Change linux windows manager

How to switch windows manager on-the-fly?

I know there’s a command to let compiz take over from whatever windows manager is running, using compiz —replace & , same for unity with unity —replace & . What are the similar commands for other window managers (e.g. KDE4’s plasma, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE)? And will this take all running application windows along?

3 Answers 3

Pretty much any window manager can replace the one currently running. Normally, you use the —replace option. Read the window manager’s man page for details. You just need to determine the command name for a particular wm. Google or apropos can help you there.

xfwm --replace # xfce, I think metacity --replace # default wm in Gnome 2 icewm --replace # old-school wm, my favorite back in the 1990s before modern wms 

Switching wms won’t have any effect on which windows are open, though it’ll likely affect their placement.

By the way, even though desktop environments such as Gnome, KDE, or Xfce have a default wm that works well with the environment, window managers are actually separate and can normally be mixed and matched. Note, however, that some window managers also provide some other features, such as panels, which you won’t have if you switch wms.

Edit

Determing the proper command to use: These kinds of things are really easy to determine for yourself. Just take a guess at the beginning of the name. For example, «open». Then start typing the first few letters and hit Tab . If the name isn’t completed, hit Tab a second time to see a list of possible matches. Once you’ve found the command name, type man to access documentation.

If you can’t find the command name that way, look at the process list through some system monitor such as htop while the program in question is running. You’ll see it there, though you might not be able to use the command in exactly the same form as it’s listed, particularly if it’s running through an interpreter such as Python.

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Technical Essentials

Java, ADF, Android, Identity Management, Data Science, Machine Learning, Fusion Middleware, Linux, Counter Strike 1.6, BSD, Windows, Programming, Search Engines

Jun 7, 2009

Changing window manager in ubuntu

The problem that you might face when you install ubuntu is it’s default window manager GNOME is quite heavy on resources and tends to be buggy (for my pc configuration at least) so to cope up with resource crunch you can shift to a light window manager like fluxbox, XFCE etc as they tend to provide better performance than GNOME or KDE but are a little un-user friendly.

To change the window manager follow these steps:-

1) Install MENU :- The precondition for changing to any new window manager is to install the program MENU that manages the application menus so that you can launch the applications without the need of Gnome or KDE launchers.

• Open terminal i.e Application->Accesories->Terminal or press ALT+F2 and choose run in terminal
• Then type the following command in the terminal :-

The fluxbox window manager provides tab options, styles menu from which you can change the theme and wallpapers, configuration menu for configuring window display (including transparency,icons etc), wsm (text browser) and by default comes with 4 workspaces that you can toggle between, more workspace windows can be added. The thing that i like about it is that it’s very fast.

To install fluxbox execute the following command:-

sudo apt-get install fluxbox

3) Changing the window manager :- Now all you have to do is logout from ubuntu and then from the options on the login screen choose select session, choose Fluxbox and choose the window manager for current session only so that you can try it out before choosing to make it default.

The following is the snapshot of fluxbox:-

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How to change the window manager without the login screen?

I know, in general, how to change which window manager I use after logging in. I do this (normally) by choosing from a slightly difficult to find menu/list of window managers. Easy. There must be a backdoor way, however, of changing the window manager. i.e., there must be a config file that stores the most recent window manager choice. What is it? My problem is, I have a chromebook with ubuntu installed as a secondary OS, which runs in parallel with chromeos. (it’s not bad.) When switching from chromeos to ubuntu, I am not presented with an ubuntu X login screen, so the opportunity to change window managers is skipped/not-available. I can’t use the usual simple method. Where is the old-style config file? Thanks.

2 Answers 2

Ubuntu starts the wm with a custom lightdm. You have three options. 1) remove lightdm so Ubuntu starts at cli, where you can startx or run whatever you want. 2) configure .xinit to run any wm you want to start in 3) modify the ubuntu lightdm or install another one thats more customizable

In the old days of Unix, one would login to console first and run startx , which in turn reads your .xinitrc file. I’ve done this on my Arch virtual machine by following this guide.

Alternatively, a lot of window managers have —replace flag. For instance, if you have installed openbox or gnome-shell you could do gnome-shell —replace or openbox —replace

Additionally, AccountsService sets most recent window manager session in /var/lib/AccountsService/users/USERNAME file. For instance, I have:

[User] XSession=gnome Background=/usr/share/backgrounds/dream-hippocampus.jpg SystemAccount=false 

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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 environments and window managers I don’t want to have to reinstall the respective flavor from scratch just to get a particular desktop environments or window manager. There probably is an easier method than that. The question: How can I easily test different desktop environments and respective compatible window managers (say KDE, LXDE, Unity, GNOME, XFCE and StumpWM)?

4 Answers 4

Just install the one that you want. For example to install LXDE, just press Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command below.

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-shell 

Once you install the one you want, log out, choose the one you want, and log back in.

Thanks Mitch, I know how to find and install the relevant packages. What I don’t know is the part you left out: how can I make the choice of desktop environments and window managers available? Example: I had installed stock Ubuntu and then added the packages for KDE. Unfortunately there was no (visible/straightforward) way to choose it before logon, let alone set it as the new default for my account. Sorry if my question was confusing in that respect. +1

You should be able to select it (whatever session or desktop environment) at your login screen. On the KDE log in screen, click the down arrow in the bottom left corner of the login dialogue.

On the login screen, there’s an Ubuntu logo right next to your username. Click on this to reveal a list of all available desktop environments.

Note: on Ubuntu 18, I needed to restart the computer before it gave me the alternative window manager as an option at logon.

This confused me too. Once a new new desktop environment is installed using apt as described by @Mitch, then it can be difficult to see where the option is at login in the Gnome Display Manager (GDM) to select your desktop. As @DanFromGermany said, the icon is next to your login.

In this picture on 13.10, you’ll see that there is an icon to the right of my login name on the GDM screen — marked with a red arrow. This icon shows the desktop that will be active when you log in.

If you click this icon, you will get a list of the desktops available on this system.

Pick the one you want and log in — that desktop should then be available.

On 13.10 myself. I have awesome installed through apt but the selection is not there by default. I know it was there for 12.10. Edit: Fixed it by removing NoDisplay line in config /usr/share/xsessions/awesome.desktop see bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/awesome/+bug/1094811

There is a bug in awesome-ws, preventing it from showing up in the lightdm/gdm/kdm list.

Delete `NoDisplay=true’ in /usr/share/xsessions/awesome.desktop solves the problem.

If this is solved, you have an icon next to your login where you can switch the window managers.

I’d have answered the question «Switching window manager [. ] ?» different:

A WM (window manager) is something different than a desktop environment!
It’s like shoes and feet .

Just try to switch the WM (window managers) back and forth. Right, it is not about installing the whole environment and stuff.
The WM can stand alone mostly.

No, it does not immediately kill your GUI — this is just about login and WM and
I use it with
Lunbuntu, XFCE4, Wayland, Gnome, Unity, Ubuntu-X, Ubuntu-Wayland, . So do not hesitate to run the config command just to try a different one.
It is fun and it does not break anything (my personal experience).

I use it with Ubuntu 22.04 in the moment and it is still fun!

What I really like are these:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm (lovely! unknown WM login. )

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm (really light; avoids f***-up due to «energy saver» problems!)

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 (well known, convenient!! until it crashes your machine due to the «energy saver» bulls***; typical Gnome, looks good until you find out all the problems and shortcomings and design issues and pitfalls and unresolved issues and and and . ) ignorance is bliss!

sudo dpkg-reconfigure slim
(you need to type your name and pwd — it is so slim it does not even offer drop down — very interesting experience, nice!)

If one is not available just install it. Mostly there will be hints.
sudo apt-get install sddm
would be one solution in the arena under a debian circus tent.

Do not miss this:
in the top left corner sddm and slim show the different available GUI flavours like Gnome, Unity, Ubuntu, w/o Wayland, XFCE etc. Choose before swaying at the display manager. No, it does not show you a screwed up desktop after successful user login. Actually it shows the same options like gdm3 (Gnome) in a different way of display. So you retain the choice of desktop surface when you chose your display manager.
Cool, isn’t it?

And then?
Well, you can just switch them again and again! There is no issue in just using a different one if you do not like the current one any longer.

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How change the default desktop manager in debian?

I am using Debian 6 with two desktop managers (Gnome and KDE). During installation, I chose KDE as the default desktop. But, now I want to change the default desktop to Gnome. How do I change it?

3 Answers 3

I have found the solution by editing the file default-display-manager in the path /etc/X11/ :

#vim /etc/X11/default-display-manager 

Once updated, reboot the computer. You can find it updated the display manager.

You can also do it by executing the below command:

Also update-alternatives —configure x-window-manager should allow you to select which one do you want to be the system default.

@Mike On my system update-alternatives —display x-window-manage outputs update-alternatives: error: no alternatives for x-window-manage whereas update-alternatives —display x-window-manager reports what one would want to see. For reference this is on sid.

Run sudo update-alternatives —config x-window-manager

This uses Debian’s built-in mechanisms to choose «alternatives» for default commands.

Answer is taken from nearby comments of Wolfer and Mike. Since this is the preferrable solution, it’d better be posted as one.

The correct answer is likely:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-session-manager 

assuming that «desktop manager» (which is not a meaningful term under X11) refers to the desktop environment (both KDE and GNOME are desktop environments, not window managers nor display managers).

Only when x-session-manager doesn’t exist does Debian GNU/Linux fall back to x-window-manager or even x-terminal-emulator .

Historical note: What Debian GNU/Linux refers to as session manager is not actually a session manager in the X11 sense, but it’s the term used by most modern GNU/Linux distributions to refer to a desktop environment, which typically includes a window manager, file manager, compositing manager, panels and other amenities.

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