Choowm is a bash shell script which allows the user to choose which window manager to run.

Choowm will examine the system for nearly all known window managers. Those found are shown in a graphical dialog. The user can pick one and choowm will run it. If the chosen window manager exits then choowm repeats the process. If the user aborts selection then choowm will stop.

This script enables fast switching between different window managers without having to authenticate. Run it as the last command in your ~/.xinitrc file.

Choowm accepts the following command line options:

• -i initialwm: This forces the given window manager to be run immediately on startup, bypassing the dialog selection process once. Only if this window manager exits is the selection dialog presented.
• -l: Just print a listing of the available window managers to stdout and exit.
• -n: No execution. This dryrun option only prints the selected window manager and then exits. This is used for testing.

By default zenity will be used to show the dialog if it is installed:

Otherwise xmessage is used: