Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

By William Ball

What Is a Window Manager?

Using Linux and the XFree86 distribution of X11 means freedom of choice—the choice of an operating system and the choice of how you'd like your computer's desktop or root window in X to look and act. Although a window manager is nothing more than an X11 client, you'll find that using a window manager is virtually necessary if you want to run different programs, drag windows around the display, click buttons, drag slider controls, use icons, create virtual desktops, resize windows, or customize how your X sessions work. Of course, you can run X without a window manager, but you'll lose a lot of functionality.

NOTE

Want to try X without a window manager? If you've configured Red Hat Linux to use a display manager, such as the GNOME display manager, gdm, select the Failsafe session. When X starts, you'll get an xterm window, as shown in Figure 5.1—but you won't be able to move or resize it. To quit your X session, either type the word exit at the command line of the xterm terminal window or use the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace key combination to kill your X session (as long as your XF86Config file doesn't use the DontZap option). Without a window manager to provide support for movable windows, you're pretty much stuck with a static xterm screen. Now do you see why window managers are so much fun (and necessary)?

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Figure 5.1 You can run X11 without a window manager, but is it worth it?

Only one of the window managers included with Red Hat Linux is part of the XFree86 X11 distribution; the others are supported by Red Hat for your use. This chapter starts by discussing the GNOME software libraries for X11, then concentrates on the default window manager, sawfish, introduces you to KDE, and wraps up with fvwm2 and twm, the XFree86 window manager.

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