Compiz – window manger with astonishing special effects.Beryl - A window manager that provides transparency effects in window borders.Instead, windows are organized into non-overlapping frames, similar to how windows are organized when 'snapped' to screen edges in other window managers. Tiling window managers differ from stacking window managers in that windows do not overlap. Compositing window managers commonly perform additional processing on buffers, adding effects such as transparencies, drop shadows, fading, and translating windows into multiple virtual displays.Ĭompositing window managers lessen the limitations of stacking window managers, preventing issues caused by the process of repainting windows. The window manager composites the buffers into an image which it then displays on the screen. For computers with a weaker graphics processor, this can cause slow changes in window focus, and occasionally graphical glitches.Ĭompositing window mangers are stacking window managers that provide applications with an off-screen buffer for each window.

Stacking window managers have several limitations in their design, most of them due to the fact that when a window is drawn, it erases whatever is behind it. Stacking window managers draw, or 'paint' each window one at a time, with overlapping windows 'erasing' the images behind them.

Stacking window managers are those that allow windows to overlap, including Compiz, Openbox, etc. There are two types of window managers, Stacking and Tiling.

Window manager