# XMonad

28 Hacker News commenters recommended XMonad and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, keyboard-driven tiling window manager with strong multi-monitor workspace handling and easy code-based config. Critics say it's not right for most people.

## Why people recommend it

- Keyboard-driven tiling with fast focus (4 comments): "XMonad with some lightly customized layouts gives me the operations to do all of this quickly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834339)) "I tried xmonad, a tiling window manager, and I was hooked" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182979)) "Also has nice hot-keys for moving focus." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019867))
- Fast and lightweight (3 comments): "It's definitely quick as heck and I like how compact the codebase is for edits." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935408)) "I just run xmonad and everything is pretty snappy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48176221)) "it takes basically no resources" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48255011))
- Strong multi-monitor workspace handling (3 comments): "xmonad is really really good. Especially how it handles workspaces on multiple monitors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45930435)) "With Xmonad I had 10 spaces on a single laptop screen" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47628950)) "the ability to have empty workspaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45932137))
- Configurable directly in code (3 comments): "XMonad with a few cargo-culted tweaks works noticeably better for me than I've been able to configure i3wm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929894)) "Or even customize my Xmonad to show specific Gimp instances on select workspaces." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45939190)) "you can actually just throw stuff into your config to change core behavior" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45937970))

## What people warn about

- Not the right choice for most people (1 comments): "I'm not denigrating XMonad or such here; it's more that I think it's probably not the right choice for most people" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931044))
- Stuck on X11, not Wayland (1 comments): "worked well with MATE and kde until the wayland switch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45932972))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Sway](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sway.md): 81 recommend
- [i3 window manager](https://hackerapproved.com/p/i3.md): 70 recommend
- [i3wm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/i3wm.md): 12 recommend
- [Ratpoison](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ratpoison.md): 8 recommend
- [PaperWM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/paperwm.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "XMonad", https://hackerapproved.com/p/xmonad/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).