I'm not familiar with icewm.
I was wondering if we added OK buttons to those two dialogs if we could do without the WM completely.
Since I've not used MC in docker I don't know how useful the WM is. Without the WM you can't move MC's windows (like the options window) around.
Is this an issue at all??
As far as I'm concerned the WM would be superfluous if there was a way to dismiss those dialogs. I don't bother moving the windows, i scroll the vnc rendering. I haven't really experimented much with various x11 capabilities in MC tho... Standard x11 programs accept a geometry specification that MC may not accept. A geometry can specify window origin and dimensions. I'll try some experiments this evening when i get home and post my results
To answer your original question, tho, i think a window manager is a lot of unnecessary overhead in a container, if there are options to dismiss dialogs
EDIT: Short answer: yes, it would help a lot if the dialogs had a way to dismiss them! I believe we could get rid of the need for a window manager altogether.
it appears that MC pays attention to the usual X11 command-line arguments. At least, I can get it to open to a particular size (e.g. -geometry 1024x768). The window manager plays a role in location so without providing a window-manager specific configuration file, I'm not sure I can force it to open at 0,0. Also, with both fluxbox and icewm, MC seems to open minimized which means one must go to the bottom of the VNC display to force it to un-minimize (it's been a long long time since I messed with this stuff so forgive me if I've missed something obvious).