Software Alternatives & Reviews

herbstluftwm VS i3

Compare herbstluftwm VS i3 and see what are their differences

herbstluftwm logo herbstluftwm

herbstluftwm is a manual tiling window manager for X11 using Xlib and Glib.

i3 logo i3

A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.
  • herbstluftwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-11
  • i3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

herbstluftwm

Categories
  • Window Manager
  • Linux
  • Utilities
  • Open Source
Website herbstluftwm.org
Details $

i3

Categories
  • Window Manager
  • Linux
  • Open Source
  • Utilities
Website i3wm.org
Details $

herbstluftwm videos

Window Manager Hopping: Herbstluftwm

More videos:

  • Review - Herbstluftwm overview
  • Review - Obscure Window Manager Project - Herbstluftwm

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 herbstluftwm and i3)
Window Manager
15 15%
85% 85
Linux
12 12%
88% 88
Utilities
18 18%
82% 82
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 herbstluftwm and i3

herbstluftwm Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Tags (workspaces or virtual desktops), a startup setup script, exactly one tag per monitor, and other features are among herbstluftwm’s highlights. Learn more about herbstluftwm in our article.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
herbstluftwm’s main features include tags (i.e. workspaces or virtual desktops), a configuration script which runs at startup, exactly one tag per monitor, etc. Learn more from our article on herbstluftwm here.
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 seems to be a lot more popular than herbstluftwm. While we know about 89 links to i3, we've tracked only 8 mentions of herbstluftwm. 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.

herbstluftwm mentions (8)

  • Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
    It's exactly how it works but only if you have mutliple screens. My comment was that, for this reason, 2 or 3 smaller (ish- ~27") 16:9 4k screens [1] (previously, 4–6 even smaller 4:3 screens) works much better for me because I can switch the spaces on my Macbook and i3/Sway virtual desktops on my Linux machine individually for each screen. If we're talking about having a smaller number of giant screens it would... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • What softwares do you recommend to a daily use BSD system?
    The nicities that I pull would be the file browser from ROX, and a tiling window manager such as herbstluftwm. I could do everything I do today without these, such as with a terminal or OpenBSD's 'cwm', but I really enjoy using them! Source: over 1 year ago
  • Berry is a healthy, byte-sized window manager written in C for Unix systems
    While people are discussing window managers, one of the most overlooked window manager is: hersbtluftwm.[0] If you even work with multiple monitors, give it a try. It uses the monitor swapping feature from xmonad but comes with simplicity of editing the config (one doesn't need to learn new programming language to edit config). It's a pretty cool window manager! [0]: https://herbstluftwm.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Looking for a FancyZones-like tiling manager for Linux
    Herbstluftwm (https://herbstluftwm.org/) has two ways to achieve what you want. And it plays nice with XFCE (and probably KDE) so you don't have to give up a traditional DE to use it. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Desktop environments on new operating system. (Debian 11 Bullseye)
    I can forgive not including tiling WMs like i3, notion, and herbstluftwm because tiling WMs are, by nature, not very photogenic. But leaving out KDE Plasma, WindowMaker, amiwm, or Enlightenment too? I want my money back! :). Source: over 2 years 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: 4 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: 9 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: 10 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: 10 months ago
  • tiling window manager
    I did use i3 exclusively for a few years. The reasons I chose it were. Source: 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

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.

Fluxbox - Fluxbox is a window manager for X that was based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code.

IceWM - icewm home page . Bug Tracking. If you have a patch, a bug report or a feature request to submit, please do so at the icewm project page at SourceForge.