14 DAY TRIAL // The Mint developers have just announced that they have some great news for the users of Linux Mint who like the Xfce and MATE desktops. They have decided to greatly increase the number of supported window managers, which is not something usually done in distros.
When developers build a distribution, they usually choose a single window manager, and they stick with it. Or maybe two at the most. Lately, some developers decided to bring much more than just one. Ubuntu MATE, for example, now has support for 4 window managers, and they can be changed on the fly. There is no reason why Linux Mint would not increase that number to six, at least for the Xfce and MATE flavors.
"There’s something cool in store for MATE and Xfce users. It was implemented this week, and it’s coming in Linux Mint 17.3. The 'Desktop Settings' tool will now support the following window/compositing managers under MATE and Xfce: Marco, Metacity, Xfwm4, Openbox, Compiz and Compton," noted Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Mint team.
Openbox, Compiz and Compton are the new arrivals and just like in the case of Ubuntu MATE, the switch between them will be done on the fly, without having to log out. This is quite interesting, since these are complex pieces of software and the fact that you can change between them like themes is amazing.
Linux Mint 17.3 is expected to arrive later this year.