X window manager Totally Explained

Everything about X Window Manager totally explained

An X window manager is a window manager which runs on top of the X Window System, a windowing system mainly used on Unix-like systems. Unlike the Mac OS (Apple Macintosh) and Microsoft Windows platforms, which have historically provided a vendor-controlled, fixed set of ways to control how windows and panes display on a screen, and how the user may interact with them, window management for the X Window System was deliberately kept separate from the software providing the graphical display. The user can choose between various third-party window managers, which differ from one another in several ways, including:

customizability of appearance and functionality:
- textual menus used to start programs and/or change options
- docks and other graphical ways to start programs
- multiple desktops and virtual desktops (desktops larger than the physical monitor size), and pagers to switch between them
consumption of memory and other system resources
degree of integration with a desktop environment, which provides a more complete interface to the operating system, and provides a range of integrated utilities and applications.

How X window managers work

When a window manager is running, some kinds of interaction between the X server and its clients are redirected through the window manager. In particular, whenever an attempt to show a new window is made, this request is redirected to the window manager, which decides the initial position of the window. Additionally, most modern window managers are reparenting, which usually leads to a banner being placed at the top of the window and a decorative frame being drawn around the window. These two elements are controlled by the window manager rather than the program. Therefore, when the user clicks or drags these elements, it's the window manager that takes the appropriate actions (such as moving or resizing the window).
Window managers are also responsible for icons. Indeed, icons don't exist at the X Window System core protocol level. When the user requests a window to be iconified, the window manager unmaps it (makes it non-visible) and takes the appropriate actions to show an icon in its place. Some window managers don't support icons.
While the main aim of a window manager is to manage the windows, many window managers have additional features such as handling mouse clicks in the root window, presenting panes and other visual elements, handling some keystrokes (for example, Alt-F4 may close a window), deciding which application to run at start-up, etc.

Specialised types of window managers

Several specialised types of window manager exist.

Virtual window managers

A virtual window manager is a window manager that uses virtual screens, whose resolution can be higher than the resolution of one's monitor/display adaptor. This environment is very useful when one wishes to have a large number of windows open at the same time. A number of virtual window managers have been made, including FVWM, Tvtwm, HaZe and others.

Tiling window managers

A tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames (hence the name tiling), as opposed to the traditional approach of coordinate-based stacking of objects (windows) that tries to emulate the desk paradigm. The following is a list of tiling window managers.

Larswm

Ion

TrsWM

Stumpwm

wmii

dwm

ratpoison

XWEM

Xmonad

awesome

Popular X window managers

AfterStep

Blackbox (minimalist)

evilwm

Enlightenment

Fluxbox (lightweight, based on Blackbox)

FVWM (a virtual window manager, derived from twm)

IceWM

Ion (a tiling tabbed window manager designed with keyboard users in mind)

KWin (originally called KWM, default for KDE)

Metacity (the current default for the GNOME desktop environment)

MWM (Motif Window Manager), Motif Window Manager

Openbox

Sawfish (a past default for GNOME, originally called Sawmill)

twm (default for the X Window System since version X11R4)

Window Maker

Xfwm4 (a window manager for the Xfce desktop environment)

Compositing window managers

Beryl

Compiz

Metacity (default for GNOME and has a compositing option since version 2.20)

Xfwm (default for Xfce)

Other X window managers

4Dwm

5Dwm (derived from mwm, true SGI look&feel)

9wm (External Link

) (clone of the original windowing system of Plan 9)

aewm (External Link

)

amiwm (External Link

) Amiga workbench unix clone.

CTWM

cwm (External Link

)

EvilPoison (External Link

) (a fork of evilwm with Ratpoison-like keybindings)

FVWM95

hackedbox (External Link

)

HaZe

JWM (Joe's Window Manager)

Kahakai

Luminocity (experimentation in compositing)

LWM (External Link

)

Matchbox (External Link

)

olwm (and olvwm (External Link

) with virtual desktops, OPEN LOOK window managers)

Orion A nested (tiled or floating) window manager written in Scheme and scsh (External Link

)

Oroborus

PekWM

PLWM

PWM

Qvwm (Windows 95/98 look-alike) (External Link

) (list of forks)

Ratpoison

Scwm (the Scheme constraints window manager)

SithWM evilwm-based, virtual window manager

swm (the original virtual desktop implementation)

Toy'd (HomePage

GoogleProject

a portable window manager for MS-Windows & UNIX / Linux platforms)

TrsWM

uwm

vtwm

Waimea (External Link

)

WindowLab

wm2

WMI

XPwm (for XPde, Windows XP Look alike) - now defunct

xwmFurther Information

Get more info on 'X Window Manager'.

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