I think we can lay a lot of the blame for that major annoyance on the two related facts: a: there is no universal windowing system everybody adheres to, just two major commercial ones with spin-offs for smartphones and the like; b: a lot of Linux developers are chasing MS Windows in hope of desktop market share and copy MS Windows features and misfeatures. A major irony is that MS Windows itself has chased Linux somewhat on the graphical user interface front - Linux was the platform of GUI redesign for OLPC and Android, Microsoft took the bait and tried it as a desktop in MS Win 8.0 and got slammed for it. Setting out standards for a herd of cats is not much of an option; the best one could do is publish RFCs giving a list of features that have been proven to work in practice and hope for the best. Wesley Parish Quoting Steve Nickolas : > On Mon, 20 Feb 2017, Steve Johnson wrote: > > > > In terms of following the Unix philosophy, the widow managers on Linux > > > are getting more bizarre by the year.  Hitting a key at random by > > mistake can cause windows to disappear, screens of unknown utility to > > > appear, everything to disappear, etc.  Setting options to try to > achieve > > some kind of consistency is totally different in each system.  Etc. > > etc.   There seems to be no larger organizing principle at work... > > Which is probably truer than you realize. > > -uso. > "I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor, Method for Guitar "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn