qtile VS xpra

Compare qtile vs xpra and see what are their differences.

qtile

:cookie: A full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written and configured in Python (X11 + Wayland) (by qtile)

xpra

Persistent remote applications for X11; screen sharing for X11, MacOS and MSWindows. (by Xpra-org)
Our great sponsors
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
qtile xpra
103 50
4,567 1,375
1.4% 7.6%
9.4 9.9
6 days ago 4 days ago
Python Python
MIT License GNU General Public License v3.0 only
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.

qtile

Posts with mentions or reviews of qtile. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-04.
  • Qtile window move/resize behavior as in bspwm?
    1 project | /r/qtile | 6 Dec 2023
  • How to install on Ubuntu: my solution
    3 projects | /r/qtile | 4 Jul 2023
    Btw. if you're installing from pip anyway, I HIGHLY recommend using git master's version (pip install git+https://github.com/qtile/qtile). It's very stable and it contains a lot of improvements, features and - mostly important - bug fixes, especially because the fact that the last 0.22.1 release is almost one year old. The current master works fine with xcffib 1.4 and cairocffi 1.6 (the newest possible versions).
  • Qtile Logs in to a Blank Screen
    1 project | /r/qtile | 4 Jul 2023
    Yes, all the dependencies listed in qtile.org are installed.
  • docs.qtile.org down? Any information to be found?
    1 project | /r/qtile | 18 Jun 2023
    I think yesterday qtile.org itself seemed to be working properly. Now it is also offline.
  • Fixed! Thank you
    1 project | /r/qtile | 15 Jun 2023
    Did you see the changelog? https://github.com/qtile/qtile/blob/master/CHANGELOG
  • my terminal gone ? setings gone etc..i just remove python
    1 project | /r/linux4noobs | 14 Jun 2023
    You need to have xcffib in version 1.3.0 and you probably have 1.4.0. You also need cairocffi 1.5.1 and you probably have 1.6.0, so it will fail as the next step. Install correct versions or wait until https://github.com/qtile/qtile/pull/4289 is merged.
  • Please consider joining the Reddit blackout
    1 project | /r/qtile | 12 Jun 2023
    Meanwhile users can still communicate and ask questions in the official Github discussion board: https://github.com/qtile/qtile/discussions or alternatively in IRC irc://irc.oftc.net:6667/qtile during the blackout time period.
  • How fedora workstation will run on this laptop?
    1 project | /r/Fedora | 28 May 2023
    Hello 👋, I use Gnome for my ThinkPad it works nice for me. But giving your ram I would suggest a window manager like Qtile which I prefer and I am about move from Gnome to it when I finish my configurations. But if you want something which will be usable out of the box Xfce is a nice choice too as people mentioned above. 😁😁 Here is the link to GitHub for Qtile if you want to give it a glance https://github.com/qtile/qtile
  • Wayland problems
    1 project | /r/qtile | 25 May 2023
  • How to set numlock on startup with Wayland?
    1 project | /r/qtile | 16 May 2023
    It's currently not supported on Wayland. There is an open issue for it: https://github.com/qtile/qtile/issues/4225

xpra

Posts with mentions or reviews of xpra. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-10.
  • Why is remote desktop slow when host monitor is off unless HDMI cable is used?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Apr 2024
    FWIW I had decent success with Xpra on Linux, and it's still being actively developed, e.g. the HTML5 client is considered stable now: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/
  • Apache Guacamole: a clientless remote desktop gateway
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Mar 2024
    I use xpra for similar purposes (https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/)

    > Xpra is known as "screen for X" : its seamless mode allows you to run X11 programs, usually on a remote host, direct their display to your local machine, and then to disconnect from these programs and reconnect from the same or another machine(s), without losing any state. Effectively giving you remote access to individual graphical applications. It can also be used to access existing desktop sessions and start remote desktop sessions.

  • Firefox 121 defaults to Wayland on Linux
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Dec 2023
    I want to move to the "future", but I use several firefox profiles via xpra in combination with xdotool based hotkeys. The fluidity with which I can control my different profile windows without a mouse and with which I can switch between computers with no lag with this setup is a big reason why I have stuck with a Linux desktop, so I am sad to see those super powers go away for no perceived benefit. I have tried Wayland several times now and don't notice any performance differences, just more bugs in Wayland.

    `xdotool search` seems like it has been deemed a security issue for reasons I can't understand (if someone has hacked in to the point that they can even run such query commands, surely I'm already pwn'd). Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but to me it's like being upset that someone who broke into your house can see the color of your curtains. The powerful feature set of X far outweighs these minor security concerns.

    And it looks like xpra is facing huge issues switching over https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/387 :(, I have yet to be as satisfied with any other free remote desktop software (paid nomachine is close but less scriptable).

    I hope these aren't fundamental limitations of wayland, but the challenges seem steep.

  • Advice on getting a 16GB Nvidia card..
    1 project | /r/linuxquestions | 6 Dec 2023
    They all operate(d) their GPUs just fine. I'm a heavy user of VirtualGL + XPRA for remote graphics usage, which is a constant factor in my life and work. When they're not doing graphics of some sort, they're hunting pulsars in a GPU-centric compute mode.
  • FreeRDP: A Remote Desktop Protocol Implementation
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Sep 2023
    I've long been a huge fan of Xpra https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra , both because of its "screen for X" original focus (though now it supports shadowing an existing session).

    There was NoMachine / nx / freenx but it always seemed to be a weird animal to me, requiring installation as a separate unix user, at least at the time.

  • Cool but Obscure X11 Apps
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Jul 2023
    One of my favorite bits of software is Xpra [0], "screen for X". You'd run it and it would start another X server (start apps in it with `DISPLAY=:1 xterm` or whatever), and you would "attach" it to your running X server with `xpra attach`.

    You can attach to e.g. `ssh://hostname/:1`, so I ran a firefox instance on a homelab server and attached to it from my laptop and my desktop to not have to bother keeping bookmarks, tabs etc in sync.

    [0] https://xpra.org/

  • Alternatives To X2go?
    2 projects | /r/linuxadmin | 3 Apr 2023
    I’ve used Xpra in the past to connect to a remote system for GUI stuff, but I almost exclusively use ssh because most of the time I don’t need to run a remote windowing system.
  • I want to (securely) remotely access my Pop!_OS desktop from my Pop!_OS laptop - what’s the best way to do this in 2023?
    4 projects | /r/pop_os | 29 Mar 2023
    To add to this if you need to access graphical applications of an entire desktop environment you can use Xpra or MOONLIGHT (I suggest the second one if you want to game on the remote desktop or need very low latency in general), you can use both of these through a ssh tunnel (you need to enable this and X forwarding in the config) so if you setup and allow access to ssh correctly you can also use these without too much of a hassle.
  • plasma-nm, libqca-qt5-2 and libkf5wallet-bin - but not in this order!
    1 project | /r/kdeneon | 14 Feb 2023
    Linux fernando-ipmh61r3 6.1.0-1006-oem #6-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Jan 24 18:24:09 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux | NVIDIA-SMI 525.89.02 Driver Version: 525.89.02 CUDA Version: 12.0 | /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy main universe restricted multiverse /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates main universe restricted multiverse /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-backports main universe restricted multiverse /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main universe restricted multiverse /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list:deb [arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cappelikan-ubuntu-ppa-jammy.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cappelikan/ppa/ubuntu/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:Types: deb /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:URIs: https://deb.librewolf.net /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:Suites: jammy /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:Components: main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:Architectures: amd64 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources:Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/librewolf.gpg /etc/apt/sources.list.d/neon.list:deb http://archive.neon.kde.org/user/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nicotine-team-ubuntu-stable-jammy.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nicotine-team/stable/ubuntu/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/obsproject-ubuntu-obs-studio-jammy.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/obsproject/obs-studio/ubuntu/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openjdk-r-ubuntu-ppa-jammy.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openjdk-r/ppa/ubuntu/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/org.kde.neon.net.launchpad.ppa.mozillateam.list:deb https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu/ jammy main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:Types: deb /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:URIs: https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:Suites: jammy /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:Components: main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:Architectures: amd64 i386 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-jammy.sources:Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xpra.sources:Types: deb /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xpra.sources:URIs: https://xpra.org /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xpra.sources:Suites: jammy /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xpra.sources:Components: main /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xpra.sources:Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/xpra.asc
  • Looking for an application that allows VNC sharing in windows for a single application
    3 projects | /r/software | 2 Jan 2023

What are some alternatives?

When comparing qtile and xpra you can also consider the following projects:

sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor

xrdp - xrdp: an open source RDP server

Hyprland - Hyprland is a highly customizable dynamic tiling Wayland compositor that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.

rustdesk - An open-source remote desktop, and alternative to TeamViewer.

bspwm-rounded - Fork of bspwm (baskerville) and the rounded corners patch (Javyre), but more up-to-date

ssh-rdp - Real display ssh based remote desktop

river - [mirror] A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor

FreeRDP - FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients

dwl - dwm for Wayland - ARCHIVE: development has moved to Codeberg

Sunshine - Sunshine is a Gamestream host for Moonlight. [Moved to: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine]

bspwm - A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

mRemoteNG - mRemoteNG is the next generation of mRemote, open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager.