Funny you say that, I just started doing specs, planning for a river based compositor based on Niri & Umbriel. After mentioning the idea a couple months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49093022
Umbriel is a Niri- like scrolling wm from the Noctalia devs, have really been enjoying it. But I do want something more configurable, easier to play with. And river certainly seems like the main go-to base for that.
Running Noctalia is a must for me. It's a great shell, from a great team. The v5 took a lot of lessons from the past & really spun a very elegant beautiful new user product with a great architecture. Great stuff, not to be missed imo. Happy convert from DMS too.
That's awesome, I'm excited to see what you come up with because Umbriel is definitely cool.
I def recommend studying that Triad project: it excites me because it represents the idea that if River had an extra layer on top of you'd have the WM customization potential that normally just comes with building a custom WM or compositor but through config and having Niri/Noctalia/DMS compatibility solved by default
When I moved from x to Wayland; I just moved from my bswpm setup to plasma because I couldn't get similar workflow that I set up in bspwm in either hyprland or sway. Then river entered my radar; but I think the development moved towards becoming a protocol rather than a WM. Nice to see river being used, might give this a try.
It's made with Quickshell and "Quickshell is configured in QML, a simple language designed for creating flexible user interfaces." - https://quickshell.org/
if you install it on top of gnome , the design of a show-apps gnome extension i made for myself which is android inspired would fit really nicely with this i think. https://github.com/y0av/cubby
I was confused for a second, but turns out DMS rebranded the 'Dank' to 'Dux' a few weeks ago [1]. I've been running DMS + Niri for nearly a year now with no intentions of switching anytime soon. Given how often I've historically changed shells/DEs, this is the ricing equivalent to settling down, getting married, and having kids.
Agreed, it's the only mainstream desktop with Windows 2000-era ergonomics, which I particularly like. I reluctantly use GNOME now for its better security.
Does KDE not have that? I don't know a lot about this and have just been using whatever DE comes default. GNOME 3 does seem like it's trying to be "different," kinda miss GNOME 2.
(I say this as someone whose been using KDE for nearly 20 years, and who LOVES KDE).
KDE is GREAT, if: you like tweaking and customizing things. The out-of-the-box KDE is lacking. It's like it wants to be a mix between GNOME's opinionated setup while giving you a lot of flexibility. This means, at least for me, KDE needs a lot of stuff "undone" to get it back to a usable point.
If you hate tweaking, and want something akin to the Win2k UI feel, XFCE will get you there effectively out of the box.
I use it daily. There was a learning curve since I was used to GNOME Shell, but Niri and the ability to build my own widgets with QML ended up being the killer features for me. I've built several custom widgets and small apps, and I'm happy with my workflow
Currently running Noctalia and interested in anyone who has switched to Dux & can talk out pros and cons. Particularly interested in creating custom widgets.
I was deciding between DMS and Noctalia; and noctalia's move away from quickshell due to resource usage made me decide on noctalia. But nice to see Dux developing.
I'm always surprised by how beautiful these make Linux, but they also turn away from the minimalism I appreciate about my Linux desktop. I'm OK with pulling up a web browser to view the weather! I've historically used a variety of "bars", and being able to tailor them down to "only show me info X" has done wonders for my focus and comprehension.
I think it's great that the year of the Linux Desktop has come and is beautiful, but it's not for me.
Been using this and niri since the inception of both, 0 complaints, 0 maintenance. I had a period(s) of going completely crazy with customizations, tons of dot files, i3, bspwm, way (and other) bars, modules, all of it and I probably forgot 90% of it. and just suddenly I settled on these 2 and kept using it.
anyone have extended thoughts using this (DMS?) vs Noctalia? i’ve been running a Noctalia fork for like a year now and I’m quite happy with its development. easy to upstream PRs too!
depends on when that fork happened. noctalia v5 moved away from quickshell and is way more performant and lightweight than DMS even if a bit more limited in what you can do
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 36.8 ms ] threadI've been wanting to try Noctalia with this River-based multi-paradigm compositor (which supports DMS) https://github.com/greenm01/triad
Umbriel is a Niri- like scrolling wm from the Noctalia devs, have really been enjoying it. But I do want something more configurable, easier to play with. And river certainly seems like the main go-to base for that.
Running Noctalia is a must for me. It's a great shell, from a great team. The v5 took a lot of lessons from the past & really spun a very elegant beautiful new user product with a great architecture. Great stuff, not to be missed imo. Happy convert from DMS too.
I def recommend studying that Triad project: it excites me because it represents the idea that if River had an extra layer on top of you'd have the WM customization potential that normally just comes with building a custom WM or compositor but through config and having Niri/Noctalia/DMS compatibility solved by default
[1] https://duxlabs.dev/blog/v2-0-release
KDE is GREAT, if: you like tweaking and customizing things. The out-of-the-box KDE is lacking. It's like it wants to be a mix between GNOME's opinionated setup while giving you a lot of flexibility. This means, at least for me, KDE needs a lot of stuff "undone" to get it back to a usable point.
If you hate tweaking, and want something akin to the Win2k UI feel, XFCE will get you there effectively out of the box.
Rather, I couldn't imagine using a closed source one.
KDE: The Documentary — The Story of Free Software Underdogs
https://youtu.be/1Vyzla9mx4g
It also just added official support for atomic distros like Bazzite; it was previously kind of an annoying gap given the popularity of those distros.
Plus, in school the dux is the person who came top of the class.
It's been turning into a very complete desktop env for a while now, surprising it doesn't get talked about more. Glad to see it get exposure on HN.
I think it's great that the year of the Linux Desktop has come and is beautiful, but it's not for me.
https://denialwm.org/mobile