Windowmanager review12/1/2023 ![]() ![]() They determine the border, titlebar, size, and ability to resize windows, and often provide other functionality such as reserved areas for sticking dockapps like Window Maker, or the ability to tab windows like Fluxbox. "Window managers are X clients that control the appearance and behaviour of the frames ("windows") where the various graphical applications are drawn. A good description of this task is given in the Arch Wiki, ![]() So we have windows that need to be given instructions this is taken care of by the manager. Lets call them the windows.Oh and you need a driver lets call the driver a manager. Now to drive the car you need very little extra, a steering wheel,seat and pedals. Lets call the chassis, wheels, engine and gearbox the operating system. So we have windows.īack to the car analogy. All programs you run when using a GUI, graphical user interface, must use a widow to contain the program otherwise how would you know where the edges of a video stop.How would you know where on the screen or control six or seven running programs.Opening each program and telling it where to appear at a certain size every time you ran it would be a real pain. ![]() So a desktop is quite a complex beast which has one component that is necessary for it to be functional. Where they differ is in how they look and feel to the user, body shape and interior design and so on.īack at the car example then, a desktop environment is like a car made by BMW for instance and that will contain a window manager. They all have gravity fed engines tweaked slightly differently but basically the same. You could look at Windows, Mac's, KDE, Gnome and Enlightenment as popular car marques, Ford ,Volvo and BMW. You may get a torrent program or a chat program or a dozen programs included and they will all have the same look and feel and integrate with each other. The only way they differ to Windows and Mac's is that they generally contain more programs as part of the package. In Linux you have KDE,Gnome and Enlightenment and others all of which look different and function differently to each other but can be viewed to be the same as Windows or Mac. You can change the look to some extent by changing icon sets, wallpapers, and colours for title bars and so on but they still have that same sort of look and function in the same way. In each version they integrate with each other and have the same look. The two operating systems have seen various different versions which all have almost the same functions and to some extent contain the same programs and to some extent have the same sort of look.įor example all the Windows from 98 to 7 have a taskbar at the bottom of the screen with a menu launcher in the bottom left corner.They have a file manager and notepad, browser, music player etc etc. Both of these contain a desktop environment.We are not looking at the core components of the operating systems which have changed quite dramatically over the years we are concerned here with how the operating system appears to the user. You are familiar with Windows and Apple's Mac. You can use a computer without a complex graphical interface from the command line which has very basic graphics showing on a screen.įor the average user you really need some way to show on the monitor videos and pictures and pages for your office program and so on this is commonly called a desktop. Simple really as the hint is in the title, a window manager manages windows.
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