Accessibility and productivity are further enhanced through features like virtual desktops and window transparency. Virtual desktops allow users to categorize their work into distinct environments—such as "Work," "Gaming," and "Communication"—to reduce visual clutter. Transparency controls enable users to see through inactive windows, making it easier to reference data from one application while typing in another.
| System | What You Call It | What It Actually Is | |--------|------------------|----------------------| | Windows 11 | Desktop Window Manager (DWM) | A compositor + policy engine + input router, tightly coupled to the graphics kernel | | macOS | Quartz Compositor (part of WindowServer) | A userspace compositor + event manager + window database | | Linux (GNOME) | Mutter | A Wayland compositor + window manager + input manager | | Linux (KDE) | KWin | The same, but with pluggable window decoration and tiling scripts | | Linux (i3/sway) | i3 or Sway | A tiling window manager that is also a compositor (Sway) or relies on X11 (i3) | actual window manager
Let us perform a small experiment in your mind. | System | What You Call It |
If we take "actual" to mean "the software component(s) that physically control window positioning, stacking, and input routing on a modern graphical system," we find not one answer but a family of them. actual window manager