Comparisons
It is difficult to compare window managers fairly, because many factors are involved, such as range of features, customization, documentation, stability, ease of installation, and hardware/software requirements, not to mention personal preferences. However, the following tables attempt to give a broad indication of some of the relative merits of the featured window managers. The figures in the resource requirements table shouldn't be taken too seriously as they are dependent to some extent on the particular machine involved, and the way it's configured.
Features
| Window Manager |
Virtual Desktops |
Workspaces or Screens |
XPM Support |
Pinnable Menus |
Session Management |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TWM | - | - | - | - | - |
| VTWM |  |
- | - | - | - |
| FVWM | |
|
|
|
|
| FVWM-95 | |
|
|
- | - |
| AfterStep | |
|
|
|
- |
| CDE (dtwm) | - | |
|
- | |
| AmiWM | - | |
- | - | - |
| OLWM | - | - | - | |
- |
| OLVWM | |
- | |
|
- |
| GWM | |
|
|
- | - |
| MWM1 | |
|
|
|
- |
| CTWM | |
|
|
|
- |
| Enlightenment | |
|
|
|
- |
| WM2 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Window Maker | - | |
|
|
- |
| KDE | |
|
|
- | |
| ICEWM | - | |
|
- | - |
| SCWM | |
|
|
|
|
Pinnable menus are ones which you can leave on the desktop, for
easy access. They are also known as tear-off menus, particularly in
relation to the Motif toolkit.
Resource Requirements
| Window Manager |
Binary Size2 (SunOS 5.x) |
Binary Size2 (Linux 2.x) |
Memory Size3 (SunOS 5.x) |
Memory Size3 (Linux 2.x) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| twm | 154K | 128K | 2672K | 1504K |
| vtwm | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| fvwm4 | 154K / 209K | 109K / N/A | 2232K / 2264K | N/A |
| FvwmPager5 | 57K | 30K | 1848K | 1436K |
| FvwmButtons5 (GoodStuff) | 81K | 23K | 2072K | 712K |
| fvwm95 | 148K | 115K | 2192K | 1032K |
| afterstep | N/A | 122K | N/A | 1648K |
| Wharf6 | N/A | 37K | N/A | 1556K |
| CDE (dtwm) | 513K | 433K | 6600K | 6672K |
| amiwm | N/A | 468K | N/A | 376K |
| olwm | 231K | 193K | 2232K | N/A |
| olvwm | N/A | 280K | N/A | N/A |
| gwm | 337K | N/A | 3352K | N/A |
| mwm | 247K | 293K | 4050K | N/A |
| ctwm | 293K | 241K | 2936K | 2180K |
| icewm | N/A | 211K | N/A | 916K |
| scwm | N/A | 516K | N/A | 6708K |
Notes
- Only under Motif 2.0 - previous versions of mwm support none of the listed features.
- The binary size is taken to be the size of the executable, stripped and not including shared libraries.
- The memory size is taken to be the memory taken up by the window manager when running. It is the size of the program's text area + data area + stack.
- The two values in each column are for version 1 of fvwm and version 2 respectively.
- These are modules for fvwm and derivatives (fvwm95 & afterstep), and should be added to the data for the appropriate window manager itself, if they are used. There are numerous other modules available, all of which will increase the resource requirements.
- This is a module for afterstep, which is similar to FvwmButtons. See note 5.