Software Alternatives & Startups

Ly VS picom

Compare Ly VS picom and see what are their differences

Ly logo Ly

TUI (ncurses-like) display manager

picom logo picom

A lightweight compositor for X11 (previously a compton fork).
  • Ly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23
  • picom Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26

Ly features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Ly is a lightweight display manager designed to be simple and efficient, with low resource consumption compared to other display managers.
  • Console-based
    Since it runs in the console, Ly does not require a graphical environment to operate, which can be advantageous for systems with limited resources or users preferring a minimal setup.
  • Customization
    Ly allows for a high degree of customization, enabling users to adjust its configuration to meet their specific needs and preferences.
  • Fast
    Due to its simplicity and minimal dependencies, Ly offers a fast startup and login experience.
  • Supports Wayland
    Ly includes support for Wayland, making it versatile for users who choose to use Wayland over X11.

Possible disadvantages of Ly

  • Limited Features
    Compared to more feature-rich display managers, Ly may lack certain functionalities, such as session management and advanced graphical configurations.
  • Console Operation
    Being console-based, Ly might be less intuitive for users who are accustomed to graphical user interfaces, requiring familiarity with command-line operations.
  • Manual Configuration
    Ly often requires manual configuration for some settings, which may not be as user-friendly for those unfamiliar with configuration files.
  • Niche User Base
    Due to its minimalistic nature and specific use case, Ly has a more niche user base, which can result in less community support and documentation compared to mainstream solutions.

picom features and specs

  • Customizability
    Picom offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to configure window transparency, animations, shadows, and other graphical effects to fit their preferences.
  • Performance
    Designed to be lightweight, Picom provides minimal resource usage while offering compositing effects, making it suitable for systems with limited resources.
  • Modern Features
    Picom includes support for hybrid backends, experimental features like VSync, and improved performance over its predecessor, Compton, making it well-suited for modern Linux systems.
  • Active Development
    The project benefits from ongoing updates and enhancements, addressing issues and introducing new features based on community feedback.

Possible disadvantages of picom

  • Complexity
    Due to its extensive range of options and settings, Picom can be complex to configure, requiring users to invest time in understanding and editing configuration files.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Some users may experience compatibility issues with specific hardware or window managers, necessitating additional troubleshooting and configuration.
  • Documentation
    Despite being actively developed, the documentation can be sparse or outdated, requiring users to seek community support or refer to insider knowledge for certain configurations.
  • Experimental Features
    Some features may be in experimental stages and could lead to instability or unpredictable behavior on certain systems.

Ly videos

Đồ Bạn Thích Ly Review 😜♡ REVIEW Subscriber Best Beauty Favorites ♡ Pretty.Much

More videos:

  • Review - Bắp Nướng Cát Thy Diva Review Ly Bắp Đầu Tiên Giáng Tiên Khai Trương l vlogs trúc ngân

picom videos

ArcoLinux : 1481 Making sure compton/picom is working on LXQt

More videos:

  • Review - ArcoLinux : 1479 Changing from compton to picom - transparency in terminals

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ly and picom)
Linux
54 54%
46% 46
Note Taking
0 0%
100% 100
PHP MVC Framework
100 100%
0% 0
Window Manager
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Ly and picom. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, picom should be more popular than Ly. It has been mentiond 40 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.

Ly mentions (7)

  • Ly display manager issues!
    After building & installing ly demonstrate manager (https://github.com/nullgemm/ly) I can't‏‏‎‏‏‎‏‏‎‏‏‎­seem to start it as there is no entry in /etc/sv to start. I then came across this: https://github.com/drozdowsky/ly-void. A build of ly that supports runit & sure enough it has a service to start however when I restart my pc and ly display manager starts, even with the right credentials it does not log in, only... Source: over 4 years ago
  • Bloated base install?
    I definitely know what you mean; I used to use ly (and haven't been able to figure out how to write a package/service for it, yet) and would love to use that, again. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Display Managers and TTY
    Yes, actually! Ly is a console-based display manager that allows you to select your login target between any of the standard sessions (KDEs, GNOMEs, and what have you), explicit launching of .xinitrc, or just dropping straight into terminal. Source: almost 5 years ago
  • Which DE do you prefer?
    What DM are you using? I tried to compile both ly-void and normal ly according to this guide. Source: about 5 years ago
  • i feel deeply betrayed.
    On the github page there is an instruction to build it manually, but idk whether that works on fedora :/. Source: over 5 years ago
View more

picom mentions (40)

  • Why I traded my custom "Opinionated Linux" for Omarchy
    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 total control over the OS: me deciding what goes in, keeping every piece (i3wm, polybar, picom, kitty, dotfiles) up to date and making sure they all talked to each other for the... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • How to make Openbox look good with ease?
    Picom is also open source and you can find its code at its GitHub repo. The version of Picom used for this tutorial was the 10.2–1 version. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • [photo] installing Debian :)
    Also I took a census and zero founding members of NWA are "straight outta Picom". That's right, you heard it here first: Not even MC Ren is running Picom. Source: about 3 years ago
  • I have two Linux computers which I use for gaming.... somehow the one with slightly inferior hardware gets significantly better performance. I'm trying to figure out why... any ideas?
    If you have compositing you are likely using picom. You can check if it's running with ps -A | grep picom. I've never dealt with this issue as I don't really game on linux often, but I'm sure there's a solution somewhere in the github docs or issues. Worst case scenario you could always just kill the process with killall picom whenever you're about to game, and re-enable it with picom -b after. Do note though that... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Picom crashes with 'I3_FLOATING_WINDOW' in a rule
    Somewhat recently in official picom, a field called corner-radius-rules was added. I would like all my floating windows to have rounded corners. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ly and picom, you can also consider the following products

CDM - Console Display Manager. Contribute to evertiro/cdm development by creating an account on GitHub.

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

GDM - Electronics

Polybar - Status bar for Unix-like systems.

SDDM - QML based X11 and Wayland display manager. Contribute to sddm/sddm development by creating an account on GitHub.

Kitty terminal - Super fast, GPU and OpenGL based terminal emulator with tiling support