Software Alternatives & Reviews

bspwm VS KDE

Compare bspwm VS KDE and see what are their differences

bspwm logo bspwm

A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

KDE logo KDE

The KDE® Community is a free software community dedicated to creating an open and user-friendly computing experience, offering an advanced graphical desktop, a wide variety of applications for communication, work, education and entertainment and …
  • bspwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • KDE Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-23

bspwm videos

Switching To Bspwm - Initial Thoughts

More videos:

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

KDE videos

KDE Plasma 5 Deep Dive (Late 2019) | Linux Desktop Reviews

More videos:

  • Review - Review - Manjaro KDE
  • Review - Debian 10 KDE review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to bspwm and KDE)
Window Manager
82 82%
18% 18
Linux
42 42%
58% 58
Operating Systems
0 0%
100% 100
Utilities
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 KDE

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

KDE Reviews

6 Best Linux Desktop Environments to Try in 2022
KDE is also popular as the Plasma desktop. KDE is a very lightweight desktop and highly customizable. Now you can connect your phone with the computer via KDE Connect. KDE’s browser integration connects your phone to your browser to establish a smooth communication fast.
Top 10 Best Desktop Environments in 2020
I call it the super DE for a reason. If you compare KDE with a group of people, KDE is the richest and the heaviest one. In terms of UI customization, KDE has it all. From transparent windows to blurred backgrounds, glass-look, to animations, and much more.
The 12 Best Linux Desktop Environments
KDE Plasma is one of the best Linux desktop environments for those who want to play with their system’s interface. KDE offers various features, but some users always complain that it is not stable enough, and it is also a bit heavier. Apart from it, all on-screen components work as a widget, which is movable and resizable.
Source: linuxhint.com
The Best Desktop Environments For Linux (We Tested Them So That You Don’t Have To)
Some Linux distros using KDE as the default are openSUSE, Kubuntu and KDE Neon. You may also refer to one of our tutorials to install KDE on Ubuntu, if that’s what you want.
Source: itsfoss.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, KDE should be more popular than bspwm. It has been mentiond 77 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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KDE mentions (77)

  • Anyone using the KDE webchat?
    I am trying to use the KDE webchat on element at https://webchat.kde.org/#/login. I made an account at identity.kde.org, but it does not let me log in to the chat client. Create an account does not work and asks me to create an account at kde.org. Does anyone know how this is supposed to work? Thanks. Source: 6 months ago
  • Looking for user-friendly personal computing oriented distro
    This is a hard one, but after giving it a decent amount of thought I've narrowed it down to openSUSE Tumbleweed with either GNOME or KDE as the desktop environment. Source: 10 months ago
  • KDE/XMonad work laptop
    You need to be running xorg, not wayland, first of all. You can follow the tutorial at kde.org: https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/Using_Other_Window_Managers_with_Plasma. Source: 11 months ago
  • Should i switch?
    I'm glad to hear that you use Krita (and I may assume you use Blender for animations). Both are free and open source software that is available on Linux (even better, Krita is made by the KDE project, makers of all sorts of open source projects, including Plasma, one of the most complete user interfaces for Linux out there). Source: 11 months ago
  • KDE publishes the new "KDE for developers" page, where you can find advice on and links to tools, frameworks and libraries that will help you build powerful and cool-looking apps using KDE technologies
    I like the concept of these "KDE for ..." pages, I think the whole https://kde.org/for/ collection should be promoted way more prominently on the front page https://kde.org/. Also, a lot of regionalized "/for" pages lists only 3 (out of 4) subpages, and some even list only a single one, this seems like a major oversight (at least list them in English if their entries weren't translated to other languages). Source: 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

i3 - A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.

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.

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.

GNOME - An easy and elegant way to use your computer, GNOME is designed to put you in control and get things done.

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

KDE Plasma Desktop - Plasma Workspaces is the umbrella term for all graphical environments provided by KDE.