With the creation of Handhelds.org and its communitys work with to make Linux and X Windows run efficiently on iPaq devices it soon became apparent to me, as an avid handhelds.org hacker, that pre existing X11 window managers were a poor fit on a device with such low resources, a small 240x320 display and very limited input mechanisms ( no keyboard, touchscreen ). To improve on this situation, Matchbox window manager was born.

The plan was to leverage the huge amount of existing X11 applications and toolkits and attempt to make them usable on such a device with little or no modification. This would also make embedded application development more familiar and easier for existing desktop orientated developers.

As the project grew, more features were added to the window manager, and where practical, more support for other desktop standards and protocols ( see freedesktop.org ) were added as well as new supporting applications such as the matchbox panel and desktop.

Nowadays matchbox is used on a wide range of non desktop type embedded devices. Matchbox's build and run time flexibility allow it to be tailored to a target platforms resources, feature requirements and physical form.