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

The X window system used in Linux doesn’t really do much by itself–you can define a rectangular area of the screen to use for your application but that’s about it. The job of the window manager is to add the “decorations” onto the window to actually make it usable, so the title bar, buttons, resize widget, all that stuff. This is why different Linux distros will often have different appearances for window title bars and the like.