Talk:Window manager

Merger Proposal
This article should be merger with X window manager as they both serve the same purpose. This article covers the same subject and there is no real need for it. The Windows specific sections of this article could be put into a new section in the X window manager article named something like "Other Platform Window Managers". bobbo (talk) 21:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Disagree (Update). I have updated this article to contain more general information about window managers. Although in principle I agree that X window managers is more detailed, many of the articles that link to this article have nothing in particular to do with x windows or linux/UNIX and therefore if it is to be merged into something it should be the Windowing system or another more general article for sure. That is my expert opinion as an information technology professional. Although having an up to date page on window managers is in my opinion very valuable as a way to tie windowing systems, X window managers, compositing window managers (which windows and mac also contain), as well as almost every other platform historical or current which has used windows. It's a nice way to tie it all up in a nice package. I also strongly disagree with the opening comment here. The article, properly written should most certainly not cover the "same subject" and there should be a read need for it. Everyone does not use X window managers. Almost everyone uses a window manager. It's something 90% of people use vs. a fraction of people for X window managers. Putting a section in window manager for X window managers would make sense, since X window managers are window managers. However putting a section in X window managers for window managers would not make sense, since all window managers are not X window managers. Andy16666 (talk) 13:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Disagree. Although I agree with all the reasons proposed by the others here, all window managers are not X window managers, and every graphical operating system has at least one. I think you need a general window manager article, unfortunately you also need someone to write one. I think I just found myself a job. :-P Andy16666 (talk) 13:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. This article looks very out-of-date, while X window manager looks much more current. MoraSique (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with merging the x11 stuff, per nom and MoraSique. Disagree with nom regarding non-x11 stuff, as it's off-topic there. I think Windowing system would be a better place for it (could expand the "other" sentence into a separate subsection about MSWindows platforms). DMacks (talk) 16:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. As all but AfterSTEP are window managers for the X11 system, they really should be added to said article, either that or this article should be expanded.  As for AfterSTEP, are there any appropriate places to mention it?  There aren't too many other window managers for Windows, about the only one I can think of (if it even counts) is 98lite.  I agree that having a subsection about window managers on other platforms in the middle of the X11 article seems out of place. Mandanthe1 (talk) 01:46, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. The term "window manager" historically was largely specific to the X11 architecture. IIRC, prior to Vista, MS Windows did not have any component specifically refered to as a window manager in the documentation, and thus the XP discussion is probably OR. 71.134.228.37 (talk) 13:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Disagree Window manager doesn't mean X window manager, X window manager is a specific example of a window manager, but is by no means the most common due to the popularity of Windows. This article is also linked to by many articles that are not in reference to the X window manager (such as tiling window manager). – Brandon XLF  (talk) 23:57, 8 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Disagree, per User:BrandonXLF's comment. -- Editor-1 (talk) 07:58, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Are docks really part of window managers?
The vast majority of X window managers do not include taskbars, docks or desktop icons. Also, in my opinion these parts really have nothing to do with a window manager's main task: managing windows (i.e drawing frames, allowing repositioning of windows etc.). Should these features really be mentioned as being part of window mangers in general?

Pafcu (talk) 08:24, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. While these features may come with various window manager software, they are not features of a "window manager", just as card games are not a feature of an "operating system" despite their inclusion in Microsoft Windows. Edit. —Centrx→talk &bull; 21:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

No Mention of Quartz Compositor?
This article seems to be an overview of window managers, but it fails even to mention Mac OS X's Quartz Compositor. Probably should be in there.

Golem —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ex2golem (talk • contribs) 03:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Too much prominence given to Amiga Workbench
Why is so much prominence and space given to Amiga workbench? This seems inappropriate to spend so much time on a now largely irrelevant window manager from a now effectively extinct OS. More prominence should be given to efforts by Xerox PARC (First GUI/Desktop), Apple (First Commercial GUI success & still relevent) and Windows (Strong in usability and the current desktop market leader).

I guess the Amiga fanboys must of have got the page. Fair enough if you still want to flog this dead horse, but keep that to your amiga forums & fan sites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.199.239 (talk) 14:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Need of "See also"
This article really should have a "See also" section with ninternal wikipedia references.

Kjetil Halvorsen 23:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjetil1001 (talk • contribs)
 * Information.svg Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). DMacks (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Main image
Shouldn't the main image of the article show KWin as a window manager (that is, listed alongside awesome, Compiz and Openbox), instead as a display server? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magerasto (talk • contribs) 17:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The main image of the article should show a diagram that handles multiple window system architectures.
 * X11 originally had a display server that did all the drawing and clients, including window managers, that asked it to do window drawing, moving, etc.. The Composite extension to X apparently allows window managers to do compositing, as per Compositing window manager.  So:
 * With the Classic X11 Protocol and an old-fashioned window manager, the X11 server is the display server, the old-fashioned window manager is the window manager, and the clients talk to the server directly (usually via a toolkit) and to the window manager via, as I remember, properties attached to the window, e.g. a window title. I guess X11 could run without a window manager, but you aren't going to be able to draw windows around the screen, and you might not get much in the way of borders or get a title bar at all. For that architecture, the main image, as it currently exists, would have X.org Server as a display server, but none of the window manaagers would be counted as the "display server" - they'd all be "window managers".
 * With the X11 Composite extension, it appears that the X11 server can maintain off-screen full images of all windows and composite them onto the screen. That's somewhat like the old-fashioned model, except that clients don't have to be told "somebody {moved this window to the front, dragged another window that was in front of it so that it obscures less of it, ...}, so redraw it" or "...redraw these bits of it that used to be obscured" - they can just pretend that the window is always fully exposed and let the server worry about clipping, etc..  Apparently, the X server can also "conveniently invoke an external "compositing manager" client to apply any desired "special effects"---for example, translucency, blurring or drop shadows---along the way."  That could involve an X11 server, a window manager, and a compositing manager, or it could invovle a "compositing window manager" that serves as both a window manager and compositing manager".  The documentation for the Composite extension seems to indicate that a compositing manager would draw to the "Composite Overlay Window", which is a full-screen window that's above all other windows; it doesn't indicate how the compositing manager finds out that a client has drawn to one of its windows and that it must re-composite the screen.  For that architecture, there would be three items in the same row - display manager, window manager, and compositing manager, with an indication that the last two can be combined into a compositing window manager.  X.org Server would again be an example of a display server; KWin, Mutter, and Compiz would be examples of compositing window managers, xcompmgr would be an example of a compositing manager, and various traditional managers lacking compositing, such as twm, awesome, and Openbox would be example of window managers. And, while an external compositing manager is involved in the process of drawing on the user's screen, it does so through the X11 server, so I'm not sure I'd call them display servers.
 * With Wayland, the display server, compositing manager, and window manager are all in one server, called a Wayland compositor. For that architecture, Weston, KWin and Mutter would be examples of compositors, so, while in an X11 environment KWin and Mutter aren't display servers, in a Wayland environment they are display servers.  I think the Wayland protocol is a lot simpler than the X11 protocol, as 1) it's newer and 2) most of the rendering work is, I think, supposed to be done by the client, with the display server just compositing the resulting rendered windows.
 * In macOS, the Quartz Compositor, also known as WindowServer (that's the name of the executable) is a compositor that acts as a display server and compositor; I'm not sure how many of the window manager functions it handles and how many are handled by the client.
 * In Windows Vista and later, the Desktop Window Manager is a compositor, but I don't know whether it runs as a server in a separate process, and don't know how many of the window manager functions it handles and how many are handled by the client.
 * So that image is a bit of a mess. For example, you have KWin and Mutter marked as display servers, perhaps because that's the function they serve in Wayland, even though in pre-compositing X11 they were window managers and in X11-with-compositing they're compositing window managers but not display servers, and you have Compiz marked as window managers even though it's also a compositing window manager.
 * (And then, just for fun, there's now a choice of client-side decoration with X11 and Wayland, where the application can draw the window decorations rather than having the window manager draw them. How do I know about this? Because Qt, which Wireshark uses as its toolkit, doesn't handle client-side decorations in the version in many Linux distributions, and Mutter only supports client-side decorations, at least on Wayland, so Wireshark - and other Qt applications - have some issues when running on GNOME+Wayland. All I have to say about that is "life's too short for this U+1F4A9".) Guy Harris (talk) 08:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)