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Questions tagged [window-manager]

A window manager is the software component responsible for the tracking and placement of windows within a graphical interface. Examples: Metacity, Compiz, KWin. If your question is about a specific window manager, add its tag.

823 questions
279
votes
15 answers

How to determine which window manager (and desktop environment) is running

Is there any way (such as a command or environmental variable) to determine what window manager is the one actively running in the current session?
Anonymous
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214
votes
4 answers

How to make Gimp run as a single window?

Gimp is nice, but the one thing that drives me nuts is that everything floats around in front of each other, often hiding the main window and forcing me to minimize all open windows until I find the one floating window that I am looking for. I'd…
Torben Gundtofte-Bruun
  • 10,594
175
votes
12 answers

How do I increase the resize margin on windows?

It takes me about 5 tries to resize a window on my computer. Is there a way to increase the resize margin on the edge of windows?
RyanScottLewis
  • 2,291
172
votes
10 answers

Quickly place a window to another screen using only the keyboard

I know that using Alt+F7, I can use the keyboard to move the window around. I can also use the "Grid" plugin of Compiz to position quickly the window around my current monitor. The grid plugin doesn't seem work across monitor however. What I need is…
Dat Chu
  • 1,917
152
votes
4 answers

How do I set focus follows mouse?

Is there a way to set up "focus follows mouse" behavior in Unity?
dharmatech
  • 2,573
130
votes
7 answers

What is the difference between a desktop environment and a window manager?

I'm having a really hard time trying to understand what the differences between a desktop environment and a window manager are? EDIT: From this article by Jack Wallen: There are basically three layers that can be included in the Linux desktop: X…
Zolomon
  • 1,829
128
votes
6 answers

Keyboard shortcut to move windows between monitors?

I remember there used to be a setting under Compiz that set a keyboard shortcut for moving applications between physical (but combined as a single xscreen) screens, similar to moving between logical screens, like Ctrl-Alt-Shift-← / → / ↑ / ↓. Any…
Andrew Bolster
  • 1,594
91
votes
4 answers

Moving windows from the keyboard

Is it possible to move windows from the keyboard itself without touching the mouse? I know I can do a Alt + Left Click and drag the window, however I am hoping there is something I can use to move it from the keyboard without the mouse.
Karl
87
votes
8 answers

how to do ALT+ TAB for main system while in VBOX?

I have recently gone through this issue. I am running Lubuntu 13.04 in VirtualBox .So when I have maximized and if I would like switch to next window of main system usually we all do ALT+TAB but thats not getting for main system and going for Vbox's…
Raja G
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83
votes
7 answers

How do I disable window move with alt + left mouse button in GNOME Shell?

There are lots of posts on this about Unity, this is about GNOME shell. As with other posters, I use apps (Inkscape in particular) that uses Alt-Click and Alt-drag. GNOME shell is grabbing this off me and thus disabling features in the…
artfulrobot
  • 8,733
79
votes
4 answers

Switching window manager/desktop environments?

In general what is the approach to switch the desktop environment or window manager on Ubuntu? The main difference between stock Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Lubuntu is supposedly the use of Unity vs. KDE vs. LXDE. However, in order to try various desktop…
0xC0000022L
  • 5,870
70
votes
8 answers

Change default width of gnome-terminal and terminator windows

Only a short question but is it possible to set the default width (and height) of terminal sessions in gnome-terminal and terminator? I find I always resize the window once it pops up so and given how much I use terminator it makes sense (IMO) to…
Oli
  • 299,380
66
votes
2 answers

How do I move child windows without moving or minimizing parent in GNOME 3?

I have Ubuntu 17.10 with GNOME 3. What happens: I have (for example) LibreOffice Calc open, with some data columns in it. I highlight the columns I want to chart, then I select INSERT > CHART. The chart child window dialog pops up on top of my…
Monet's Chemist
  • 965
66
votes
1 answer

What is the app, "compiz" responsible for on ubuntu 12.04?

When I open my system monitor and check the "processes" tab, I've noticed that regardless of what other apps I have running, "compiz" is always taking roughly 10% of my CPU. It might be a broad question, but what is compiz? I understand it's a…
Jiskya
  • 2,165
62
votes
11 answers

How do I save/remember last-used window position and size for applications?

When I log in Ubuntu, I would like all windows opened at previous session (terminal and Firefox mainly) to be re-opened automatically at the same size and position. How to proceed?
Eric
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