DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released • Hacker News Board

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#11

Post by stonogo » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

arikrahman wrote: post #10

preisschild wrote: post #7

I've been trying Zirconium[1] (a fedora atomic-based bootable container image with niri+dms) since a few weeks ago, works really well. Can recommend. [1]: github.com/zirconium-dev/zirconium

What's the benefit to using this over Nix flakes

not having to learn what Nix flakes are is a pretty big plus

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#12

Post by dangrover » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

I've been really enjoying using DMS as a daily driver. I had been partial to Cosmic DE, but the overall visual appearance, pace of development, and ecosystem around DMS made me switch.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#13

Post by arjie » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

arrakeen wrote: post #5

despite how cringe everything about this is, i'll support anything that gets young people using linux

Haha, dude, the stuff we used to do when we were young. Transparent conky on the desktop showing a bunch of graphs that drive their own selves up. Spinning cubes to get workspaces. Loved it. And ran it on absolutely garbage hardware too.

It will always be uncool to do this stuff, and I will always be there for it.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#14

Post by dgunay » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

DMS is a pretty good gateway drug out of major DEs and into WMs like Niri. I had already started using Niri but the base DMS configuration has a lot more batteries included so I switched and so far haven't had any major complaints.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#15

Post by farresito » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

arikrahman wrote: post #9

arrakeen wrote: post #5

despite how cringe everything about this is, i'll support anything that gets young people using linux

I agree, I switched to noctalia so I get all the performance benefits without the baggage of telling people I use Dank

Noctalia will soon release v5, which is a complete rewrite in C++, which makes it even more appealing if you care about the performance.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#16

Post by arikrahman » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:44 PM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #11

arikrahman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit to using this over Nix flakes

not having to learn what Nix flakes are is a pretty big plus

That sounds like a pretty big minus. Not hard to learn with LLMs doing everything. Pretty easy to replicate dotfiles with flakes that's why most of them use it. Since you claim it's a benefit, but I've already learned it, no point to using this. Seems like a worse docker.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#17

Post by arikrahman » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:45 PM UTC

farresito wrote: post #15

arikrahman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I switched to noctalia so I get all the performance benefits without the baggage of telling people I use Dank

Noctalia will soon release v5, which is a complete rewrite in C++, which makes it even more appealing if you care about the performance.

Yes, I'm on the beta of v5 and it works flawlessly

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#18

Post by butlike » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

arjie wrote: post #13

arrakeen wrote: post #5

despite how cringe everything about this is, i'll support anything that gets young people using linux

Haha, dude, the stuff we used to do when we were young. Transparent conky on the desktop showing a bunch of graphs that drive their own selves up. Spinning cubes to get workspaces. Loved it. And ran it on absolutely garbage hardware too. It will always be uncool to do this stuff, and I will always be there for it.

The cube window space switcher was awesome. My friend Alex had that. The conky graphs dude. Why would you not want to see up-to-the-second disk I/O?

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#19

Post by zamalek » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

actionfromafar wrote: post #2

What is a DMS?

In Linux you generally have two types of desktops: DEs, which are full featured (KDE, GNOME, Cosmic, Cinnamon, etc.), and window managers. Window managers do only what they say on the tin, if you used one with genuinely no config (they usually have minor defaults to prevent this) you would be completely soft-locked: an empty desktop just a cursor to play with, no way to launch apps, nothing.

They have a special layer into which apps can spawn windows that typically do things like adding a launcher, or an app switcher, notifications, or whatever else you want. It's the unix philosophy brought to the UI domain. Usually you have a separate app for each, but DMS brings in a full suite: allowing you to use the window manager without having to spend hours ricing your system.

Re: DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released

#20

Post by mmgutz » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

farresito wrote: post #15

arikrahman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I switched to noctalia so I get all the performance benefits without the baggage of telling people I use Dank

Noctalia will soon release v5, which is a complete rewrite in C++, which makes it even more appealing if you care about the performance.

DMS | super heavyweight | sluggish | lots of eye candy, GUI configurable

Noctalia | welterweight | fast | professional look, GUI configurable

Waybar | lightweight | fast | minimal, DIY theming, hand configured

swaybar | flyweight | blazingly fast | ultra minimalist, hand configured

Noctalia uses about 70MB more RAM, and a little more CPU than Waybar. No brainer.