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

iTerm2
Warp Terminal
Tabby.sh
cmux
Kitty terminal
Termux
Windows Terminal
A fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator

Which is more popular?
Based on our record, i3 should be more popular than Ghostty. 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 | ghostty.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.
No analysis of Ghostty yet.
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
30k Miles with the BMW i3 - End of Lease Review
More videos
Ghostty is Probably The Best Terminal Emulator I've Ever Used
More videos
How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


Share your experience with using i3 and Ghostty. 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...
We have no reviews of Ghostty yet. Be the first one to post
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 / 2 months 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 / 6 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 / 10 months ago
Ghostty, the terminal emulator by Mitchell Hashimoto, is one of my favorite examples of this split. Its core, libghostty, is written in Zig, exposes a C API, and handles terminal emulation, fonts, and rendering. On top of it sit a macOS... - Source: dev.to / 4 days ago
Almost everything happens in a terminal, so the terminal matters. I use Ghostty because it's fast and feels native on macOS, which is exactly what you want from the tool you keep open all day. - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
You need tmux 3.3+, jq, git, python3 and a logged-in Claude Code. Ghostty is recommended, but any terminal works if you start tmux yourself. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
When comparing i3 and Ghostty, 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 Ghostty:


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 Ghostty:

The terminal for the 21st century. Warp is a blazingly fast, rust-based terminal reimagined from the ground up to work like a modern app.
Compare Warp Terminal to i3 or Ghostty:
Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.
Compare Openbox to i3 or Ghostty:

Tabby is a free and open source SSH, local and Telnet terminal with everything you'll ever need.
Compare Tabby.sh to i3 or Ghostty: