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NewsForge details how a small window manager designed for a Compaq Ipaq ended up being the target of the largest phone maker in the world, Nokia.
Freelance software developer Matthew Allum was simply "scratching an itch" when he created the Matchbox Window Manager, a lightweight program designed to more efficiently run X11 applications on handheld devices. But Allum's project worked so well, it caught the attention of a giant in the handheld space.
Allum became enamored with the idea of running Linux on a Compaq Ipaq in 2000 when he saw screenshots published by Compaq that showed the Ipaq happily running Linux. He bought one and installed Debian, but found that a lot of the Linux-based window managers didn't work with the small 240x320 display. Frustrated, he "bought a book on xlib," sat down, and in 2001 wrote Matchbox, a 50KB highly flexible window manager that depends only on xlib, which makes it lightweight enough to run on small devices without using too many resources.
Matchbox "stacks" open windows one on top of another and allows access to each through the use of a drop-down menu on the title bar. Users can't move or resize windows, which sounds restrictive, but actually works well because of the extremely limited screen space on small devices.
Allum made a practice of publicizing the project on handhelds.org; he published the project on his page there and was well-known in the Linux on handhelds community. He garnered several speaking positions at big conferences like FOSDEM, Usenix, and Python, where he worked to dispel what he called the "myth of slow X."
"One day in November 2002, I got a mysterious email asking about Matchbox," Allum says. He almost hit the Delete key. "At first I didn't answer because it was so odd and out of the blue; when you write open source software you occasionally get strange emails."
Fortunately, he decided to reply and answer the questions. Promptly he received a response back from a Nokia.com address. "They said they were experimenting with Linux and they wanted to fund my work with Matchbox." He was astounded. All of a sudden, Matchbox the hobby project became Matchbox the full-time job -- no need to freelance any longer. Full article
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