If, like me, you have been looking to move on from i3/sway into something with a “Paper”-like experience, check out niri: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri
Paper (for GNOME shell) introduced a new tiling window manager paradigm: scrolling workspaces. New windows are placed to the right and build up in a stack. You push and pop from this stack as you enter and exit subtasks. For example, you might be editing code and want to open a PDF to find some datasheet values, then open a repl to do some calculations, then close both those windows and put the result into your code. The new windows grow out to the right, then you close them to scroll back left to the code.
While tools like papersway managed to hack a paper like experience on top of sway, niri implements it from the ground up into a window manager that is as light as sway but designed with scrolling workspaces as a first class citizen. For example, it has an overview mode for zooming out and seeing many workspaces at once. Given that the raison d’etre of the paper/scrolling paradigm is to be able to handle large numbers of windows, once you’ve used niri+overview it is very hard to go back to sway and live without it.
It is very nice! It’s also not really an improvement if you live in two windows all day long (80% if my time all I have open is a browser and my code) but as soon as you start having to context switch in and out of other tasks on multiple tracks (mortgage application, CAD design, proposal doc editing, email follow-ups, procrastinating on HN!) having paper like scrolling stacks is a huge boon.
marginalia_nu · 2m ago
I've been using Hyprland for a while now. I really like it. I've tried tiling window managers before and bounced off, but hypr really gets along with me.
Though I have the eye candy stuff cranked way down, doesn't really add too much for me.
dogas · 16m ago
I've attempted many times to adopt Hyprland, but I always come back to swaywm. Stability and speed always seem to be an issue. Both hyprland and the plugins (hyprpm, etc) have an alpha-level quality to them.
I have nothing but respect for vaxerski. He's 100% dedicated to the project and is incredibly prolific. But I feel like they need a better release strategy for those who prioritize stability over shiny new thing.
bobajeff · 38m ago
I like eye candy but browsing the hall of fame makes me realize that some people can't possibly be using their systems for anything other than showing off.
qsort · 13m ago
It's a phase. I used to try and customize everything, tiling window managers, custom color schemes, Arch, etc. Right now I'm on a Mac so vanilla I didn't even change the wallpaper.
fb03 · 2m ago
Was about to mention this. 25y+ linux user here, we all had our ricing phase, where we'd customize our desktop and shell to oblivion. Now, I'm always on a as-vanilla-as-possible Ubuntu machine, or a Macbook with the same default wallpaper that came when I bought it.
The only thing I do to my new systems is installing oh-my-zsh, because that gives me a lot of goodies for basically zero configuration (I just use and learned the default presets to be "my own")
63stack · 24m ago
Gaps between windows in tiling managers (why would you have random parts of your background take up screen estate), and "icons instead of numbers" for workspace identifiers (was the circle icon meta-5? 6? 7?) are the biggest indicators for this. I would get annoyed in 20 minutes.
bigyabai · 7m ago
You'd be surprised. The color themes look super complicated, but writing the CSS for one of these desktops is like a weekend project (at the longest).
fb03 · 10s ago
I guess you sabotaged your own point with the answer. If it takes a full weekend to just have my DE look like what I feel is needed, that's a lot of time wasted that you could be doing useful work or even gaming, in that sense, idk. But to each their own.
I was a ricer before in my heydays of Linux, but now, after 25 years, I just use whatever comes by default with Xubuntu (XFCE) and a Macbook
delusional · 27m ago
The two top ones, sure, but the rest of them look reasonably usable.
bobajeff · 30s ago
Further down the list, the biggest offender for me was 'Golden Era' there is no way you're using that to do actual coding (shown in the video).
sfpotter · 5m ago
I really like Cinnamon. Basic, basic tiling window management that covers most cases, but DE is fleshed out enough that it's actually capable of running an external monitor with my laptop's lid closed, and can even recover from the shock of opening the lid back up and unplugging the HDMI cable. This is my 20th year of desktop Linux and all I can say is that Fedora and Cinnamon works amazingly well.
tamimio · 12m ago
I tried it, too buggy and it looks a bit unprofessional imo.
iddan · 46m ago
I’m a Mac user but I spotted this in one of my employees’ computer and it looks sick.
entropie · 36m ago
Still a hardpass for me since workspaces are bound to displays which makes absolutely no sense for me.
I swap workspaces very often with my tripple monitor xmonad setup.
mberger · 41m ago
For most electron apps, you should put the above in ~/.config/electron-flags.conf. Note that VSCode is known not to work with it.
Seems like a deal breaker.
aorth · 10m ago
For the benefit of others, that note comes from this page:
It has been common for years to use such flags for Electron-based apps on Wayland. It's not specific to Hyprland, and it's not as bad as it sounds. Chromium has been working on Wayland support for years and it was behind a feature flag. It's worked well for a while now and will be the default soon. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-Auto-Ozone-Platform
hyperbolablabla · 36m ago
Code works just fine with Hyprland in my experience, you just need yo tweak the interface scaling. However, I've taken the opportunity to learn neovim since switching to arch/Hyprland, since the emphasis is much more on keyboard-centric input. Can't say I miss vscode much, other than multi cursor.
bee_rider · 35m ago
They clearly managed to make the window manager, so evidently it was not.
delusional · 25m ago
It's pretty common to need to hack stuff for tiling window managers. Java/Swing has required faking being LG3D since forever for example to run some compatibility code paths. Yeah, Looking Glass.
sergiotapia · 41m ago
If you want to try this but not really spend time configuring it, there's a cool OS distro called Omarchy. https://omarchy.org/
entropie · 34m ago
Its also very easy on nixos. I could switch from xmonad/xorg to hyprland in a minute (and back).
nextos · 23m ago
Do you still prefer XMonad?
hyperbolablabla · 38m ago
I recently finished setting up arch + Hyprland manually last weekend, and then saw Omarchy for the first time yesterday and it basically does everything I wanted + more QOL features. Hit me just slightly too late. But great work from DHH.
Paper (for GNOME shell) introduced a new tiling window manager paradigm: scrolling workspaces. New windows are placed to the right and build up in a stack. You push and pop from this stack as you enter and exit subtasks. For example, you might be editing code and want to open a PDF to find some datasheet values, then open a repl to do some calculations, then close both those windows and put the result into your code. The new windows grow out to the right, then you close them to scroll back left to the code.
While tools like papersway managed to hack a paper like experience on top of sway, niri implements it from the ground up into a window manager that is as light as sway but designed with scrolling workspaces as a first class citizen. For example, it has an overview mode for zooming out and seeing many workspaces at once. Given that the raison d’etre of the paper/scrolling paradigm is to be able to handle large numbers of windows, once you’ve used niri+overview it is very hard to go back to sway and live without it.
It is very nice! It’s also not really an improvement if you live in two windows all day long (80% if my time all I have open is a browser and my code) but as soon as you start having to context switch in and out of other tasks on multiple tracks (mortgage application, CAD design, proposal doc editing, email follow-ups, procrastinating on HN!) having paper like scrolling stacks is a huge boon.
Though I have the eye candy stuff cranked way down, doesn't really add too much for me.
I have nothing but respect for vaxerski. He's 100% dedicated to the project and is incredibly prolific. But I feel like they need a better release strategy for those who prioritize stability over shiny new thing.
The only thing I do to my new systems is installing oh-my-zsh, because that gives me a lot of goodies for basically zero configuration (I just use and learned the default presets to be "my own")
I was a ricer before in my heydays of Linux, but now, after 25 years, I just use whatever comes by default with Xubuntu (XFCE) and a Macbook
I swap workspaces very often with my tripple monitor xmonad setup.
Seems like a deal breaker.
https://wiki.hypr.land/Getting-Started/Master-Tutorial/#forc...
It has been common for years to use such flags for Electron-based apps on Wayland. It's not specific to Hyprland, and it's not as bad as it sounds. Chromium has been working on Wayland support for years and it was behind a feature flag. It's worked well for a while now and will be the default soon. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-Auto-Ozone-Platform