The Atari ST's desktop, for Wayland.
GemWM is a Wayland compositor that looks like GEM, the desktop of Atari's TOS: a desktop in the ST's own colours, the menu bar along the top, and black and white windows with a closer, a fuller and a sizer. Under it is a modern window manager, with tiling and scrolling modes, workspaces, an overview of every window, and programs of its own.
Three Ways to Work
Switch between them in Options > Mode, with a key, or with one command. The frames stay GEM's in all three.
WindowOverlapping GEM windows. Drag the title bar and an outline follows the pointer; the window moves when you let go. Super+W shows every window at once.
TilingTwo columns that share the screen, each stacking its windows, as in i3 and sway. Windows glide to their new places, or step there in outline, the way GEM did.
ScrollingA strip of columns that scrolls sideways, after niri. New windows open to the right; the view slides to keep the one you are in in sight.Its Own Applications
A desktop is more than its windows, so GemWM comes with the programs to fill them, all drawn as GEM drew: menus in the bar, GEM's dialogs and its item selector, in the ST's own font.
- GemWebA WebKit web browser in GEM chrome, with ad blocking, Reader View, web apps and a password manager's logins.
- GemMailEmail over IMAP and SMTP, offline-first, with optional AI categories, a newsletter rack and a bills ledger.
- GemWriteA word processor for OpenDocument files, with comments, spelling, and a command-line twin for scripts.
- Terminalfoot dressed as an Atari ST terminal, in the ST's own font and palette, light or dark.
- Crossword PuzzleThe week's newspaper crosswords, solved on screen and printed the way a newspaper would.
And the rest of a desktop:notifications,Open and Save dialogs for every program,Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,volume, printing,screenshots and alogin screen. See all of them.
Made to Be Changed
One small file, ~/.config/gemwm/config, and you only write what you change. The desktop can be any ST colour, a picture redrawn in the ST's own palette, or a GEM fill pattern; the menus are a text file too.
[desktop]
color = blue
image = ~/Pictures/atari.png
dither = st16 # the picture, as an ST would show it
[keys]
Super+Return = exec foot
Super+Page_Down = workspace next
[animation]
mode = outline # GEM's moving boxesDesktop and looks,key bindings,the menu bar.
Scriptable
gemwm msg runs any command and prints JSON, andgemwm msg subscribe streams what changes. Every item at the right of the menu bar is a menu app: a program that prints a line, which a shell script can be.
# Send every terminal to workspace 2
gemwm msg windows | jq '.windows[] | select(.app_id=="foot") | .id' |
xargs -I gemwm msg move-window 2GemWM is free software under the BSD license, written in C onwlroots. The Atari ST font is built fromEmuTOS's, under the GPL. GEM and TOS were Digital Research's and Atari's; GemWM is a tribute, not affiliated with either.