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What are the most user friendly advanced window managers on Linux?

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9 Options Considered

9 Options ConsideredPriceLicenseNumber of themes
Openbox
GPLv2+–
i3
BSD–
awesome WM
––
dwm
MIT/X Consortium license–
Gala
––
See Full List

Openbox

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Defaults easy to quickstart

•••
Openbox's set of defaults are easily editable to the user's liking.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Highly configurable with a moderate learning curve

•••
Configuring Openbox is very easy to carry out, simply by editing its few config files. There are programs that allow for an even easier means of editing these files by doing so in a UI.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Extremely lightweight

•••
Openbox is a lightweight window manager that uses a little over 100MB RAM upon boot.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Uncluttered

•••
Openbox does away with many traditional desktop elements, like menu buttons, bars, etc. and places everything in the (insanely customizable) context menu. If any of the missing pieces are desired, they can be added through others apps (e.g. tint2 for taskbar).
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Stable

•••
Openbox is used as a default window manager in few desktop environments so it offers more testing, more bugfixes, and more stable behavior.
Ben Creasy
Top Con

Maintenance is unclear or halted

•••
As of 2018-02: The homepage for Openbox has a News section with the last post in 2010 (http://openbox.org/wiki/Openbox:News). The code is apparently at https://github.com/danakj/openbox but no changes have been made since 2015-03-03. PRs and bug reports continue to be submitted, but they are not...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Default configuration is lacking basic features

•••
When booting Openbox for the first time, the user won't even know they have actually booted into a window manager as there will be nothing of note on the screen other than a right mouse action.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

i3

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Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Good documentation

•••
Every feature is thoroughly documented (including examples), and documentation is kept up-to-date. For questions that are not answered by the i3 user guide, because they concern tools outside of i3 for example, there is the community question & answer site.
Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Fully configurable (including tiling)

•••
One of the biggest attractions of i3 is that it can be configured just about any way the user likes. Ranging from custom keyboard shortcuts to placement of opened apps, it is up to the user as to how they would like their window manager to behave.
Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Fast, especially on weaker hardware

•••
Tiling means there are no fancy compositing or window effects to take up system resources.
Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Easily readable plain-text configuration

•••
i3 has plain-text configuration, meaning that no lua or haskell is needed. This makes it rather easy to recommend i3 to other people without worrying whether or not they have the knowledge to configure it as it can be read by anyone without prior knowledge.
Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Comfortable usage (keyboard only)

•••
The user keeps their hands in one spot (most of the time). One will find that the mouse is used less and less, making navigation quicker over time.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Can tab windows

•••
i3 permits tabbing through windows by turning on tab mode with $mod+w.
Izem Lavrenti
Thomas Schneider
Top Pro

Wayland support

•••
It's called sway for wayland, but handles the same
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Poor floating window support

•••
Sometimes this is necessary, even when the Dev rejects feature requests. Firefox child windows (option dialog) is an example.
Thomas Schneider
Top Con

Not as intuitive as the rest

•••
Key combinations that have to be defined or learned
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Documentation is online

•••
Can't access it offline unless you download the page.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

The plain-text configuration may not be suitable for beginners

•••
i3 is configured through a plaintext configuration file. While it's very powerful and easy to learn, it may not be entirely user-friendly for those who have never edited a text configuration.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

It has some issues with transparency

•••
Using transparent windows can cause them to crash.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Manual tiling

•••
The layout isn't automatic. The user must move panels manually and may indeed end up spending time on that rather than on working with the application.
See 11 more Pros & ConsSee 11 more Pros & Cons

awesome WM

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Fully extensible with Lua

•••
Awesome can be skinned, configured, and extended with Lua, a language with a programming model similar to the ubiquitous Javascript. Learning resources for Lua are fairly abundant, as Lua is a popular extension language, often used for scripting in games.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Any window can be full screen

•••
Select the window. Hold ALT+SHIFT and press SPACE until the window takes up the entire screen.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Highly configurable

•••
Awesome is highly configurable, allowing the user to change anything they see fit in order to make the WM work for them and their workflow.
actionless
Top Pro

Very detailed documentation with examples and pics

•••
WhiteLilac
actionless
Top Pro

Popup with hotkeys help

•••
Just like in Unity.
FantasticAmatsuMikaboshi
Top Pro

Keyboard friendly

•••
Awesome is extremely keyboard friendly.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Good default configuration

•••
By default, you'll have a status bar (hidden in some modes), an application launcher, automatic fullscreen, manual fullscreen shortcut, etc.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Stable

•••
Awesome always works as it should: it is very stable and reliable.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Low latency

•••
Awesome was the first window manager to be ported to use the asynchronous XCB library instead of XLib, making it much more responsive than most other window managers.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Single window, multi-workspace support

•••
The user can have each window visible on one, multiple, or no workspace. You can also temporarily include another workspace in the current one.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Tags instead of workspaces

•••
With awesome, clients are organized with tags: one client can be on more than one tag, and multiple tags can be displayed at the same time.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Some mouse tiling support

•••
You can rearrange and re-size [some] panels via the mouse.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Xinerama support

•••
Awesome has real multi-head support via XRandR/Xinerama, with per-screen desktops.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Easy module for useless gaps

•••
Lain module makes useless gaps easy.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Difficult to google for solutions to problems

•••
Awesome is a very common word, making searches for solutions to problems using Google very time-consuming as a lot of chaff has to be sifted through.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

You should have some skills to configure it

•••
Awesome, like most window managers, is targeted at advanced users. Though is has sane defaults and easy to read documentation, it is still a far jump from the more common graphical UIs found in computing.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Some programs don't cooperate well with tiling window managers

•••
The user can usually work around this, but it can be quite annoying at the same time.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Configuration uses Lua (Programming Language)

•••
It is time-consuming to make changes to configuration. Though Lua is a good language, a plain text file to configure things would seem to be a better approach.
Ben Creasy
Top Con

Difficult to persist and restore layouts

•••
As discussed at https://www.reddit.com/r/awesomewm/comments/7w9t49/hello_how_are_people_saving_layouts_sessions/ "default layout system is quite hard to configure to do that" with improvements slowly being worked on in this PR from January 2016.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Regular API breakage

•••
Results in many of the scripts for awesome to be found online end up being outdated.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Doesn't have tabbed containers

•••
There is no option to have tabbed containers in awesome window manager.
See 19 more Pros & ConsSee 19 more Pros & Cons

dwm

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Simple and small

•••
Dwm is a low-resource window manager that is entirely simplistic in design.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Application grouping with tags

•••
Dwm's design paradigm is to use tags to group clients (applications) that can then be pulled into a view (workspace); this allows you to view multiple clients at once and to assign or reassign those tags and their related views on the fly. Contrary to most other window managers, when you view...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Useful and informative status bar

•••
The dwm status bar can be set to display all kinds of useful information, such as volume level, wifi signal strength, and battery notification.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

XRandR/Xinerama support

•••
Dwm has support for XRandR and Xinerama, allowing for multi-monitor support.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Encourages user modification

•••
Dwm is part of the suckless suite of tools, and encourages users to extend and configure it by modifying the code itself. To this end, dwm is kept under 2000 SLOC, and is an exemplar of clean, readable code (C). This, while giving users all the flexibility they could ask for, also makes dwm as ligh...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Default keybindings and functionality are very useful and well thought-out

•••
An example of this is the application of alt-tab to switch between two tags.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Easy to configure

•••
Configuring dwm is straight-forward thanks to its config.h file (though it will have to be rebuilt for the effects to take place).
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

No runtime config file

•••
There is no config file that can be edited after the window manager is compiled: all changes need to be made prior to compiling.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

By developers, for developers

•••
Basic knowledge of C language, general programming, and compilation are all required.
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons

Gala

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Easy for Linux beginners who are coming from legacy OSs

•••
Gala has limited configurability which keeps things simple.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Beautiful, uniformly designed, and sleek

•••
Gala is designed to be unimposing while still remaining functional and pleasant to look at. By following the elementary OS design guidelines, Gala maintains a very consistent look.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Innovative multitasking

•••
Gala takes some hints from mobile OSes, but handles multitasking in a powerful way designed for desktop. Workspaces and alt-tabbing work well and are familiar, but feel smoother than alternatives.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Excellent stability

•••
Despite the current stable release only being on version 0.2, it is very stable.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Extremely fast

•••
Gala works well on limited-resource hardware, e.g older netbooks and Chromebooks.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Dynamic workspace management

•••
Workspaces are added and removed on the fly so you only have as many as you need at any given time.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Works with Gtk client-side decorations

•••
The current bets of elementary OS (Freya) has enabled the use of Gtk client-side decorations.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Hotcorners give shortcuts for multitasking, window management, or custom commands

•••
User-configurable hotcorners means power users get four super easy shortcuts for multitasking, window management, or custom commands.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Integrated compositing manager allows for fancy effects and animations

•••
The Gala compositing manager allows for effects and animations to be used on a window by window basis.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Limited configurability

•••
Configuration options are few and far between and require editing settings with dconf editor.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Hard to install on some distros

•••
While Elementary OS has Gala built-in, it might be difficult to set it up on certain distributions because it's tailored to Elementary OS only. Arch, for example, only supports Gala via AUR at the moment.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Buggy with nVidia Graphics

•••
It's fantastic with the Intel integrated graphics; however, it is not good on nVidia ones
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Does not render well under AMD graphics

•••
The underlying compositor is know to have issues with AMD graphics cards, leading to poor performance, stuttering, and graphical artifacts.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Not very lightweight

•••
Although it certainly does not eat up CPU or RAM, it is not as lightweight on resource usage as awesome, i3, openbox, for instance. This shouldn't really be a surprise however.
See 12 more Pros & ConsSee 12 more Pros & Cons

XMonad

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Very stable

•••
Use of Haskell, in conjunction with smart programming practices, guarantees a crash-free experience.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Great availability of libraries

•••
The use of Haskell as an extension language means that popular pieces of functionality are easily shared and widely available as Haskell Libraries. Many default layouts, and tools for quickly and easily building your own, are available through XMonad-contrib, and highly re-usable configurations are...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Fully extensible with Haskell

•••
XMonad is written, configured, and fully extensible in Haskell. This means that users aren't limited to a small set of pre-programmed layouts and actions: anything can be programmed into the configuration. It's simple to modify basic settings, and the example config has lots of comments...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Highly configurable

•••
If you enjoy programming, you can even add features to XMonad to make it your perfect desktop environment, and the Contrib modules give you most of what you need to do exactly that.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Absolutely minimal

•••
The entire window manager is extremely small, and includes nothing beyond basic window manipulation and tiling. Out of the box, there are no window decorations, status bar nor icon dock; just clean lines and efficiency.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Edit configuration and reload on-the-fly

•••
Configuration is compiled into the WM, and it can be changed/updated on-the-fly, without requiring a full reload.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Efficient to use

•••
XMonad is a very minimal and efficient window manager, especially if the user is familiar with Haskell.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Handles multiple monitors well

•••
XMonad can handle multi-monitor setups by default.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Xinerama support

•••
XMonad has full support for Xinerama: windows can be tiled and managed across multiple physical screens.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Requires a lot of Haskell dependencies

•••
XMonad depends on GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler) which can take up about 700 MB or disk space.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Requires knowledge of Haskell for configuration

•••
Understanding of Haskell is required in order to configure XMonad.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Con

Steep learning curve for uninitiated users

•••
Like a lot of tiling window managers, the learning curve for XMonad is quite steep.
See 10 more Pros & ConsSee 10 more Pros & Cons

Fluxbox

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IceWM

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Window Maker

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M Edward Borasky
Top Pro

Customizable

•••
M Edward Borasky
Top Pro

Very fast

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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