Software Alternatives & Reviews

picom VS Cairo Shell

Compare picom VS Cairo Shell and see what are their differences

picom logo picom

A lightweight compositor for X11 (previously a compton fork).

Cairo Shell logo Cairo Shell

Cairo is a desktop environment for Windows.
  • picom Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • Cairo Shell Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

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

Cairo Shell videos

No Cairo Shell videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

+ Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to picom and Cairo Shell)
Window Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Image Optimisation
0 0%
100% 100
Note Taking
43 43%
57% 57
Mac
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, picom seems to be a lot more popular than Cairo Shell. While we know about 38 links to picom, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Cairo Shell. 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.

picom mentions (38)

  • [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: 10 months 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: about 1 year 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: about 1 year ago
  • Linux Mint XFCE4. I felt like having simpler looking rice. More in reply
    • Compositor: Picom - https://github.com/yshui/picom - used it to just get shadow, under rofi. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Black corners in GTK apps
    I'm running Manjaro with i3 as my window manager. I'm also using picom as a compositor and this is what my config file looks like:. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

Cairo Shell mentions (2)

  • Microsoft is turning Windows 11's Start Menu into an advertisement delivery system
    Back when I was an edgy teenager I tried every Windows desktop shell replacement available. My favorites were LiteStep and Emerge Desktop. I was there when Cairo Shell first emerged but has never tried a working version since I moved to other OSes before any usable version was out. I am now using Windows for work and I think it’s time to revisit these options. Source: over 1 year ago
  • My first personal server
    Hyper-V Server 2019 gets my vote, with the Cairo Desktop it's a near unbeatable setup. Add the FoD pack, browser of your choice, Windows Admin Center for local management of the entire system including virtualized guests. It's a very robust enterprise grade server that requires NO LICENSE and ends up having a very nice GUI for a core server. Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

Contexts - Switch between application windows effortlessly — with Fast Search, a better Command-Tab, a Sidebar or even a quick gesture. Free trial available.

bug.n - Provide views (i. e. virtual desktops) for showing only those windows, which you need to do your work..

Xcompmgr - Xcompmgr is a simple composite manager capable of rendering drop shadows and primitive window transparency. Designed solely as a proof-of-concept, Xcompmgr is a lightweight alternative to Compiz and similar composite managers.

VirtuaWin - VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista/Win7/Win10). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces').

VistaSwitcher - VistaSwitcher is an elegant and powerful task management utility for Windows OS.

WindowBlinds - WindowBlinds is a computer program that allows users to skin the Windows graphical user interface.