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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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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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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Fluxbox is a X11 windowmanager build for speed and flexibility.
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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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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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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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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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LinuxMint 22.3 XFCE RU/EN
Linux Mint 22.3 "Zara" XFCE (RU/EN) by KDE_MintyFlow
A custom build of Linux Mint 22.3 "Zara" featuring lightweight XFCE desktop environments. Optimized for performance and stability. Includes Russian and English languages out of the box. Pre-installed essential software and codecs. Perfect for low-end hardware and older PCs. Fast, clean, and ready to use. A custom build of Linux Mint 22.3 "Zara" with lightweight XFCE desktop environments. Optimized for speed and stability. Full support for Russian and English languages. Pre-installed essential software and codecs. Ideal for low-end hardware and older computers. Fast, clean, and ready to use immediately after installation. Tested on an Acer Extensa 5630EZ (2Ghz 2RAM) The "Windows App Support" build differs only in that it includes additional scripts to support Windows applications on Linux, which ensures a smoother transition for Windows users to Linux. Everything works out of the box. Just install, click, and go! -
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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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LeftWM
A tiling window manager for Adventurers
Left is a tiling window manager written in rust for stability and performance. The core of left is designed to do one thing and one thing well. Be a window manager. Because you probably want more than just a black screen LeftWM is built around the concept of theming. With themes, you can choose between different bars/compositors/backgrounds/colors, whatever makes you happy. LeftWM has been built from the very beginning to support multiple screens and has been built around ultrawide monitors. You will see this with the default key bindings. -
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screenrotate
Small script used to automatically change the various screen rotation
This program was originally written for the Lenovo flex 5. But if your laptop has iio-sensor-proxy installed and supports it, automatic rotation should work on any laptop. Since version 1.7 I use an ASUS ROG Flow. Therefore new features and patches will be available first on the asus_rog_flow branch. -
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wxMathPlot is an add-on library for wxWidgets which provides a framework for easy plotting of mathematical functions, sampled data and generic 2D plots.
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LeftWM Layouts
Library providing fixed but parameterized window layout calculations
This library encapsulates layout calculations from external dependencies and displays servers, so that it can be used by window managers for X.Org, Wayland, or whatever else. It's all about splitting up rectangles, the library has no concept of "windows". Some default layouts are provided, but custom layouts can be defined. Custom layout definitions allow some flexibility but are still fairly limited by design, as the target audience of this library is list-based / dynamic-tiling window managers (the likes of leftwm, dwm, ...) as opposed to manual tilers like i3. -
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baru
A system monitor written in Rust and C
Baru gathers the information from /sys and /proc filesystems (filled by the kernel). Except for audio and network modules that use C libraries. There is no memory leak over time. All modules are threaded. Thanks to this design (as well as Rust and C), baru is lightweight and efficient. It can run at a high refresh rate with a minimal processor footprint. The audio module communicates with the PipeWire/PulseAudio server through client API to retrieve its data. Wireless and wired modules use the netlink interface with the help of libnl to talk directly to the kernel and retrieve their data. Baru is modular. This means that only the modules you want to see are instantiated and executed. -
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penrose
A library for writing an X11 tiling window manager
Penrose is a modular library for configuring your own X11 window manager in Rust. This means that, unlike most other tiling window managers, Penrose is not a binary that you install on your system. Instead, you use it like a normal dependency in your own crate for writing your own window manager. Don't worry, the top-level API is well documented and a lot of things will work out of the box, and if you fancy digging deeper you'll find lots of opportunities to customize things to your liking. Penrose was born out of my failed attempts to refactor the dwm codebase into something that I could more easily understand and hack on. While I very much admire and aim for minimalism in code, I personally feel that it becomes a problem when your code base starts playing code golf to keep things short for the sake of it. -
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wmfocus
Visually focus windows by label
This tool allows you to rapidly choose a specific window directly without having to use the mouse or directional keyboard navigation. Thanks to cairo, it should work on all kinds of screens and automatically display at the correct size according to your DPI. -
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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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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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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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berry
A healthy, byte-sized window manager
A healthy, bite-sized window manager written in C over the XLib library. Controlled via a powerful command-line client, allowing users to control windows via a hotkey daemon such as sxhkd or expand functionality via shell scripts.
