• Diff for "WindowManager"

Translation(s): Français

In the X Window System, the X Server itself does not give the user the capability of managing windows that have been opened. Instead, this job is delegated to a program called a window manager.

The window manager gives windows a border and allows you to move them around and maximize/minimize them. The user interface for these functions is left up to its author.

This proves to be quite confusing for the new user of a X windowing environment because most other environments simply use one window manager and give the user no choice. In this sense, X is much more versatile and allows more tailoring of the environment to whatever the user wants. It allows the creation of an xterminal, a diskless workstation which runs only an X server (out of ROM) and leaves all user interface implementation to a central compute server.

Available Linux window managers are:

• AmiWM (Amiga Lookalike)

• Sawfish http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

• Windowmaker http://www.windowmaker.org/

• Metacity http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/metacity (for DebianGnome ).

• Blackbox http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/

• Fluxbox http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/

• IceWM http://www.icewm.org/

• JWM http://joewing.net/programs/jwm/

• Openbox http://www.icculus.org/openbox/

• Enlightenment http://www.enlightenment.org/

• XFCE http://www.xfce.org/

• Kwm (The window manager used for the KDE desktop)
• Twm (an old window manager dating back to the beginnings of X windows)

• Fvwm http://www.fvwm.org/ (an old but useful window manager - still in constant development!)

• ?OpenLook

• wmii http://wmii.suckless.org/

• awesome http://awesome.naquadah.org/

• xmonad http://xmonad.org/

see x-window-manager packages descriptions

If you use startx rather than a login manager, you'll probably want to choose a default Window Manager. To change the default window manager use

  update-alternatives --config x-window-manager

( See update-alternatives manpage).

Window Managers must not be confused with ?Desktop_environments such as GNOME, KDE, XFce. These three environments use a window manager as a single part of a much larger system. And to make things much more complicated, GNOME doesn't force you to use any one window manager. They have a list of "supported" window managers that you can choose from.

Afterstep should be mentioned - (and fvwm is actually fvwm2 whereas fvwm1 already had/has lots of "functionality" and lives on a smaller foot-print)

See also

• Display managers: (gdm, kdm, xdm ..).

• GUI

• http://xwinman.org/ for a more comprehensive list of window managers for X.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/window_manager

• Comparison of X Window Managers at the Mark Hobley's Open Source Laboratory

CategoryDesktopEnvironment | CategoryXWindowSystem