Metacity is not a meta-City as in an urban center, but rather Meta-ness as in the state of being meta. i.e. metacity : meta as opacity : opaque. Also it may have something to do with the Meta key on UNIX keyboards. - Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios. - Uses GTK+ 2.0 for drawing window frames. This means colors, fonts, etc. come from GTK+ theme. - Has a simple theme system and a couple of extra themes come with it. Change themes via gconf-editor or gconftool: gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Crux - Change number of workspaces via gconf-editor or gconftool: gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 5 Can also change workspaces from GNOME 2 pager. - Change focus mode: gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode mouse