Emacs as a Window Manager and concurrency

Thomas Koch - https://blog.koch.ro, thomas@koch.ro

Format: 20-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-rau
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-rau
Status: Waiting for video from speaker

Description

Rau is one of three different Wayland Window Manager projects active right now and the only one written only in Elisp (at the moment).

I'll present the current state of Rau, compare it with the other two projects (Reka, EWM) and discuss some difficulties encountered with a focus on concurrency and Emacs.

Rau is already fully functional for daily use. The single threaded nature of Emacs however is a major issue that will require to move the major part of Rau from Elisp into an Emacs module and thus into another language.

https://github.com/thkoch2001/rau

About the speaker:

Thomas Koch has a preference for logic, correctness and elegance. Therefore, he likes Haskell, Emacs, Nix, Postgres and tries to help the success of https://github.com/axiosoph/axios. He deeply values open, respectful discussions with people of diverse perspectives.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail thomas@koch.ro