GUI

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General

Startup

  • fbsplash (formerly gensplash) is a userspace implementation of a splash screen for Linux systems. It provides a graphical environment during system boot using the Linux framebuffer layer.
Q: "I get a tty1 login before KDM pops up."
A: "You could disable tty1. Comment out this line in /etc/inittab: 
  c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty1 linux"

Display server

X

Xwindows drives the underlying graphical interface of most if not all Unix/Linux computers providing a GUI. It was developed in 1984 at MIT. After around 35 years of development, tweaking and adding of new hardware and ideas, it is generally acknowledged to be a bit of a beast. It should be remembered that the common configuration at time of development was a single mini running X providing individual views to Xterminals in a timesharing system. Nowadays the norm is X providing a single screen on a desktop or laptop.

All of this means that there are many ways of achieving the same thing and many slightly different things that can meet the same purpose. In modern X versions sometimes you can get away with limited or no configuration. In the last few years the boast is that X is self configuring. Certainly the best practice rule of thumb is less configuration is better - that is only configure what is wrong.


  • Xplain - Explaining X11 for the rest of us [1]




  • A Testament to X11 Backwards Compatibility - I recently scored a Hewlett Packard 1670A Deep Memory Logic Analyzer and I finally had a chance to fire it up. This unit dates back to 1992 and is packed with all sorts of interesting options for connecting peripherals to it. One particular feature that caught my eye was the option to connect to an X Server.

History

Config

xrdb
xset


In case monitors don't report EDID information, modeline settings might required. 

cvt 1280 1024 75

randr

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RandR - a communications protocol written as an extension to the X11[2] protocol. XRandR provides the ability to resize, rotate and reflect the root window of a screen. RandR is also responsible for setting the screen refresh rate.


xrandr -q
  show possible and current screen resolutions

xdpyinfo | grep 'dimensions:'
  show just current screen resolution in px and mm


  • ARandR is designed to provide a simple visual front end for XRandR. Relative monitor positions are shown graphically and can be changed in a drag-and-drop way.
  • autorandr - Auto-detect the connect display hardware and load the appropiate X11 setup using xrandr or disper
  • randrctl - Minimalistic JSON profile based screen manager for X. It allows to store current screen setup in a declarative configuration file (a profile) and apply stored settigns later with a simple command.

Multihead

faulty EDID;

  • DMX (Distributed Multihead X Project) - Typical X servers provide multi-head support for multiple displays attached to the same machine. When Xinerama is in use, these multiple displays are presented to the user as a single unified screen. Xdmx is proxy X server that provides multi-head support for multiple displays attached to different machines (each of which is running a typical X server). When Xinerama is used with Xdmx, the multiple displays on multiple machines are presented to the user as a single unified screen. A simple application for Xdmx would be to provide multi-head support using two desktop machines, each of which has a single display device attached to it.

Other

  • Disper is an on-the-fly display switch utility. It is intended to be used just before giving a presentation with a laptop, when all one wants is that the beamer, which has just been connected, is able to show whatever you prepared. Disper gives you the option to either clone all detected displays, or extend the desktop to them. Resolutions are automatically detected. For cloning, the highest common resolution supported by all displays is chosen; for extending every display device gets its highest supported resolution. For special setups requiring more detailed control, one can still use the standard display configuration utilites.

X servers

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86 - was an implementation of the X Window System. For most of the 1990s and early 2000s, the project was the source of most innovation in X and was the de facto steward of X development. Until early 2004, it was almost universal on Linux and the BSDs. In February 2004, with version 4.4.0, The XFree86 Project adopted a license change that the Free Software Foundation considered GPL incompatible. Most open source operating systems using XFree86 found this unacceptable and moved to a fork from before the license change.[3] The first fork was the abortive Xouvert, but X.Org Server soon became dominant. Most XFree86 developers also moved to X.Org.


  • Xnest is both an X client and an X server. Xnest is a client of the real server which manages windows and graphics requests on its behalf. Xnest is a server to its own clients. Xnest manages windows and graphics requests on their behalf. To these clients, Xnest appears to be a conventional server.
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xnest - a display server implementing the X11 display server protocol that shows its output in a window. In other words, Xnest opens a window that works like another screen in which the user can open windows, etc.
  • Xephyr is a kdrive based X Server which targets a window on a host X Server as its framebuffer. Unlike Xnest it supports modern X extensions (even if host server doesn't) such as Composite, Damage, randr etc (no GLX support now). It uses SHM Images and shadow framebuffer updates to provide good performance. It also has a visual debugging mode for observing screen updates.


DXPC

X Forwarding

xmove

  • xmove - a computer program that allows the movement of X Window System applications between different displays and the persistence of X applications across X server restarts. It solves a problem in the design of X, where an X client (an X application) is tied to the X server (X display) it was started on for its lifetime. Also, if the X server is shut down, the client application is forced to stop running. xmove lets the client disconnect from its current X server, and connect to a new one, at any time. The transition is completely transparent to the client. xmove works by acting as a proxy between the client and server. It is a "pseudoserver" which stores enough server state so that clients can connect to a new server without being disrupted.

Xpra

  • Xpra - X Persistent Remote Applications, is 'screen for X', and more: it allows you to run X programs, usually on a remote host and direct their display to your local machine. It also allows you to display existing desktop sessions remotely. Xpra is "rootless" or "seamless", and sessions can be accessed over SSH, or password protected and encrypted over plain TCP sockets. Xpra adapts to bandwidth constraints and is fully open-source. [2]

The main problem with ssh -X is all your apps close when your connection drops.


  • Xdummy was originally developed by Karl Runge as a ​script to allow a standard X11 server to be used by non-root users with the dummy video driver

Guievict

  • guievict is a computer program which enables the GUI of any application for XFree86 implementation of X Window to be transparently migrated to or replicated on another display. Unlike some program providing similar functionalities, it requires neither prearranging steps such as re-linking the application program binary nor re-directing the application process's window system communication through a proxy like xmove does.

Guievict is based on a small X server extension that enables an application to retrieve its window state from the X server and a library of GUI migration functionality that is injected in the application process at run time. Code injection or runtime code-patching can be done via the DynInst API. However, guievict contains its own implementation to avoid requiring users to install DynInst.

x2x

x2vnc

  • x2vnc - A dual-screen hack. will let you use two screens on two different computers as if they were connected to the same computer. Even if one of the computers runs Windows 95/98/NT and the other one runs X-windows. The program will open a small (one pixel wide) window on the edge of your screen. Moving the pointer into this window will trigger the program to take over your mouse and send mouse movements and keystrokes though the RFB protocol to a VNC server running on another machine. When the pointer is moved back towards the opposite edge on the other screen, the mouse is then released again. The operation itself is almost identical to x2x, but most of the code was actually borrowed from the program vncviewer.

xrdp

  • xrdp - An open source remote desktop protocol(rdp) server. Based on the work of FreeRDP and rdesktop, xrdp uses the remote desktop protocol to present a GUI to the user. The goal of this project is to provide a fully functional Linux terminal server, capable of accepting connections from rdesktop, freerdp, and Microsoft's own terminal server / remote desktop clients. Unlike Windows NT/2000/2003/2008/2012 server, xrdp will not display a Windows desktop but an X window desktop to the user. Xrdp uses Xvnc or X11rdp to manage the X session.


Microsoft Windows

  • Xming is the leading X Window System Server for Microsoft Windows. It is fully featured, lean, fast, simple to install and because it is standalone native Windows, easily made portable (not needing a machine-specific installation or access to the Windows registry). Xming is totally secure when used with SSH and optionally includes an enhanced PuTTY Link SSH client and a portable PuTTY replacement package.

Xvfb

  • Xvfb
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvfb - or X virtual framebuffer is a display server implementing the X11 display server protocol. In contrast to other display servers Xvfb performs all graphical operations in memory without showing any screen output. From the point of view of the client, it acts exactly like any other X display server, serving requests and sending events and errors as appropriate. However, no output is shown. This virtual server does not require the computer it is running on to even have a screen or any input device. Only a network layer is necessary. Unlike a real display server, Xvfb does not support modern X11 extensions like compositing, Randr or GLX. Xdummy is a newer alternative which supports these extensions as well as providing the same functionality as Xvfb.

Xvfb is primarily used for testing:


Utils

  • xprop - property displayer for X

xprop

xprop -root
  # list root (wm) window properties

xprop -root -f _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY 32cc -set _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY "$GEOM_X,$GEOM_Y"
  # set _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY. only applies if wm supported.

xev

  • xev - print contents of X events
    • 'keysym' gives the name to bind to

xwit

  • xwit is an X window interface tool. By default when used with no arguments in an xterm it de-iconifies and raises the window. You can specify a different function to do, such as iconifying the window, and apply it to several windows whose name begins with one of the given strings, or a particular window id given, or the window id found in the environment variable WINDOWID (which is set by xterm for the program it runs), or the window under the mouse cursor.

xdo

  • xdotool - lets you simulate keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows, etc. It does this using X11's XTEST extension and other Xlib functions. Additionally, you can search for windows and move, resize, hide, and modify window properties like the title. If your window manager supports it, you can use xdotool to switch desktops, move windows between desktops, and change the number of desktops.

wmutils

  • chwb - change window's border
  • chwso - change window's stacking order
  • ignw - ignore/unignore window
  • killw - kill windows
  • lsw - list windows
  • mapw - map/unmap windows
  • pfw - print focused window
  • wattr - show window's attributes
  • wmp - move the mouse pointer
  • wmv - move a window
  • wrs - resize a window
  • wtf - focus a window
  • wtp - teleport a window

xmag

  • xmag - allows you to magnify portions of an X screen. If no explicit region is specified, a square with the pointer in the upper left corner is displayed indicating the area to be enlarged. The area can be dragged out to the desired size by pressing Button 2. Once a region has been selected, a window is popped up showing a blown up version of the region in which each pixel in the source image is represented by a small square of the same color. Pressing Button1 in the enlargement window shows the position and RGB value of the pixel under the pointer until the button is released. Typing Q or ^C in the enlargement window exits the program.

xdimmer

  • xdimmer is a lightweight X11 utility to dim the screen backlight when idle, then brighten it back up when mouse or keyboard activity is detected. This power-saving behavior is common on other operating systems and in bloated X11 frameworks like GNOME.

xinput

  • xinput - utility to configure and test X input devices

XMacro

  • XMacro - package contains two simple, C++ programs (xmacrorec and xmacroplay) for recording and replaying keyboard and mouse events on an X server. This functionality is achieved through the XTest extension.

devilspie

KPie

  • KPie is a simple window manipulation tool, modeled after devil's pie, with a Lua-based configuration file.

telak

  • telak is a program which displays pictures in root window. It can display content of local file, or download image via http. Telak can be configured to refetch picture every n seconds, so it can be used to display image from webcam.

Xearth

  • Xearth sets the X root window to an image of the Earth, as seen from your favorite vantage point in space, correctly shaded for the current position of the Sun. By default, xearth updates the displayed image every five minutes. The time between updates can be changed using either X resource or a command-line option. Xearth can also be configured to either create and render into its own top-level X window or render directly into PPM or GIF files; see the man page for details.

Xplanet

  • Xplanet was inspired by Xearth, which renders an image of the earth into the X root window. All of the major planets and most satellites can be drawn, similar to the Solar System Simulator. A number of different map projections are also supported, including azimuthal, Lambert, Mercator, Mollweide, orthographic, and rectangular.

Xeyes

Xsnow

Other

Programming

Pointer

Scripts GUI

  • whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts

Backgrounds

Fonts

Some fonts like terminus-font are installed in /usr/share/fonts/local, which is not added to the font path by default. By adding the following lines to ~/.xinitrc, the fonts can be used in X11: 

xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/local
xset fp rehash

Keyboard input

  • xcape allows you to use a modifier key as another key when pressed and released on its own. Note that it is slightly slower than pressing the original key, because the pressed event does not occur until the key is released. The default behaviour is to generate the Escape key when Left Control is pressed and released on its own. (If you don't understand why anybody would want this, I'm guessing that Vim is not your favourite text editor ;)

xmodmap

xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1"
  # set mouse buttons for left hand

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3"
  # set mouse buttons for right hand

xbindkeys

~/.xbindkeysrc

sxhkd


~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc

other

Cursor

xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr


freedesktop.org

ICCCM

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Client_Communication_Conventions_Manual - ICCCM or I39L short for "I", 39 letters and "L")[1] is a standard for interoperability between X Window System clients of the same X server. It is primarily used for communication between normal clients and the window manager. X deliberately specifies "mechanism, not policy". As such, an additional specification beyond the X protocol itself was needed for client interoperation. The ICCCM specifies cut and paste buffers, window manager interaction, session management, how to manipulate shared resources and how to manage device colours. These low-level functions are generally implemented within widget toolkits or desktop environments, meaning that application programmers rarely work directly with the ICCCM itself but instead use the higher-level toolkit functions that implement it.

EWMH

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Window_Manager_Hints - aka NetWM or Net WM, is an X Window System standard for window managers. It defines various interactions between window managers, utilities, and applications, all part of an entire desktop environment. It builds on the functionality of the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM).



  • ewmhstatus - Outputs the current EWMH desktop name and window title
  • wmctrl is a UNIX/Linux command line tool to interact with an EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager.

3D

Video

Session managers

ugh




  • selectwm - a small application (using GTK+) which lets you select your window manager. It looks for a file named .selectwmrc in the user's directory which contains a list of window managers. When you start X it should show a list which lets you choose your window manager (by double clicking on it with the mouse or with the arrow keys and the return or space key)

Display Managers

  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_Manager - X Display Manager is used to start a session from a local system or from another computer. The request and the start of the session is handled by the XDMCP, which stands for "X Display Manager Control Protocol" and is a network protocol. It provides a way of running the X-Terminal to run on your PC (or MAC) and it uses the X Server to provide a client/server interface between display hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop environment while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a standardized application interface (quoted from XFree86 Project home page)



X Window System is the display and networking protocol developed by MIT. The X is built with network in mind with the capability to run a (graphical) session on a remote computer. In it, an X Display Manager is used to start a session from a local system or from another computer. The request and the start of the session is handled by the XDMCP, which stands for "X Display Manager Control Protocol" and is a network protocol. It provides a way of running the X-Terminal to run on your PC (or MAC) and it uses the X Server to provide a client/server interface between display hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop environment while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a standardized application interface (quoted from XFree86 Project home page). The X-Terminal can be displayed with an individual window or multiple windows, based on your X window system's software capabilities and setup.

XDM



WDM

SLiM

Security issues.

username: 

exit - Return to the command line
halt - Shutdown the system
reboot - Reboot the system
console - Launch the terminal

cd /usr/share/slim/themes/
slim -p [name of theme]
  # preview theme (needs to be killed from a non-X tty!)

Enterance

SDDM

LightDM

Compositing

Older

Compton

  • Compton - "I was frustrated by the low amount of standalone lightweight compositors. Compton was forked from Dana Jansens' fork of xcompmgr and refactored. I fixed whatever bug I found, and added features I wanted. Things seem stable, but don't quote me on it. I will most likely be actively working on this until I get the features I want. This is also a learning experience for me. That is, I'm partially doing this out of a desire to learn Xlib."

Unagi

Window Managers

xwm

xnwm

uwm

1985

developed by the Digital Equipment Corporation for their Ultrix operating system. It was released in 1985. Shortly thereafter, it became included as part of the base X Window System distribution, beginning with X10R3. Initially, it was distributed alongside two other window managers (xwm and xnwm).

In 1986, the X Window System switched to version 11 of the protocol. Only uwm was ported, so it became the only window manager for X Window System until X11R4 release, where it was replaced by twm. uwm has never been updated since.

twm

1987

awm

1988

descended from uwm.

swm

1990

vtwm

1990

tvtwm

1990

CTWM

1992

Motif Window Manager

1992

fvwm

1993

9wm

1994

olvm / olvwm

1996?

AmiWM

1996?

wm2 / wmx

1996 / 1998

PieWM

1997

Window Maker

1997


Blackbox

1997

Enlightenment

1997

  • Enlightenment is not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces with much less work than doing it the old fashioned way and fighting with traditional toolkits, not to mention a traditional window manager. It covers uses from small mobile devices like phones all the way to powerful multi-core desktops (which are the primary development environment).

IceWM

1997

MLVWM

1997

Xfwm

Xfwm - used in Xfce, intially based on fvwm2, itself derived from twm, redesigned to minimize memory consumption, provide a 3-D look to window frames, and provide a simple virtual desktop.

4Dwm

1998?

aewm

1998

AfterStep

1999

Scwm

1999

PWM

2000

Tiling

Succeeded by Ion

Ion

2000

Tiling

Successor to PWM, development dead

Fork: Notion

Sawfish

2000

  • Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language. Its policy is very minimal compared to most window managers. Its aim is simply to manage windows in the most flexible and attractive manner possible. All high-level WM functions are implemented in Lisp for future extensibility or redefinition. what i wanted when using litestep

larswm

2000

ratpoison

2000

PLWM

2000

Fluxbox

2001

WindowLab

2001

Openbox

2002

Metacity

2002

miwm

2002

Hackedbox

2002

Oroborus

2002

NovaWM

2002

Stumpwm

2003

cwm

2004

wmii

2005

PekWM

2005

Stacking

JWM

2005

dwm

2006

spectrwm

2006

  • spectrwm is a small dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and does not require one to learn a language to do any configuration. It was written by hackers for hackers and it strives to be small, compact and fast. It was largely inspired by xmonad and dwm.

flwm

2006?

Matchbox

2007

evilwm

2007

xmonad

2007

  • xmonad is a dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell. In a normal WM, you spend half your time aligning and searching for windows. xmonad makes work easier, by automating this.

Config

cabal --recompile
  after changing ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs

Hotkeys

mod shift enter
  start terminal
mod shift c
  close current window

mod w
  reload xmonad

mod space
  rotate through window layouts
mod shift space
  reset to workspace default
mod tab
  tab through windows
super 2
  switch to workspace 2

Awesome

2007

Config

echo 'naughty.notify({ text = "hello from tty" })' | awesome-client

debug rc.lua changes; 

Xephyr :1 -ac -br -noreset -screen 1152x720 &
DISPLAY=:1.0 awesome -c ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua.new

If xdg/awesome default config loads instead of .config/awesome, this is due to error in the rc.lua.

Usage

[mod]-Enter
  new terminal window
[mod]-c
  close window

[mod]-j
  rotate window selection clockwise
[mod]-k
  rotate window selection anticlockwise
[mod]-J
  move active window clockwise
[mod]-K
  move active window anticlockwise

[mod]-f
  fullscreen active window

[mod]-a
  create new tag
[mod]-s
  rename active tag

[mod]-shift-r
  reload awesome (to resource config)

Multihead

Wibox

Widgets

Colours

The color format in awesome is either a standard X color name (blue, darkblue, lightred, etc) or a hexadecimal formatted color (#rrggbb or #rrggbbaa). By using the hexadecimal format, you can also specify an alpha channel: that means that #00ff00 will draw pure green, but #00ff00aa will set the alpha channel to ‘aa’ and will blend the green with the color under it.

Text format

You can use Pango markup in a text string. This allows formating the text rendered inside widgets. Pango markup documentation can be found in the Pango documentation at http://library.gnome.org/devel/pango/stable/PangoMarkupFormat.html.

A Pango markup example: ….

Shifty

Revelation

Expose-like client selection.

Freedesktop menu

MPD

Other

3.5

subtle

2007

  • subtle is a manual tiling window manager with a rather uncommon approach of tiling: Instead of relying on predefined layouts, subtle divides the screen into a grid with customizeable slots (called gravities). For better understanding, the default config uses a 3x3 grid and maps each gravity to one key of the numpad. With those keys, windows can be moved directly to the desired gravity - the same can be done with tagging rules in the config. Another unique concept is the strict tagging: Unlike other tiling window managers, subtle doesn't allow weak tagging and always maps windows to virtual desktops (called views) with matching tags, regardless of the current active view.

Echinus

2007

Tritium

2007?

SithWM

2007

wmfs

2008

CLFSWM

2008

Lucca WM

2008?

i3

2009

based on wmii

TinyWM

Notion

2010

Tiling, tabbed

Fork of Ion

Musca

2009

Bluetile

2010

  • Bluetile is a tiling window manager for Linux, designed to integrate with the GNOME desktop environment. It provides both a traditional, stacking layout mode as well as tiling layouts where windows are arranged to use the entire screen without overlapping. Bluetile tries to make the tiling paradigm easily accessible to users coming from traditional window managers by drawing on known conventions and providing both mouse and keyboard access for all features. based on Xmonad

mcwm

2010

catwm

2010

euclid-wm

2010

wind

2010

Wind is a window manager for the X Window System. It supports virtual desktops, optional Xft font rendering, and is pretty standards compliant. It provides overlapping window management with click-to-type focus. Unlike most window managers, Wind does not have the concept of minimized or hidden windows. Instead of hiding and unhiding windows, the virtual desktops abstraction makes it easy to group similar tasks and switch between these groups instantly using convenient key bindings. Standards compliancy is a prominent goal of the project, and Wind supports almost all mandatory parts of the ICCCM and the Extended Window Manager Hints specifications. Full compliancy is expected in the next major release.

herbstluftwm

2011

monsterwm

2011

  • monsterwm is a minimal, lightweight, tiny but monstrous dynamic tiling window manager. It will try to stay as small as possible. Currently under 700 lines with the config file included. It provides a set of four different layout modes (vertical stack, bottom stack, grid and monocle/fullscreen) by default, and has floating mode support. Each virtual desktop has its own properties, unaffected by other desktops' settings. Finally monsterwm supports multiple monitors setups.

tilenol

2011

nwm

2011

  • nwm - A dynamic window manager for X11 written with Node.js

Mer

2011

dminiwm / snapwm

2011

wingo

2011

no-wm

2011

Foo-Wm

Aura

TTWM / Alopex

2012

  • https://github.com/TrilbyWhite/alopex
  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alopex
  • TTWM is a minimal tiling window manager combining concepts or elements from TinyWM, DWM, and i3wm. Inspiration has also been drawn from other great tilers like MonserWM. TinyTiler is currently under 650 lines of code. In contrast to other tilers, TinyTiler does not have modes nor does have window rules. TinyTiler has only two layouts: right stack and bottom stack. These choices were by design. TinyTiler instead provides two screen sections, the master and the stack. In TinyTiler only one stack window is visibile at a time, the others have tabs in the statusbar.

Qtile

2012

Goomwwm

2012

bspwm

2012

Very nice and atomic. 

bspc set focused_border_color '#ff0000'
bspc set border_width '3px'
bspc set window_gap 0
bspc set focus_follows_pointer true

Deep Space Window Manager

2012

Piwm

2013

  • Piwm is a very small window manager written in Bash. Following are the 5 task it performs : 1) Ctrl + t : Opens xterm, 2) Ctrl + f : Makes current window full screen, 3) Alt + Mouseleft : Moves the window, 4) Alt + Mouseright : Rescales the window, 5) Ctrl + F1 : Refocus the window

howm

2014

wtftw

2014

written in rust

adwm

2014

  • https://github.com/bbidulock/adwm - originally a fork of Echinus which in turn was a fork of dwm, and borrows concepts from velox, awesome and spectrwm. What it includes is a full rewrite with significant updates and additions resulting in full EWMH (NetwM), WMH (WinWM), MWMH (CDE/Motif), ICCCM 2.0 compliance and support.

eggwm

2014

exwm

2015

katriawm

2015

non-reparenting, tiling window manager with window decorations. It’s a learning project started in December 2015.

Lunchbox Window Manager

2015

other tiling

Desktop environment

as DEs are fairly tightly integrated, a full DE install is required for proper running and configuration of their component apps

OpenWindows

1989-2000, Sun Microsystems

Common Desktop Environment

1993-

GNOME

  • Glade is a RAD tool to enable quick & easy development of user interfaces for the GTK+ toolkit and the GNOME desktop environment. The user interfaces designed in Glade are saved as XML, and by using the GtkBuilder GTK+ object these can be loaded by applications dynamically as needed. By using GtkBuilder, Glade XML files can be used in numerous programming languages including C, C++, C#, Vala, Java, Perl, Python,and others.

shellshape

Consort

MATE

KDE

Cinnamon

Xfce

Lightweight, not entirely UNIXy, but hey..

LXDE / LXQt

ROX

  • ROX is a fast, user friendly desktop which makes extensive use of drag-and-drop. The interface revolves around the file manager, or filer, following the traditional Unix view that `everything is a file' rather than trying to hide the filesystem beneath start menus, wizards, or druids. The aim is to make a system that is well designed and clearly presented. The ROX style favours using several small programs together instead of creating all-in-one mega-applications.

Sugar

other


Pantheon

Budgie Desktop

OS.js

  • OS.js - JavaScript Cloud/Web Desktop Platform [8]

XDE

Modular DE for non-DE window managers?

System GUI

Status bar

usually fairly minimal

dzen

bar

some_sorta_bar

  • some_sorta_bar - A simple bar to display text from a pipe for lightweight window managers. e.g; conky | some_sorta_bar

xmobar

  • xmobar is a minimalistic, mostly text based, status bar. It was originally designed and implemented by Andrea Rossato to work with xmonad, but it's actually usable with any window-manager. xmobar was inspired by the Ion3 status bar, and supports similar features, like dynamic color management, icons, output templates, and extensibility through plugins.

taffybar

  • [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/taffybar taffybar - A somewhat fancier desktop bar than xmobar. This bar is based on gtk2hs and provides several widgets (including a few graphical ones). It also sports an optional snazzy system tray. haskell

gobar

bipolarbar

bevelbar

Panel / Taskbar

  • tint2 is a simple panel/taskbar made for modern X window managers. It was specifically made for Openbox but it should also work with other window managers (GNOME, KDE, XFCE etc.). Panel with taskbar, system tray, clock and launcher icons; Easy to customize: color/transparency on fonts, icons, borders and backgrounds; Pager like capability: move tasks between workspaces (virtual desktops), switch between workspaces; Multi-monitor capability: create one panel per monitor, showing only the tasks from the current monitor; Customizable mouse events. fork of ttm.






  • http://freecode.com/projects/hpanel - Hpanel is hacked version of fspanel, a small panel that lists your windows and allows you to switch workspaces. It requires a window manager that is compliant with the NETWM specification. It works nicely with pekwm and aewm++, and handles maximized windows better than fspanel.


uses webkit

  • Plank is meant to be the simplest dock on the planet.

System tray

Dock

  • xdock - emulates the Window Maker docks, with the following differences: runs in any window manager; client/server - it works in a client/server way, where a server sits in the right side of the screen, and the docks are clients that connect to that server; easy to program - programming the Window Maker docks was a hard job. But xdock provides a API that makes programming much easier!
  • Flipse - small app that collects Windowmaker Dockapps into one window. This allows the usage of WM Dockapps in other Windowmanagers like wmii.Code is heavily inspired by XFCE-WMDock


Launchers

  • Kupfer is an interface for quick and convenient access to applications and their documents. The most typical use is to find a specific application and launch it. We have tried to make Kupfer easy to extend with plugins so that this quick-access paradigm can be extended to many more objects than just applications.
  • Services menu is an application that helps the user perform actions on text in other programs. The user simply selects some text and launches Services — for example, by keyboard shortcut or clicking the fourth mouse button. A menu pops up letting the user edit the text and select desired operation, such as open a browser window searching for the text in Google.
  • Ayr is a Bash script which lets you manage menus of application launchers, which can be either executables or desktop files. It also opens files and URIs with launchers, desktop files, or applications associated by name or MIME-type. Launchers can be grouped and/or made read-only with tags, and the menu of launchers can be ordered in various ways, including the frequency or recency of launcher usage. Desktop files and MIME-type file associations are detected according to the XDG Base Directory Specification and Association between MIME types and applications standards, as far as is practical, and a wrapper is provided to let ayr function as an xdg-open replacement. Great for integrating with minimal desktop environments and file managers. Ayr uses dmenu to manage its menus. Once installed, execute the command 'ayr -h' for much more information.
  • simdock - an eye-candy deskbar for Linux.


dmenu

  • dmenu2 is the fork of original dmenu - an efficient dynamic menu for X, patched with XFT, quiet, x & y, token, fuzzy matching, follow focus, tab nav, filter. Added option to set screen on which dmenu apperars, as long as opacity, window class and window name. Also allows to dim screen with selected color and opacity while dmenu2 is running. Added underline color and height. (options -uc and -uh)

Task switcher


  • SuperSwitcher is a (more feature-ful) replacement for the Alt-Tab window switching behavior and Ctrl-Alt-Left/Right/Up/Down workspace switching behavior that is currently provided by Metacity. When running, use the 'Super' key (also known as the 'Windows' key) to switch between windows and workspaces. This key is usually found between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the keyboard.
  • Rofi - A popup window switcher roughly based on superswitcher, requiring only xlib and pango. This version started off as a clone of simpleswitcher, the version from Sean Pringle. All credit for this great tool should go to him. Rofi developed extra features, like a run-dialog, ssh-launcher and can act as a drop-in dmenu replacement, making it a very versatile tool.

Virtual desktop pagers

  • multihead size problem A = virtual desktop representation size matches viewport size, but within that, the viewport representation is false, squeezing in a non-existent viewport for the opposite monitor.
  • multihead size problem B = virtual desktop representation size does not match viewport site, instead being double the actual viewport by including the width of the non-existent opposite monitor

Setup is with randr 1.2+ multihead. I think this is due to a lack of EWMH support in bspwm.

  • http://www.makelinux.com/man/1/B/bbpager - blackbox
    • multihead size problem A(+B)
    • desktop representations are correct width ratio, but it just hides the right hand side, i.e, second monitor windows are essentially hidden



  • https://github.com/ijanos/desktend - automatic virtual desktop extender. update the number of virtual desktops of EWMH compatible X11 window managers. add a new virtual desktop to the right every time there is a new window appears on the last desktop.



Infos

Conky

Other

  • inxi - A newer, better system information script for irc, administration, and system troubleshooters.

Notifications

Widgets

Icons

On Screen Display

  • ghosd -- on-screen display (osd) with transparency

Volume

other

  • fsv (pronounced eff-ess-vee) is a file system visualizer in cyberspace. It lays out files and directories in three dimensions, geometrically representing the file system hierarchy to allow visual overview and analysis. fsv can visualize a modest home directory, a workstation's hard drive, or any arbitrarily large collection of files, limited only by the host computer's memory and graphics hardware. "i know this!"

Tiling

For non tiling WMs

Screensaver and locks

  • XScreenSaver is the standard screen saver collection shipped on most Linux and Unix systems running the X11 Window System. I released the first version in 1992. I ported it to MacOS X in 2006, and to iOS in 2012. On X11 systems, XScreenSaver is two things: it is both a large collection of screen savers; and it is also the framework for blanking and locking the screen.




  • https://github.com/the-cavalry/light-locker a simple locker (forked from gnome-screensaver) that aims to have simple, sane, secure defaults and be well integrated with the desktop while not carrying any desktop-specific dependencies.

It relies on lightdm for locking and unlocking your session via ConsoleKit/UPower or logind/systemd.

Monitor

xset dpms force standby 

xset -dpms
  turn off power saving
xset +dpms
  turn on power saving

xset s off
  then off screensaver

Screenshot

scrot mydesktop.png

scrot '%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png' -e 'mv $f ~/documents/images/screenshots/'
  would create a file called something like 2000-10-30_2560x1024.png in a screenshots directory.

import -window root Pictures/Image5.png
  imagemagick

Colour

Widget toolkits

  • Survey of Widget Sets - This page serves as a survey of the various free widget sets written for the X intrinsics. Most of these widget sets are variations on the standard Athena widget set, Xaw.
  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_Look_for_Qt_and_GTK_Applications - Qt and GTK+ based programs both use a different widget toolkit to render the graphical user interface. Each come with different themes, styles and icon sets by default, among other things, so the "look and feel" differ significantly. This article will help you make your Qt and GTK+ applications look similar for a more streamlined and integrated desktop experience.

Xt

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Toolkit_Intrinsics - also known as Xt, for X toolkit) is a library that implements an API to facilitate the development of programs with a graphical user interface (GUI) for the X Window System. It can be used in the C or C++ languages.

Most modern toolkits such as FLTK, GTK+, and Qt do not use the Xt library, preferring to use Xlib or even XCB directly.

Xaw

OPEN LOOK

Motif

Tk

1991

FLTK

1992

wxWidgets

1992

EFL

GTK+

Used by GNOME

  • libwnck is the Window Navigator Construction Kit, a library for use in writing pagers, tasklists, and more generally applications that are dealing with window management. It tries hard to respect the Extended Window Manager Hints specification (EWMH). The Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) is also a useful resource.

GTK2 theming

Tools
  • Zenity is a tool that allows you to display Gtk+ dialog boxes from the command line and through shell scripts. It is similar to gdialog, but is intended to be saner. It comes from the same family as dialog, Xdialog, and cdialog, but it surpasses those projects by having a cooler name.
  • GtkOrphan (a Perl/Gtk2 application for debian systems) is a graphical tool which analyzes the status of your installations, looking for orphaned libraries. It implements a GUI front-end for deborphan, adding the package-removal capability.

GTK3 theming

Clutter

Qt

qtconfig qt4

SDL

Desktop/menu files

File managers

PCManFM

SpaceFM

QTFM

Sunflower

Other

Compression

Screen magnification

Multitouch

  • TUIO is an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible multitouch surfaces. The TUIO protocol allows the transmission of an abstract description of interactive surfaces, including touch events and tangible object states. This protocol encodes control data from a tracker application (e.g. based on computer vision) and sends it to any client application that is capable of decoding the protocol. There exists a growing number of TUIO enabled tracker applications and TUIO client libraries for various programming environments, as well as applications that support the protocol.
  • Glassomium - Open-source cross-platform web-based TUIO-enabled multi-touch window manager
  • reacTIVision is an open source, cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking. It was mainly designed as a toolkit for the rapid development of table-based tangible user interfaces (TUI) and multi-touch interactive surfaces.


  • The Natural User Interface Group is an open source community that creates and shares interaction techniques & standards that benefit designers & developers throughout the world. We offer a collaborative environment for scientists that are interested in learning and developing modern Human/Computer Interaction methods and concepts. Our research includes topics such as: computer vision, touch computing, voice & gesture recognition, experience design and information visualization.

Remote

History

other

Clipboard

Selecting any text in Linux copies it and scroll-wheel middle click pastes it, separate to the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v clipboard. This means double clicking a non-line broke sentence copies it to the middle click paste clipboard.

This most used selection is the PRIMARY selection, and is used when the user selects some data. The CLIPBOARD selection is used when the user selects some data and explicitly requests it to be "copied" to the clipboard, such as by invoking "Copy" under the "Edit" menu of an application. An associated request of "Paste" results in the data of the CLIPBOARD selection being used.

"The PRIMARY selection is used when you select some text with the mouse. You usually paste it using the middle button. The CLIPBOARD selection is used when you copy text by using, for example, the Edit/Copy menu. You may paste it using the Edit/Paste menu." 

Shift-Insert
  paste PRIMARY selection (where ctrl-v isn't supported)

Ctrl-v
  pate CLIPBOARD selection

Articles

Software

xclip

  • xclip is a command line interface to the X11 clipboard. It can also be used for copying files, as an alternative to sftp/scp, thus avoiding password prompts when X11 forwarding has already been setup.

Autocutsel

  • Autocutsel tracks changes in the server's cutbuffer and CLIPBOARD selection. When the CLIPBOARD is changed, it updates the cutbuffer. When the cutbuffer is changed, it owns the CLIPBOARD selection. The cutbuffer and CLIPBOARD selection are always synchronized. Since the VNC client synchronizes the Windows' clipboard and the server's cutbuffer, all three "clipboards" are always kept synchronized.

xcmenu

XSel

  • XSel - a command-line program for getting and setting the contents of the X selection. Normally this is only accessible by manually highlighting information and pasting it with the middle mouse button.

CopyQ

  • CopyQ is clipboard manager with searchable and editable history.

Parcellite

  • Parcellite is a lightweight GTK+ clipboard manager. This is a stripped down, basic-features-only clipboard manager with a small memory footprint for those who like simplicity.

Other

Future

Wayland

  • Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain. GNOME and KDE are expected to be ported to it. Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself. The clients can be traditional applications, X servers (rootless or fullscreen) or other display servers.

Part of the Wayland project is also the Weston reference implementation of a Wayland compositor. Weston can run as an X client or under Linux KMS and ships with a few demo clients. The Weston compositor is a minimal and fast compositor and is suitable for many embedded and mobile use cases.

Mir

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