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Ratpoison VS i3

Compare Ratpoison VS i3 and see what are their differences

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Ratpoison logo Ratpoison

Ratpoison is a simple window manager with no fat library dependencies, no fancy graphics, no window...

i3 logo i3

A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.
  • Ratpoison Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-12-30
  • i3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

Ratpoison videos

+ Add

Windows 10... or ratpoison?

More videos:

  • Review - Why Rat X is the Only RatPoison I will ever use

i3 videos

+ Add

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ratpoison and i3)

Ratpoison

i3

Window Manager
14 14%
Window Manager
86% 86
Linux
12 12%
Linux
88% 88
Utilities
22 22%
Utilities
78% 78
Qt
100 100%
Qt
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Ratpoison and i3. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

Ratpoison Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Ratpoison is a lightweight Window Manager that is free of elaborate visuals, window decorations, and dependencies on other programmes. It is based on the GNU Screen, which is widely used among virtual terminal users.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
Ratpoison is a lightweight Window Manager designed to be simple and without fancy graphics, window decorations, or dependence on any other projects. It is modeled after the GNU Screen which is very popular in the virtual terminal community.
Source: www.tecmint.com
5 Great Tiling Window Managers for Linux
Ratpoison is a simple window manager that has “no fat library dependencies”. The developers boast that it has no “fancy graphics” or “decorations” of any kind, just a straight-up tiling window setup. Ratpoison is easy to get around in. All of the interactions with your windows are done with keyboard shortcuts.
Source: www.maketecheasier.com

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.
Source: www.journaldev.com
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...
Source: www.maketecheasier.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, i3 seems to be a lot more popular than Ratpoison. While we know about 89 links to i3, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Ratpoison. 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.

Ratpoison mentions (3)

  • FancyZones fork which maximizes windows properly
    - AquaSnap (paid) - https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap As a ratpoison [https://ratpoison.nongnu.org/] user, a decade ago, returning to the rigid window management of i3-based window managers, no longer appealed to me. MaxTo provided much of the experience I was looking for, but random crashes when using multiple desktops and my inability to get custom recipes triggering correctly had me look... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • It do be like that tho
    Or, the alternative is, use a completely command line operating system. No mouse required, ever. Easy peasy! Or, you could just use ratpoison. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Any tips for my first set up?
    I actually use an UI that has no taskbar, buttons, icons, etc. It's called ratpoison. I definitely don't think so, but hey, maybe thats what we are seeing here! Source: over 2 years ago

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: 11 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: 11 months ago
  • tiling window manager
    I did use i3 exclusively for a few years. The reasons I chose it were. Source: 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

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.

qtile - Qtile is a full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written in Python.

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

Xmonad - xmonad is a dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell.

Xfce - Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly.

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