Experimental Mir-based tiling WM is winning acceptance outside Ubuntopia

The Miracle-WM tiling window manager for Canonical's Mir display server has hit 0.3 – and also reaches places you may not expect to find Canonical code.

The new version is 0.3.0 and as Miracle-WM's core functionality settles down somewhat, it's starting to get prettier as well. Although it's still new, there are several things about it that are a little different, which is why we've covered earlier versions here on The Register. Version 0.1.0 only appeared in February, and was followed by version 0.2.0 in April.

The new version not only improves window management, it also adds some eye candy. Window resize and move operations can now include animation effects, as well as switching between workspaces. Lest ye mock, this sort of thing has been attracting folks to Linux for at least a decade and a half. Windows can now have borders, and that of the active window can be a different color, to make it more obvious which one you're typing into. There are also improvements to IPC (inter-process communication), which is modelled on that of i3.

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There's a nifty – and short – YouTube demo video showing off some of the new bling.

One of the more unusual things about Miracle-WM is that it runs on top of Canonical's Mir display server, which is very much still around and in active development. In the wider Linux community, it's common to find anti-Canonical and anti-Ubuntu sentiment, particularly against some Canonical technology such as Snap packaging. Mir, however, seems to be winning friends and influencing people.

It was included as a supporting element of the Lomiri desktop in Debian 12 last year. More recently, Miracle-WM has been available as a package in Fedora since Fedora 40. Indeed, plans are under way for there to be a specific Fedora Miracle-WM Spin, which might happen for Fedora 41 – currently scheduled for October this year.

Miracle-WM is distributed as a snap package, and on Ubuntu you can install it with:

sudo snap install miracle-wm --classic

It's still pre-release, but it has come a long way in just six months. The source code is on GitHub and it has a growing set of documentation in its own wiki. ®