IceWM is a window manager for the X Window System. The goal of IceWM is speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user’s way. It comes with a taskbar with pager, global and per-window keybindings and a dynamic menu system. Application windows can be managed by keyboard and mouse. Windows can be iconified to the taskbar, to the tray, to the desktop or be made hidden. They are controllable by a quick switch window (Alt+Tab) and in a window list. A handful of configurable focus models are menu-selectable. Setups with multiple monitors are supported by RandR and Xinerama. IceWM is very configurable, themeable and well documented. It includes an optional external background wallpaper manager with transparency support, a simple session manager and a system tray. IceWM is available on popular Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, CentOS, antiX, NixOS and on most *BSDs.
IceWM
Window Manager
Key takeaways
IceWM is a lightweight C++ window manager for the X Window System, created in 1997 by Marko Maček. It emphasizes speed and simplicity, offering extensive configurability, multi-monitor support, and availability across various Linux and BSD distributions.
- IceWM provides a taskbar, dynamic menus, and multiple focus models for managing application windows via keyboard or mouse.
- The software supports multi-monitor setups through RandR and Xinerama, and includes an optional background wallpaper manager.
- Over 450 themes are available for download, and the interface is translated into three dozen languages.
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