{"slug": "icewm", "name": "IceWM", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 2.908, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-12-06", "latest": "2026-09-15", "why": "A simple \"IceWM\" WM (I use the tiling \"Awesome WM\" but that's too radical for my wife) and she loves it.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "A simple \"IceWM\" WM (I use the tiling \"Awesome WM\" but that's too radical for my wife) and she loves it.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://ice-wm.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["IceWM"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795313361, "item_id": 49707085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49707085", "by": "rpdillon", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Debian/Ubuntu/Arch with IceWM or Fluxbox (or the like) works great.", "excerpt": "Meta-topic: I've seen this comment many times over the years, and it never results in a discussion where folks can agree. My reaction reading it is \"You must be holding it wrong!\" because I daily-drive Linux in many more ways than one (servers, laptops, desktops, handhelds (Hackberry Pi), SBCs, and, Valve-willing, VR headsets), and adore the Linux desktop. I use Pop!_OS almost everywhere, but Debian/Ubuntu/Arch with ", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft patches Windows and Excel \u2013 breaks audio, remote access, and paste"}, {"id": 762403570, "item_id": 47650223, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650223", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-04-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A simple \"IceWM\" WM (I use the tiling \"Awesome WM\" but that's too radical for my wife) and she loves it.", "excerpt": "I had a machine (an AMD 3700X with 32 GB of RAM and a fast NVMe SSD) on which I used to run Debian. Then about 2.5 years ago I bought a new one and gave my wife the 3700X: I figured out she'd be more at ease so I installed Ubuntu on it. I couldn't understand why everything was that slow compared to Debian and didn't want to bother looking into it so... After a few weeks: got rid of Ubuntu, installed her Debian. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11"}, {"id": 739032401, "item_id": 46189525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189525", "by": "cess11", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "before switching to IceWM because it was more fun to configure", "excerpt": "It was released 25 years and four days ago, and is still around. Simple enough to still work I'd bet, though the last official release was in 2017 or so. https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/ratpoison I used it for a while back then, before switching to IceWM because it was more fun to configure. Prepared me well for a much later move to i3.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "ratpoison", "story": "Emacs is my new window manager (2015)"}, {"id": 738852816, "item_id": 46178301, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178301", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use mostly IceWM these days.", "excerpt": "Interesting how Brian works. I guess it is the UNIX spirit he carries there. Or perhaps he is damn fast with the tabbed WM. Or is that OSX? I use mostly IceWM these days. I can't use the leaner WMs such as ion or ratpoison and XFCE, mate-desktop, KDE and GNOME are too slow or too crap (KDE unfortunately also now; before that only GNOME was crap. KDE killing xorg-support also means it is one less thing I can use anywa", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "shevy-java", "context": "Linux user for 23 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46464614", "date": "2026-01-02"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["window manager", "desktop window manager"], "compared": [{"slug": "i3", "name": "i3", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "kde", "name": "KDE", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gnome", "name": "GNOME", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "debian", "name": "Debian", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ubuntu", "name": "Ubuntu", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699297", "title": "Microsoft patches Windows and Excel \u2013 breaks audio, remote access, and paste", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47648452", "title": "Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770", "title": "Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161328", "title": "Emacs is my new window manager (2015)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46176905", "title": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 795313361, "item_id": 49707085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49707085", "by": "rpdillon", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Debian/Ubuntu/Arch with IceWM or Fluxbox (or the like) works great.", "excerpt": "Meta-topic: I've seen this comment many times over the years, and it never results in a discussion where folks can agree. My reaction reading it is \"You must be holding it wrong!\" because I daily-drive Linux in many more ways than one (servers, laptops, desktops, handhelds (Hackberry Pi), SBCs, and, Valve-willing, VR headsets), and adore the Linux desktop. I use Pop!_OS almost everywhere, but Debian/Ubuntu/Arch with ", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft patches Windows and Excel \u2013 breaks audio, remote access, and paste"}, {"id": 762403570, "item_id": 47650223, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650223", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-04-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A simple \"IceWM\" WM (I use the tiling \"Awesome WM\" but that's too radical for my wife) and she loves it.", "excerpt": "I had a machine (an AMD 3700X with 32 GB of RAM and a fast NVMe SSD) on which I used to run Debian. Then about 2.5 years ago I bought a new one and gave my wife the 3700X: I figured out she'd be more at ease so I installed Ubuntu on it. I couldn't understand why everything was that slow compared to Debian and didn't want to bother looking into it so... After a few weeks: got rid of Ubuntu, installed her Debian. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11"}, {"id": 743433827, "item_id": 46464614, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46464614", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use icewm typically", "excerpt": "I have been using Linux since almost 23 years now. I don't praise it as flawless in any way, but compared to Microsoft it is a much more efficient operating system. Top 500 supercomputers also running Linux kind of hint that Linux is very good. Despite this, Linux as ecosystem has numerous problems. The \"wayland is the future\" annoys me a lot. The wayland protocol was released in 2008. Now it is almost 20 years. I do", "context": "Linux user for 23 years", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it"}, {"id": 739032401, "item_id": 46189525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189525", "by": "cess11", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "before switching to IceWM because it was more fun to configure", "excerpt": "It was released 25 years and four days ago, and is still around. Simple enough to still work I'd bet, though the last official release was in 2017 or so. https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/ratpoison I used it for a while back then, before switching to IceWM because it was more fun to configure. Prepared me well for a much later move to i3.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "ratpoison", "story": "Emacs is my new window manager (2015)"}, {"id": 738852816, "item_id": 46178301, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178301", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use mostly IceWM these days.", "excerpt": "Interesting how Brian works. I guess it is the UNIX spirit he carries there. Or perhaps he is damn fast with the tabbed WM. Or is that OSX? I use mostly IceWM these days. I can't use the leaner WMs such as ion or ratpoison and XFCE, mate-desktop, KDE and GNOME are too slow or too crap (KDE unfortunately also now; before that only GNOME was crap. KDE killing xorg-support also means it is one less thing I can use anywa", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"}]}