ratpoison is a simple window manager with no fancy graphics, no window decorations, and no fat library dependencies. It is largely modelled after GNU Screen, a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes.
The screen can be split into non-overlapping frames. All windows are kept maximized inside their frames to take full advantage of your precious screen real estate.
All interaction with the window manager is done through keystrokes. ratpoison has a prefix map to minimize the key clobbering that inhibits Emacs and other quality Linux software.
Key Features
- Extremely configurable.
- Very fast, requires little system resources.
- No loss of screen real estate on flashy borders.
- Only one visible frame, reducing distractions from getting on with the task in hand.
- Works like GNU Screen.
Website: www.nongnu.org/ratpoison
Support: Manual
Developer: Shawn Betts, Ryan Yeske and other contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
ratpoison is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| X11 Tiling Window Managers | |
|---|---|
| i3 | Improved tiling window manager |
| StumpWM | Common Lisp window manager |
| bspwm | Based on binary space partitioning |
| EXWM | Full-featured tiling X window manager for Emacs |
| herbstluftwm | Basic tiling concept is that the layout is represented by a binary tree |
| wmderland | Offers no bloated features, an easy-to-use config, and a very small footprint |
| Notion | Originally a fork of Ion |
| zwm | Minimal, opinionated window manager with a keyboard-driven workflow |
| Ratpoison | Keyboard-only window manager |
| NWM | Lightweight window manager with a simple, efficient workflow |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
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