Software Alternatives & Reviews

i3 VS Xpra

Compare i3 VS Xpra and see what are their differences

i3 logo i3

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

Xpra logo Xpra

multi-platform screen and application forwarding system
  • i3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19
  • Xpra Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-13

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

Xpra videos

How to Use xpra to Run Linux Applications in a Web browser

More videos:

  • Review - [VIP] Xpra on OS.js (02)
  • Review - [VIP] Xpra on OS.js (01)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to i3 and Xpra)
Window Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Remote Desktop
0 0%
100% 100
Linux
100 100%
0% 0
Remote PC Access
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare i3 and Xpra

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...

Xpra Reviews

We have no reviews of Xpra yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, i3 should be more popular than Xpra. It has been mentiond 89 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.

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: 5 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: 10 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: 12 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: 12 months ago
  • tiling window manager
    I did use i3 exclusively for a few years. The reasons I chose it were. Source: 12 months ago
View more

Xpra mentions (27)

  • Cool but Obscure X11 Apps
    One of my favorite bits of software is Xpra [0], "screen for X". You'd run it and it would start another X server (start apps in it with `DISPLAY=:1 xterm` or whatever), and you would "attach" it to your running X server with `xpra attach`. You can attach to e.g. `ssh://hostname/:1`, so I ran a firefox instance on a homelab server and attached to it from my laptop and my desktop to not have to bother keeping... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Alternatives To X2go?
    I’ve used Xpra in the past to connect to a remote system for GUI stuff, but I almost exclusively use ssh because most of the time I don’t need to run a remote windowing system. Source: about 1 year ago
  • I want to (securely) remotely access my Pop!_OS desktop from my Pop!_OS laptop - what’s the best way to do this in 2023?
    To add to this if you need to access graphical applications of an entire desktop environment you can use Xpra or MOONLIGHT (I suggest the second one if you want to game on the remote desktop or need very low latency in general), you can use both of these through a ssh tunnel (you need to enable this and X forwarding in the config) so if you setup and allow access to ssh correctly you can also use these without too... Source: about 1 year ago
  • It’s 2022, what good alternatives for Remote Desktop exists for Linux that can give decent frame rates and gpu acceleration?
    Xpra.org It has hardware acceleration (h264 encoding/decoding) for high framerates. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Linux NILFS file system: automatic continuous snapshots
    You might be able to do the screen recording today using Wayland ports, or nested display servers a la Xpra. https://xpra.org. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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.

X2Go - Get X2Go. Installing X2Go (client/server). Download X2Go Client (Windows installer (XP and Later), OS X 10. 9 and higher DMG, OS X 10. 10 and higher DMG or macOS 10.

awesome - A dynamic window manager for the X Window System developed in the C and Lua programming languages.

Remmina - Remmina is a remote desktop client written in GTK+, aiming to be useful for system administrators and travellers, who need to work with lots of remote computers in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks.

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

VNC Connect - VNC is remote access and control software which allows you to view and fully interact with one...