What does a window manager do? If I have two overlapping windows and I click on the window behind, the window behind will appear on the front. What is the window manager doing in this scenario?

Question

As a Microsoft Windows user who has no idea about Linux at all, what is a window manager? If I have two overlapping windows and I click on the window behind, the window behind will appear on the front. What is the window manager doing in this scenario?

In: 2

Answer 1

It depends on the implementation actually.

Stacking window managers are Windows-like managers. They allow overlapping. I don’t much about stacking window managers if you want to know about this.

There are also tiling window managers. Windows do not overlap each other. Screen is organized like tiles. You can expand/shrink the size of a tile (*window*). A tile can occupy all the screen also. (For instance I have only Firefox in my screen now.) Tiling window managers generally make use of workspaces. For instance i3wm use Super Key + 1,2,3,4,5,6… keybinding by default to access workspaces. You can use a single workspace to do all things, windows in the workspace will be either tabbed or tiled. But also, you can use workspaces for different purposes. 1 is web browser, 2 is music/video (Spotify, Vlc etc.), 3 is development environment and other tools, 4 is office programs… Workspaces can also have user defined names instead of numbers.

I added two images that shows tabbed and tiled views of two windows in a workspace.

* Tabbed: [https://i.imgur.com/q4Zy8pO.pn](https://i.imgur.com/q4Zy8pO.png)
* Tiled: [https://i.imgur.com/KvJJT7N.png](https://i.imgur.com/KvJJT7N.png)

PS: i3wm have also stacked mode which you can make windows floating. In that mode clicking the behind does not change positions. Again, it depends on the implementation. There are many window managers and this behavior may differ.