icewm

IceWM is a lightweight, traditional-styled window manager for the X Window System. It is designed to be fast and resource-efficient, with a small codebase and minimal dependencies. IceWM aims to provide a familiar desktop experience while remaining highly configurable, making it a popular choice for older hardware and minimal Linux installations. It is implemented primarily in C++ and interfaces with the X11 protocol.

IceWM offers a taskbar-like panel, a start menu, and basic window decorations. It supports multiple workspaces, simple keyboard shortcuts, and a straightforward theme system. The look and feel can be customized through themes and icon sets, which are distributed separately from the core program.

Configuration is file-based. User-specific settings reside in the ~/.icewm directory, including preferences and menus, while system-wide defaults live under /etc/icewm. Themes are installed in /usr/share/icewm/themes. The project distributes lightweight utilities for managing menus and launching applications, facilitating a quick and configurable user experience.

IceWM was developed in the late 1990s and is maintained by a small community of volunteers. It remains open source and is released under a permissive license. It is commonly used in lightweight Linux distributions and in environments where a simple, fast window manager is preferred over more feature-rich options. As a mature project, IceWM continues to receive updates and theme packages from its user and developer community.