
Sway
dwm
Openbox
awesome
Fluxbox
bspwm
Hyprland
A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.

Flutter
Qt
React Native
Buefy
Vuetify
Bootstrap Vue
Vuesax
Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies
Which is more popular?
Based on our record, i3 should be more popular than Electron. It has been mentioned 93 times since March 2021.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | i3wm.org | electronjs.org |
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What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
i3wm is recommended for advanced users, developers, and anyone who prefers a keyboard-centric interface. It is ideal for users who like to customize their environment extensively and are comfortable with configuring software via text files. New users with a willingness to learn may also find it rewarding.
Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
Electron is recommended for developers or teams that already have experience with web technologies and need to create desktop applications quickly across multiple platforms. It's especially useful for applications that require a high degree of flexibility and customization in the UI, or for products that benefit from sharing a codebase with a web application. Startups and small to medium-sized businesses that prioritize development speed and cost efficiency may find Electron particularly attractive.
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
30k Miles with the BMW i3 - End of Lease Review
More videos
💻 Why You Should Build Desktop Software With Electron
More videos
How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


Share your experience with using i3 and Electron. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.


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...
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...
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...
All of this changed when Electron.js came into the picture. The framework allowed developers to create a unique cross-platform desktop application without any hurdles. However, it uses up quite a bit of resource...
If you are looking for an alternative to the Electronjs desktop application development framework, Neutralinojs is a viable option. A few applications may become bulky with Electron, but Neutralinojs can help avoid...
Electron.js is compatible with a variety of frameworks, libraries, access to hardware-level APIs and chromium engine, and Node.js support. Electron Fiddle feature is great for experimentation as it allows developers...
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


In my case, I decided to go with a compositor instead of desktop environment. I have already used others windows tilling managers such as i3wm. This time, I want something that has more features out-of-the-box. - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
I've been using Omarchy as my main setup since June 26, 2025, the day DHH released the first version. Before that I had my own custom Opinionated Linux, mclovin-ARCHived: an Arch + i3wm installer set up exactly the way I liked. It was... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
Then few years back, in 2015, I got shown i3wm and used it on my ubuntu-netinstall until 2020, then I switched to Budgie and my personal laptop has been using that ever since. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
So we talked a lot about the Atomic Design Principle, but you could just use that in any system and start creating. You could have Angular components, React Components, and Vue Components. But if you notice these don't easily work... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
For the longest time, building desktop apps was a daunting task to web developers. That is, until technologies like Electron made creating these apps more approachable to a wider audience. Today, we’ve got a wide array of native... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
I make a new Adapter for SvelteKit apps that prerenders your entire site as a collection of static files for use with Electron. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
When comparing i3 and Electron, you can also consider the following products.

Sway is a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager, but for Wayland instead of X11.
Compare Sway to i3 or Electron:


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.
Compare dwm to i3 or Electron:

Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.
Compare Qt to i3 or Electron:
Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.
Compare Openbox to i3 or Electron:

A framework for building native apps with React
Compare React Native to i3 or Electron: