What distro are you running Niri and Noctalia on? Did you find it easy to install?

Sounds kinda nice, I mist admit.

Niri implements a scrolling windowmanager like PaperWM instead of tiling like Hyprland. Tiling resizes your windows constantly, while scrolling only resizes when you want it to. If you keep opening windows, Niri opens them to the right of the last one on an infinitely wide workspace. Workspaces are organized vertically downwards. There’s no fixed number of workspaces, they grow on demand. There’s also a zoomed out overview showing you all workspaces and windows. Niri and Hyprland have some similarities though otherwise like lots of keyboard commands to move, resize, arrange windows.

Niri is friendlier overall I would say. It’s worth trying both since they are distinct.

Omarchy is the most complete package for Hyprland, I have seen so far. Installs in under 10 minutes and comes with everything you need installed, nicely configured, and good documentation.

Distros might package some stuff for you, yes.

Most window managers come with no GUI apps. They don’t even have a launcher (start menu), status bar, notification area, wifi menu, task bar, dock, etc.

For most window managers you pick and choose a shell, launcher, etc, to combine it with. Then you configure all those separate tools and the window manager to your liking

There are preconfigured packages, distros, and scripts that make sensible choices for this already. Even they usually don’t bring a lot of applications with them.

Omarchy brings a lot of applications in their default install. Check out this uninstall script to get an idea. KDEnlive is a KDE application, gnome-calculator, nautilus, gnome-diskutil, gnome-keyring are GNOME. Chromium is GTK too, I actually don’t know if LibreOffice is. So not many I would dare say. Others ship less.

Dank Linux, a full features shell for Niri, Wayland, mangowc describes it pretty well.

Batteries Included

The age of assembling your desktop from dozens of separate tools and spending hours trying to make it feel cohesive is over. While traditional Wayland setups require you to hunt down, configure, and maintain a sprawling collection of utilities, Dank Linux delivers everything in one cohesive package with minimal dependencies.

The Traditional Way: Package Hunting Simulator

A typical Hyprland, niri, Sway, MangoWC, dwl, labwc, Miracle WM, or generic Wayland setup forces you to learn about and configure a dozen or more separate tools, such as:

• Status Bar: waybar, eww, or custom scripts
• Notifications: mako, swaync, or dunst
• App Launcher: rofi, wofi, fuzzel, or tofi
• Screen Locking: swaylock, hyprlock, or gtklock
• Idle Management: swayidle, hypridle
• System Tools: htop, btop, nm-applet, blueman, pavucontrol
• Audio Control: pavucontrol, pamixer scripts
• Brightness Control: brightnessctl with custom bindings
• Clipboard Manager: clipman, cliphist, or wl-clipboard scripts
• Wallpaper Management: swaybg, swww, hyprpaper, or wpaperd
• Theming: manually configuring gtk, qt, various apps, bars, compositor gaps and colors
• Power Management: custom scripts or additional daemons
• Greeter: gdm, sddm, lightdm, greetd

Each tool has its own configuration format, its own quirks, and its own dependencies. You’ll spend hours writing glue scripts, debugging integration issues, and discovering missing functionality at the worst possible moments.

I used Niri with KDE apps for a month recently and liked it a lot. Niri is easiest to install already configured as a useable desktop using Dank Linux or Noctalia.

If you like PaperWM, you will love Niri.

XFCE is great, although a little stale and slow to evolve. I used it for many years. Still remember when Thunar finally got thumbnail previews.

Yes, for window managers, it’s worth finding a good strongly opinionated distro or script to start with, so you don’t have to hunt down and configure a dozen tools.

ML4W, Dank Linux, Zirconium, Omarchy come to mind

Try Niri with danklinux.com It’s super easy to install and lots of fun to use.

I like tiling window managers, because I run out of screen real estate and actually close windows. On a regular window manger, I will open dozens of windows and keep them open for many sessions.

What version of KDE did you try on what distro?

How is MATE nowadays? Is it just Gnome 2 frozen in time or does it have modern features?

I also liked GNOME 2 a lot. Current GNOME is okay for what it is, but it feels too dumbed down for my tastes. For example the default editor has basically no features compared to gedit back in the day. The desktop is kind of nice on a laptop with a good touchpad and gestures though.