Metacity: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Metacity is a window manager for the X Window System, and is the default window manager for the GNOME desktop environment. It was developed by Havoc Pennington and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Before the introduction of Metacity in GNOME 2.0, 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.

Controversy

Metacity, unlike the previous choices for GNOME window manager, has few configuration options and its introduction as the default choice was a controversial one. Those in favour of Metacity say that GNOME is aimed at new computer users who do not need the extreme configurability of Sawfish or Enlightenment. Critics claim that Metacity has sacrificed the flexibility and control usually associated with Unix applications.