Window manager
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Not to be confused with display manager.
A window manager manages the creation, manipulation, and destruction of on-screen windows and window decorations in Xorg.
Each X server installation should usually have a window manager. If a desktop environment is used, a window manager will generally be provided.
Classification
Windows managers can generally be dynamic, stacking, or tiling in their behavior.
- Stacking (or floating) window managers have windows analogous to pieces of paper on a physical desktop, which can be stacked each on top of the others, with the one with which the user interacts on top of the stack, and totally visible.
- Tiling window managers represent windows as tiles, or split views, with windows displayed next to one another, but with none of the windows overlapping.
- Dynamic window managers can dynamically switch between the other two paradigms.
Windows managers can integrate a compositor, for buffering graphics before showing them, allowing visual effects, anti-flicker and other facilities.
Available software
This is a partial selection of window managers available in Gentoo. See x11-wm on packages.gentoo.org, or use eix (app-portage/eix).
| Name | Package | Homepage | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| aewm | x11-wm/aewm | 404 (bug #708484) | Minimalistic, dynamic X11 window manager. |
| aewm++ | x11-wm/aewm++ | https://github.com/frankhale/aewmpp | Dynamic window manager with more modern features than aewm but with the same look and feel. |
| amiwm | x11-wm/amiwm | https://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiwm.html | Stacking window manager that resembles the Amiga Workbench user interface. |
| Awesome | x11-wm/awesome | https://awesomewm.org/ | Highly configurable, next generation, dynamic window manager for X. |
| blackbox | x11-wm/blackbox | https://github.com/bradleythughes/blackbox | Open-source stacking window manager written in C++ and licensed under the MIT License. |
| bspwm | x11-wm/bspwm | https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm | Lightweight, tiling, minimalist window manager that is written in C and represents its windows as leaves on a binary tree. |
| CTWM | x11-wm/ctwm | https://www.ctwm.org/index.html | Lightweight, stacking window manager. |
| cwm | x11-wm/cwm | https://github.com/leahneukirchen/cwm | Lightweight, stacking window manager originally developed for OpenBSD. |
| dwm | x11-wm/dwm | https://dwm.suckless.org/ | Dynamic window manager for X11. |
| echinus | x11-wm/echinus | https://plhk.ru/ | Lightweight tiling and floating window manager forked from dwm. |
| Enlightenment | x11-wm/enlightenment | https://www.enlightenment.org/ | Eye-candy, compositing and stacking window manager that is released under the permissive BSD License. |
| evilwm | x11-wm/evilwm | https://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/ | Lightweight, stacking window manager. |
| fluxbox | x11-wm/fluxbox | http://fluxbox.org/ | Open-source stacking window manager for X11 that was originally forked from Blackbox. |
| FVWM | x11-wm/fvwm | http://www.fvwm.org/ | Stacking window manager for X11. |
| goomwwm | x11-wm/goomwwm | https://github.com/seanpringle/goomwwm | Get out of my way, Window Manager! |
| herbstluftwm | x11-wm/herbstluftwm | https://herbstluftwm.org/ | Manual tiling window manager for X11 using Xlib and Glib. |
| JWM | x11-wm/jwm | https://github.com/joewing/jwm | Extremely lightweight window manager for the X window system. |
| i3 | x11-wm/i3 | https://i3wm.org/ | Minimalist tiling window manager, completely written from scratch. |
| IceWM | x11-wm/icewm | https://ice-wm.org/ | Free and open-source, lightweight, stacking window manager for X11. |
| KWin | kde-plasma/kwin | https://userbase.kde.org/KWin | KDE's compositing window manager. |
| larswm | x11-wm/larswm | http://porneia.free.fr/larswm/larswm.html | Tiling window manager for X11, based on 9wm. |
| lwm | x11-wm/lwm | http://www.jfc.org.uk/software/lwm.html | Lightweight, stacking window manager. |
| Marco | x11-wm/marco | https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco | MATE's window manager, forked from Metacity, the window manager of GNOME 2. |
| matwm2 | x11-wm/matwm2 | https://github.com/segin/matwm2 | Simple EWMH compatible window manager with titlebars and frames. |
| Muffin | x11-wm/muffin | https://github.com/linuxmint/muffin | Cinnamon's compositing window manager. |
| Musca | x11-wm/musca | https://launchpad.net/musca | Simple dynamic window manager, with features nicked from ratpoison and dwm. |
| Mutter | x11-wm/mutter | https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/ | GNOME's compositing window manager. |
| Notion | x11-wm/notion | http://notion.sourceforge.net/ | Tiling, tabbed window manager for X11. |
| Openbox | x11-wm/openbox | http://openbox.org/ | Highly configurable, next generation, stacking window manager for X11 with extensive standards support. |
| oroborus | x11-wm/oroborus | https://www.oroborus.org/ (link seems wrong, as of 2022-11) | Small and fast window manager. |
| page | x11-wm/page | https://github.com/gschwind/page | Mouse-friendly tiling window manager. |
| PekWM | x11-wm/pekwm | https://www.pekwm.se/ | Lightweight, dynamic window manager originally forked from aewm++. |
| Qtile | x11-wm/qtile | http://www.qtile.org/ | Open-source, tiling window manager that is written in and extended with the Python programming language. |
| ratpoison | x11-wm/ratpoison | https://nongnu.org/ratpoison/ | Tiling window manager modeled after screen. |
| Sith WM | x11-wm/sithwm | https://sithwm.darkside.no/ | Minimalist window manager for X11. |
| spectrwm | x11-wm/spectrwm | http://srobb.net/spectrwm.html | Small dynamic tiling window manager for X11. |
| StumpWM | x11-wm/stumpwm | https://stumpwm.github.io/ | Tiling window manager written entirely in Common Lisp. |
| twm | x11-wm/twm | https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/twm | Simple stacking window manager started written in C. |
| WindowLab | x11-wm/windowlab | https://github.com/nickgravgaard/windowlab | Small and simple window manager of novel design. |
| Window Maker | x11-wm/windowmaker | http://www.windowmaker.org/ | Fast and light GNUstep window manager. |
| wm2 | x11-wm/wm2 | https://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/ | Minimalist window manager for X11. |
| Xfwm | xfce-base/xfwm4 | https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/start | Xfce's compositing window manager. |
| xmonad | x11-wm/xmonad | https://xmonad.org/ | Fast and lightweight tiling window manager for X11. |
See also
- Desktop environment — provides a list of desktop environments available in Gentoo.
- Display manager — presents the user with a graphical login screen to start a GUI session, either X or Wayland.
External resources
- Comparison of X window managers (Wikipedia)