TUI (Text-based) Windowing environments and desktops?

Text User Interfaces are awesome. Here's one for Linux and one for DOS.

“Are there TUI windowing environments or TUI desktops that can be used to have drag-drop windowing in TUI apps, so that windows can be dragged around, reordered, resized, organized freely, minimized etc? To be included to for example C/Basic/Other programming language apps itself, or TUI desktop environments that can run multiple apps? For DOS/Linux/Amiga/etc?”

- xet7 on Lunduke.Locals.com

Yes! This is a real thing that definitely exists!

There are text only “window managers” and “desktop environments”! And, get this, they’re really good!

And I’m not talking about simple terminal multiplexers here. Things like GNU Screen, Tmux, and Byobu are all incredibly cool ways to run several shell applications in a single terminal session.

But they’re really tiling systems. You can’t freely move and resize overlapping “windows” with any of those.

But those do exist! There are two that I’ll highlight here. Let’s start with the old-school DOS one that is no longer updated… then we’ll move on to the modern Linux one.

DESQview

DESQview is amazing. Run this on top of MS-DOS and shazam you’ve got a multi-tasking, Text-mode desktop environment.

You can even resize and move those windows (running DOS text mode applications) around. Arrange them however you like.

This works astoundingly well.

In fact, DESQview was a big name in the 1980s. Many multi-line BBS systems used DESQview to run several instances of a BBS server all at the same time.

Monotty Desktop

Now, let’s talk about something more modern.

Monotty is a purely text based terminal multiplexer. But, unlike many other popular multiplexers (like tmux or gnu screen), you can use the mouse to freely move and resize applications.

And it looks gorgeous!

Runs on Linux and just about any POSIX compliant system.

Check out this video and try your best not to drool on your keyboard.

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