Software Alternatives & Reviews

BB4Win VS i3

Compare BB4Win VS i3 and see what are their differences

BB4Win logo BB4Win

BB4Win (Blackbox for Windows) is an alternative shell for Microsoft Windows.

i3 logo i3

A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.
  • BB4Win Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-14
  • i3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

BB4Win videos

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i3 videos

30k Miles with the BMW i3 - End of Lease Review

More videos:

  • Review - 2016 BMW i3 - Review and Road Test
  • Review - 2018 BMW i3s Range Extender (REx) Review - The Future Of Cars?
  • Demo - Gaming With Intel's Core i3 9100F - The First Turbo Boosted Desktop i3
  • Review - The best EV for the money? Used BMW i3 Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to BB4Win and i3)
Image Optimisation
100 100%
0% 0
Window Manager
0 0%
100% 100
OS & Utilities
100 100%
0% 0
Linux
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare BB4Win and i3

BB4Win Reviews

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i3 Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Sway is a tiling Wayland i3-compatible window manager that dynamically arranges app windows to rationally maximise desktop space. It is free, open-source, and lightweight. By default, it arranges windows in a grid and supports practically all of the i3 commands.
Source: www.hubtech.org
Top 10 Best Desktop Environments in 2020
i3-wm is one of my most loved standalone window managers, qualifying it to easily fit under the desktop environment list! The configuration is just very easy, and you can change everything that you see on screen. This includes what information you see on the bottom panel, how windows behave, and keyboard shortcuts to move, align, and set up windows on the screen.
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
Sway is a free, open-source, and lightweight tiling Wayland i3-compatible window manager that automatically arranges app windows to logically maximize desktop space. It arranges windows into a grid by default and supports almost all the commands included in i3.
Source: www.tecmint.com
5 Great Tiling Window Managers for Linux
I begun testing i3 just this week. I was always fascinated by the Tiling WM’s as they seem really light on system resources and functional. To my surprise , although i3 is really easy to customize, and works really well (at least for my needs) , I found that it isn’t really that lightweight. I had Mate desktop environment use the same amount of RAM. Maybe I was mislead to...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, i3 seems to be a lot more popular than BB4Win. While we know about 89 links to i3, we've tracked only 3 mentions of BB4Win. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

BB4Win mentions (3)

  • I Still Use Windows 95 (archived, 2008)
    I used this Windows port of Blackbox many years ago. Perhaps time try again. https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Alternative Windows Desktop
    Cool, that still exists. Some years ago I was into all that desktop customization and tried this, LiteStep [0] and Blackbox/bb4win [1] but ended up with BlackBox. Nowadays, all the customization I need is a tool to fix the taskbar position that someone who probably uses a portrait mode monitor moved to the wrong spot [2] and a launcher [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteStep [1]:... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Riced out my desktop a bit - who says Windows isn't customizable?
    You can go farther but it might become buggy http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/ I have not tested it for along time but it was fun to play with. Source: over 1 year ago

i3 mentions (89)

  • "We understand" ;)
    This is partially why I use tools like i3 (/ sway). I like the tool; it works extremely well for me; the design has stayed the same for 20 years; there's no profit motive to come along and fuck everything up. It just works. It is boring in the best way possible. Source: 5 months ago
  • what machines have you used for development, and what do you prefer?
    I use MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid-2014) with Manjaro as OS using i3 as a window manager. It isn't perfect, but I'm thrilled with it. I have been a Mac OS user for the last 15 years and wouldn't change what I have now for a Mac OS because I don't need more than what I'm using for development. Source: 10 months ago
  • Machine for pentesting and general use?
    For daily usage I really like kubuntu with i3wm, but it takes some configuration and getting used to the shortcuts, but it's well worth it. Source: 11 months ago
  • What's the difference between Gnome and KDE? Do applications written for one work in the other?
    Some window managers are meant to be used as-is, and provide a minimalist yet functional environment that use very little resources or give power users an almost HUD-like interface. Examples of those window managers are OpenBox and i3wm for X, and Weston and Hyprland for Wayland. Source: 11 months ago
  • tiling window manager
    I did use i3 exclusively for a few years. The reasons I chose it were. Source: 12 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing BB4Win and i3, you can also consider the following products

Cairo Shell - Cairo is a desktop environment for Windows.

dwm - dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All of the layouts can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

WindowBlinds - WindowBlinds is a computer program that allows users to skin the Windows graphical user interface.

awesome - A dynamic window manager for the X Window System developed in the C and Lua programming languages.

bbLean - Alternative Windows shell

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning