wm2 was released around 1997 and was inspired by the window manager from the operating system Plan 9.[3]
Functions
wm2 was designed to have a simple set of features and be fast. It provides support for moving, resizing, and deleting windows, but does not support desktop icons, menus, toolbars, panels, or docks.[4] Instead of icons, wm2 allows temporary hiding of windows from the desktop environment. Hidden windows can be recovered via a menu from the root window. It does not support interactive configuration, or provide a virtual desktop, and other features of modern window managers such as configurable root menus, toolbars, etc. Configuration options require editing and recompiling a source file and few options are available.[5][6] wm2 is intended to be configuration free.[7]
wmx
wmx is a version of wm2 modified to add experimental features otherwise not supported in wm2.[8][9]
Reception
wm2 was noted as being "very spartan", "bare-bones", and minimalist, though opinions on it were positive as it is allows for easy access to X11 and window management without too much configuration.[6][10][11] One author noted it used less memory than the other options he tried, getting it to run with only 0.7MB of memory.[4]
