Windows managers The Verdict
The fvwm3 window manager recently published 1.0.2 stable release, which was why we selected the project for this Roundup. But if our tests are any indication, the project isn’t quite ready for the masses just yet. It’s for this reason that the project comes in last in our Roundup. That being said, if you can spare the time, share your experience with the project with the developers. After all, early testers and beta users are the backbone for any software’s success.
If familiarity and comfort zone were a factor in deciding the winner of this Roundup, ICEWM and Enlightenment would have earned the top spot. Both projects are incredibly intuitive and not all that different in operation than full-fledged desktop environments such as KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon and XFCE. But because our objective has always been to promote open source software and encourage readers to broaden their experience, we’ll instead award them the third and fourth spot, respectively.
Which leaves us with awesome and i3. These window managers are also quite alike in their disdain for the mouse. You can easily work with multiple windows, switch to different workspaces, and open and close windows, all without ever touching the mouse. The downside to this keyboard-driven workflow approach is that you have to master new keyboard hotkeys to get things done. But if you’re willing to learn this new way of functioning, you’ll quickly learn to appreciate these minimalist yet highly configurable window managers.
If you’re already a keyboard junkie, of the kind who enjoys working with Vim text editor, you’ll perhaps lean more towards i3 with its reliance on the j, k, l and the semicolon key to move between windows. The project also boasts of a dedicated user community and has thorough documentation to get you started in your journey.
But we’ll award the top spot to Awesome. That’s because of its choice of different layouts across the different tags, which makes working with different classes of software a breeze. This doesn’t mean that Awesome is all sunshine and rainbows. For one, we don’t appreciate the need for referring to workspaces as tags.