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Metacity (pronounced ) was the default window manager used by the GNOME 2 desktop environment until it was replaced by Mutter in GNOME 3. It is still used by GNOME Flashback, a session for GNOME 3 that provides a similar user experience to the Gnome 2.x series sessions.

Key facts

Software.name
Metacity
Software.logo
Metacity.png
Software.logo size
48px
Software.screenshot
Metacity-screenshot.png
Software.screenshot size
220px
Software.caption
Metacity running on GNOME
Software.developer
The GNOME Project
Software.released
2.4.2 5
Software.programming language
C
Software.operating system
Linux
Software.platform
GNOME
Software.genre
X window manager
Software.license
GPL-2.0-or-later

via Wikipedia infobox

Source code

The first release of Metacity was version 2.3. Metacity has no need for your petty hangups about version numbers. Report new bugs on Please check for duplicates, especially if you are reporting a feature request. METACITY FEATURES Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios. Uses GTK+ 2.0 for drawing window frames. This means colors, fonts, etc. come from GTK+ theme. Does not expose the concept of "window manager" to the user. Some of the features in the GNOME control panel and other parts of the desktop happen to be implemented in metacity, such as changing your window border theme, or changing your window navigation shortcuts, but the user doesn't need to know this. Includes only the window manager; does not try to be a desktop environment. The pager, configuration, etc. are all separate and modular. The "libwnck" library (which I also wrote) is available for writing metacity extensions, pagers, and so on. (But libwnck isn't metacity specific, or GNOME-dependent; it requires only GTK, and should work with KWin, fvwm2, and other EWMH-compliant WMs.) Has a simple theme system and a couple of extra themes come with it. Change themes via gsettings: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme Crux gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme Gorilla gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme Atlanta gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme Bright Use metacity-theme-viewer to preview themes. Change number of workspaces via gsettings: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences num-workspaces 5 Can also change workspaces from GNOME 2 pager. Change focus mode: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode mouse gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode sloppy gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode click Global keybinding defaults include: While moving, hold down Control to move slower, and Shift to snap to edges. Keybindings for things like maximize window, vertical maximize, etc. can be bound, but may not all exist by default. See metacity.schemas. Window mouse bindings: If you click and drag the titlebar with button 1 it moves the window. If you pick up a window with button 1 and then switch workspaces the window will come with you to the new workspace, this is a feature copied from Enlightenment. If you hold down Shift while moving a window, the window snaps to edges of other windows and the screen. Session management: Metacity connects to the session manager and will set itself up to be respawned. It theoretically restores sizes/positions/workspace for session-aware applications. Metacity implements much of the EWMH window manager specification from freedesktop.org, as well as the older ICCCM. Please refer to the COMPLIANCE file for information on metacity compliance with these standards. Uses Pango to render text, so has cool i18n capabilities. Supports UTF-8 window titles and such. There are simple animations for actions such as minimization, to help users see what is happening. Should probably have a few more of these and make them nicer. if you have the proper X setup, set the GDK USE XFT=1 environment variable to get antialiased window titles. considers the panel when placing windows and maximizing them. handles the window manager selection from the ICCCM. Will exit if another WM claims it, and can claim it from another WM if you pass the --replace argument. So if you're running another ICCCM-compliant WM, you can run "metacity --replace" to replace it with Metacity. does basic colormap handling and much more! well, maybe not a lot more. This is part of a "no crackrock" policy, despite some exceptions I'm mildly embarrassed about. For example, multiple workspaces probably constitute crackrock, they confuse most users and really are not that useful if you have a decent tasklist and so on. But I am too used to them to turn them off. Or alternativel

Excerpt from the source-code README · 18,122 chars · not written by Vinony

Wikidata facts

Image
Metacity-screenshot.png
Show 6 more facts
Commons category
Metacity
source code repository URL
gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/metacity.git
software version identifier
3.56.0
publication date
2002-10-00
official blog URL
blogs.gnome.org/metacity
inception
2002-10-05
Sources (5)

via Wikidata · CC0

~2 min read

Article

5 sections
Contents
  • Aim
  • Themes
  • See also
  • References
  • External links

Metacity (pronounced ) was the default window manager used by the GNOME 2 desktop environment until it was replaced by Mutter in GNOME 3. It is still used by GNOME Flashback, a session for GNOME 3 that provides a similar user experience to the Gnome 2.x series sessions.

The development of Metacity was started by Havoc Pennington and it was released under the GNU General Public License. Before the introduction of Metacity in GNOME 2.2, GNOME used Enlightenment and then Sawfish as its window manager. Although Metacity was designed to integrate into the GNOME desktop, it does not require it to run, while GNOME can be used with different window managers provided that they support the part of the ICCCM specification that GNOME requires.

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