PaperWM VS i3

Compare PaperWM vs i3 and see what are their differences.

Our great sponsors
  • SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
PaperWM i3
37 200
2,641 9,053
3.8% 1.7%
9.8 7.6
3 days ago 7 days ago
JavaScript C
GNU General Public License v3.0 only BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

PaperWM

Posts with mentions or reviews of PaperWM. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-11-30.
  • Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS
    35 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Nov 2023
  • PaperWM: Tiled scrollable window management for Gnome Shell
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2023
  • Rethinking Window Management in Gnome
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Jul 2023
  • Why doesn't Gnome have native tiling?
    1 project | /r/gnome | 10 Jun 2023
    But with auto-tiling you need to place windows according to a pre-set configuration, it needs to fit whatever layout you want to go for and it needs to be able to resize the window without breaking the content. This works pretty well for libadwaita apps, but a lot of webapps seem to assume a certain minimum window size. Another issue is how to handle modal dialogues, where paperwm for example sets an override to ensure they're not attached to the main window. Should the settings window then be treated as a separate window and tiled, or should it be left floating above all others?
  • PaperWM – Scrolling Window Manager for Gnome
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 20 May 2023
  • Fedora is really good
    1 project | /r/Fedora | 18 Apr 2023
    I like Gnome's simplicity, agree with most of its deviations from the tired old Windowsy desktop status quo, and am very happy to depend on all its great integration work. I can't quite live with the simplistic window management, but extensions cover that (as they do much else). With Fedora + Gnome + PaperWM, I'm quite at peace with the current linux desktop situation.
  • Bismuth likely going to be deprecated after 5.27
    2 projects | /r/kde | 31 Jan 2023
    Still I'm looking forward for something like PaperWM to be possible in KDE - or even to write it by myself
  • Elementary OS 7
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2023
    I have noticed in one of your comments in this thread that you are looking for novel ideas of the UI look. As others commenters stated, you might be interested in tiling window managers like i3 [0] or sway [1]. They are truly a gem for productivity and sometimes for an eye [2].

    However, I love the concept of scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3] is. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I was complaining a lot on unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have huge IDE on the left and small part of terminal displayed on the right. That way I knew if something was printed to terminal, while my editor took 80% of the screen.

    [0]: https://i3wm.org/

    [1]: https://swaywm.org/

    [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

    [3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

  • How do i make linux not just a different version of windows
    4 projects | /r/linuxquestions | 18 Jan 2023
    If you want something really different, give PaperWM a shot.
  • 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop
    3 projects | /r/linux | 25 Dec 2022
    You may want to try PaperWM (GNOME extension) https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

i3

Posts with mentions or reviews of i3. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-12-19.
  • Show HN: Chrome Reaper
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Dec 2023
    While I believe Memory Saver was a great improvement, it only works if the tab is hidden or the window minimized. I recently learned the required state is not triggered if the tab is open but on another virtual desktop. At least this is the case with many of not all Linux window managers. Some of the many discussion threads on the topic:

    https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/4353

  • Firefox 121 defaults to Wayland on Linux
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Dec 2023
    > This is very true, and unfortunately there are very few people working on linux accessibility (including not me! I am part of the problem!).

    Accessibility work itself ironically suffers from an accessibility problem. I brought up i3wm above, the issue for that is pretty illuminating: https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3393

    It's not that the devs are saying "this doesn't matter", the devs behind one of the most popular tiling window managers in the X11 ecosystem are saying, "this does matter, but we don't know how to fix it. We don't know what changes we'd need to make to get Orca working."

    It's a really fundamental breakdown that's kind of a tragedy because I honestly believe that if accessibility communities were more heavily baked into testing and development in Linux and if this wasn't treated like two separate worlds, it would be better for everyone -- fixing accessibility concerns very often improves interfaces across the board and makes them more powerful.

    But... how do you bridge that gap? I don't really know, I tried looking into Orca to see what would need to happen here and bounced off of it pretty hard, it's not a very approachable tech stack and there aren't tutorials or getting started guides. And on the other side of the issue I can preach about needing accessibility input during interface design, but I'm not in a position to give specific advice because I don't use screenreaders or alternate control schemes and I don't know what the biggest problems are.

    The people who need to be involved in that process can't get involved because there's a tech barrier in place even for technically inclined people, and because the underlying software locks them out from the start. i3wm isn't ever going to get someone who's intimately familiar with Orca to jump into the conversation because the people who need to use Orca can't use i3wm. So that leaves the people who can address that tech barrier, but they don't know what to do or how to approach the problem because of the lack of involvement and because the communities are isolated from each other. So it's a chicken-and-egg problem and I don't know how to solve it.

  • "We understand" ;)
    2 projects | /r/discordapp | 9 Dec 2023
    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.
  • what machines have you used for development, and what do you prefer?
    1 project | /r/webdev | 4 Jul 2023
    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.
  • The future of /r/i3wm
    1 project | /r/i3wm | 18 Jun 2023
    Even though, we have moved the official i3 support channel to GitHub discussions, i3's biggest community is still on reddit and if things continue like that there is going to be a lot of helpful content on an increasingly closed platform.
  • while in i3wm, krita dockers move downwards a bit each time they're spawned - how do I fix this?
    1 project | /r/i3wm | 12 Jun 2023
  • i3wm-like window switching for Windows
    1 project | /r/software | 9 Jun 2023
  • egui_overlay - A transparent Overlay window where you can only click the "egui parts"
    3 projects | /r/rust | 4 Jun 2023
    for example, take i3. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/4478
  • How to start on a Linux desktop environment?
    2 projects | /r/osdev | 4 Jun 2023
  • Machine for pentesting and general use?
    1 project | /r/Kalilinux | 23 May 2023
    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

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PaperWM and i3 you can also consider the following projects:

material-shell - A modern desktop interface for Linux. Improve your user experience and get rid of the anarchy of traditional desktop workflows. Designed to simplify navigation and reduce the need to manipulate windows in order to improve productivity. It's meant to be 100% predictable and bring the benefits of tools coveted by professionals to everyone.

sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor

gnome-shell-extension-appindicator - Adds KStatusNotifierItem support to the Shell

awesome - awesome window manager

kwin-tiling - Tiling script for kwin

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

shell - Pop!_OS Shell

wslg - Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios

Rectangle - Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts and snap areas

xmonad - The core of xmonad, a small but functional ICCCM-compliant tiling window manager

Grid-Tiling-Kwin - A kwin script that automatically tiles windows

tmux - tmux source code