Window Managers

You probably noticed in the Labs above that there is still something missing and unfriendly about your GUI environment. You will have noticed that your windows did not have the usual borders and title bars and that you couldn’t move/drag/resize the windows. This is the job of a window manager.

The layout of windows on the screen is controlled by special programs called window managers. It should be noted that window managers are also a form of Xclient program. Examples of window managers are - twm, metacity etc. In the following exercise you will start two different instances of the X server.

To use a window manager

1. While logged in at the tty1 (i.e. the 1st virtual console), launch an X server at display zero (“:0”)



Note that we didn’t explicitly have to specify “:0” above. By default it will use that display.

2. Switch back to the 1st virtual console. Start another X server on the 8th virtual console
( i.e. display 1 or “:1” ). Type:



Note that we are deliberately using and specifying display “:1” in this example.

3. Change to the 7th virtual terminal (i.e. tty7). What are the key strokes to do this?


4. Switch to tty1 where you were logged into.

5. Launch the xterm client to display on the Xserver running at display zero. Type:



You should switch to tty7 to make sure xterm was displayed correctly. Then switch back to tty1

6. Finally start the “twm” window manager on Xserver running at display one (:1). Type:



Switch to tty8 to view the output of the above command.

7. Click your left mouse button to view a menu of the things you can do with the twm window
manager.

8. Kill the X servers’ you have running on display zero and one.

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