Software Alternatives & Reviews

bspwm VS i3

Compare bspwm VS i3 and see what are their differences

bspwm logo bspwm

A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

i3 logo i3

A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.
  • bspwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • i3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

bspwm videos

Switching To Bspwm - Initial Thoughts

More videos:

  • Review - BSPWM - Its like I3 but not.
  • Review - BSPWM Review

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 bspwm and i3)
Window Manager
30 30%
70% 70
Linux
29 29%
71% 71
Utilities
44 44%
56% 56
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

bspwm Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Support for multiple windows, limited support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically determining the location of app tiles, and configuration and control via messages are among the characteristics of bspwm.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
bspwm’s features include support for multiple windows, partial support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically setting the position of app tiles, and it is configured and controlled through messages, among others.
Source: www.tecmint.com

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 should be more popular than bspwm. It has been mentiond 89 times since March 2021. 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.

bspwm mentions (20)

  • What WM should I use?
    Use BSPWM. It supports right clicks by default and its modular. You might want to look for status bars that work with it, slstatus does not work. Good luck, supremacist! Source: about 1 year ago
  • What are some OpenSource apps that are the best of their kind?
    I had not heard of bspwm but I am a fan of telling WMs. Looking at the documentation now, I really like the pragmatic approach lol https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Got some questions before moving to linux...
    I am not familiar with that distro at all, so no idea. KDE Plasma is fine, I use it myself (with BSPWM as my window manager, but that's irrelevant). Source: about 1 year ago
  • MacBook Setup - OS Ventura 13.1 - Samsung QLed 43” - VM: yabai - Terminal: Hyper
    There's a paradigm shift required for a lot of people to start using automatic tiling window managers. Yabai is basically a bspwm port for MacOS and it follows the rules of binary space partitioning. In fact, bspwm has a great diagram on its github readme that illustrates how it works. This will limit the number of windows you can have on any given desktop. To overcome this limitation you use multiple desktops. A... Source: over 1 year ago
  • How much better is neoVim? Is it really that much better than VsCode?
    It’s night and day. I also combine a heavily customized NeoVim config (https://github.com/tomit4/notes/tree/main/nvim) with a tiling window manager (https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm), the espanso text expander (https://espanso.org/), Vimium in the browser (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/), and a 40% ortholinear keyboard(https://drop.com/buy/planck-mechanical-keyboard). Source: over 1 year ago
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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: 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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.

qtile - Qtile is a full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written in Python.

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

Xfce - Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly.

Xmonad - xmonad is a dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell.

Openbox - Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.