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The Window Manager

The window manager is what controls the `look and feel' of your screen. It adds the titlebars and borders to all of your windows. It is also responsible for any menus that appear when you click on the background. Different window managers decorate their windows with different icons used to manipulate the windows.

Some window managers support `virtual desktops', which means you can have more than one screen full of windows. This often makes it easier to organise the way you work.

You can also customise the way your window manager looks. This can range from simply modifying the colour of the titlebars and the background image, to changing the borders and adding extra buttons to the titlebar.

The following sections describe four of the window managers currently available on the School's system.

• Fluxbox
• Twm
• WindowMaker
• KDE