Actual Window Manager May 2026

Here is the unsettling part: in a composited system, no window ever touches the screen.

You move your mouse over a terminal window. You click. A cursor appears. actual window manager

At this level, there are no windows. There are buffer objects, page flips, and scanout engines. The window manager is a ghost in this machine—a high-level construct that the kernel does not recognize. Here is the unsettling part: in a composited