Free window manager software for linux

dynamic window manager or dwm is a dynamic window manager for X11.
As founder and main developer of wmii I came to the conclusion that wmii is too clunky for my needs. I dont need so many funky features and all this hype about remote control through a 9P service, I only want to manage my windows in a simple, but dynamic way.
wmii never got finished because I listened to users, who proposed arbitrary ideas I considered useful. This resulted in an extreme CADT development model, which was a mistake. Thus the philosophy of dwm is simply to fit my needs (maybe yours as well). Thats it.
Main features:
- dwm has no Lua integration, no 9P support, no editable tagbars, no shell-based configuration, no remote control, and comes without any additional tools like printing the selection or warping the mouse.
- dwm is only a single binary, its source code is intended to never exceed 2000 SLOC.
- dwm is based on tagging and dynamic window management (however simpler than ion, wmii or larswm). It manages windows in tiling and floating modes. Either mode can be applied dynamically, depending on the application in use and the task performed.
- dwm doesnt distinguishes between layers, there is no floating or tiled layer. Wether the clients of currently selected tag are in tiled mode or not, you can re-arrange all clients on the fly. Popup- and fixed-size windows are treated floating, however.
- dwm is customized through editing its source code, that makes it extremely fast and secure - it does not process any input data which hasnt been known at compile time, except window title names and status text read from standard input. You dont have to learn Lua/sh/ruby or some weird configuration file format (like X resource files), beside C to customize it for your needs, you only have to learn C (at least editing header files).
- Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, its pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.
- dwm uses 1-pixel borders to provide the maximum of screen real estate to clients. Small titlebars are only drawn in front of unfocused clients.
- dwm reads from standard input to print arbitrary status text (like the date, load, battery charge). Thats much simpler than larsremote, wmiir and what not...
- It can be downloaded and distributed under the conditions of the MIT/X Consortium license.
- Optionally you can install dmenu to extend dwm with a wmii-alike menu.
Enhancements:
- This release contains certain major bugfixes, especially regarding banning/unbanning client windows.

So its not a desktop and doesnt offer you a huge pile of useless options, just the facilities needed to run your X applications and at the same time having a friendly and easy to use interface.
Objectives
Pawm goals are to be simple, small and functional. Thats important, small :), there are too bloated windows managers out there, so who wants another one ;). That means that for future releases is a very important point for us not add new features or dependencies if theyre not really necessary.
If you need to run some X apps and dont have the time, space or interest in installing a desktop like kde or gnome, then what youre looking for is pawm. Download it now and give it a try!
Functionality
As youve already guessed, it manages your windows. It provides a bar placed at the bottom of the screen to access the minimized windows, and a simple application launcher to place some icons in your desktop for frequently used applications.
Things that pawm doesnt have: keyboard support (in the todo list), workspaces, icons formats different from .xpm
To compile it the only required libraries are the Xorg/XFree86 standard libraries. It supports Xft which is the new X font library, but its no required
Platforms
Its been tested and compiled under Linux/x86, Linux/PPC, FreeBSD, NetBSD, HP-UX and OSX-XDarwin. If you got succesfull reports in other architectures let us know. It should compile in any platform, providing you use GNU make, GNU gcc, and a POSIX compatible shell.
Enhancements:
- This release adds support for a "solid" appearance when moving windows.
- An important bug with argb windows that caused crashes has been fixed.

Linux Commander is a powerful file manager for the X Window System.

It is partially modelled after Window Commander for Windows.

Twindy is a window manager for linux and possibly any system running an X server, inspired by Tracktion, the multitrack audio editor/sequencer for Windows and OS X.
Twindy tries to apply Tracktions workflow, where everything is on screen at once, to a window manager.
As such, there are two panels, a main panel where new windows/programs open by default and may be selected using tabs, and a lower panel, which can only hold one window/program at a time.
The idea is that youll do your main work in the top panel, and use the bottom panel for a terminal, or a file manager youd want to keep open. See the screenshots page for some examples.
The philosophy behind Twindy isnt particularly complicated:
- Twindy is intended to be as simple as possible. That means it is only a window manager - its not intended to become a huge Desktop Environment like KDE/Gnome, with all sorts of applications developed specifically for it.
- All Twindys options must be configurable from Twindy itself - there shouldnt be any messing about with configuration files necessary. (okay, were not there yet, but eventually...)
- Twindy should be fairly lightweight - Im not entirely sure how well it succeeds in this yet, as I dont have a low-ish spec machine to test it on, but on my P4 laptop, it only takes up ~10MB while running, which I reckon is pretty good, compared to Gnome and KDE. Since it uses JUCE to do pretty much everything, it should be pretty good on this front, and its got very few dependencies (basically the X libs, and freetype).
Main features:
- Windows are automatically mapped to either the upper or lower panel, and fixed in position.
- Upper window panels are tabbed.
- Fully customisable colour scheme, colours are read from .tracktionscheme files, so you can import your favourite Tracktion 2 scheme. This is probably the best place to find .tracktionschemes.
- You dont have to start it from an xterm anymore!
- Fourteen user-customisable buttons in the lower left corner, which can be set to open a popup menu with a number of program entries, or just start a particular program.
- Can run any number of programs at startup (particularly useful for gnome-settings-daemon).
- Clicking the clock switches between showing the current time, or the date.
Enhancements:
- This is the last release of the project.
- Various small improvements to the UI have been made, such as labeling the upper and lower panel buttons, asking whether the user wants to log out, and providing buttons to switch apps between the upper and lower panels.
- Localization support was also added.

GAI Pager is an Enlightenment and a Waimea pager.

Support for other window managers wont be hard to add, but at the moment it WONT work
with any other window manager.

As with all applets that uses the GAI library it can both be used as a Gnome 2 panel applet or a dockapp.

To install it and compile it, do as you usually do:

configure
make
make install

Docker is a docking application (WindowMaker dock app) which acts as a system tray for KDE and GNOME2. Docker can be used to replace the panel in either environment, allowing you to have a system tray w ithout running the KDE/GNOME panel or environment.

I wrote and designed Docker to work with Openbox 2, but it should work fine in any window manager that supports WindowMaker dock apps.

If you running WindowMaker or otherwise and experiencing problems, you should try using the -wmaker option to make docker keep a fixed size.

Docker requires a KDE3 compliant window manager to handle KDE3 system tray icons, and since it is a docking application, the window manager needs to also support WindowMaker Dock Apps. The only window manager that meets these requirements to my knowledge is:

- Openbox 2 (http://icculus.org/openbox)

If you know of any other window managers that support the KDE3 hints for the system tray and docking apps (i.e. that docker works in), please let me know so I can add them to this list, and test docker out in them!

Why dont my GNOME2 system tray icons show up?

I dont know! Email me and let me know what application isnt working. (Dont you dare email me about a GNOME1 application!