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herbstluftwm VS Wayland

Compare herbstluftwm VS Wayland and see what are their differences

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herbstluftwm logo herbstluftwm

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

Wayland logo Wayland

Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain.
  • herbstluftwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-11
  • Wayland Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-30

herbstluftwm features and specs

  • Tiling Window Management
    Herbstluftwm is a dynamic tiling window manager, allowing users to efficiently organize open windows without overlapping, thereby optimizing screen real estate.
  • Scriptability
    The window manager is highly scriptable, providing users the ability to extend and customize its functionality using shell scripts.
  • Lightweight
    Herbstluftwm is lightweight and consumes minimal system resources, making it an excellent choice for older hardware or systems with limited resources.
  • Simple Configuration
    Configuration is straightforward and done through a simple text file, allowing users to easily adjust settings to meet their preferences.
  • EWMH and ICCCM Compliance
    It adheres to EWMH and ICCCM standards, ensuring better compatibility with various desktop environments and applications.
  • Community Support
    Herbstluftwm has an active community that provides support, documentation, and shared configurations, aiding new users and fostering improvements.

Possible disadvantages of herbstluftwm

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Users coming from traditional desktop environments might find the tiling system and keyboard-driven interface challenging to learn initially.
  • Limited Graphical Configuration Tools
    Unlike some other window managers, herbstluftwm lacks extensive graphical tools for configuration, requiring users to edit configuration files manually.
  • Dependencies
    While lightweight, certain features or functionalities might require additional dependencies such as scripting or external programs.
  • Not as Feature-Rich as Some Alternatives
    Herbstluftwm focuses on simplicity and efficiency, which might not offer as many features or eye-candy as some other window managers.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    Despite EWMH and ICCCM compliance, some applications, especially older or proprietary ones, might not behave as expected.

Wayland features and specs

  • Improved Performance
    Wayland provides a more efficient and direct communication between applications and the display server, reducing latency and improving performance by minimizing protocol overhead.
  • Reduced Complexity
    Wayland simplifies the graphical stack by eliminating the need for an X server, reducing the overall complexity and potential for bugs or errors that can arise from more complex architectures.
  • Security Enhancements
    Wayland offers better isolation and security by design, as applications only have access to their own buffers and cannot snoop on input events from other applications.
  • Modern Features
    Wayland supports contemporary features such as high-DPI displays and fractional scaling, providing a better experience on modern devices and screens.
  • Consistency
    Wayland ensures more consistent rendering across different applications, as it standardizes the rendering pipeline and reduces inconsistencies caused by different toolkits trying to work with X11.

Possible disadvantages of Wayland

  • Compatibility Issues
    Wayland is not backward compatible with X11, so older applications that rely on X11-specific features may not work correctly without modification or through compatibility layers like XWayland.
  • Limited Customization
    Some users may find Wayland's reduced ability to configure and customize the windowing system compared to X11 to be a disadvantage, as X11 provides extensive customization options.
  • Driver Support
    Wayland's functionality can be limited by the availability and maturity of graphics drivers, as driver support is crucial for optimal performance and features.
  • Adoption and Maturity
    While many applications and environments are moving towards Wayland, it is still relatively newer and may lack the maturity and extensive ecosystem of X11, affecting its adoption in some distributions.
  • Feature Parity
    As Wayland continues to develop, some advanced features available in X11 might not be fully implemented yet, possibly affecting power users who rely on them for their workflows.

herbstluftwm videos

+ Add

Window Manager Hopping: Herbstluftwm

More videos:

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

Wayland videos

+ Add

WAYLAND: what is it, and is it ready for daily use?

More videos:

  • Review - Testing Wayland & Weston desktop experience in 2020!
  • Review - Wayland vs Xorg | Learn which one to choose

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to herbstluftwm and Wayland)

herbstluftwm

Wayland

Window Manager
47 47%
Window Manager
53% 53
Linux
39 39%
Linux
61% 61
Utilities
45 45%
Utilities
55% 55
OS & Utilities
0 0%
OS & Utilities
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using herbstluftwm and Wayland. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

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

Wayland Reviews

We have no reviews of Wayland yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Wayland should be more popular than herbstluftwm. It has been mentiond 24 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.

herbstluftwm mentions (9)

  • The Future Is Niri
    It's X11 but whenever (tiling) window managers are mentioned, I feel a strong urge to mention Herbstluftwm [0]. It's more manual than the automatic splitting most tiling WMs do but I really enjoy how easy it is to split/tab using the keyboard in Herbstluftwm. [0] https://herbstluftwm.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • 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 / over 1 year 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 2 years 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 3 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 3 years ago
View more

Wayland mentions (24)

  • Debian KDE: Right Linux distribution for professional digital painting in 2024
    Wayland is flawless for what it claims to do. The issue is you can't replace X Org with Wayland, you can only use Wayland combined with other software to replace X Org. This is the biggest issue with Wayland: "Wayland is a replacement for the X11 window system protocol,"[0] but you can't actually replace x11 with it. What they should have done is make sure all the features that x11 had were supported by Wayland.... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Session manager Anbox
    Waydroid is rebuilding the original idea behind Anbox with explicit focus on modern Wayland powered desktop environments. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Asahi Linux To Users: Please Stop Using X.Org
    Checkout out the wayland site.( https://wayland.freedesktop.org/ ) The gist is wayland is a protocol that describes how compositor implementations need to behave for clients to use them and clients need to behave according to the waylaid protocol to use the compositor. There are many different compositors. The wayland contributors have a full usable implementation. Gnome has one and I believe KDE has one. So if... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Swingland: Recreating Java Swing for Wayland
    More recently I switched away from X11 & Budgie to pure Wayland for my desktop on the assumption that it's over 10 years old now, and is the default technology underlying current Gnome and KDE desktops.. Everything will be fine right? Kind of.. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Linux is Making Apple Great Again
    Wayland is not a WM. https://wayland.freedesktop.org Wayland is the thing "underneath" a Window Manager. For example you can run KDE on top of X or Wayland. There are a few blurry boundaries in all this but that largely covers it. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

Mir - The purpose of Mir is to enable the development of user interfaces shells.

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.

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

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

XQuartz - The XQuartz project is an open-source effort to develop a version of the X.

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