Openbox Alternatives for Linux

There are many alternatives to Openbox for Linux and since it's discontinued a lot of people are looking for a replacement. The best Linux alternative is Hyprland, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Openbox and loads of them are available for Linux so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Linux alternatives to Openbox are niri, i3, Sway and awesome.

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Alternatives list

  1. Hyprland icon
     43 likes

    An independent tiling Wayland compositor written in C++. Noteworthy features of Hyprland include dynamic tiling, tabbed windows, a clean and readable C++ code-base, and a custom renderer that provides window animations, rounded corners, and Dual-Kawase Blur on transparent windows.

    31 Hyprland alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    • openSUSE
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo
    • Fedora
    • Ubuntu
    • Debian
    • FreeBSD
    • Alpine Linux
    • Slackware
    • Wayland
     
  2. niri icon
     11 likes

    Windows are arranged in columns on an infinite strip going to the right. Opening a new window never causes existing windows to resize.

    82 niri alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Wayland
     
  3. i3 icon
     71 likes

    i3 is a dynamic tiling window manager with clean, readable and documented code, featuring extended Xinerama support, usage of libxcb instead of xlib and several improvements over wmii.

    84 i3 alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  4. Sway icon
     23 likes

    Sway is a Tiling Wayland Compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.

    52 Sway alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  5. awesome icon
     39 likes

    awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  6. Fluxbox icon
     33 likes

    Fluxbox is a window manager for X that was based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. It is very light on resources and easy to handle but yet full of features to make an easy, and extremely fast, desktop experience. It is built using C++ and licensed under the MIT license.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    • C++
     
  7. bspwm icon
     13 likes

    A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  8. spectrwm icon
     11 likes

    spectrwm is a small dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and does not require one to learn a language to do any configuration.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  9. IceWM icon
     11 likes

    IceWM is a Window Manager for X Window System. It is fast and memory-efficient, and it provides many different looks including Windows'95, OS/2 Warp 3,4, Motif.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  10. SwayFX icon
     3 likes

    Sway is an incredible window manager, and certainly one of the most well established wayland window managers. However, it is restricted to only include the functionality that existed in i3. This fork ditches the simple wlr_renderer, and replaces it with our fx_renderer, capable...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo Linux
    • Fedora
    • Nix Package Manager
    • Sway
    • FreeBSD
    • Wayland
     
  11. Qtile icon
     8 likes

    A full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written and configured in Python.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  12. dwm icon
     24 likes

    dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All of the layouts can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

    84 dwm alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
12 of 65 Openbox alternatives