Brightside is a small utility for extending the functionality of Metacity, the default window manager for the GNOME desktop. Now at version 1.4.0, it currently offers two mutually exclusive functions: corner actions that are activated when the mouse cursor moves to one of the desktop's corners, and scrolling with the mouse between desktops.

Although I regularly use KDE, Xfce, and other desktops for GNU/Linux, I keep returning to GNOME. Sometimes I use the default Metacity window manager, and other times the quicker Sawfish, but, with either choice, GNOME has an uncluttered look that allows me to focus on my work rather than my software.

Compiz is a compositing window manager that uses 3D graphics acceleration via OpenGL. It provides various new graphical effects and features on any desktop environment, including Gnome and KDE.

The Linux community has come up with a bunch of new technologies to bring the UI eye candy on Linux to the next level…following the path of a well established player : Apple with its 8 years old compositing window manager Quartz.

Yes! guys and gals, our beloved window manager is kicking ass in composite land. There’s a new branch on metacity subversion were developers are working on composite features for metacity. So far we have, transparency, shadow and ALT+tab Godness, and now that I’m running a composite WM i can use the nice MAC OS X like dock bar, AWN. All this without the lag (and CPU masacre) introduced in compiz-fusion when scrolling applications.

"Recently I switched from GNOME to Stumpwm (wiki), which means that I jumped out of a desktop environment to a simple window manager. So far, I'm very satisfied with such a change and never looked back. Stumpwm, as its website says, 'is a tiling, keyboard driven X11 Window Manager written entirely in Common Lisp'. This definition summarizes the reasons why Stumpwm is so suitable for me..." --

Over the past few years, 3-D rendering in window managers has become a new trend in the desktop environment. OS X was the first to make fancy visual effects prominent in the way users interact with the windows in their desktop. Windows Vista has also jumped on the bandwagon with its Aero interface, though it has some performance issues to work out.

In this funny posting, the author gives eight reasons for leaving GNOME in favor of a lightweight window manager.

In the 10 years I've been using Linux, I've run the gamut of window managers and desktop environments: FvWM, FvWM95, ICEWM, AfterStep, BlackBox, KDE, GNOME, Beryl, Fluxbox, CDE, XFCE, Windowmaker, Sawfish, Metacity, WM2, as well as Compiz. But it seems that no matter how many times I try another Linux GUI, I always go back to Enlightenment.