# [FAQ] Window Managers: A comparison

## NME

Basically, i am really getting fed up with people asking "wich WM is best fit for my needs?"

Really, there are so many topics on this subject that i wanted to put an end to our misery and post a comparison of window managers and their desktop environments. I know i'm a chaotic kind of guy and so i will use version numbers and a changelog. Please post your corrections and thoughts, I'm sure there are people (yes you, taviso  :Razz: ) who know a lot more about their favorite WM than me and i will probably have forgotten to include a (popular) WM.

Of course, the giants go first:

KDE and Gnome

for your consideration:

Poll: KDE vs Gnome

GNOME

Gnome uses Metacity to manage its windows.

The Metacity WM is supposed to be a "crack-free WM": the developers don't want any features that, they think, you won't need.

Gnome's main characteristic over the past years, however, is that it uses the GTK library. GTK was originally developped for The GIMP and adopted by the Gnome project. It generally has a very clean look, something that's found throughout the whole Gnome DE. Gnome tends to be less eye-candy but more productivity; they have guidelines on how a user-interface should behave and be set up, and the project has been modified by Ximian to be fit especially for the office. Ximian, i might add, was recently bought by Novell.

Although Gnome doesn't really start at eye-candy you can get some. Try gdesklets for instance, its in portage. Or pay a visit to art.gnome.org for some nice themes.

KDE

KDE uses the QT library (plus some enhancements), developed by Trolltech. QT is a tidbit faster then GTK+ and is able to show off some more eye-candy. It's typically used by people who want a full-featured desktop/wm and then some. Also, it seems to be the desktop environment in wich people get to know their way around the fastest. KDE uses it's own KWin to show window-decorations, a WM that has all the functionality Metacity has. The two don't differ a lot.

When you're into eye-candy then KDE really is your DE. You probably know of (super)Karamba. Karamba introduced the concept of sensors and display's on your desktop to a wide audience for the first time. In no time people were installing all kinds of cpu/memory sensors, calendars etc.. on their desktops. The same idea was later taken to Gnome with gdesklets.

Your link for eye-candy on KDE: KDE-look.org

The Rest

Most people use Gnome or KDE. Another big group is the "Non-DE" group.

Some users don't want a big Desktop Environment running all the time. After all, DE's tend to suck memory. All their supportive apps running in the background add up to quite a heavy load, especially for older systems. People with say a Pentium 2 probably don't want to use either Gnome or KDE. Then there's of course users who just want to have very simple and very effective WM. They want their apps to work for them and fast! In the following list I discuss only (fairly popular) WMs that are in portage, the other ones you probably won't use if you've read anything new so far.

The poll that is supposed to back up my yacking:

Poll: The other window managers

The *BOX-es

Once upon a time a WM existed, it was called BlackBox. It's main feature was functionality, it's second was speed. This was touched up with simplicity. Many people used this WM, but eventually some wanted to see some new things, or existing things only in a different form. These people started working on their own derivatives of BlackBox, like Fluxbox. Fluxbox is still very popular for the one feature that makes it great: tabbing. Tabbing allows you to hang multiple windows in one space. you can then switch between by touching the tabs that appeared above the window. Again, this wasn't made to be beautiful; but it is functional. 

Another derivative is Openbox. It supports some new features and isn't directly build on Blackbox, the 3.0 release was build from scratch. Most importantly however it was, as it states on the website, "written first to comply with standards and to work properly." What did i tell you? These people want functionality.

One last thing: if you put your soul into it (like many *box-users do) these WM's can be made absolutely beautiful, and 100% customized. You just have to make an effort first.

Kahakai

Kahakai was forked of off Waimea (wich was based on BlackBox!). Its codebase is still Waimea for a big part, but its main feature is or will be extensibility using languages like Python, Ruby and Perl. It's fast, light and flexible. There aren't many themes though, it's userbase isn't very big and it doesn't seem to care for really juicy themes, the default just works for them. Of course kahakai can be used with a panel like PyPanel and a desktop-icons manager like iDesk to juice it up a bit... hell, you can use gdesklets if you want. Most kahakai users probably won't though.

FVWM

Yes,it does get more extreme in terms of configurability and the need to customize. Fire up FVWM for the first time and see.. well nothing really. This WM needs to be customized to be useable at all.

But just wait when you have. The options are endless, once you have worked your way through the text-based configs you will have a truely unique desktop. You will know exactly what it will or won't do and that will be how you like it. Actually, about every feature found in any other popular WM can be reproduced with FVWM. All it takes is a lot of patience working your way through the configuration. Naturally, idesk, pypanel, gdesklets and a lot of other desktop-enhancing apps apply.

There's a thread in the fora where users are showing off configs and helping each other enable the various options.

XFCE4

Favored by many former Gnome users in search of something a bit light but still with that "complete" feel. The latest release is XFCE4, a radical rewrite from XFCE3. It provides about the same look and feel Gnome does, since it uses the GTK library. It's not very configurable, but has a lot of nice skins in stock. If you like ease of use and have a lightweight system or just want things to be a bit snappier for you than this could be the way to go.

Your themes, sir.

WindowMaker

WindowMaker was, as it states on the website, designed to give users the look and feel of the NeXTSTEP environment but with better compatibility. It can be configured using its own GUI. The setup of WindowMaker is slightly different from the usual bars in WMs. WindowMaker makes a box out of every iconified application and stocks it neatly in the corner. You can then reorganise the boxes just the way you want, stick all your dev-apps in one corner and your porn in the other! The userbase is loyal and there are lots and lots of themes to be found.

IceWM

When you want a plain WM that just manages, and is fast when it comes to that, then IceWM could be for you. It combines a starterbar with a windowmanager and that's it. It aims to be customizable but not drown you in options like FVWM might do. It is of course very lightweight so if you want to use X on that really old computer that still works you could consider IceWM. It's fully useable with only the keyboard for when you've ran out of old mice.

For your themeing pleasure go here.

PekWM

Yet another lightweight windowmanager is PekWM. It has about the same basic functionality the *BOX-es have (like tabbing and key-chains), and the author knows that. The question of why he made this WM is answered on his website with a simple "why not?". The more choice people have, so says the author, the better. It might be slightly faster than, for instance, OpenBox. This may or may not be noticeable, depending on your hardware. It is, of course, themeable. From the website:

[here]

[here]

[here]

[ and here]

--Version 1.2

Changelog

Feb 05 -- added WindowMaker, IceWM, pekwm and minor changes.

Feb 04 -- added XFCE4

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## ckdake

Don't forget about xfce4!   The super light weight but still good looking windowmanager:  http://www.xfce.org  There are probably others but I use xfce4 so I'm a bit biased.

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## NME

I knew i had forgotten an important player in the field   :Embarassed: 

thanks.

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## WebsterRF

Aww, no IceWM?  I'd still be in the playing around phase with different window managers, and Ice was one of the ones I was enjoying.  However, the computer crapped out on me, and since I'm trying to get somebody else's up and running before I fix mine (alhtough I do have the new mobo already...) I haven't had the chance to continue fooling with things.  

Thanks for the nice preview.

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## aroben

Very nice overview.  Just one little nitpick:

 *NME wrote:*   

> KDE uses it's own library, QT.

 

Qt is actually made by Trolltech, and is released under 4 separate licenses.

Of course, this doesn't really affect your choice of WM/DE, unless you're RMS and can't stand any code that's been within 20 miles of a proprietary license.

-Adam

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## ckdake

However, QT is accepted by the OSI as a valid open source software liscence now.  This used to not be the case but they changed it because of developer concerns. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/qtpl.php

So QT used to be not "real" OSS but now it is. 

And last time I checked, RMS uses emacs in a console for his gui so i guess that should go in the options somewhere.  :Razz: 

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## chipi

you forgot my favourite... pekwm  :Smile:  even slimmer that the *boxs, and has some neat features. pekwm.org

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## Reality

Personally I use WindowMaker. Slim enough for a slower machine, yet themed easily enough for a newbie.

Slashdot recently had a bit on Stallman going to India and this link: http://faifzilla.org/toc.html

It's a good read at the least, inspiring at most. -Happy Hacking!

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## trapperjohn

 *aroben wrote:*   

> Very nice overview.  Just one little nitpick:
> 
>  *NME wrote:*   KDE uses it's own library, QT. 
> 
> Qt is actually made by Trolltech, and is released under 4 separate licenses.
> ...

 

But don't forget that KDE uses an enhanced version of Qt - it has some unique Dialogs and Widgets to give an application the typical feature-rich KDE-look (like KFileDialog .. in my eyes too many buttons, just to choose a file  :Wink:  ).

@NME: You really forgot WindowMaker  :Sad:  I think, their user-base is as least as big as *Box's.

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## NME

Just posted an update including windowmaker, icewm and pekwm.

I'm considering including Enlightenment tonight.

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## plate

On the lowest end of the scale, in the "almost not a window manager anymore" category, you'll need Ratpoison and Ion and Ion2, and maybe a word about LarsWM, a port of Plan 9's 9wm for Linux...

By the way, here's a good overview of window managers in existence.

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## ILikePi

psst....afterstep

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## Corw|n of Amber

Oh! Why no Enlightenment? It's SO pretty AND fast and useable and and and...

*ANNOUNCEMENT : Please ignore the Rasterman fanboy, thank you.*

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## axxackall

 *NME wrote:*   

> Just posted an update including windowmaker, icewm and pekwm.

 

I use WindowsMaker on Cygwin - excellent. It just does its work, but it does it in a way to make my Windows-centric co-workers to love it.

 *NME wrote:*   

> I'm considering including Enlightenment tonight.

 

I gues that wasn't that night. How about this night?

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## timfreeman

And sawfish? 

http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/

 *Quote:*   

> Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language --all window decorations are configurable and all user-interface policy is controlled through the extension language. This is no layer on top of twm, but a wholly new architecture.

 

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## axxackall

 *timfreeman wrote:*   

> And sawfish? 
> 
> http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/
> 
>  *Quote:*   Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language --all window decorations are configurable and all user-interface policy is controlled through the extension language. This is no layer on top of twm, but a wholly new architecture. 

 

Last time I've checked it's development was frozen. For example you are in trouble if you try it with recent GNOME.

Too sad - I like it's functionality which I believe was possible only due to its Lisp-like scripting. Although I belive that it's failure is also due to it's Lisp-like language - they should use one of portable either common lisps (SBCL?) or schemes (Guile?), but not that stranger "librep".

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## shm

 *axxackall wrote:*   

> Too sad - I like it's functionality which I believe was possible only due to its Lisp-like scripting. Although I belive that it's failure is also due to it's Lisp-like language - they should use one of portable either common lisps (SBCL?) or schemes (Guile?), but not that stranger "librep".

 

no it failed because GNOME 2.0 replaced sawfish with the vastly inferior metacity as the main window manager, instead of fixing the problems with sawfish. Development of sawfish was strong until then.

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## homeobocks

Never forget Enlightenment! DR17 will rule!

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## Hypnos

Wow, that's actually a fair and insightful preview -- good work.

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## Vann

Yes, I'll be able to run DR17 on my nice HURD box.

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## darkarchon

the full performance comparison can be found at:

http://www.windowmaker.org/features-performance.html

they ran the numbers on april 5, 2003 on a p2 233 with 32mb of ram using debian and the default configs for each. 

```

Name                Version        Total Memory Size   Load Time

AfterStep           1.8.8          2556K               4s   

Enlightenment       0.16.5         3784K               8s

Blackbox            0.61.1         1568K               2s

FVWM                2.2.5          1428K               2s

Window Maker        0.65.1         2376K               2s

```

i wonder if anyone has more recent numbers.

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## darkarchon

fluxbox vs windowmaker: my numbers

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=171935&highlight=

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## zojas

I really think you should add ratpoison and wmi to the list.

Ratpoison is a whole new paradigm for window management. it's designed to act for X like 'screen' does for terminals.  ratpoison requires no use of the mouse for window management (actually, it practically forbids it). This is good if you're a programmer and have to deal with editors, xterms, and web browser windows. but can be an issue if you have to deal with lots of floating palettes (gimp)

ratpoison's homepage:

http://ratpoison.sourceforge.net

an impassioned article about using it:

http://handhelds.freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/

finally a screenshot of my custom frameset so I can run some dockapps with it:

http://desertsol.com/~kevin/screens/040709_ratpoison.jpg

wmi is a new, fairly immature project, which tries to get ratpoison-like operation but still have traditional mouse interaction and title bars too.

wmi has two modes; a ratpoison-like mode, and a 'floating' mode. that way you can easily run programs like the gimp (in traditional, floating mode) as well as full-screen mode apps (like xterm, etc)

http://wmi.berlios.de/

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## bizkit

THANKS!

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## discomfitor

For now, E17 isn't so much of a big deal since they're working on E16.7 so rapidly.  They have a new release every week...quite nice.

That's not to say I don't want E17 right now, because I do.  I'm just being realistic.

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## ag_x

 *zojas wrote:*   

> I really think you should add ratpoison ...

 

I have to second that...one week with ratpoison it was enough to make me change the wiew that i had about window managers.I use only fluxbox now just for gimp (ratpoison can open a new WM with the newwm switch) ,although there is a way to make it (gimp) work without problems in ratpoison.

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## jacksonscottsly

XPde, too.

definitely not my thing, but that doesn't make it perfect for some users.

and i'll second the vote for the inclusion of enlightenment

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## Deranger

 *jacksonscottsly wrote:*   

> XPde, too.
> 
> definitely not my thing, but that doesn't make it perfect for some users.
> 
> and i'll second the vote for the inclusion of enlightenment

 

XPde is so ridiculous...I hope it is a joke  :Wink: 

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## Dominique_71

FVWM-Crystal here. It give me the same kind of feeling as with my old Amiga 2000 with the mouse (it just do what I want), it is FVWM so it provide the same flexibility and speed, it is nice looking and fully configured from the first run and easier to customize for a FVWM newbie as stock FVWM.

I done my own configuration with improvements such as a freedesktop compatible application menu and it will be merged in the next FVWM-Crystal release.

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## i92guboj

 *trapperjohn wrote:*   

>  *aroben wrote:*   Very nice overview.  Just one little nitpick:
> 
>  *NME wrote:*   KDE uses it's own library, QT. 
> 
> Qt is actually made by Trolltech, and is released under 4 separate licenses.
> ...

 

Besides that would not be a concern for the matter, Qt is Qt. Kde does not install a modified version of Qt, it is you or your distro package manager which resolves the dependencies and install the required packages. The things you are talking about are classes contained within kdelibs, which are Qt based, and holds the foundational features with are common to all the kde applications.

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## ThomasAdam

http://xwinman.org is good for such things.  Comparisons are pretty meaningless, alas, and just trying any one (or all) of them per individual user is probably one's best bet.

-- Thomas Adam

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## Sadako

I just love it when people carry on almost three year old threads as if the last post was made just yesterday;

Deranger, Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 2:28 pm

next post

Dominique_71, Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 10:40 am

 :Laughing: 

Anyway, the poll still doesn't enclude enlightenment (16 or 17), so the whole thing is moot.

 :Razz: 

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## hokstein

 *Hopeless wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Anyway, the poll still doesn't enclude enlightenment (16 or 17), so the whole thing is moot.
> 
> 

 

And considering the author's last post was in February 2005, it is unlikely to be updated. It really is a shame he didn't get to include Enlightenment.

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## DrunkenWarrior

 *hokstein wrote:*   

> It really is a shame he didn't get to include Enlightenment.

 

Or stumpwm, it has everything. Ease of use, more noob-friendly than KDE. Who needs an easy installation when you can extend your wm in lisp?

(((((Its) not) for) me) .)

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## Dominique_71

One thing bother me: the size and the resolution of our screens are expanding with time. The consequence is at, for the same screen size, the applications are shrinking.

And it is no function in any windows manager that make possible to zoom in a whole window with all its content, no matter what that content is.

As I understand the problem, it is something that must be implemented directly in X and not at the wm level.

It would be a really nice feature. For what I know, mac OSX is working to implement such a feature. It really would be an overkill for a lot of applications that doesn't use the theme feature of gtk+ or qt.

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## ThomasAdam

 *Dominique_71 wrote:*   

> As I understand the problem, it is something that must be implemented directly in X and not at the wm level..

 

No, it's nothing like that.  Look at Beryl, for instance.  You can of course simulate it with xzoom.

-- Thomas Adam

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## Dominique_71

Thanks, Thomas.

Last time I try Beryl, it was possible to zoom out a window but not to zoom in. And it use too much resources.

I just installed xzoom, very nice application. Much better as xmag. 

BTW, I found the original tarball on Debian repository, but no website. Do you know if xzoom have a website, or if it is some lost piece of code?

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## ningo

I'm missing wmii, dwm and tinywm.

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