Other Window Managers
Here is a list of other window managers I've heard about. Some are no longer available, and some are commercial. If you know of any others, or think I should feature any of them in more detail, please let me know.
See also the Other Desktops page.
- monsterwm: A minimal, lightweight dynamic tiling window manager.
- subtle: A grid-based manual tiling window manager with a strong focus on easy but customizable look and feel.
- Awesome: A highly configurable, lightweight window manager aimed at power users and developers.
- xmonad: A dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell.
- Beryl: A fork of Compiz.
- Compiz: A window manager and OpenGL composite manager which brings a variety of effects to Xgl based Linux desktops.
- dwm: A dynamic window manager derived from wmii.
- SithWM: A minimalist window manager based on evilwm with menus and virtual desktops.
- Whim: A window manager written in Tcl that supports multiple desktops.
- Karmen: A simple window manager with a clean look. It doesn't need a config file and has no library dependencies other than Xlib.
- Integrity: A Qt/X11 based window manager supporting multiple dynamic themes, image transparency, color masking, menus, and virtual desktops.
- QuarkWM: A lightweight window manager designed to increase your productivity.
- BadWM: A minimalistic window manager with good keyboard control.
- XIGE: The Xilicius Graphical Environment is a new and fast window manager optimized for programmers, laptops and fast users.
- JWM: Joe's window manager is a simple Xlib-based window manager with sloppy focus and click-to-raise.
- WWM: The Weird Window Manager is rather basic and hasn't been updated for a long time.
- wmii: Window Manager Improved 2 is a lightweight window manager written from scratch. It aims to combine the best features of larsWM, Ion, evilwm, and ratpoison.
- Stumpwm: a tiling, keyboard driven window manager written in Common Lisp.
- TrsWM: This window manager builds on the ideas of Ion, by splitting the screen into frames, and making it easy to completely manage windows using only the keyboard.
- Kahakai: A window manager based on Waimea with scripting support for various languages.
- PyWM: The Python window manager is a small python-programmable window manager based on FLWM.
- XWEM: A window manager written in Emacs Lisp.
- MIWM: The Microscopic Window Manager is a minimal window manager written in C++ which is efficient and stable, and supports virtual desktops.
- Eclipse: A window manager written entirely in Common Lisp.
- Framer: Written in Eiffel, this is a simple window manager for the ROX Desktop.
- Mavosxwm: A minimal window manager, in an early state of development.
- WindowLab: A small and simple window manager based on aewm, with some novel additions.
- Openbox: Based on Blackbox, with various features including anti-alised fonts with Xft and Xinerama support for multiple monitors.
- Hackedbox: A stripped down version of blackbox, with the toolbar and slit features removed.
- Matchbox: A small window manager, requiring only XLib, designed for computers with little screen real estate, including PDAs and phones.
- Pekwm: Another aewm++ based window manager. Features include tabbed windows (grouping windows together in a single frame), root menus, and Xinerama support.
- Waimea: A fast and highly customizable virtual desktop window manager which conforms to the EWMH specification and uses the Cairo graphics library.
- Clementine: A small, fast window manager based on aewm but rewritten in C++.
- Interface WM: A window manager written in objective-c (originally a rewrite of alloywm) and optimized for GNUstep applications.
- ZWM: a SDL based Window Manager and Widget library intended to be used in cross platform applications.
- HaZe: A window manager based on mlvm.
- PAWM: The Puto Amo Window Manager (PAWM) is designed to be simple, small and functional.
- aewm++: A window manager with more modern features than aewm but with the same look and feel.
- NovaWM: A very new window manager in an early stage of development.
- Golem: A small window manager supporting themes, plugins, and multi-screen displays.
- Oroborus: A simple window manager with GNOME support, themes, and full keyboard control.
- Treewm: A window manager that lets you create desktops and windows within desktops.
- GwML: A window-manager written in OCAML.
- Heliwm: A compact window manager designed to minimize memory consumption.
- 5dwm: The Indigo Magic Desktop for Linux.
- Mosquito: A small window manager by Erik Thyrén, not to be confused with the beginnings of a GNOME-compliant window manager also called Mosquito by Michael Rogers, which seems to have disappeared.
- Maewm: Yet another hack of aewm.
- QLWM: A small and efficient Qt 2.x based window manager.
- Phluid: Yet another window manager (pre-alpha) based on aewm.
- Alloywm: Another window manager based on aewm.
- Amaterus: a window manager using the GTK+ toolkit, in an early stage of development.
- Evilwm: A minimalist window manager derived from aewm, with some additions in the area of keyboard control.
- Ratpoison: A simple lightweight window manager with no fancy graphics or window decorations.
- Ion: A tiling tabbed window manager designed with keyboard users in mind.
- Perlwm: A window manager written in Perl, using the X11::Protocol module.
- Efsane II: Formally Efsane, the first Turkish window manager, it has now been rewritten as Efsane II.
- 3Dwm: A Three-Dimensional workspace manager from Chalmers Medialab in Sweden.
- Swm: The Small Window Manager is designed for low memory / small screen environments such as laptops and PDAs.
- Puppet: A window manager written in Java, which has no window decoration and is keyboard driven. It includes a Java library, called Escher, for making X11 calls.
- YAWM: A window manager, in an early state of development, which aims to be portable, intuitive and fast. Previously at www.yawm.org, but now defunct.
- w9wm: This is a quick hack which adds virtual screens to the 9wm window manager.
- larswm: Another hack of 9wm that adds automatic tiling of windows.
- PWM: This is a lightweight window manager, which can frame multiple client windows within a single frame.
- PLWM: The Pointless Window Manager. It is a highly modularised window manager written in Python.
- EPIwm: A window manager that is intended to be small, fast, configurable while maintaining a large feature set.
- wmG: A small GTK-based window manager that is GNOME-compliant, partially Mwm compliant, and fully ICCCM compliant.
- aewm: The ascetic/aesthetic WM, a minimal window manager based on 9wm.
- B4step: An original window manager for Linux and Solaris, featuring GNOME compliance and fancy window titles.
- flwm: The Fast Light Window Manager, based on wm2.
- lwm: the Lightweight Window Manager, which has no icons, no button bars, no icon docks, no root menus, no nothing.
- mlvwm: a virtual window manager designed to look like the Macintosh.
- qvwm: a Win95 look-a-like.
- mwm 2.0: the 2.0 version of mwm includes support for multiple workspaces.
- GWM: the Generic Window Manager is an old Lisp-based extensible window manager.
- 9wm: by David Hogan (dhog@cs.su.oz.au), this is an X window manager which attempts to emulate the Plan 9 window manager 8-1/2 as far as possible within the constraints imposed by X.
- OSWM is the window manager from Sun's version of OPENSTEP for their Solaris platform. OPENSTEP is based on a joint specification from NeXT and Sun.
- awm: the Ardent Window Manager was for a while a hotbed for hackers and offered some features (dynamic menus) not found on more current window managers
- rtl: Siemen's window manager tiles windows so that they don't overlap and resizes the window with the focus to its preferred size.
- dxwm: Digital's dxwm is part of the DECwindows offering
- hpwm: HP's window manager offers a 3D look; it is a precursor of mwm
- tekwm: Tektronix's window manager offering
- m_swm: the Sigma window manager is on the R4 tape
- pswm: Sun's PostScript-based pswm is part of the OpenWindows release
- swm: Solbourne's swm is based on the OI toolkit and offers multiple GUI support and also a panning virtual window; configuration information comes from the resources file. See also this swm PDF document.
- tvtwm: Tom's Virtual Tab Window Manager is also based on the Tab Window Manager and provides a virtual desktop modelled on the virtual-root window of swm. It is available on ftp.x.org and mirroring archive servers. The current [March '95] version is available at ftp.x.org/contrib/window_managers/tvtwm.pl11.tar.gz.
- mvwm: the vtwm-style virtual-desktop added to OSF's mwm. A beta version is floating around (most recently from suresh@unipalm.co.uk) but requires a source license to OSF/Motif 1.1.3 [March '92].
- NCDwm: the window manager local to NCD terminals offers an mwm look
- XDSwm: the window manager local to Visual Technology's terminals is simple but full-featured.
- vuewm: HP's MWM-based window manager offers configurable workspaces. SAIC offers a version of this VUE environment.
- 4Dwm: SGI's enhanced MWM
- piewm: this version of tvtwm offers pie menus
- pmwm: IXI's Panorama version of MWM offers olvwm-like features.
- uwm: the Universal Window Manager is very outdated, but is an excellent example of how to do simple window manager functions. The source code (47K) is available, and minor modifications have been made to ensure it compiles on UnixWare, Linux, and AIX. It should also compile on other platforms without too much trouble.
- wm: a very primitive overlapping window manager, originally designed to help with the debugging of the X11 server, this window manager was phased out in X11R2 or R3.
- xwm: Possibly the first... this dates back to 1985, before X11 itself. The version in the archive is from X10R4.
The source for quite a few of these window managers (particularly the older ones) can be downloaded from the xwinman.org archive.