Missing pieces

When managing Windows, there's not too many options, but Unix/Linux has quite modular structure. In most cases window manager can ge changed from graphical login screen, in other cases by editing one row in config file.

But what's window manager? If you got operating system as premade package, you might no even realize that it's there (that's even point of Metacity, Gnomes window manager). First picture is plain Xorg without any window manager. It works as at least some programs have parameters to set window size and placement. But not very convenient, even for keyboard junkie. Though if you want to save some memory, this is option too.

Quite convenient for kiosk setup too, as whole screen is taken by the only running application and there's no minimize buttons, task bars and things like that. Exiting the application exits X too, so it's not secure setup on it's own. But using such setups would mean less funny blue screens and anti-virus notifications for public information displays.

Some features are provided by Xorg itself. Keyboard and mouse work, but with one terminal open, mouse is not that useful yet as there's no buttons to click on and windows can't be dragged around. Resolution can be also changed with keyboard shortcuts. In addition it's possible to launch programs from remote computers and display them on this screen. No need to install additional programs for that as X is designed to be networked. Though it's also security risk, so X doesn't usually listen for network connections by default, just connections from local computer. That can be circumvented securely with SSH, but that's another topic for some another time.

So what happens when window manager is launched? As you can see window suddenly has title bar and there's task bar and menu. I cheated a bit and added background image by hand.

Window manager in this screenshot is Fluxbox. Quite lightweight, though some themes are slightly heavier than others. Menus can have transparency and windows can be grouped together.

Theme is not the default one, Fluxbox includes just some more simple themes by default. I think the project is still alive, so some new features might be expected. Fluxbox supports also small applications that Window Maker calls dockapps. Configuration is done by editing configurations files by hand as almost everything else too. And of course, virtual desktops are supported.

Second window manager is Afterstep. This is the default theme and doesn't look bad for default theme. As can be seen from the picture, windows can be grouped too, but this feature is reserved for terminals.

Afterstep takes some time to get used to as all three mouse buttons seem to have different function with every button. Dockapps are also supported and some of them are launched by default. Again, configurations is done by editing configuration files by hand. I think there was some graphical configuration tool for older Afterstep, but I have never used it. By default there's few virtual desktops that are divided in four parts.

And then my favourite, Window Maker. No, theme in the screenshot is not the default theme. Default theme is not completely plain though, it has some gradients.

Nice thing about Window Maker is that there's really no need to edit configuration files by hand, there's graphical utilities for configuring most of the things. If the default configuration tool is not good enough, another alternative configuration tool can be installed.

Window Maker does things differently, or at least differently than Windows does things, so there's slight learning curve, but reading the manual is not mandatory to get things done.

Another nice thing is that things can be dragged around. Rearranging dock (that's where dockapps live, on the right side of the screen in this screenshot) can be done by dragging dockapps around. It's also possible to enable dragging of windows from one virtual desktop to another.

Development seems to be slow, so new features can't really be expected.

And now something slightly different. WMII is one of the tiling window managers. That means that each window gets it's own tile of the screen. Usually that means too that themes are plain and mouse is not necessary. WMII is easiest to learn so far of window managers of this type that I have found.

Usual problem with window managers like these is that some programs don't behave well when stuffed in small tiles. WMII supports floating windows too, so those misbehaving applications can be used normally too. Though I would like to see window manager that's not so strict with tiling princibles. For example giving requested window size for application is not that bad with some applications. Dockapps like to have 64x64 pixel space usually for reason. Though there should be dock for Ion, but I haven't been able to enable it.

Last one in this article is Enlightenment, more precisely E17, version that's not released yet. That still doesn't stop it from being popular and some distributions offer development snapshots and if yours doesn't, there always Elive (too bad there's no free download). E17 isn't strictly only a window manager, it's more like lightweight desktop manager. It has graphical configuration tools, file manager and its own toolkit.

Another thing that could be said about E17 is that it's artistic window manager, even bit too much in some places with the default theme. Theme in this screenshot is not the default one, but default one doesn't look bad either. All kinds of desktop effects are supported. For example animated backgrounds, rain and snow. 3D acceleration is not supported, so no 3D effects like in Beryl or Compiz.

If these window managers are not enough for you, there's more of them. Impartial, but still good list of them can be found from http://xwinman.org/