Editing X window manager (section)

==Types of window managers==

===Stacking window managers===
{{Main|Stacking window manager}}

A '''stacking window manager''' renders the windows one-by-one onto the screen at specific co-ordinates. If one window's area overlaps another, then the window "on top" overwrites part of the other's visible appearance. This results in the appearance familiar to many users in which windows act a little bit like pieces of paper on a desktop, which can be moved around and allowed to overlap.

In contrast to ''compositing'' window managers (see below), the lack of separate [[off-screen buffer]]s can mean increased efficiency, but effects such as translucency are not possible.

Stacking window managers include [[Amiwm]], [[Blackbox]], [[CTWM]], [[Enlightenment (window manager)|Enlightenment]], [[Fluxbox]], [[FLWM]], [[FVWM]], [[IceWM]], [[Motif Window Manager|MWM]], [[Openbox]], [[Twm|TWM]] and [[Window Maker]].

===Tiling window managers===
{{Main|Tiling window manager}}

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

Tiling window managers include [[Awesome (window manager)|awesome]], [[dwm]], [[Ion (window manager)|ion]], [[larswm]], [[ratpoison]], [[Stumpwm]], [[wmii]], [[I3 (window manager)|i3]], [[xmonad]], and [[XWEM]].

===Compositing window managers===
{{Main|Compositing window manager}}

A '''compositing window manager''' may appear to the user similar to a stacking window manager. However, the individual windows are first rendered in individual buffers, and then their images are composited onto the screen buffer; this two-step process means that visual effects (such as shadows, translucency) can be applied. It also means that compositing window managers are inherently more resource-hungry than an equivalently-powerful stacking window manager. For this reason, some window managers for X do not support compositing by default, such as [[Openbox]].[http://askubuntu.com/questions/53745/compositing-in-lubuntu Compositing in Lubuntu]

[[Compositing window manager#History|Historically]], the Amiga in 1985, OSX in 2001, Java Looking Glass in 2003, and the Windows Longhorn demo in 2003 (delayed until Vista in 2007) preceded compositing efforts under X11.  Compositing window managers for X include:
* [[GNOME]]'s [[Mutter (window manager)|Mutter]] née [[Metacity]] (first dev-branch compositor in 2.7{{citation needed|date=September 2013}} or 2.8 [https://web.archive.org/web/20140607010531/http://webapp5.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/SuSe-Dokumentation/packages/metacity/NEWS Wayback Machine] of 2004 [http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2004083101126NWGNRL Linux Today - Release Digest: GNOME, August 30, 2004]—original stable-branch compositor since 2.14 in 2005 [https://mail.gnome.org/archives/metacity-devel-list/2005-November/msg00063.html Re: About Compositing] or 2006 [https://mail.gnome.org/archives/metacity-devel-list/2006-February/msg00011.html Metacity branched for 2.14]—current compositor architecture since 2.22 [http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/03/31/enable-metacity-compositing-in-gnome-222 Enable Metacity Compositing in GNOME 2.22 | Tombuntu] in 2008—Metacity+Clutter begat [[Mutter (window manager)|Mutter]] in 2011),
* [[Xfce]]'s [[Xfwm]] (since 4.2 of 2004{{citation needed|date=September 2013}} or 2005 [https://web.archive.org/web/20150923235500/https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2005-January/012328.html Xfce 4.2.0 released!]),
* [[Unity (user interface)|Unity]]'s [[Compiz]] (since 2005—was forked as [[Beryl (window manager)|Beryl]] in 2006 but the projects re-merged in 2007), and
* [[KDE]]'s [[KWin]] (since 4.0 of 2008).
Compositing support can be added to non-compositing window managers, through the use of compositors such as ''compton''.

===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 adapter]] thus resembling a two dimensional [[virtual desktop]] with its [[viewport]].  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]]<ref>{{cite web |title=HaZe - a real B&W; window manager |url=http://geocities.com/hazewm/ |website=HaZe Homepage |access-date=2024-08-31 |archive-date=2009-10-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091026234522/http://geocities.com/hazewm/ |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref> and others.

===Extensible window managers===
{{Category see also|X window managers extensible by scripting}}
Some window managers are extensible, or programmable, by user scripts.

In these window managers, users can define new actions or override the default, or reactions to various events, like window size and position changes, window creation and deletion, key and mouse input, timer, etc. They often provide on-the-fly code execution, too.

Some examples of such window managers and the used languages are:
* [[Awesome (window manager)|Awesome]] - [[Lua (programming language)|Lua]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://awesomewm.org/|title=home|website=awesome window manager|access-date=2022-07-27|archive-date=2007-10-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225622/http://awesome.naquadah.org/|url-status=live}}</ref>
* [[KWin]] - [[ECMAScript]]
* [[Qtile]] - [[Python (programming language)|Python]]
* [[Sawfish (window manager)|Sawfish]] - "rep", a [[lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] dialect
* [[Xmonad]] - [[haskell (programming language)|haskell]]
* [[StumpWM]] - [[Common Lisp]]
* [[GWM (window manager)|GWM]] - "WOOL", a Lisp dialect
* Bspwm - [[C (programming language)|C]]