I switched from i3 to Niri a couple weeks ago, and I've been super happy with it.
Niri feels like it lines up more naturally with the way I tend to use windows and workspaces. I'm working on one project per workspace, opening an occasional ephermeral terminal window or web browser to the right when I need to reference something or run a quick command. My other windows in the workspace aren't altered by these new ones, no reflow happens, and then I can close it when done.
My only problem with Niri is that now I really want an Ultrawide monitor.
I've seen Niri floating around the conversation, but still find myself drawn to Hyprland. There's something about "pagination" vs a scrollable compositor that makes things feel much more targeted and organized.
I'm basically fullscreen with everything all the time on macos, but not in the super-duper-fullscreen mode so cmd-tab/cmd-` works predictably. I want this on macos. I know I can't have it on macos. I also can't switch to Linux since macos is mandated by my employer.
Nothing really to take out of it except that I feel like I'm not alone feeling stuck, knowing there are better workflows and not being able to do anything about it.
If there is one thing about macOS that really sucks, it is the window management. I have been using it for three months now and still don't understand how to use it.
It is not that I am inexperienced (Windows 95/98/2k/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11, Linux with all kinds of Desktops over the years (KDE 2/3/4/5/6, Gnome 2/3, Sway, Unity, XFCE, Enlightenment, blackbox, ...)), or that I didn't try (searched, watched several YouTube tutorials). I also tried different options, such as disabling the entire "Displays have separate spaces" feature (it fixes some cases, but others worsen).
My verdict is simple: They would be better off just adopting the dumb Microsoft Windows 95 approach to window management.
And it isn't that I don't like the system overall. I have never had a laptop with such superb performance, and at the same time, it stays cool as ice and silent. I love the animated video backgrounds on the lock screen with the slowdown on login, and having Zsh as the default is also fun. But the window management...
This is my exact experience! I really tried for 6 months and I just couldn't avoid fumbling around. For example, the experience of going in/out of fullscreen is jarring.
What's funny is that when someone first learns about Alt+Tab it's like the best cheat-code for any desktop navigation, but after switching to Niri, Alt+Tab seems like a silly way to layout your windows.
I did try it, but hyprland is still the most usable/pretty ratio for me, I also use Vicinae launcher (I wish that name is changed it’s hard to remember) so not sure how that will work with niri.
Somebody sell me on these newfangled tiling WMs. I have been using basically the same xmonad configuration for 15+ years, pretty much updating it only on breaking or deprecated changes. What do all these new Wayland compositors have to offer except "tiling, but for wayland?"
Does Wayland actually work now? I've tried it every few years for over a decade now and every time I ran into showstopper bugs (usually on nvidia cards).
Niri convinced me to give up xmonad. I ran xmonad exclusively for 14 years.
Being able to have an unlimited number of windows on a desktop (without continually switching the tiling structure) makes them collections of topics rather than having multiple desktops bounded by what fits comfortably. What used to be a switch from the "editor and terminals" desktop to the "browser" desktop is now horizontal movement on the current desktop to the related browser window (general browsing is on a different desktop).
Really low barrier to entry, works great out of the box. There were some wayland teething issues (application support, e.g., no Zoom), but nothing that couldn't be overcome (occasionally by falling back to X). Most of those have been resolved with time.
I'm running a 1-2 year old build of niri (because it isn't broken), so I've not experienced some of the fancier animations & etc. others dislike.
I consider cloning and building from source to be low barrier to entry if it doesn't involve major setup effort (it doesn't/didn't), so I may be biased. Caveat emptor.
"Normal" tiling WMs / compositors just don't work for me, but the tiling model does. Before niri, I used PaperWM and GNOME -- but a GNOME extension can only do so much. I wish the folks doing COSMIC would add scrollable tiling, but unless/until they do I'll probably stick with niri.
Why all the animations? Not only for this WM, but hyprland, too, for example. They are just way too distracting, I don't understand why people like them.
Yes, i know they can usually be deactivated, but it's stupid to have them as default
The funny thing about Niri is the choice in animations. When you resize a window, it fades out and then fades back in… it would look much smoother to simply resize the window as you drag. The fading effect almost looks like a glitch.
I was installing hyprland on cachyos and it seems that cachyos had niri as an option too in the calameres installer.
It definitely had caught my attention and I might look at it too in the future.
I am really distro hopping and trying out a lot of things recently as I have really cut down on the amount of software to just zen-browser with bitwarden and ublock origin,signal and micro and zed for the most part with some custom zsh script and hyprland cachy had a fish shell which looked gorgeous out of the box and very very similar to my zsh script but my zsh script always had problems with history and what not and it seems that they are fixed now so I am very very happy.
One thing that was holding me back from trying Niri is its configuration was limited to 1 file with no way to override or include additional configs which is quite important IMO for having 1 main config that you slightly change on different devices if you want to make your dotfiles public. For example you can have gitignored "local" files on each device to handle overrides.
Moved onto Niri yesterday after having to reinstall my PopOS and it just clicked. Like i3wm did all those years ago.
I can focus for hours on end and spend zero mental energy on resizing a window. I had less of that with i3wm but you had to always readjust after a few windows were tiled to your workspace. That final bit of cognitive overload was removed with Niri.
EDIT:
Spec: RTX 3090, Pop OS 24.04 (beta), 4K 43" Monitor,
Niri Installed from cargo build, super easy install, make sure you install xwayland-satellite so that you can run VS Code, Obsidian, Zoom, Blender and other strictly X11 applications
My only complain about niri is that after a few weeks without reboot I end up with ~500 terms open, as I often open a new shell to check something, get distracted, and forget about it as it scrolls out of the view...
(I usually notice at the 400-500 mark because this machine starts swapping noticeably, and closing it all is a chore that usually ends in pkill without checking...)
Does this or any other scrollable-tiling WM remember your preferred size of windows per-application? For instance, if I open a new Firefox window, I always want it to be the same width and full height. If I open a terminal, I want it to be half-height and the width I've set for terminals.
Ideally, I'd want to set that in a configuration, so if I made adjustments to a window one time it wouldn't change the default sizes.
Niri is currently being "hugged to death", if you want to contribute: Donate to Ivan or review others PRs before making your own, the project has no commercial backing and he's "overloaded" by the projects recent success.
I've been using it for years now and it's obvious that Smithay and Niri are high-quality projects, I haven't had any issues other than missing features (more of which has become available over time).
ultimately it turned out that after years of i3/sway scrollable tiling doesn't feel natural at all (and neither do dynamic workspaces, but that's less significant). when i resurrected my desktop a couple of months into the experiment i found it also lagged quite badly on my desktop with an nvidia card (a 3090, tried both drivers) and i couldn't be bothered to figure that one out so that was the final straw and i went back to sway
i was quite impressed with the level of thought that went into the ux and the amount of polish in everything though. it already feels like a serious, well-made piece of software, and it's not even that old yet
But if I may, I'd like to see just one implementation of a vertical bar where the text is rotated, especially if it's going to display the time. I mean, I want to see it, but not enough to actually DO anything about it.
49 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 67.1 ms ] threadNiri feels like it lines up more naturally with the way I tend to use windows and workspaces. I'm working on one project per workspace, opening an occasional ephermeral terminal window or web browser to the right when I need to reference something or run a quick command. My other windows in the workspace aren't altered by these new ones, no reflow happens, and then I can close it when done.
My only problem with Niri is that now I really want an Ultrawide monitor.
I use Omarchy, btw.
Nothing really to take out of it except that I feel like I'm not alone feeling stuck, knowing there are better workflows and not being able to do anything about it.
It is not that I am inexperienced (Windows 95/98/2k/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11, Linux with all kinds of Desktops over the years (KDE 2/3/4/5/6, Gnome 2/3, Sway, Unity, XFCE, Enlightenment, blackbox, ...)), or that I didn't try (searched, watched several YouTube tutorials). I also tried different options, such as disabling the entire "Displays have separate spaces" feature (it fixes some cases, but others worsen).
My verdict is simple: They would be better off just adopting the dumb Microsoft Windows 95 approach to window management.
And it isn't that I don't like the system overall. I have never had a laptop with such superb performance, and at the same time, it stays cool as ice and silent. I love the animated video backgrounds on the lock screen with the slowdown on login, and having Zsh as the default is also fun. But the window management...
What's funny is that when someone first learns about Alt+Tab it's like the best cheat-code for any desktop navigation, but after switching to Niri, Alt+Tab seems like a silly way to layout your windows.
Does Wayland actually work now? I've tried it every few years for over a decade now and every time I ran into showstopper bugs (usually on nvidia cards).
Being able to have an unlimited number of windows on a desktop (without continually switching the tiling structure) makes them collections of topics rather than having multiple desktops bounded by what fits comfortably. What used to be a switch from the "editor and terminals" desktop to the "browser" desktop is now horizontal movement on the current desktop to the related browser window (general browsing is on a different desktop).
Really low barrier to entry, works great out of the box. There were some wayland teething issues (application support, e.g., no Zoom), but nothing that couldn't be overcome (occasionally by falling back to X). Most of those have been resolved with time.
Edits: Hardware: 2017 System76 Bonobo WS, 2x GTX 1080, multiple screens (4k @ 2x scaling + 2 1080p). PopOS.
I'm running a 1-2 year old build of niri (because it isn't broken), so I've not experienced some of the fancier animations & etc. others dislike.
I consider cloning and building from source to be low barrier to entry if it doesn't involve major setup effort (it doesn't/didn't), so I may be biased. Caveat emptor.
"Normal" tiling WMs / compositors just don't work for me, but the tiling model does. Before niri, I used PaperWM and GNOME -- but a GNOME extension can only do so much. I wish the folks doing COSMIC would add scrollable tiling, but unless/until they do I'll probably stick with niri.
Yes, i know they can usually be deactivated, but it's stupid to have them as default
It definitely had caught my attention and I might look at it too in the future.
I am really distro hopping and trying out a lot of things recently as I have really cut down on the amount of software to just zen-browser with bitwarden and ublock origin,signal and micro and zed for the most part with some custom zsh script and hyprland cachy had a fish shell which looked gorgeous out of the box and very very similar to my zsh script but my zsh script always had problems with history and what not and it seems that they are fixed now so I am very very happy.
Just the other day the author merged 2 PRs to handle both use cases https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2482.
It's not in a release yet but hopefully soon.
I can focus for hours on end and spend zero mental energy on resizing a window. I had less of that with i3wm but you had to always readjust after a few windows were tiled to your workspace. That final bit of cognitive overload was removed with Niri.
EDIT: Spec: RTX 3090, Pop OS 24.04 (beta), 4K 43" Monitor,
Niri Installed from cargo build, super easy install, make sure you install xwayland-satellite so that you can run VS Code, Obsidian, Zoom, Blender and other strictly X11 applications
Maybe a bit more self discipline would help :)
Ideally, I'd want to set that in a configuration, so if I made adjustments to a window one time it wouldn't change the default sizes.
I've been using it for years now and it's obvious that Smithay and Niri are high-quality projects, I haven't had any issues other than missing features (more of which has become available over time).
https://github.com/dawsers/scroll
niri concept implemented in sway.
ultimately it turned out that after years of i3/sway scrollable tiling doesn't feel natural at all (and neither do dynamic workspaces, but that's less significant). when i resurrected my desktop a couple of months into the experiment i found it also lagged quite badly on my desktop with an nvidia card (a 3090, tried both drivers) and i couldn't be bothered to figure that one out so that was the final straw and i went back to sway
i was quite impressed with the level of thought that went into the ux and the amount of polish in everything though. it already feels like a serious, well-made piece of software, and it's not even that old yet
But if I may, I'd like to see just one implementation of a vertical bar where the text is rotated, especially if it's going to display the time. I mean, I want to see it, but not enough to actually DO anything about it.
Oh maybe it's just up and down