this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Interesting. Have you tried Stumpwm as well, and if so, how would you compare it to Herbstluftwm?
That's one I don't remember, but I probably wouldn't have: the config file is in Lisp. Not only is Lisp something I never use anymore, which gives it a high cognitive load, but I don't particularly care for Lisp-like syntax.
I'm certain there are several less common WMs that I haven't tried. It'd probably be almost impossible to try every WM every written for X; it seems to be a common hobby project for folks interested in the X protocol.
I did say "almost every", but perhaps even that was exaggeration. I do think I've tried the majority, though.
My differentiator for hlwm, the killer feature, shared by only two other projects that I'm aware of, is that hlwm has no configuration file. All configuration is performed through client commands. Every command interaction that can be performed by a user input - and much that can't - can also be performed on the CLI. All (?) windowing events can also be monitored on the command line, and therefore scripted. The other two WMs that share at least some of these features are bspwm and river.