Software Alternatives & Reviews

Xmonad VS bspwm

Compare Xmonad VS bspwm and see what are their differences

Xmonad

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

bspwm

A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning
  • Xmonad Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-01
  • bspwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14

Xmonad

Categories
  • Window Manager
  • Linux
  • Utilities
  • Open Source
Website xmonad.org  
Details $

bspwm

Categories
  • Utilities
  • Window Manager
  • Linux
  • Open Source
Website github.com  
Details $-

Xmonad videos

Xmonad Review

More videos:

  • Review - Hacking on Xmonad - GridSelect, ToggleStruts, ToggleBorders
  • Review - Obscure Window Manager Project - Xmonad

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 Xmonad and bspwm)
Window Manager
47 47%
53% 53
Linux
48 48%
52% 52
Utilities
43 43%
57% 57
Productivity
42 42%
58% 58

User comments

Share your experience with using Xmonad and bspwm. 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 Xmonad and bspwm

Xmonad Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
XMonad is a dynamic tiling X11 window manager that allows you to automate window finding and alignment. It may be customised with its own extension library, which includes choices for status bars and window decorations. It’s also simple to set up, stable, and minimal.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
spectrwm is a small, dynamic, xmonad, and dwm-inspired reparenting and tiling window manager built for X11 to be fast, compact, and concise. It was created with the aim of solving the issues of xmonad and dwm face.
Source: www.tecmint.com
5 Great Tiling Window Managers for Linux
Xmonad is a tiling window manager written in Haskell. Like most (if not all) window managers, it comes with no frills or window decorations. The keyboard shortcuts are top notch. It works out-of-the-box and is very user friendly. On top of all that, Xmonad sports a fairly big extension library (which can add on even more functionality).

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

bspwm might be a bit more popular than Xmonad. We know about 20 links to it since March 2021 and only 14 links to Xmonad. 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.

Xmonad mentions (14)

  • [Media] shrs: a shell that is configurable and extensible in rust
    Hey everyone 👋 ! I'm currently working on a rust library for building and configuring your own shell! It's inspired by projects like xmonad and penrose where the configuration of the program is done in code. This means that for example, instead of using Bash's arcane syntax for configuring the prompt, it can be configured instead using a rust builder pattern! The project itself is still at a very young stage, so... Source: 10 months ago
  • What LaTeX setup do you use?
    There are a few other things I could mention, but there are more like side issues, and not relevant to my actual LaTeX setup. First and foremost—and thus perhaps noteworthy after all—is bibliography management with arxiv-citation (see here for more words). This is integrated very well with the XMonad window manager, which makes it even more of a joy to use. Source: 12 months ago
  • How to map arrows keys to CapsLock+(h,i,j,k) shortcuts in i3
    Another way to do it (and works on Linux and other platforms) is with XMonad, defining Caps Lock as a layer key. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Can ISTP like abstract things and theories?
    I tried it once, it was alright. https://xmonad.org/ But I prefer to build my own. Source: over 1 year ago
  • What exactly is a tiling window manager?
    Here is another tiling wm with screenshots: Https://xmonad.org/. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

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: 10 months 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: 11 months 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: about 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: about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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.

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

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

Openbox - Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.

spectrwm - spectrwm is a small dynamic tiling window manager for X11.