New Release: IceWM 3.8.0 Brings Enhanced Features to Lightweight Window Manager

On June 22, 2025, the open-source lightweight window manager project IceWM released version 3.8.0. The previous version, IceWM 3.7.0, was launched in February. The source code is written in C++ and is available under the GPLv2 license. This project has been in development for over twenty-eight years.

According to information from OpenNET, IceWM offers comprehensive management through keyboard shortcuts, virtual desktops, taskbars, and application menus, with support for window grouping via tabs. The window manager is configured through a straightforward configuration file, and theme support is available. It allows tabbed window grouping and includes built-in applets for monitoring CPU usage, memory, and network traffic. Additionally, several third-party GUIs are in development for settings, desktop implementations, and menu editors.

Key updates and enhancements in IceWM 3.8.0 include:

— The theme menu now displays a window minimize button as part of the icon style demonstration for each theme.
— Loading times for the theme menu have been improved.
— Reduced CPU load when using the widget for monitoring memory and CPU usage.
— The Help menu has been expanded with additional links to manuals.
— Hotkeys are now converted to uppercase according to the current locale.
— The utilities icesh and icewmbg have transitioned to using a non-deterministic random number generator (replacing the «rand()» function with «arc4random_uniform()»).