• Diff for "WindowManager"

Translation(s): English - Français - Italiano

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.

The most commonly used Linux window managers are:

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

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

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

  • FluxBox

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

• IceWM http://www.icewm.org/

  • IceWM is a small, fast, lightweight WindowManager designed to resemble Microsoft Windows.

  • It provides basic, standards compliant window management and a TaskBar.

  • It is very configurable, with many options. So many, in fact, that dispite several attempts, there is no good, intuitive configuration program for it.
  • IceWM is also extremely themable, supporting rounded corners, pixmaps, and many amazingly ugly themes.

  • http://www.icewm.org/

• KWin / Kwm (The window manager used for the KDE desktop)

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

• Openbox http://openbox.org/

  • Openbox

• Twm (an old window manager dating back to the beginnings of X Window)

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

• XFCE http://www.xfce.org/

Other WMs include:

• 9wm
• aewm

• AfterStep

• amiwm
• AmiWM (Amiga Lookalike)

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

• lwm
• MIWM

• ?OpenLook

• Oroborus
• PekWM
• ratpoison
• Scrotwm
• StumpWM

• TinyWM

• uwm
• VTWM
• w9wm

• WindowLab

• wm2

Tiling Window managers

Tiling window managers arrange application windows into various grid layouts, often in a manner which displays all of the windows seamlessly without overlapping. Debian provides packages for several popular tiling window managers, including:

• awesome

• dwm (see also Dwm page on this wiki))

• i3

• larswm

• ratpoison

• sawfish

• scrotwm

• stumpwm

• wmii (see also Wmii page on this wiki)

• xmonad (see also Xmonad page on this wiki)

Other tiling window managers, which can be built from source, include:

• echinus

• ion (see also fr/Ion (French))

• musca

• subtle

• wmfs

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

• DisplayManager (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