Developer(s) The GNOME Project | Written in C | |
Initial release April 2011; 5 years ago (2011-04) Stable release 3.22.3 (9 November 2016; 4 months ago (2016-11-09)) [±] Preview release 3.23.91 (1 March 2017; 21 days ago (2017-03-01)) [±] Repository git.gnome.org/browse/mutter/ | ||
Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, and recently has evolved to be a Wayland compositor. It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, replacing Metacity which used GTK+ for rendering. Mutter uses a graphics library called Clutter giving it OpenGL capability. The name is a portmanteau of Metacity and Clutter.
Contents
Mutter can function as a standalone window manager for GNOME-like desktops and serves as the primary window manager for the GNOME Shell, which is an integral part of GNOME 3. Mutter is extensible with plugins and supports numerous visual effects. GNOME Shell is written as a plugin to Mutter. Gala, a core component of the Pantheon desktop environment, is built using libmutter. Budgie-wm, used in the Budgie desktop environment, is another window manager built on libmutter.
Development
Adel Gadllah added support for HiDPI to version 3.13 of Mutter.
In version 3.13.2 logind integration replaced mutter-launch.
In version 3.13.3 (June 24, 2014) the server side bits of wl_touch_interface were implemented by Carlos Garnacho.
Performance
OpenGL games run with a performance hit when using a compositing window manager; in June 2010, Phoronix evaluated this as similar for Mutter and Compiz.
Muffin
Muffin is a fork of Mutter by the Linux Mint team for their Cinnamon desktop environment. Cinnamon's shell, a fork of GNOME Shell, is written as a plugin for Muffin.