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Linux Window Managers (last tallied 2024-05-17) (work in progress),…

- - - - awesomewm
        Highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license. Configured in Lua, it has a system tray, information bar, and launcher built in. There are extensions available to it written in Lua. Awesome uses XCB as opposed to Xlib, which may result in a speed increase. Awesome has other features as well, such as an early replacement for notification-daemon, a right-click menu similar to that of the *box window managers, and many other things.
      - dwm
        Dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All of the layouts can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed. Does not include a system tray or automatic launcher, although dmenu integrates well with it, as they are from the same author. It has no text configuration file. Configuration is done entirely by modifying the C source code, and it must be recompiled and restarted each time it is changed.
        
        dwm-flexipatch
        A dwm build that uses preprocessor directives to decide whether or not to include a patch during build time.
        
        dusk
        An comprehensive and polished build of dwm that features workspaces and seamless restarts
        
        MoonWM
        An outstandingly named fork of dwm
        
        chadwm
        A fork of dwm focusing on visual appearance
        
        pdwm
        dwm fork with a control center (pdwmc), full animation support, and easy configuration
        
        dwm c++
        A dwm port for c++
      - worm
        Worm is a is a dynamic, tag-based window manager for X11. It supports both a floating layout and a master-stack tiling layout and is developed openly. It is also written in the Nim programming language.
      - bspwm
        A tiling window manager that represents windows as the leaves of a full binary tree. It has support for EWMH and multiple monitors, and is configured and controlled through messages.
      - larswm
        A tiling window manager based on 9wm
      - LeftWM
        A tiling window manager written in Rust.
      - ratpoison
        Simple Window Manager with no fat library dependencies, no fancy graphics, no window decorations, and no rodent dependence. It is largely modeled after GNU Screen which has done wonders in the virtual terminal market. Ratpoison is configured with a simple text file. The information bar in Ratpoison is somewhat different, as it shows only when needed. It serves as both an application launcher as well as a notification bar. Ratpoison does not include a system tray.
      - echinus
        Simple and lightweight tiling and floating window manager for X11. Started as a dwm fork with easier configuration, echinus became full-featured re-parenting window manager with EWMH support. It has an EWMH-compatible panel/taskbar, called ourico.
      - spectrwm
        Small dynamic tiling window manager for X11, largely inspired by xmonad and dwm. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and is configured with a text file. It was written by hackers for hackers and it strives to be small, compact and fast. It has a built-in status bar fed from a user-defined script.
      - Qtile
        Full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written in Python. Qtile is simple, small, and extensible. It is easy to write your own layouts, widgets, and built-in commands.It is written and configured entirely in Python, which means you can leverage the full power and flexibility of the language to make it fit your needs.
      - Wingo
        Fully featured true hybrid window manager that supports per-monitor workspaces, and neither the floating or tiling modes are after thoughts. This allows one to have tiling on one workspace while floating on the other. Wingo can be scripted with its own command language, is completely themeable, and supports user defined hooks. Wingo is written in Go and has no runtime dependencies.
      - xmonad
        Dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell. In a normal WM, you spend half your time aligning and searching for windows. Xmonad makes work easier, by automating this. XMonad is configured in Haskell. For all configuration changes, xmonad must be recompiled, so the Haskell compiler (over 100MB) must be installed. A large library called xmonad-contrib provides many additional features.
      - Ion3
        An abandoned tiling tabbed window manager designed for keyboard users.
      - marswm
        A modern window manager featuring dynamic tiling (rusty successor to moonwm).
      - Hypr
        Hypr is a dynamic Linux tiling window manager for Xorg. It's written in XCB with modern C++ and aims to provide easily readable and expandable code.
      - wmii
        wmii is a dynamic window manager for X11. It supports classic and tiled window management with extended keyboard, mouse, and 9P-based[1] remote control. It consists of the wmii(1) window manager and the wmiir(1) the remote access utility.
      - scrotwm
        scrotwm is a minimalistic window manager that tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and does not require one to learn a language to do any configuration. It was written by hackers for hackers and it strives to be small, compact and fast.
      - snapwm
        snapwm is a xinerama and Xrandr aware, minimal and lightweight dynamic tiling window manager.
      - Nextwm
        Successor to snapwm.
      - catwm
        catwm is a very simple and lightweight tiling window manager aiming to stay under 1000 SLOC.
      - FrankenWM
        FrankenWM is a dynamic tiling window manager, comparable to dwm or awesome. This means there are a number of predefined layouts that are used to tile the windows. The source code is based on monsterwm-xcb, but includes a lot of bugfixes and additonal features like extensive runtime configuration, a scratchpad window, window minimizing, floating control via keyboard and currently 13 different tiling layouts.
      - RagnarWM
        Minimal, flexible & user-friendly X Window Manager
    - - i3
        Manual tiler that also supports dynamic layouts
      - EXWM
        Emacs X Window Manager built on top of XELB
      - Herbstluftwm
      - Stumpwm
        Tiling, keyboard driven X11 Window Manager written entirely in Common Lisp. Stumpwm attempts to be customizable yet visually minimal. It does have various hooks to attach your personal customizations, and variables to tweak, and can be reconfigured and reloaded while running. There are no window decorations, no icons and no buttons. Its information bar can be set to show constantly or only when needed.
  - - - 2bwm
        Fast floating window manager, with the particularity of having 2 borders, written over the XCB library and derived from mcwm written by Michael Cardell. In 2bwm everything is accessible from the keyboard but a pointing device can be used for move, resize and raise/lower.
      - 9wm
        X11 window manager inspired by Plan 9's rio.
      - afterstep
        Originally based on the look and feel of the NeXTStep interface, it provides end users with a consistent, clean, and elegant desktop. The goal of AfterStep development is to provide for flexibility of desktop configuration, improving aesthetics, and efficient use of system resources.
      - berry
        Bite-sized window manager written in C. It is controlled via a command-line client, allowing users to control windows via a hotkey daemon such as sxhkd or expand functionality via shell scripts. It provides extensible theming options with double borders, title bars, and window text. Berry places new windows in unoccupied spaces and supports virtual desktops.
      - compiz
        OpenGL compositing manager
      - cwm
        Minimalistic floating window manager
      - eggwm
        A lightweight QT4/QT5 window manager
      - Enlightenment
        Window manager and suite of libraries for creating user interfaces
      - evilwm
        Minimalist window manager
      - Fluxbox
        Fast desktop experience based on Blackbox
      - Flwm
        Combines various ideas from other window managers
      - Gala
        A beautiful window manager from elementaryos, part of Pantheon
      - Goomwwm
        Keyboard driven floating window manager
      - IceWM
        The goal is speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user's way
      - jbwm
        Based on evilwm, with a minimal configuration size
      - JWM
        written in C and uses only Xlib at a minimum
      - Karmen
        no configuration file and no library dependencies other than Xlib
      - KWin
        The standard KDE window manager
      - lwm
        Minimalist stacking window manager
      - Marco
        The MATE window manager, fork of Metacity
      - Metacity
        Strives to be quiet, small, stable, and to stay out of your attention
      - MLVWM
        Macintosh-Like Virtual Window Manager
      - Muffin
        The Cinnamon window manager
      - Mutter
        Window and compositing manager for GNOME
      - MWM
        The Motif Window Manager based on the Motif toolkit
      - OpenBox
        Highly configurable with extensive standards support
      - pawm
        Simple stacking window manager
      - PekWM
        Once based on the aewm++ window manager
      - Sawfish
        Extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language
      - sowm
        Simple Opinionated Window Manager
      - TinyWM
        Minimalistic window manager
      - twm
        Simple window manager for X
      - ukwm
        Default window manager for UKUI desktop environment
      - UWM
        The ultimate window manager for UDE
      - Wind
        Small floating window manager
      - WindowLab
        Small and simple window manager of novel design. It has a click-to-focus but not raise-on-focus policy, a window resizing mechanism that allows one or many edges of a window to be changed in one action, and an innovative menubar that shares the same part of the screen as the taskbar. Window titlebars are prevented from going off the edge of the screen by constraining the mouse pointer, and when appropriate the pointer is also constrained to the taskbar/menubar in order to make target menu items easier to hit.
      - Window Maker
        X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface. It is fast, feature rich, easy to configure, and easy to use.
      - WM2
        Window manager for X. It provides an unusual style of window decoration and as little functionality as its author feels comfortable with in a window manager. wm2 is not configurable, except by editing the source and recompiling the code, and is really intended for people who do not particularly want their window manager to be too friendly.
      - Xfwm
        The Xfce window manager
      - Blackbox
        Fast, lightweight window manager with few library dependencies
      - cons-wm
        Minimalist WM in scheme
      - wmx
        Based on wm2, and it retains a similar look and feel, but it's intended to provide an experimental vehicle for features that fall comfortably outside the scope of the manifesto for the original wm2.
      - MaXX Interactive Desktop
        Re-implementation of the IRIX Interactive Desktop found on SGI systems. Continuation of the old 5Dwm project.
  - - - twin
        Twin is a windowing environment with mouse support, window manager, terminal emulator and networked clients, all inside a text display.
      - Notion
        Tiling, tabbed window manager for the X window system that utilizes 'tiles' and 'tabbed' windows.
        
        Tiling: you divide the screen into non-overlapping 'tiles'. Every window occupies one tile, and is maximized to it
        
        Tabbing: a tile may contain multiple windows - they will be 'tabbed'.
        
        Static: most tiled window managers are 'dynamic', meaning they automatically resize and move around tiles as windows appear and disappear. Notion, by contrast, does not automatically change the tiling.
        
        Notion is a fork of Ion3.
      - xswm
        Minimal window manager where every window is maximized / fullscreen.
- - - - Hikari
        Simple, clean compositor inspired by OpenBSD's x11-wm/cwm
      - Wayfire
      - Kiwmi
        Fully programmable compositor configurable with Lua
      - LabWC
        OpenBox clone
      - Liri
        QT shell from Liri OS
      - Waybox
        OpenBox clone
      - Weston
        Reference compositor implementation for developers
      - KWin
      - Unity8
      - Enlightenment
        Eye candy compositor part of the Enlightenment desktop environment
      - Mutter
      - Greenfield
        Written in TypeScript
      - wxrc
        Stacking/VR
  - - - Cagebreak
        Tiling compositor inspired by RatPoison
      - Sway
        Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.
    - - Vivarium
        A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor using wlroots, with desktop semantics inspired by xmonad.
      - dwl
        dwl is a compact, hackable compositor for Wayland based on wlroots. It is intended to fill the same space in the Wayland world that dwm does in X11, primarily in terms of philosophy, and secondarily in terms of functionality.
      - Newm
        Wayland compositor written with laptops and touchpads in mind
      - River
        Dynamic tiling compositor, inspired by DWM and BSpWM
      - Hyprland
        Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor based on wlroots that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.
      - Qtile
        wlroots
      - Cardboard
        Scrollable tiling
      - strata
        Wayland compositor written in Rust using the Smithay library.
  - - - swvkc
        Vulkan Wayland compositor. It can output to a single GPU and a monitor, use a single keyboard and a mouse.
      - Cage
        Kiosk based compositor for displaying a single fullscreen application (in GURU)
      - Lipstick
      - Gamescope