===== About =====

The **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 [[en:system:userspace:desktop_enviroment|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 window managers =====

{| border="1" style="border-collapse:collapse; text-align: center; color:#262627; background-color:#f8f9fa;"
! style="background-color:#eaecf0"  colspan="1" width="17%"| Package-Name
! style="background-color:#eaecf0"  colspan="1" width="23%"| Homepage / Source-Repository
! style="background-color:#eaecf0"  colspan="1"| Description
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/awesome|awesome]] || https://awesomewm.org/ || Highly configurable, next generation, dynamic window manager for X. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/blackbox|blackbox]] || https://github.com/bradleythughes/blackbox || Free and libre stacking window manager written in C++ and licensed under the MIT License.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/bspwm|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. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/cwm|cwm]] || https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/xenocara/app/cwm/ || Lightweight, stacking window manager originally developed for OpenBSD.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/fluxbox|fluxbox]] || http://www.fluxbox.org || Free software stacking window manager for X11 that was originally forked from Blackbox. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/fvwm3|fvwm]] || http://www.fvwm.org/ || Stacking window manager for X11. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/herbstluftwm|herbstluftwm]] || https://herbstluftwm.org/ || Manual tiling window manager for X11 using Xlib and Glib.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/jwm|jwm]] || http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/ || Extremely lightweight window manager for the X window system. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/i3-wm|i3-wm]] || https://i3wm.org/ || Minimalist tiling window manager, completely written from scratch.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/icewm|icewm]] || https://ice-wm.org/ || Free and libre, lightweight, stacking window manager for X11. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/notion|notion]] || http://notion.sourceforge.net/ || Tabbed and tiling window manager.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/openbox|openbox]] || https://github.com/danakj/openbox || Highly configurable, next generation, stacking window manager for X11 with extensive standards support.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/pekwm|pekwm]] || https://pekwm.org/ || Lightweight, dynamic window manager originally forked from aewm++.  
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/ratpoison|ratpoison]] || https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ || Tiling window manager modeled after screen. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/sawfish|sawfish]] || https://sawfish.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page || Extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language.
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/xenocara-twm|twm]] || https://www.xenocara.org/ || Simple stacking window manager started written in C. 
|-
| [[https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/uwm|uwm]] || https://uwm.sourceforge.io/ || Micro (u) and Stacking Window Manager.
|}
===== Acknowledgement =====

This wiki article is based on information from Gentoo and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_window_managers|Wikipedia]].