Another vote on niri being just great software. While itss idea (scrolling tiling windows manager) is novel, the software in itself is very polished with a very mature API that doesn't change at every version (looking at you hyprland).
Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
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Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#42I’ve been using the PaperWM extension for Gnome (that I believe Niri took inspiration from?), and it’s definitely an interesting way to work. I’m not sure that I love it, I feel like it’s a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace. But I’m giving it a real shot, and the nice thing about it being a Gnome extension is that the rest of the Gnome DE is right there without a ton of config.
Same, I also enjoy the fact that PaperWM is a mostly non-intrusive Gnome extension. Also apart from generally improving my workflow, it enabled me to remove two or three other extensions I was using (desktop grid and others, I forgot which).
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#43I love niri. I'm half way through getting hdr rendering running
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#44I’ve gotten so used to the tiling WM workflow of quick-switching between a bunch of different dedicated fullscreen workspaces and managing windows with pure keyboard. Each workspace typically has a single app, or terminal with tmux, but occasionally I’ll split two apps side by side. Would love to hear the perspective of anyone who switched from a similar workflow to Niri. How does the mental model shift?
I was a tiling user for quite a while.similar setup to you (used awesome then qtile, short stind with xmonad and ended up with i3 and then switching to Wayland with sway, but tried hyprland for a bit as well). One thing I always ran into was that I generally found that more than three windows are horizontally just doesn't work and vertical splits very often make windows to small either. On the other hand I would often find that I wanted a new window next to something I was reading or working on, or e.g. I'd have some terminals open and wanting to plot from ipython. That always caused quite a bit of friction, i.e. I'd have to either collect some windows into a stacked layout before opening the new window. Or moving some of the windows is want side by side to a new workspace.
That for me meant I had to think about what I was doing when window managing, taking my focus away from my actual task.
With niri I just open another window and it's where I need it and all other windows are still to the left and right so I just "scroll" there. Now I'd say my workflow is messier now, but I think that's actually a good thing. Tiling window managers require (but also make it reasonably easy) to be organised. With niri I don't have to be organised. Sometimes it you can't find a window immediately, but you can just use overview (and I also have a window search rofi). Initially I still had some named workspaces similar to my sway tags, mainly because I found I was still switching to them out of habit. Nowadays I don't use them any longer.
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#45If anyone wants to try the NNN (Niri-Nix-Noctalia) dots. Feel free to use my flake, https://github.com/MostlyKIGuess/nix-flake-public .
I used window managers for years, but the hurdle of actually configuring stuff not-related to the WM itself (like setting up dark mode) made me switch to a full-fledged desktop environment. Thanks for mentioning Noctalia - it looks like exactly what I needed!
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#46I 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…
I'm in a similar boat, but I've found where I once habitually put things in the same workspace every time and was able to trivially recall them, I now end up all over the place.
Also I've been missing scratch deeply.
I'm sure it's solvable with some diligence and config changes, but I haven't invested the time yet.
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#47I’ve gotten so used to the tiling WM workflow of quick-switching between a bunch of different dedicated fullscreen workspaces and managing windows with pure keyboard. Each workspace typically has a single app, or terminal with tmux, but occasionally I’ll split two apps side by side. Would love to hear the perspective of anyone who switched from a similar workflow to Niri. How does the mental model shift?
I've always (KDE, GNOME, niri) used a workspace per activity/project. I have a workspace with Steam open and a game wiki I was consulting earlier, another workspace with Emacs and browser with documentation, a third workspace with Godot and some gamedev apps open. The beauty of niri is that I never feel I need to close some apps because I've got "too many windows"; it's quite easy to compartmentalize
I never understood the point of per-app workspaces. I hate having, for example, a single Firefox instance open with everything mixed in, from work to leisure.
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#48I use mangowm on the wl-only branch(which is based on wlroots 0.20). It uses a lot less resources, has more layouts and I have fewer problems with it. Although niri seems to have more eye candy. It's definitely worth giving a try. If you want HDR, you have to wait though. https://github.com/mangowm/mango
Fewer problems such as? For me niri has been rock solid.
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#49I’ve gotten so used to the tiling WM workflow of quick-switching between a bunch of different dedicated fullscreen workspaces and managing windows with pure keyboard. Each workspace typically has a single app, or terminal with tmux, but occasionally I’ll split two apps side by side. Would love to hear the perspective of anyone who switched from a similar workflow to Niri. How does the mental model shift?
I was an i3 and away user before switching to Niri.
I generally use one workspace per task with some workspaces dedicated to specific apps (eg my browser workspace). Every app is full screen, always. I tend to use niri’s scrolling mainly for related work on one task, for example, I have my editor working on a project, scroll left and I have kilo code open on that project, and scroll right I have terminals or other related things.
So I mainly use a sway-like workflow except things tightly coupled to a specific task as on the same workspace and I scroll left or right to get to them. Everything is either full screen or sometimes 3/4 width (and full height). Occasionally I have two terminals vertically split on one column.
Re: Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
#50I 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…
I'm in a similar boat, but I've found where I once habitually put things in the same workspace every time and was able to trivially recall them, I now end up all over the place. Also I've been missing scratch deeply. I'm sure it's solvable with some diligence and config changes, but I haven't invested the time yet.
I mentioned elsewhere that scrolling WMs shine when you use a workspace per activity. You should never "have stuff all over the place", you should be working on a single one until you context switch.