KWin
Shares rank 11 of 30 window managers by recommenders
Free KDE Plasma window manager that people find polished, easy to use and grow fond of. Critics most often report high CPU use, bugs and crashes.
Free KDE Plasma window manager that people find polished, easy to use and grow fond of. Critics most often report high CPU use, bugs and crashes.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Easy to use, grows on you
“KWin, Dolphin, Plasma panels have unmatched ease whih grows on you”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Nothing works and everyone is euphoric” “It's been nice using kwin as my window manager”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “KDE Plasma 6.8 Set to Drop X11 Support Completely”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
High CPU use
“on Kwin it uses substantial cpu when scrolling and even lags a bit at high resolutions”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK” “kwin taking up what seems like way too much CPU at idle”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Wayland Nvidia” Buggy window management
“kwin_wayland is what is broken, probably. Why they broke it when porting it from X11 I don't know.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “XWayland 26.1-rc1 Released Two Years After the Last Release” “kwin_wayland's window management is very buggy”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “XWayland 26.1-rc1 Released Two Years After the Last Release” Crashes and freezes
“I had a day 1 crashloop with KWin on the 2nd desktop”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit” “KWin's compositor causes random freezes”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions”
Other window managers people recommend
The four most recommended other 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyprland | 82 | 33 | 71% | 12 | 1 mo4 owners | Approved |
| Rectangle for macOS | 67 | 3 | 96% | 11 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| Enlightenment window manager | 51 | 19 | 73% | 8 | — | Approved |
| FVWM | 28 | 4 | 88% | 8 | 25 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| KWinThis page | 11 | 8 | 58% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Kwi also embeds into Yakuake”
“kwin_wayland is what is broken, probably. Why they broke it when porting it from X11 I don't know.”
“kwin_wayland's window management is very buggy”
“KWin, Dolphin, Plasma panels have unmatched ease whih grows on you”
“There are currently many high-quality implementations, Kwin being the best IMO.”
“on Kwin it uses substantial cpu when scrolling and even lags a bit at high resolutions”
“In KDE's Kwin, I configure windows resizung using crude stretching algorithm.”
“Fullscreen apps can also do direct scanout on Kwin now”
“Both Wayland and KWin changes should have improved the situation since then.”
“I would argue that it is up to the window manager to provide this functionality at the discretion of the user.”
“I had a day 1 crashloop with KWin on the 2nd desktop”
“you could always run kwin_wayland and prevent all that phoning home”
“Even KWin's (original?) implementation of the feature wasn't great and caused issues with applications, apparently”
“KWin for example has already gained many bugs on X11 that I expect to never be fixed”
“kwin taking up what seems like way too much CPU at idle”
“It's been nice using kwin as my window manager”
“KWin's compositor causes random freezes”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.