A minimal X11 floating window manager distinguished by the two borders it draws around each client and by keyboard-accessible controls. It is derived from mcwm, uses XCB, and keeps the session small by omitting a built-in panel or desktop shell; configuration is set in C source. 2bwm was derived from Michael Cardell’s mcwm and added its characteristic pair of window borders.
Window Manager Gallery
Discover X11 window managers and Wayland compositors.
A research-oriented X11 prototype exploring three-dimensional desktop workspaces and window navigation. The surviving primary material is sparse, so its exact interaction model and configuration options cannot be described in detail. 3dwm was developed as a research and development platform for three-dimensional user interfaces.
A minimal X11 window manager that recreates the rio interface from Plan 9, including click-to-focus interaction and simple floating windows. It keeps the desktop surface intentionally small, leaving panels and launchers to other software, and is useful both as a lightweight manager and as a reference implementation. 9wm was written to emulate the rio window manager from Plan 9 on X11.
An X11 stacking desktop with virtual workspaces, themes, menus and modular dock-like applications, using a visual style inspired by NeXTSTEP. Its modules can be launched and configured independently, and text-based settings let users shape both window behaviour and the surrounding desktop. AfterStep originated as a continuation of the BowMan window manager, which was based on FVWM; it later developed into a distinct NeXTSTEP-inspired desktop.
A highly configurable X11 window manager written and extended in Lua. Its dynamic tagging model, per-client rules, layouts, widgets and multi-monitor support let users assemble a desktop from scriptable components rather than a fixed shell. Originally based on dwm code; the project developed its own Lua-driven dynamic window-management model.
A historical X11 window manager associated with early workstation environments; surviving primary documentation is sparse. The catalogue record identifies it as a stacking manager, but its precise configuration model and feature set could not be established confidently from the sources checked.
A lightweight X11 window manager controlled through a command-line client and shell scripts. It supports floating windows and manual tiling, with rules and startup behaviour configured as scripts; the project keeps window management separate from hotkeys, panels and other desktop services.
A historic X11 compositing manager known for OpenGL desktop effects and a separate configuration interface. Contemporary secondary accounts describe it as a Compiz fork that later merged into Compiz Fusion; detailed first-party project records are no longer readily available. Secondary-source accounts report that Beryl forked from Compiz and later merged back into the Compiz Fusion project.
A compact C++ X11 stacking manager with themeable decorations, menus and workspaces, designed as a standalone alternative to a full desktop environment. Its own theme system controls the visual style, while menus and startup configuration provide the main points for adapting a session. Brad Hughes designed and coded Blackbox beginning in 1997, emphasizing memory efficiency and avoiding external library dependencies.
A Haskell and XMonad-based X11 tiler that presents dynamic layouts inside a more conventional desktop session, including panel and task-list integration. Its configuration builds on XMonad’s Haskell model, while the project’s desktop-oriented defaults make it less bare than a typical tiling manager. Bluetile began as a university project and thesis built on XMonad.
An X11 tiling window manager that represents each monitor as a binary tree of split containers, so placement and resizing are explicit and scriptable. The small `bspwm` process manages windows over a socket; a separate hotkey daemon such as `sxhkd` handles keyboard input, and a shell startup script configures the session.
A full-screen X11 window manager written in Common Lisp, organising windows through recursively nested frames rather than conventional desktop panels. Its frame tree can be navigated and reshaped from the keyboard, and Lisp configuration allows users to extend the manager interactively. CLFSWM’s own project documentation identifies TinyWM and StumpWM among its influences; it developed these keyboard and frame-management ideas into a Common Lisp full-screen manager.
An X11 compositing window manager focused on OpenGL-rendered desktop effects, with window placement and decoration extended through plugins. Compiz Reloaded continues the 0.8.x line and offers graphical CompizConfig tools for enabling effects and adjusting plugin settings. The current Compiz Reloaded repository continues development of the Compiz 0.8.x series.
A stacking window-management client for the River Wayland compositor, with policy separated from the compositor that handles display and input. Its commands and configuration can be scripted externally, and its focus is conventional overlapping windows rather than a built-in tiling policy. CoW is a window-management client for River, reflecting River’s separation of compositor and policy.
A twm-family X11 stacking manager that adds named virtual workspaces, workspace maps, per-workspace backgrounds and multiple screens. It retains familiar `.twmrc` configuration while extending the classic window-manager model with a visual way to move between desktops. CTWM began as an extension to twm by Claude Lecommandeur, adding multiple virtual workspaces.
An extensible wlroots-based Wayland compositor with dynamic and floating layouts, Lua scripting and C plugins. Its API and interaction model draw on AwesomeWM, letting users script window behaviour and compose the desktop rather than relying on a fixed configuration alone. CWC draws on AwesomeWM’s API and interaction model.
OpenBSD’s compact, keyboard-focused X11 stacking window manager, with commands for searching and launching applications, moving windows and switching groups. A concise `~/.cwmrc` file configures bindings, menus and behaviour, while cwm deliberately leaves panels and desktop utilities to other programs. The OpenBSD manual records cwm as first appearing in OpenBSD 4.2, documenting its place in the project’s base-system history.
A Wayland compositor with tiling, stacking and scrolling window-management modes, paired with an integrated Flutter-based shell. It targets laptop and touchpad interaction, while the shell supplies desktop controls around the compositor rather than relying on a collection of unrelated desktop utilities. Denial is built around a Flutter-native compositor and integrated shell.
The CDE desktop’s Motif-style X11 window manager, integrated with CDE workspaces, menus, session startup and desktop tools. It manages conventional stacked windows and exposes familiar Motif decorations and workspace controls as part of the larger Common Desktop Environment. dtwm is the Motif-style window manager supplied as part of the Common Desktop Environment.
A small Wayland compositor inspired by suckless’s dwm, built on wlroots and configured by editing C source and rebuilding. It provides a compact tiling and floating session with tags and keyboard controls, leaving many desktop services and visual components to separate programs. The project describes itself as dwm for Wayland, aiming to carry dwm’s philosophy and core functionality to Wayland.
A deliberately small, dynamic X11 window manager offering tiled, monocle and floating arrangements plus tag-based workspaces. Users change its C source configuration and rebuild it, so customisation follows suckless’s compile-time patching model instead of a runtime settings panel.
A small X11 window manager supporting floating, tiled and maximised clients, with compact decorations and workspaces. Its C-source configuration keeps the implementation lightweight, while rules and keyboard controls provide the main way to adapt a session. Echinus identifies itself as a dwm fork and developed that base into a separately configurable manager.
An EFL-based window manager, compositor and desktop shell that provides panels, menus, settings and session components as well as window management. It supports X11 and has Wayland compositor work, with a broad set of built-in modules and graphical configuration for a complete, lightweight desktop. Carsten Haitzler launched Enlightenment in the 1990s as an easy-to-use X11 window manager.
A minimal X11 floating manager with keyboard-based window movement and resizing, sparse borders and optional virtual desktops. It avoids a built-in panel and keeps configuration and interaction simple, so users can assemble a desktop from separate utilities. The project describes evilwm as originally based on aewm, before evolving into its own minimalist, keyboard-driven X11 window manager.
An experimental Wayland compositor derived from dwl and built on wlroots, with a compact C-oriented configuration and tiling workflow. The project is small and its public documentation is limited, so this description sticks to the documented compositor base and design lineage. FjordWM began as a fork of dwl.
A lightweight X11 stacking window manager for floating desktops, with multiple workspaces, tabbed window groups, menus and themeable styles. Its Blackbox-compatible theme format makes it a familiar option for users who want a compact desktop with decoration and menus configured through text files. Fluxbox began from the Blackbox 0.61.1 codebase and developed its own lightweight, feature-rich X11 desktop.
A Fluxbox-inspired Wayland stacking compositor for lightweight floating desktops. It carries the familiar emphasis on themes, menus and conventional overlapping windows into a Wayland session while leaving the rest of the desktop environment modular. Fluxland takes its design inspiration from Fluxbox and adapts a lightweight, theme-oriented stacking workflow to Wayland.
A lightweight X11 stacking manager from the FLTK project, designed for small systems and simple desktop sessions. It uses compact, distinctive window controls and virtual desktops, with mouse and keyboard shortcuts for moving, resizing and iconifying windows. Its author describes flwm as an attempt to combine useful ideas from several window managers in an FLTK project.
A full-screen X11 manager that organises applications into pages and frames controlled mainly from the keyboard. Its focus is a workspace-oriented frame model rather than a conventional desktop with panels and floating title bars.
A modular X11 stacking window manager known for extensive control over menus, bindings, window rules and large virtual desktops. Configuration is expressed in text, and optional modules extend the core; FVWM3 is the maintained successor line to FVWM2 rather than a separate desktop shell. FVWM began as a TWM fork in 1993; FVWM3 later forked FVWM2 to allow major changes.
elementary OS’s Pantheon window manager and compositor, built around libmutter and integrated with the desktop’s workspaces, gestures and shell components. It can run as an X11 manager or a Wayland compositor, while Pantheon supplies the panels, dock and session interface around it. Gala was designed by elementary for Pantheon and is based on the libmutter window-management library.
Valve’s Wayland micro-compositor for games, used either embedded directly on a display or nested inside a regular desktop. It isolates a game’s display surface to manage resolution, scaling, frame presentation and related gaming workflows without replacing the host desktop session. Gamescope was formerly called steamcompmgr; the project expanded from the embedded SteamOS use case to nested desktop use.
A keyboard-driven X11 manager combining floating windows, tags and manually controlled placement with a deliberately clean, minimal interface. Its C implementation keeps the manager small, while scripts and key bindings can provide the surrounding desktop workflow.
A manual X11 tiler built around a tree of frames that can be split and assigned windows independently on each monitor. Tags act as workspaces, while `herbstclient` exposes runtime commands and IPC; its startup configuration is a shell script that issues those commands. Project documentation records influence from i3, Musca and wmii alongside its manual frame model.
A stacking Wayland compositor for Unix-like systems, with workspaces, sheets and groups for organising windows and a keyboard-oriented control model. Its configuration is read from a text file, and its cwm influence is reflected in the emphasis on compact controls rather than a large desktop shell. Hikari’s author identifies cwm as a strong inspiration for the project.
A Wayland compositor with dynamic tiling and floating windows, per-monitor workspaces, animations and composable visual effects. Current documentation introduces Lua as a configuration interface while retaining support for existing Hyprlang configuration, and its compositor also manages input, outputs and desktop layers. A later milestone added Lua configuration while retaining the established Hyprlang path.
A dynamic X11 window manager whose container tree can be split horizontally or vertically and displayed in tiled, stacked or tabbed modes. A readable text file controls key bindings, workspaces and rules, while IPC lets status bars and other programs inspect or control the running session. Created by Michael Stapelberg as a replacement for wmii, i3 grew into an independently developed tiling window manager with its own configuration format.
A lightweight X11 stacking window manager for conventional overlapping windows, with an integrated task bar, workspace switcher, system tray, menus and task list. Its text-based files configure preferences, keys, toolbar, menus and themes, making it usable as a compact desktop without a larger desktop environment. Created by Marko Maček in 1997, IceWM initially emulated Motif, OS/2 Warp and Windows 95.
A historic keyboard-driven X11 manager built around tiled frames and tabbed windows. Users split the screen into frames, then switch among clients within each frame; its text configuration controls bindings and session behaviour without requiring a mouse-driven desktop. Tuomo Valkonen created Ion as a keyboard-driven tiled and tabbed window manager.
A wlroots-based Wayland tiler with dynamic layouts and configurable workspaces, controlled through a simple configuration file and keyboard bindings. It is a compact compositor for users who want a dwl-like workflow with its own layout and workspace choices. JapokWM describes itself as a compositor based on dwl, adapting that compact wlroots project into its own dynamic tiling Wayland compositor.
A Linux Wayland compositor combining i3-like tiling with support for floating windows and multiple GPUs. Its Rust-based configuration API and rendering backends target users who want a programmable compositor with explicit control over outputs, layouts and session behaviour.
A small X11 stacking window manager that pairs ordinary floating windows with a panel, task list, tray, menus and virtual desktops. Its XML configuration covers menus, key bindings, themes, startup applications and tray components, which makes it a compact desktop choice for low-resource systems. JWM was written by Joe Wingbermuehle as a small X11 window manager.
A programmable Wayland compositor built on wlroots that uses Lua scripts to define window-management policy and respond to compositor events. It intentionally provides a small base rather than a fixed desktop model, so users create behaviours such as placement, key handling and rules in Lua.
KDE’s window manager and compositor: it manages X11 windows in Plasma’s X11 session and runs as a Wayland compositor in Wayland sessions. Window rules, keyboard shortcuts, effects, scripts and workspace behaviour are configurable, and KWin can also be used by desktop shells other than Plasma. KDE announced that Plasma 6.8 will remove the X11 session; X11 applications will continue to run through Xwayland.
A wlroots-based Wayland compositor for conventional floating, overlapping windows, with desktop stacking and Xwayland support. Its XML configuration and Openbox 3.6 style conventions make it approachable to Openbox users, while the project keeps the compositor focused rather than supplying a complete desktop shell. Developed as a Wayland compositor inspired by Openbox, including a similar stacking workflow and Openbox-style XML configuration.
An X11 manager that keeps a tiled primary track for the main window and a floating area for secondary clients. Its automatic arrangement offers a structured alternative to pure manual tiling, while retaining a floating region for windows that do not fit the main layout. LarsWM was derived from 9wm and developed its tiled-primary and floating-secondary model.
A Rust-based X11 tiling window manager that separates core window management from the theme layer used for panels, launchers and other desktop components. Configuration and themes can be changed independently, allowing users to keep the tiler while replacing the surrounding session appearance. LeftWM presents itself as a Rust window manager focused on performance and stability.
A minimal X11 stacking manager with bare window frames and almost no desktop chrome. It deliberately leaves menus, panels, launchers and workspace tools to other programs, making it suitable for users assembling a small custom session. The author describes lwm as drawing inspiration from Plan 9’s 8½ and 9wm, favouring a deliberately unobtrusive X11 interface.