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 that work with X11 and are available in Gentoo. See x11-wm on packages.gentoo.org, or use eix (app-portage/eix).
Note to editors
Window managers that work under Wayland should be added to the list of compositors. Window managers that work under X11 and Wayland can be added to both lists.
| 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)