bspwm
Ranked 11 of 11 tiling window managers by recommenders
People recommend bspwm as a minimal tiling window manager for X11 that gives simple building blocks to configure however you like.
People recommend bspwm as a minimal tiling window manager for X11 that gives simple building blocks to configure however you like.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Minimal, simple, and customizable
“Ive personally always enjoyed more minimal window mangers like DWM and BSPWM on X11”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “A Tale of AI Betrayal and Snapshotting Victory” “BSPWM gives me all the primitive building blocks and lets me go wild with them”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files” “For graphical programs I prefer using a simple window manager like bspwm on X”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”
Other tiling window managers people recommend
The four most recommended other tiling window managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niri | 125 | 17 | 88% | 13 | 6 mo16 owners | Approved |
| Sway | 81 | 23 | 78% | 12 | 4 yrs17 owners | Approved |
| AeroSpace | 77 | 12 | 87% | 12 | 4 mo10 owners | Approved |
| i3 window manager | 70 | 9 | 89% | 12 | — | Approved |
| bspwmThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 6 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“BSPWM gives me all the primitive building blocks and lets me go wild with them”
“Ive personally always enjoyed more minimal window mangers like DWM and BSPWM on X11”
“it's as complete as a software can get”
“The only DE's that I haven't had poor experiences with are xfce, bspwm, i3/i3gaps, and xmonad.”
“For graphical programs I prefer using a simple window manager like bspwm on X”
“it had really nice I3, bspwm, and xmonad distributions”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.