Metacity – compositing window manager

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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