Open Source Linux Window Managers
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Window Managers for Linux
View 9 business solutionsBrowse free open source Window Managers and projects for Linux below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source Window Managers by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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Bodhi Linux
A minimalist, enlightened Linux distribution
Bodhi is a minimalistic, enlightened, Linux desktop. Bodhi Linux is extremely lightweight and highly customizable. Bodhi is suitable for both Linux newcomers and experienced users. The Ubuntu LTS assures stability for years and the Bodhi Team is very open to all suggestions and requests from users and willing to help. -
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Archcraft
Yet another minimal Linux distribution, based on Arch Linux.
Archcraft is an arch-based rolling-release distribution aimed at users who cares more about minimalism and aesthetics of their desktop. It comes pre-configured with various lightweight applications which makes it super fast. It can run under 500Mb of memory. There's no desktop environment in (main) Archcraft, just two highly configured window managers - Openbox and Bspwm. The default username & password is 'liveuser' for live ISO. The installer can be found in the app launcher and in openbox menu under the Application > System category, namely 'Install Archcraft'. Archcraft uses two Installers, Calamares and ABIF -
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Mabox Linux
Lightweight ready to use OpenBox Desktop Rolling-release Manjaro based
Mabox is a Manjaro based, desktop Linux distribution. The project ships with Openbox as the default desktop with pinch of customistations and home-brewed tools, like improved menu, side-panels and Mabox Control Center. Works great even on weaker computers. -
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Enlightenment is a window manager for the X11 windowing system. Its design goal is to be as configurable as possible - in look AND in feel.
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CDE - Common Desktop Environment
The Common Desktop Environment, the classic UNIX desktop
The Common Desktop Environment was created by a collaboration of Sun, HP, IBM, DEC, SCO, Fujitsu and Hitachi. Used on a selection of commercial UNIXs, it is now available as open-source software for the first time. For support, see: https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/Home/ -
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Window Maker Live
Window Maker Live Linux Distribution
Window Maker Live is an installable Linux Live ISO based on the current Trixie branch of Debian. The system uses the Window Maker window manager as the default graphical user interface. Window Maker Live's components have been carefully preconfigured and the desktop environment has a consistent visual appearance. Window Maker Live integrates selected components from other desktop environments such as XFCE4, MATE, LXQT, with a particular focus on GNUstep. The main idea behind this project is to integrate the Window Maker window manager as default user interface on top of a standard Debian/Trixie base system. It also serves as an alternate installation medium for Debian/Trixie. The second main idea not directly visible on the surface level is the inclusion of many useful command line utilities and tools for system administration. This effectively turns wmlive into a UNIX administrator's workbench for rescue and repair operations. -
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Fluxbox is a X11 windowmanager build for speed and flexibility.
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TaskbarX
TaskbarX: Customize taskbar icons with animations for a sleek Windows.
TaskbarX offers precise control over taskbar icon placement, providing a Windows dock-like ambiance. Enjoy customizable animations, speeds, and positioning options. Easily tailor your taskbar to your preferences, with support for vertical taskbars and multiple instances. Developed since May 6, 2018, under the aliases FalconX and Falcon10, TaskbarX ensures a seamless user experience. -
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A circular, oval, and spiral dock for Windows implemented in .Net using C#. It is based on the idea of pie menus but in a dock form. Official Hompage: http://circledock.wikidot.com
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Grafana: The open and composable observability platformGrafana is the open source analytics & monitoring solution for every database.
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Rectangle
Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts
Rectangle is a window management app based on Spectacle, written in Swift. -
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Rofi
A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement
Rofi started as a clone of the simple switcher, written by Sean Pringle - a popup window switcher roughly based on a super switcher. Simpleswitcher laid the foundations, and therefore Sean Pringle deserves most of the credit for this tool. Rofi (renamed, as it lost the simple property) has been extended with extra features, like an application launcher and ssh-launcher, and can act as a drop-in menu replacement, making it a very versatile tool. Rofi, like dmenu, will provide the user with a textual list of options where one or more can be selected. This can either be running an application, selecting a window, or options provided by an external script. It's not an application that can support every possible use case. It tries to be generic enough to be usable by everybody. Rofi has several built-in modes implementing common use cases and can be extended by scripts (either called from Rofi or calling Rofi) or plugins. -
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SWM
Simple stacking window manager for X11
SWM is a simple stacking window manager for X. SWM is meant to be controlled using X events and swmctl, its custom command-sending tool. X events could be sent using utilities like xdotool or wmctrl. Their commands, as well as swmctl ones could be mapped to keyboard shortcuts using a utility like sxhkd. You can find an example sxhkd config in the examples. -
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Worm
A dynamic, tag-based window manager written in Nim
Worm is a tiny, dynamic, tag-based window manager written in the Nim language. It supports both a floating mode and master-stack tiling with gaps and struts. Worm will try to execute the file ~/.config/worm/rc on startup. Simply create it as a shell-script to execute your favorite applications with worm. (don't forget to make it executable). Worm does not have a built-in keyboard mapper, so you should use something like sxhkd. Please read the docs to understand how wormc works before writing your own sxhkdrc. -
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Menu Maker is 100% Python heuristics-driven menu generator for a number of X Window Managers and desktop environments. It features large knowledge base of known programs, powerful and flexible search algorithms, persistence of menus across several WMs
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Mac OS X Transformation Pack. Macbuntu is an open-source program, designed to transform Linux’s appearance and layout into a Mac OS X environment. Although Macbuntu is dedicated to Ubuntu Linux OS, it could be used in other OS based on Debian/GTK
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Tiling Shell
Extend Gnome Shell with advanced tiling window management
Extend Gnome Shell with advanced tiling window management. Supports multiple monitors, Windows 11 Snap Assistant, Fancy Zones, customised tiling layouts and more. This is a Gnome Shell extension implementing modern windows tiling system by extending GNOME's default 2 columns to any layout you want! Can be installed on Gnome Shells from 40 to 46 on X11 and Wayland: the most recent GNOME Shell is supported, and older releases will include all the features and bug fixes. -
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icewm is a window manager for the X Window System. The features of icewm are speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user's way.
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bbtools is a set of simple and small desktop tools for the Blackbox window manager. Tools range from a pager (bbpager) to a mail notifier (bbmail).
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LuninuxOS
LuninuxOS is a Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distribution.
A Linux operating system, designed and developed to be beautiful, simple, fast, and stable on many computer hardware. -
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FVWM-Crystal
FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use and powerful desktop.
FVWM - Crystal aims to create an easy to use, eye-candy but also powerful desktop environment for Linux or other Unix-like operating systems. Its goals include seeking for better ways of using window manager and providing it with eyecandy interface. It try to exercise FVWM quite a bit. It has some very interesting features unique to Linux/Unix desktops like direct controls for several media players and its ability to bring in full screen virtualy any application. It can flow through the full screened applications and the desktop in a manner similar to the application stack of the Amiga OS, which provides an innovative way to go around the desktop space, without compromising traditional X multiple desktop pages. The core code was written by harnir Maciej Delmanowski with contributions from many other folks. The current developments are led by Dominique Michel. -
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This is a set of improved artwiz fonts. They are compatible with the latest fontconfig/Xft-2.0. Thus artwiz fonts work with gtk2/kde3 applications. Multiple encodings are available.
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Blackbox is that fast, light window manager you have been looking for without all those annoying library dependancies. If you have a C++ compiler and the X Window System you can compile and use it.
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Awesome
Awesome window manager
awesome is a highly configurable, next-generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license. It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with everyday computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their graphical environment. A window manager is probably one of the most used software applications in your day-to-day tasks, along with your web browser, mail reader and text editor. Power users and programmers have a big range of choices between several tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable. awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss, an extensible, highly configurable window manager. To achieve this goal, awesome has been designed as a framework window manager. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language.
