Software Alternatives & Reviews

tmux VS bspwm

Compare tmux VS bspwm and see what are their differences

tmux logo tmux

tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals (or windows), each running a...

bspwm logo bspwm

A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning
  • tmux Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • bspwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14

tmux videos

How I Work: Tmux

More videos:

  • Tutorial - You need to know how to use TMUX
  • Review - Getting Started with tmux Part 1 - Overview and Features

bspwm videos

Switching To Bspwm - Initial Thoughts

More videos:

  • Review - BSPWM - Its like I3 but not.
  • Review - BSPWM Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to tmux and bspwm)
Terminal Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Window Manager
0 0%
100% 100
SSH
100 100%
0% 0
Linux
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 tmux and bspwm

tmux Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Tmux makes the most of the available space and is simple to use thanks to keybindings that may be used to divide windows and create extra panes. Individual shell instances can also be shared throughout various sessions and utilised for different purposes by different users.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
tilix is a multiplexing terminal, not a tiling window manager. tmux is a terminal multiplexer, not a tiling window manager either. jwm is a lightweight STACKING window manager. I guess you could call tmux a tiling wm for a console only system (along with gnu screen and dvtm), but that’s really stretching your definition, and the other two certainly don’t qualify.
Source: www.tecmint.com

bspwm Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Support for multiple windows, limited support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically determining the location of app tiles, and configuration and control via messages are among the characteristics of bspwm.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
bspwm’s features include support for multiple windows, partial support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically setting the position of app tiles, and it is configured and controlled through messages, among others.
Source: www.tecmint.com

Social recommendations and mentions

tmux might be a bit more popular than bspwm. We know about 26 links to it since March 2021 and only 20 links to bspwm. 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.

tmux mentions (26)

  • Easy Access to Terminal Commands in Neovim using FTerm
    Having a common set of tools already set up in different windows or sessions in Tmux or Zellij is obviously an option, but there is a subset of us ( 👋 ) that would rather just have fingertip access to our common tools inside of our editor. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Automating the startup of a dev workflow
    Well, I now use tmux and tmuxinator. I have had many failed tmux attempts over the years, but I'm firmly bedded in now. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Connecting Debugger to Rails Applications
    The downside of overmind is that it requires tmux, which is a terminal multiplexer tool. If you don't already use tmux, I'd say it's probably not worth learning it just for the purposes of using overmind. But if you're like me and already know/use tmux, this can be a great solution to pursue. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • NeoVim Capability Functions
    For splitting the terminal you could try either toggleterm or tmux. If you want to send things from one tmux pane to another, then you can use slime. For a toggle-able filetree, you can use nvim tree. Source: 6 months ago
  • New User
    Another reason the above setup is helpful is that I use terminal vim in conjunction with Tmux. I always configure my IDE where vim is about 75% of my terminal window, on the left. The other 25% is a command line. In tmux, you can "zoom in" to a tmux pane by using Leader+z (for default tmux, this is "Ctrl+b z"). This effectively allows me to focus on vim but pop out a command line when I need it. Having the three... Source: about 1 year ago
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bspwm mentions (20)

  • What WM should I use?
    Use BSPWM. It supports right clicks by default and its modular. You might want to look for status bars that work with it, slstatus does not work. Good luck, supremacist! Source: about 1 year ago
  • What are some OpenSource apps that are the best of their kind?
    I had not heard of bspwm but I am a fan of telling WMs. Looking at the documentation now, I really like the pragmatic approach lol https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Got some questions before moving to linux...
    I am not familiar with that distro at all, so no idea. KDE Plasma is fine, I use it myself (with BSPWM as my window manager, but that's irrelevant). Source: about 1 year ago
  • MacBook Setup - OS Ventura 13.1 - Samsung QLed 43” - VM: yabai - Terminal: Hyper
    There's a paradigm shift required for a lot of people to start using automatic tiling window managers. Yabai is basically a bspwm port for MacOS and it follows the rules of binary space partitioning. In fact, bspwm has a great diagram on its github readme that illustrates how it works. This will limit the number of windows you can have on any given desktop. To overcome this limitation you use multiple desktops. A... Source: over 1 year ago
  • How much better is neoVim? Is it really that much better than VsCode?
    It’s night and day. I also combine a heavily customized NeoVim config (https://github.com/tomit4/notes/tree/main/nvim) with a tiling window manager (https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm), the espanso text expander (https://espanso.org/), Vimium in the browser (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/), and a 40% ortholinear keyboard(https://drop.com/buy/planck-mechanical-keyboard). Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing tmux and bspwm, you can also consider the following products

Alacritty - Alacritty is a blazing fast, GPU accelerated terminal emulator.

i3 - A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.

wezterm - GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer made with Rust.

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.

iTerm2 - A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

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