And he keeps his promise. Window managers there are many, but they all tend to have the same weak point: the design leaves a lot to be desired, unless it is exactly what you are looking for to maximize performance. Among the most popular we find, for example, i3wm, a manager based on X11 that already has a "successor" in Sway. For just over a year there has also been Hyprland, and one of its reasons for being is to offer a superior user experience.
Installing a window manager may be something simple in many Linux distributions, but what is no longer so easy is configuring them so that they look fairly good. Hyprland is not spared, and what I would recommend is that, if you want to try a window manager, you do it through a distribution, probably community, that offers it by default. Hyprland being so young, it appeared in the first half of 2022, it is logical that there are not many Linux distributions that do it, but there are also young projects, such as GarudaLinux, and offers an ISO with this window manager.
Hyprland, a window manager with better UX
Spizaetus, the latest version of Garuda Linux, I arrive eliminating several of your options, but with a new one with Hyprland. At the time, a server tried to test this new option, but a lot of work had to be done to get it into the operating system. Today, November 25, they have uploaded a new image, and works even on virtual machines. It is something that I do not recommend, and I would rather recommend using it in a Live Session from a USB. The reason is simple: the animations, at least in my case, do not look good on virtual machines (tested on GNOME Boxes). And without those animations we are missing everything that gives meaning to Hyprland.
What is offered
I would summarize what Hyprland is by saying that it is like the window managers that we already know, but with animations that make it look more modern. Everything we find in other window managers is present in Hyprland:
- Windows that stack and adjust automatically.
- Configurable gap between windows.
- Possibility of controlling everything from the keyboard.
- Animations everywhere.
- Image/design that depends on our own configuration or that offered by a specific project.
Animations everywhere
Let's take i3wm as an example. When we press the META+number keys and change to what could be considered other virtual desktops, what we see is that the content of the desktop we are on disappears and the new one appears. As I have already explained, this is fine if we do not want to lose a bit of performance, but the user experience (or UX) is not taken into account. Moving from one desktop to another in Hyprland is like the one we see in GNOME or KDE: you move sideways and the new one appears. As a note, the jump is always 1, regardless of whether there are 3 or more active desktops.
Rearranging windows with the mouse also ends with an animation where the window snaps to the interface.
Hyprland settings can be configured editing the file hyprland.conf which should be in the folder .config/hypr, and from there we can modify, among other things, the behavior of the pointer or the keyboard shortcuts. It is worth taking a look to get to know them, although I can tell you that most of them are the same as the i3wm ones, for example.
Try Hyprland with Garuda Linux or install it on your distro
For anyone interested in trying Hyprland, I think the best and safest thing is to do it with the Garuda Linux ISO published this November 25. To enter, the password is "garuda" without the quotes. The software chosen for any task is from Xfce and GNOME, but this is part of the customization that its developers have decided to give it, it is not part of Hyprland itself.
To install it in a distribution, something that I do not recommend to users with little experience, we must do what it says in its Wiki. Although it is only supported for Arch Linux, Nix and openSUSE Tumbleweed works well, we also found information on how to install it on openSUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, FreeBSD, Ubuntu 23.04, Void Linux and Slackware.
The manual installation would be done following these steps:
- Download the latest version from this link.
- Copy the binary (Hyprland), hyprctl and libwlroots.so.XX32 to /usr/bin.
- The desktop file is copied to /usr/share/wayland-sessions/.
To update, the process is repeated, but overwriting the files.
Worth?
I like to play it safe, and I usually opt for distributions that have a significant team of developers behind them. Hyprland is taking its first steps, and what I don't recommend is betting everything on it. Being a window manager, and Linux allowing us to log in in different options, I would recommend trying it in a safe environment, a "sandbox", and the best one right now is the Garuda Linux ISO with Hyprland.
And my recommendation for Garuda + Hyprland, I would say a resounding yes for those who are not afraid to try, not so much for those who prefer something reliable.
More information and pictures at official website of the project.