Metacity

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Metacity

Metacity running on GNOME
Developer(s) GNOME Team
Initial release 2.4.2 4th October 2002
Stable release 2.26  (18 March 2009) [+/−]
Preview release [+/−]
Written in C
Operating system Linux, Solaris, BSD, other Unix-like
Platform GNOME
Type X window manager
License GNU General Public License

Metacity (pronounced /məˈtæsəti/, rhyming with "capacity" with the stress on the second syllable[1]) is a compositing window manager used by default in the GNOME desktop environment.[2] The development of Metacity was started by Havoc Pennington and it is 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 is part of the GNOME project and designed to integrate into the GNOME desktop, it does not require GNOME to run, and GNOME can be used with different window managers provided that they support the part of the ICCCM specification that GNOME requires.

Metacity uses the GTK+ graphical widget toolkit to create its user interface components, which makes it themeable and makes it blend in with other GTK+ applications.

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[edit] Philosophy

Metacity's focus is on simplicity and usability rather than novelties. Its author has characterized it as a "Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios."[3] Due to its lack of configuration options, people in favour of Metacity say that GNOME is aimed at new computer users who do not need the extreme options and functionality of Sawfish or Enlightenment.[4] Havoc Pennington wrote an essay explaining why he wrote Metacity and simplified the GNOME desktop.[5] Some applications to give more control over windows are Devil's Pie and Brightside. However, these applications cannot overload or override Metacity's key bindings.

[edit] Themes

Despite the incomplete state of Metacity theme development documentation, many themes have been written for Metacity. A huge number of such themes can be downloaded from GNOME's art site, art.gnome.org. A popular theme engine is Clearlooks, which has been GNOME's default since version 2.12.[6]

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