Last Updated on July 11, 2021
Metacity is a compositing window manager used by default in the GNOME desktop environment. It is the default window manager for many distributions including Ubuntu.
It is a small window manager, using GTK+2 to do everything.
Metacity focuses on simplicity and usability rather than novelties or gimmicks. The author says, metacity is a “Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios.”
Features include:
- Uses GTK+ 2.0 for drawing window frames. This means colors, fonts, etc. come from GTK+ theme.
- Does not expose the concept of “window manager” to the user.
- Includes only the window manager; does not try to be a desktop environment. The pager, configuration, etc. are all separate and modular.
- Has a simple theme system and a couple of extra themes come with it.
- Session management.
- Implements most of the EWMH window manager specification from freedesktop.org, as well as the older ICCCM.
- Uses Pango to render text, so has cool i18n capabilities.
- Simple animations for actions such as minimization, to help users see what is happening.
- Basic colormap handling.
Website: ftp.gnome.org
Support:
Developer: Havoc Pennington
License: GNU GPL v2
Metacity is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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