{"slug": "niri", "name": "niri", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that arranges windows on an infinite horizontal strip.", "recommenders": 21, "commenters": 31, "warners": 1, "score": 17.781, "rising": 0.44, "first": "2025-11-14", "latest": "2026-10-27", "why": "Loved for its scrolling layout, which keeps adding windows to an endless horizontal strip, and for pairing easily with desktop shells like Noctalia and DankMaterialShell.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 27, "neutral": 17, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [4, 2, 3, 1, 0, 5, 2, 0, 4, 1, 3, 2], "listed": true, "loved": ["Scrolling layout", "Desktop shell pairing"], "caveat": "X11 compatibility", "short_quote": "The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/niri-wm/niri", "official_url": "https://github.com/niri-wm/niri", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["niri", "Niri"], "verdict": [{"text": "Loved for its scrolling layout, which keeps adding windows to an endless horizontal strip,", "cites": [{"id": 797336800, "item_id": 49833550, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833550", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "recently switched to niri and really, really like it", "excerpt": "I've used dwm for years and recently switched to niri and really, really like it. I'm with you, that tiling vertically is not useful. Niri aligns better with my innate mental model: just keep adding new panes to the right offscreen that I can scroll through, then I can swipe up and down for more lanes to do collections of different tasks. I feel much more productive doing read/write tasks, like viewing tickets + code", "context": "used dwm for years", "use_case": "scrolling tiling window manager", "switched_from": "dwm", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 766448672, "item_id": 47903042, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "by": "dyates", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.[1] Having horizontal scroll unbounded by my monitor size and workspace count unbound by the number of shortcut keys I have configured has been very freeing, and the graphical stuff is nice too. My only remaining pain-point is that its X compatibility layer, xwayland-satellite, does not yet support drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.[2] [1", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 762064224, "item_id": 47629014, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629014", "by": "edoloughlin", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus. Set the default window width to 1/4 or 1/3 of the screen width (depending on the screen size) and it's easy to keep just the right context visible.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager for focus", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 781229808, "item_id": 48826863, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826863", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion.", "excerpt": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion. I don\u2019t need tmux. Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it\u2019s perfect for the way my brain works. If you haven\u2019t tried it, I highly recommended it.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management instead of tmux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}]}, {"text": " and for pairing easily with desktop shells like Noctalia and DankMaterialShell.", "cites": [{"id": 792262544, "item_id": 49516409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49516409", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "excerpt": "The nice thing about wayland is you can easily combine a compositor/window manager with a wayland desktop shell and get a lot of the stuff you used to have to fiddle with when using like i3 for free. For example, I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 766452992, "item_id": 47903312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck. One thing I learned in the process was that the custom wayland desktop world has the concept of a \"desktop shell,\" which provides most or all of the additional components you might want on top of your compositor, rather than having to separately install a top bar, manage suspend/hibernate, figure out notifications, etc. You ca", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 780882432, "item_id": 48805152, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805152", "by": "bshacklett", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted", "excerpt": "Point to another source that does it as well or better. The problems might have been solved, but it seems the majority of the industry continues to ignore them. That said, I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted by the lack of astonishing behavior.", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "If you're a button, you have one job"}, {"id": 749144400, "item_id": 46821525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821525", "by": "S0und", "date": "2026-01-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy", "excerpt": "I've switched my work laptop from W10 to Fedora about 9 months ago, using KDE during this time. The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy, which is odd to say. I've a stacked external monitor setup 2 x 4k monitors on top of each other. Top one is the main, runs mostly just the IDE. The bottom one with 7 named workspaces: - chat: teams / discord - work: assisting workspace for Main screen - git : s", "context": "switched work laptop from Windows 10 to Fedora", "use_case": "scrolling window manager on work laptop", "switched_from": "KDE", "story": "The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is limited X11 support through xwayland-satellite,", "cites": [{"id": 766448672, "item_id": 47903042, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "by": "dyates", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.[1] Having horizontal scroll unbounded by my monitor size and workspace count unbound by the number of shortcut keys I have configured has been very freeing, and the graphical stuff is nice too. My only remaining pain-point is that its X compatibility layer, xwayland-satellite, does not yet support drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.[2] [1", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 759190896, "item_id": 47449431, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47449431", "by": "arikrahman", "date": "2026-03-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager", "excerpt": "I've had an interesting experience with creating a wayland compatability layer with Bitwig. Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager, it is even harder to use as a base as it less supportive of X11 compared to other WMs like hyprland. This may be Niche, but DAWs are very rare to support linux, especially this stack. I would say it might be a stretch to say the company behind Bitwig is punishing Wayland ", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years"}, {"id": 740490001, "item_id": 46280625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280625", "by": "imiric", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri, and had to install both Xwayland and xwayland-satellite", "excerpt": "> Back when I was writing xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland Ah, yes, XDG \"portals\". The reason file selection and screencasting is broken on every new Linux/Wayland installation I do, forcing me to try to understand the insane matrix of supported, half-supported, broken, and unsupported features by the dozen+ different implementations, and come up with the magic configuration incantation that makes it work on my system. Br", "context": "Linux/Wayland user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop"}]}, {"text": " and some find its spatial window model hard to adjust to.", "cites": [{"id": 766453680, "item_id": 47903355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903355", "by": "varun_ch", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay.", "excerpt": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay. I don\u2019t think it clicked with me/I\u2019m not sure if I was using it right, but it was giving me a headache to mentally deal with spatially mapping all of my windows (I came from MacOS where I just knew which windows I had open and cmd+tab into the right one when needed).. I think I would\u2019ve adjusted best if I could somehow just watch someone do their da", "context": "came from macOS", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766452992, "item_id": 47903312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck. One thing I learned in the process was that the custom wayland desktop world has the concept of a \"desktop shell,\" which provides most or all of the additional components you might want on top of your compositor, rather than having to separately install a top bar, manage suspend/hibernate, figure out notifications, etc. You ca", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Scrolling layout", "summary": "Commenters say the unbounded horizontal scroll fits how they think and helps focus.", "quotes": [{"id": 797336800, "item_id": 49833550, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833550", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "recently switched to niri and really, really like it", "excerpt": "I've used dwm for years and recently switched to niri and really, really like it. I'm with you, that tiling vertically is not useful. Niri aligns better with my innate mental model: just keep adding new panes to the right offscreen that I can scroll through, then I can swipe up and down for more lanes to do collections of different tasks. I feel much more productive doing read/write tasks, like viewing tickets + code", "context": "used dwm for years", "use_case": "scrolling tiling window manager", "switched_from": "dwm", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 766448672, "item_id": 47903042, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "by": "dyates", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.[1] Having horizontal scroll unbounded by my monitor size and workspace count unbound by the number of shortcut keys I have configured has been very freeing, and the graphical stuff is nice too. My only remaining pain-point is that its X compatibility layer, xwayland-satellite, does not yet support drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.[2] [1", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 762064224, "item_id": 47629014, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629014", "by": "edoloughlin", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus. Set the default window width to 1/4 or 1/3 of the screen width (depending on the screen size) and it's easy to keep just the right context visible.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager for focus", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}]}, {"label": "Desktop shell pairing", "summary": "Pairing it with Noctalia or DankMaterialShell gives a status bar, notifications and suspend without extra fiddling.", "quotes": [{"id": 792262544, "item_id": 49516409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49516409", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "excerpt": "The nice thing about wayland is you can easily combine a compositor/window manager with a wayland desktop shell and get a lot of the stuff you used to have to fiddle with when using like i3 for free. For example, I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 766452992, "item_id": 47903312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck. One thing I learned in the process was that the custom wayland desktop world has the concept of a \"desktop shell,\" which provides most or all of the additional components you might want on top of your compositor, rather than having to separately install a top bar, manage suspend/hibernate, figure out notifications, etc. You ca", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 780882432, "item_id": 48805152, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805152", "by": "bshacklett", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted", "excerpt": "Point to another source that does it as well or better. The problems might have been solved, but it seems the majority of the industry continues to ignore them. That said, I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted by the lack of astonishing behavior.", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "If you're a button, you have one job"}]}, {"label": "Multi-monitor workspaces", "summary": "Each monitor gets its own workspaces, which move back when a monitor is reconnected.", "quotes": [{"id": 734896704, "item_id": 45931044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931044", "by": "Philpax", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then", "excerpt": "I'm not a Niri stan by any means - I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then - but I suspect that most alternatives have answers to these, too. > Especially how it handles workspaces on multiple monitors. By default, each monitor has one workspace. Not one workspace for ALL monitors. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most tiling WMs; it's definitely the case for Niri (https://github.c", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "Sway", "story": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad"}, {"id": 766456256, "item_id": 47903516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903516", "by": "nolist_policy", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try", "excerpt": "Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try: > Each monitor contains an independent set of workspaces arranged vertically. [...] You can move a workspace to a different monitor [...] > When you disconnect a monitor, its workspaces will automatically move to a different monitor. But, they will also \"remember\" their original monitor, so when you reconnect it, the workspaces will au", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-monitor workspace management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 749144400, "item_id": 46821525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821525", "by": "S0und", "date": "2026-01-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy", "excerpt": "I've switched my work laptop from W10 to Fedora about 9 months ago, using KDE during this time. The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy, which is odd to say. I've a stacked external monitor setup 2 x 4k monitors on top of each other. Top one is the main, runs mostly just the IDE. The bottom one with 7 named workspaces: - chat: teams / discord - work: assisting workspace for Main screen - git : s", "context": "switched work laptop from Windows 10 to Fedora", "use_case": "scrolling window manager on work laptop", "switched_from": "KDE", "story": "The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers"}]}, {"label": "Smooth and fast", "summary": "Users describe it as smooth, fast and zippy, including on large external monitors.", "quotes": [{"id": 742119072, "item_id": 46382442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382442", "by": "0x38B", "date": "2025-12-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Wayland window manager Niri is amazing \u2013 so smooth and fast, now with alt-tab in the latest release.", "excerpt": "My brother has a 16, and it\u2019s been good for him. It is big and chunky, more so with the GPU module; only a few paragraphs into the blog post I felt the author was trying to fit a big square peg in a round hole, and then blaming the square peg for being big and square. That is to say, it\u2019s a big, heavy, expensive laptop. My brother works shifts in a remote location and from what I can tell, the 16 is great for that: y", "context": "Linux user with Framework laptop", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "Sway", "story": "I'm returning my Framework 16"}, {"id": 773651793, "item_id": 48353237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353237", "by": "rcarmo", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy", "excerpt": "I love mine: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 - I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy, besides being able to drive huge external monitors.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chuwi Minibook X"}, {"id": 799097153, "item_id": 49943572, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943572", "by": "lobofta", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride.", "excerpt": "Desktop shells may be the answer. I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride. Were I not a NixOs nerd I'd recommend this setup to any noob.", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}]}, {"label": "Readable config", "summary": "Its KDL config is easy to read, reloads on save, and can be as simple or complex as wanted.", "quotes": [{"id": 783763472, "item_id": 48985217, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985217", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like niri's approach.", "excerpt": "It's neat that Hyprland lets you define layouts in its config but I like niri's approach. It uses KDL (an established document / config language) and slightly extends it to add useful things like being able to include files. For example, here's mine: https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice/blob/master/.config/niri/config.kdl What you end up with is a config file that's natural to read with no prior knowledge about any", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 783865328, "item_id": 48991583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991583", "by": "hackeraccount", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.", "excerpt": "You're like a smarter more articulate version of me. I used to use Sway - switched to hyperland very briefly and it was so busy and a pain to work with. Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 734896704, "item_id": 45931044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931044", "by": "Philpax", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then", "excerpt": "I'm not a Niri stan by any means - I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then - but I suspect that most alternatives have answers to these, too. > Especially how it handles workspaces on multiple monitors. By default, each monitor has one workspace. Not one workspace for ALL monitors. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most tiling WMs; it's definitely the case for Niri (https://github.c", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "Sway", "story": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad"}]}, {"label": "Replaces tmux", "summary": "Some users say they no longer need tmux after switching.", "quotes": [{"id": 799069552, "item_id": 49941847, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49941847", "by": "OtomotO", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all.", "excerpt": "Actually for me it's different. I've been using Tmux and later Zellij for many years, while I was on Ubuntu's Unity, then Gnome, KDE, i3 and lastly sway. Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all. Very weird, come to think of.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "sway", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}, {"id": 781229808, "item_id": 48826863, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826863", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion.", "excerpt": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion. I don\u2019t need tmux. Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it\u2019s perfect for the way my brain works. If you haven\u2019t tried it, I highly recommended it.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management instead of tmux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "X11 compatibility", "summary": "X11 apps need xwayland-satellite, which lacks drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.", "quotes": [{"id": 766448672, "item_id": 47903042, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "by": "dyates", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.[1] Having horizontal scroll unbounded by my monitor size and workspace count unbound by the number of shortcut keys I have configured has been very freeing, and the graphical stuff is nice too. My only remaining pain-point is that its X compatibility layer, xwayland-satellite, does not yet support drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.[2] [1", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 759190896, "item_id": 47449431, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47449431", "by": "arikrahman", "date": "2026-03-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager", "excerpt": "I've had an interesting experience with creating a wayland compatability layer with Bitwig. Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager, it is even harder to use as a base as it less supportive of X11 compared to other WMs like hyprland. This may be Niche, but DAWs are very rare to support linux, especially this stack. I would say it might be a stretch to say the company behind Bitwig is punishing Wayland ", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years"}, {"id": 740490001, "item_id": 46280625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280625", "by": "imiric", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri, and had to install both Xwayland and xwayland-satellite", "excerpt": "> Back when I was writing xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland Ah, yes, XDG \"portals\". The reason file selection and screencasting is broken on every new Linux/Wayland installation I do, forcing me to try to understand the insane matrix of supported, half-supported, broken, and unsupported features by the dozen+ different implementations, and come up with the magic configuration incantation that makes it work on my system. Br", "context": "Linux/Wayland user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop"}]}, {"label": "Learning curve", "summary": "Some users found the spatial window model hard to get used to at first.", "quotes": [{"id": 766453680, "item_id": 47903355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903355", "by": "varun_ch", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay.", "excerpt": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay. I don\u2019t think it clicked with me/I\u2019m not sure if I was using it right, but it was giving me a headache to mentally deal with spatially mapping all of my windows (I came from MacOS where I just knew which windows I had open and cmd+tab into the right one when needed).. I think I would\u2019ve adjusted best if I could somehow just watch someone do their da", "context": "came from macOS", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766452992, "item_id": 47903312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck. One thing I learned in the process was that the custom wayland desktop world has the concept of a \"desktop shell,\" which provides most or all of the additional components you might want on top of your compositor, rather than having to separately install a top bar, manage suspend/hibernate, figure out notifications, etc. You ca", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}]}, {"label": "Missing scratchpads", "summary": "An i3/sway user missed scratchpads and could not stop partially cropped windows from showing.", "quotes": [{"id": 766468624, "item_id": 47904289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47904289", "by": "_rousbound", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny", "excerpt": "For people that went from i3wm to Niri, I would love to be convinced. Being a i3wm(now sway) user, I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny: - (Cropping) Sometimes when I scroll by shifting focus, a little bit like 10% of the window I pushed to the left keeps appearing. I tried to configure Niri in such a way that never a tiny fraction of a window be cropped but couldn't manage. Not sure I mis", "context": "i3wm/sway user", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}]}], "who": [{"by": "lobofta", "context": "NixOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943572", "date": "2026-10-03"}, {"by": "randusername", "context": "used dwm for years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833550", "date": "2026-09-24"}, {"by": "nickjj", "context": "maintains own dotfiles, Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390940", "date": "2026-08-21"}, {"by": "Fire-Dragon-DoL", "context": "1080p gamer on Linux", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410265", "date": "2026-06-05"}, {"by": "varun_ch", "context": "came from macOS", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903355", "date": "2026-04-25"}, {"by": "mplanchard", "context": "NixOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "date": "2026-04-25"}, {"by": "dyates", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "date": "2026-04-25"}, {"by": "imiric", "context": "Linux user, formerly bspwm user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391780", "date": "2026-03-15"}, {"by": "S0und", "context": "switched work laptop from Windows 10 to Fedora", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821525", "date": "2026-01-29"}, {"by": "0x38B", "context": "Linux user with Framework laptop", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382442", "date": "2025-12-24"}, {"by": "jxdxbx", "context": "laptop user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45938337", "date": "2025-11-15"}], "tags": ["for Linux users", "for laptops", "for multi-monitor setups", "for tiling WM switchers"], "use_cases": ["window manager", "wayland compositor", "desktop environment", "window management", "scrolling tiling window manager", "wayland window manager"], "compared": [{"slug": "sway", "name": "Sway", "co": 7, "switched_from": 3, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "hyprland", "name": "Hyprland", "co": 8, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "i3", "name": "i3", "co": 6, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kde-plasma", "name": "KDE Plasma", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "bspwm", "name": "bspwm", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "arch-linux", "name": "Arch Linux", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "windows", "name": "Windows", "co": 0, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902416", "title": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928873", "title": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937540", "title": "Make Tmux the OS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825642", "title": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49499854", "title": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982011", "title": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 4}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 4}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 4}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804218993, "item_id": 50263687, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263687", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Niri and launch Foot terminals all the time as part of my workflow", "excerpt": "Yeah. It's slow on Linux, for sure. I use Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch. I use Niri and launch Foot terminals all the time as part of my workflow (it's just how my mind works), so time to launch matters to me.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799097153, "item_id": 49943572, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943572", "by": "lobofta", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride.", "excerpt": "Desktop shells may be the answer. I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride. Were I not a NixOs nerd I'd recommend this setup to any noob.", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}, {"id": 799069552, "item_id": 49941847, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49941847", "by": "OtomotO", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all.", "excerpt": "Actually for me it's different. I've been using Tmux and later Zellij for many years, while I was on Ubuntu's Unity, then Gnome, KDE, i3 and lastly sway. Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all. Very weird, come to think of.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "sway", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}, {"id": 797336800, "item_id": 49833550, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833550", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "recently switched to niri and really, really like it", "excerpt": "I've used dwm for years and recently switched to niri and really, really like it. I'm with you, that tiling vertically is not useful. Niri aligns better with my innate mental model: just keep adding new panes to the right offscreen that I can scroll through, then I can swipe up and down for more lanes to do collections of different tasks. I feel much more productive doing read/write tasks, like viewing tickets + code", "context": "used dwm for years", "use_case": "scrolling tiling window manager", "switched_from": "dwm", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 797258704, "item_id": 49828669, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49828669", "by": "noelwelsh", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Niri and love it.", "excerpt": "I use Niri and love it. I think manually managing windows is a waste of time, and when I watch normal users they usually struggle with this and their desktop is a disaster zone. I never want to go back to that. Tiling window managers are slightly better, but they still require you do window management.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 792262544, "item_id": 49516409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49516409", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "excerpt": "The nice thing about wayland is you can easily combine a compositor/window manager with a wayland desktop shell and get a lot of the stuff you used to have to fiddle with when using like i3 for free. For example, I use niri with the \u201cdank material shell\u201d desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all \u201cout of the box.\u201d", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 792052433, "item_id": 49503277, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503277", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have my own opinionated Arch / niri set up", "excerpt": "Yep, but pretty much every single piece of software you've installed on your system can read and write files to your home directory in a silent way without root, and that's where your most important files are on a desktop machine (API tokens, secrets, client projects, etc.). I have my own opinionated Arch / niri set up and there's 1155 packages installed. That's 1155 opportunities for a package to be compromised. Thi", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 790255040, "item_id": 49390940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390940", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "niri is so good", "excerpt": "> It's a lot more than any shell script I've written, certainly. If you've written a more complex one I'd love to see it. I've been maintaining https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice for around 8 years, it's my dotfiles that have an installer, theming and other things. I'd still absolutely classify this is a shell script / dotfiles project. I've added just enough customization to make it easy to modify most things wi", "context": "maintains own dotfiles, Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omacom Foundation Launches with $8M"}, {"id": 783865328, "item_id": 48991583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991583", "by": "hackeraccount", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.", "excerpt": "You're like a smarter more articulate version of me. I used to use Sway - switched to hyperland very briefly and it was so busy and a pain to work with. Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 783763472, "item_id": 48985217, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985217", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like niri's approach.", "excerpt": "It's neat that Hyprland lets you define layouts in its config but I like niri's approach. It uses KDL (an established document / config language) and slightly extends it to add useful things like being able to include files. For example, here's mine: https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice/blob/master/.config/niri/config.kdl What you end up with is a config file that's natural to read with no prior knowledge about any", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 783403889, "item_id": 48962743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48962743", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A full desktop environment I put together based on niri boots at 1.1 GB of memory.", "excerpt": "I like how efficient Arch is, in the sense that you have nothing and now you get to pick and choose what you want. My main desktop I use for full time software development and video editing is from 2014. I've run Windows on it forever. I put Arch on it ~8 months ago. A full desktop environment I put together based on niri boots at 1.1 GB of memory. Every app I want is installed (tons of CLI tools, various GUI tools, ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 783272913, "item_id": 48954557, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954557", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-07-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fedora + Niri + Foot + Podman + Neovim is better with each release.", "excerpt": "iOS has gotten worse. No doubt about it. I don\u2019t think k that\u2019s AI induced. I think Apple have lost the plot. On the other hand, Fedora + Niri + Foot + Podman + Neovim is better with each release.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"}, {"id": 781229808, "item_id": 48826863, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826863", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion.", "excerpt": "Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion. I don\u2019t need tmux. Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it\u2019s perfect for the way my brain works. If you haven\u2019t tried it, I highly recommended it.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management instead of tmux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}, {"id": 780882432, "item_id": 48805152, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805152", "by": "bshacklett", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted", "excerpt": "Point to another source that does it as well or better. The problems might have been solved, but it seems the majority of the industry continues to ignore them. That said, I\u2019ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I\u2019m continuously delighted by the lack of astonishing behavior.", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "If you're a button, you have one job"}, {"id": 779556338, "item_id": 48722271, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48722271", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a niri based opinionated set of configuration on top of CachyOS (or vanilla Arch)", "excerpt": "If anyone is looking for a niri based opinionated set of configuration on top of CachyOS (or vanilla Arch) I put together: https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice The goal is after installing the official ISO, you can get a developer focused desktop environment up and running in ~10 minutes with 1 command. It's quite configurable so you can change around anything you want ahead of time or after you install it. I use i", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "CachyOS June 2026 Release"}, {"id": 779555889, "item_id": 48722243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48722243", "by": "JaceComix", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm using Niri and Noctalia as my desktop setup", "excerpt": "I switched to Cachy in late February this year. First day was a bit rough, first week was still a little rough, but it's been pretty smooth since then, even when learning how to fix things and trying new software. I'm using Niri and Noctalia as my desktop setup, and it's been different than my Windows experience, but it feels fun and cool to just use a computer in a new way.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "CachyOS June 2026 Release"}, {"id": 779215297, "item_id": 48700956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48700956", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-06-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a wonderful environment on 2014 era hardware.", "excerpt": "I run vanilla Arch with niri (Wayland), Waybar and a few other tools to create a desktop environment. I didn't do any special kernel or app specific tweaks for performance. The machine boots using 1.1 GB of memory and total disk space after installing a bunch of apps is ~10 GB. Browser, Docker, video editor, image editor, LibreOffice, OBS, VMs, a ton of CLI tools and everything you'd expect to have a fully working an", "context": "runs 2014-era hardware", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide"}, {"id": 777295363, "item_id": 48580960, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48580960", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Maybe this time I'll try to get Niri running on this desktop.", "excerpt": "A very fine sense of timing to release this one year after KDE 6.4 was released! https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.4.0/ . Here in 2026, KDE 6.7 just dropped. I'm still super excited for this release. KDE 6.4.3 from 6.2.5 is a nice jump. I'm very excited to get Wayland here, which is my normal baseline. Maybe this time I'll try to get Niri running on this desktop. This is one of my daily driver systems, with a ", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "SteamOS Linux 3.8 released as stable"}, {"id": 775832944, "item_id": 48489559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48489559", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I reported it to niri but it hasn't gotten traction", "excerpt": "When I switched to Linux from Windows last year I noticed I had a lot of keyboard input latency only when gaming. It was like I had ~100ms of input latency and it felt exactly the same as playing old school Quake I on a dial up connection without client side prediction turned on. It's like you're skating on ice with a delay when seeing the output vs when you performed the input. This was despite having a solid 60 FPS", "context": "switched from Windows to Linux last year", "use_case": "Wayland compositor for gaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux latency measurements and compositor tuning"}, {"id": 774564241, "item_id": 48410265, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410265", "by": "Fire-Dragon-DoL", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Niri as my desktop environment on linux", "excerpt": "Happy 1080p poweruser and gamer here. I get to spend less and still play any game at max, and I can actually run 2 instances of some heavy games for local coop using Nucleus (Nightreign specifically). I use Niri as my desktop environment on linux, zero need for 4k. My screen is 27'' since 8 years ago when i bought it", "context": "1080p gamer on Linux", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 \u2013 AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building"}, {"id": 773651793, "item_id": 48353237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353237", "by": "rcarmo", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy", "excerpt": "I love mine: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 - I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy, besides being able to drive huge external monitors.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chuwi Minibook X"}, {"id": 772746512, "item_id": 48296657, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296657", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2026-05-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Taking Niri as a real desktop example, it's just so good", "excerpt": "Excellent post. Thank you. I love looking through awesome-web-desktops. Most aren't infinite canvases but they are canvases, canvases of programs. There's fun stuff. UI paradigms being cooked up. I'll pitch in particular AetherOS, as being a neat web desktop that also is interestingly connected, networked, which is neat. https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://bsky.app/profile/aetheros.computer I do ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cate v1.0 is out: The Infinite canvas workspace for developers"}, {"id": 769424881, "item_id": 48089055, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089055", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I added a desktop environment based on using niri and Arch Linux.", "excerpt": "I've had public dotfiles at https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice for a long time but recently branded them and after having run native Linux for 6 months, I added a desktop environment based on using niri and Arch Linux. It can get you up and running in a few minutes with an installer that can set up a new system or keep an existing system up to date. There's also a command line version that works on Arch and Debia", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 766468624, "item_id": 47904289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47904289", "by": "_rousbound", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny", "excerpt": "For people that went from i3wm to Niri, I would love to be convinced. Being a i3wm(now sway) user, I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny: - (Cropping) Sometimes when I scroll by shifting focus, a little bit like 10% of the window I pushed to the left keeps appearing. I tried to configure Niri in such a way that never a tiny fraction of a window be cropped but couldn't manage. Not sure I mis", "context": "i3wm/sway user", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766456256, "item_id": 47903516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903516", "by": "nolist_policy", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try", "excerpt": "Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try: > Each monitor contains an independent set of workspaces arranged vertically. [...] You can move a workspace to a different monitor [...] > When you disconnect a monitor, its workspaces will automatically move to a different monitor. But, they will also \"remember\" their original monitor, so when you reconnect it, the workspaces will au", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-monitor workspace management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766453680, "item_id": 47903355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903355", "by": "varun_ch", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay.", "excerpt": "I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay. I don\u2019t think it clicked with me/I\u2019m not sure if I was using it right, but it was giving me a headache to mentally deal with spatially mapping all of my windows (I came from MacOS where I just knew which windows I had open and cmd+tab into the right one when needed).. I think I would\u2019ve adjusted best if I could somehow just watch someone do their da", "context": "came from macOS", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766452992, "item_id": 47903312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903312", "by": "mplanchard", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.", "excerpt": "I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck. One thing I learned in the process was that the custom wayland desktop world has the concept of a \"desktop shell,\" which provides most or all of the additional components you might want on top of your compositor, rather than having to separately install a top bar, manage suspend/hibernate, figure out notifications, etc. You ca", "context": "NixOS user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766448672, "item_id": 47903042, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903042", "by": "dyates", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.[1] Having horizontal scroll unbounded by my monitor size and workspace count unbound by the number of shortcut keys I have configured has been very freeing, and the graphical stuff is nice too. My only remaining pain-point is that its X compatibility layer, xwayland-satellite, does not yet support drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.[2] [1", "context": "decade-long i3 user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 766445632, "item_id": 47902852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902852", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Niri is so good. I've switched to using it about 5 months ago", "excerpt": "Niri is so good. I've switched to using it about 5 months ago and it was legit the best computing decision I can remember making in recent history to move away from Windows. My dotfiles have always included an install script for setting everything up around command line tools, theme switching and more but it fully supports niri now too on Arch based distros https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles in case anyone is shoppin", "context": "Arch-based Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "Windows", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 762534066, "item_id": 47658379, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658379", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "now I am on niri on my desktop. I recommend you to test it out within a virtual machine", "excerpt": "I had once lost my LUKS encryption key to StackOverflow effectively making me lose all the data that I had within that disk. It was only when I had scrolled down the article AFTER running the command, that I saw warning: your data will be unrecoverable and I panicked (I then used chatgpt but to no avail, and I feel like it might've made things worse even) Anyhow, I think a larger lesson is to have a full context on w", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop window manager", "switched_from": "Hyprland", "story": "A Tale of AI Betrayal and Snapshotting Victory"}, {"id": 762064224, "item_id": 47629014, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629014", "by": "edoloughlin", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.", "excerpt": "I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus. Set the default window width to 1/4 or 1/3 of the screen width (depending on the screen size) and it's easy to keep just the right context visible.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager for focus", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 760148913, "item_id": 47509307, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509307", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "What are your thoughts on going even further than Niri?", "excerpt": "I love the writing of a Niri clone with this. Miri is a great way to express what Miracle WM can do! What are your thoughts on going even further than Niri? Virtual outputs has some people asking for it. I'd be interested to hear how you think that might be modelled, how the plugin system might be able to express that. Stilch is the main Wayland example I know today with virtual outputs, https://github.com/wegel/stil", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating a WebAssembly Plugin System for Window Management in Miracle"}, {"id": 759190896, "item_id": 47449431, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47449431", "by": "arikrahman", "date": "2026-03-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager", "excerpt": "I've had an interesting experience with creating a wayland compatability layer with Bitwig. Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager, it is even harder to use as a base as it less supportive of X11 compared to other WMs like hyprland. This may be Niche, but DAWs are very rare to support linux, especially this stack. I would say it might be a stretch to say the company behind Bitwig is punishing Wayland ", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years"}, {"id": 758268481, "item_id": 47391780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391780", "by": "imiric", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched to niri a few months ago, and while I like it for the most part, it feels too... busy for my taste.", "excerpt": "I'm very excited about river. I switched to niri a few months ago, and while I like it for the most part, it feels too... busy for my taste. It defaults to a bunch of animations and decorations, all of which I've turned off. I'm happy with my current setup (aside from Wayland quirks[1]), but river's design and simplicity are very appealing. It reminds me of the philosophy of bspwm/sxhkd which I used for years on X11.", "context": "Linux user, formerly bspwm user", "use_case": "scrollable tiling compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager"}, {"id": 758264369, "item_id": 47391523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391523", "by": "kyorochan", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched to Niri while waiting for it to happen", "excerpt": "River was really great even before this split, so I'm very excited to see what happens in the space in the future. I switched to Niri while waiting for it to happen, and I'll probably switch back at some point. If you were an Xmonad user I feel pretty confident in saying River is the Wayland WM for you.", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager"}, {"id": 754271713, "item_id": 47141982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141982", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2026-02-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it to navigate Niri", "excerpt": "I've been enjoying Vicinae for this. Not rust. Has some compatibility with Raycast extensions. And it works on Linux! I use it to navigate Niri, and use it as my clipboard manager (which recently broke?) https://github.com/vicinaehq/vicinae I am wondering if Vicinae ever attempts the Raycast AI stuff.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "RustCast -open-source Raycast-style launcher written in Rust"}, {"id": 753708049, "item_id": 47106753, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106753", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "As far as I know niri enables direct scanout by default.", "excerpt": "Thanks, I have tried gamescope but it kills the performance of games for me. All games have a lot of stuttering when I use it. It also didn't reduce the input latency. Same hardware is liquid smooth on Windows. As far as I know niri enables direct scanout by default. It's an option you can disable if you want https://niri-wm.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Debug-Options.html#disable-direct-scanout. I do not have this", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Inputlag.science \u2013 Repository of knowledge about input lag in gaming"}, {"id": 753684752, "item_id": 47105297, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105297", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "This only happens to me with niri", "excerpt": "I wish they included the window compositor as something that can introduce latency because I'd like to learn more about it. When I switched from Windows to Linux on the same hardware I noticed a lot of keyboard input latency when playing games, at least 150ms. This only happens to me with niri, KDE Plasma (Wayland) feels identical to Windows. So did Hyprland. I'm able to reproduce it on multiple systems when I have a", "context": "switched from Windows to Linux", "use_case": "Wayland compositor for gaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Inputlag.science \u2013 Repository of knowledge about input lag in gaming"}, {"id": 753324258, "item_id": 47082766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082766", "by": "wonger_", "date": "2026-02-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a 4k monitor and the window manager niri", "excerpt": "I keep htop and some vim buffers open regularly, and I keep some tools open while a work on a project e.g. https://github.com/Canop/bacon. But everything else is opened as needed. Especially toys like this weather thing. EDIT - I use a 4k monitor and the window manager niri, so it's easy to fit multiple terminals on a screen", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "A terminal weather app with ASCII animations driven by real-time weather data"}, {"id": 752067280, "item_id": 47004205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004205", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-02-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "niri is great because it gives you the best of all worlds.", "excerpt": "> Not to mention the direction that the likes of Paper and Niri are going, these are things that very few users get to experience and therefore couldn't possibly have an informed decision on what they prefer. niri is great because it gives you the best of all worlds. Scrolling by default but you can easily float and tile things as needed. It feels so intuitive for how I use computers. I've created a few posts and vid", "context": "Linux user, previously Windows for 25 years", "use_case": "scrolling tiling window management", "switched_from": "Windows", "story": "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe \u2013 the saga continues"}, {"id": 749144400, "item_id": 46821525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821525", "by": "S0und", "date": "2026-01-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy", "excerpt": "I've switched my work laptop from W10 to Fedora about 9 months ago, using KDE during this time. The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy, which is odd to say. I've a stacked external monitor setup 2 x 4k monitors on top of each other. Top one is the main, runs mostly just the IDE. The bottom one with 7 named workspaces: - chat: teams / discord - work: assisting workspace for Main screen - git : s", "context": "switched work laptop from Windows 10 to Fedora", "use_case": "scrolling window manager on work laptop", "switched_from": "KDE", "story": "The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers"}, {"id": 740490001, "item_id": 46280625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280625", "by": "imiric", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use niri, and had to install both Xwayland and xwayland-satellite", "excerpt": "> Back when I was writing xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland Ah, yes, XDG \"portals\". The reason file selection and screencasting is broken on every new Linux/Wayland installation I do, forcing me to try to understand the insane matrix of supported, half-supported, broken, and unsupported features by the dozen+ different implementations, and come up with the magic configuration incantation that makes it work on my system. Br", "context": "Linux/Wayland user", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop"}]}