The Joy of X - Master the Linux GUI Oct 13, 2008, 15 :07 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (4347 reads) (Other stories by David M Williams)
"X doesn’t impose any style on these windows; they’re all pretty plain by default. On top of X sits a piece of software called a window manager. You can have many different window managers, but only one can run at a time. The window manager effectively provides window dressing, which makes windows have a consistent style and behaviour. The window manager provides close, minimise and maximise buttons. It gives windows a metallic border, or a purple border, or a transparent background or anything else that can be imagined."
