awesome vs herbstluftwm

awesome is a Linux window manager for X built as a configurable framework, not a complete desktop environment. It is aimed at power users, developers and others who want detailed control over their graphical environment. Lua provides its extension mechanism, while keyboard control covers all operations without a mouse. Windows can be assigned to one or more tags, with multiple tags visible at once; XRandR provides per-screen desktops for multihead setups. The manager implements EWMH, XDG Base Directory, XEmbed, Desktop Notification and System Tray standards, and supports D-Bus. Lua extensions cover dynamic tagging, widgets, tabs and layouts. Its maker says asynchronous XCB makes it less subject to latency than window managers based on Xlib. Packages are available for several Linux and BSD distributions. The listed latest stable release is version 4.3, dated 28 January 2019. The free software is licensed under GNU GPLv2.

herbstluftwm is a manual tiling window manager for the X window system. Each virtual desktop, called a tag, has a tiling layer and a floating layer, allowing windows to occupy split frames or be placed freely. Frames can be divided into further subframes or filled with windows, and keyboard controls move, resize, and focus tiled and floating windows. Configuration runs through herbstclient and can be changed while the manager is running without a restart. Screen space can be divided into virtual monitors that need not match physical displays; monitors share a common pool of tags. The project is licensed under the Simplified BSD License and is listed as free at free. The download page lists packages for Linux distributions and Mac OS X via MacPorts, and confirms operation on Cygwin. The project also offers released source tarballs and links to its current development version. Community help is available through IRC, Reddit, GitHub issues, and a mailing list.