The keyboard commands do make sense after some use but initially the learning curve is pretty steep.' In the same vein, Bruce Byfield found it (and stumpwm) 'virtually unusable until you read the documentation'. Peter Seebach remarked that 'the convenience and performance are impressive the learning curve, however, daunts many users.' Similarly, Brian Proffitt observes that 'the key commands are well explained in this window manager's man pages, and whatever you do, read these first. Jeff Covey found it 'lightning fast and perfectly stable'. Mark Pilgrim, a frequent user, praised it for being 'minimalist' and 'configurable'. The default keybindings are specifically designed to not conflict with Emacs. Unlike other tiling window managers like Ion, ratpoison completely ignores the mouse (or 'rat'), and avoids window decorations as much as possible. The name 'ratpoison' reflects its major design goal: it lets the user manage application windows without using a mouse.

The user interface and much of their functionality are inspired by the GNU Screen terminal multiplexer. ratpoison is written in C Betts' StumpWM re-implements a similar window manager in Common Lisp. Ratpoison is a tiling window manager for the X Window System primarily developed by Shawn Betts.

Rat poison csgo