Niri – A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scrollable-tiling model & workflows

  • Many users say Niri “clicked” after years on i3/sway/xmonad: workspaces become “topics” containing long horizontal strips of related windows (editor, browser, terminals, etc.) instead of a few tightly packed tiles.
  • Common pattern: keep a main app centered, with partial “peeks” of neighboring windows, and quickly open ephemeral terminals/browsers to the side without reflowing the layout.
  • The scroll plus “overview”/mini‑map and subtle “struts” (visible slivers of adjacent windows) help people maintain a spatial mental model.

Comparisons to other WMs

  • Former i3/sway/xmonad users highlight:
    • Less cognitive load from not constantly re‑tiling or adding workspaces.
    • Ability to have “unlimited” windows per workspace while still grouped by topic.
  • Hyprland:
    • Some prefer Hyprland’s paged model and richer floating/split options.
    • Others switched to Niri citing better stability, fewer breaking changes, and a more cohesive scroll-first design than Hyprland’s hyprscrolling plugin.
  • PaperWM:
    • Niri is seen as a more polished, native implementation of the same idea; PaperWM is described as quirkier within GNOME.

Wayland, hardware, and platform issues

  • Multiple reports that Wayland “finally works” well, even with NVIDIA, though some still hit show‑stoppers (sleep/wake multi‑monitor bugs, tablet orientation, screensharing edge cases).
  • Niri is praised for good screen sharing, power savings (letting GPUs sleep), and Xwayland integration via xwayland‑satellite.
  • Packaging is easiest on Arch/Fedora/Nix; Debian/Ubuntu users may need to build from source or use derivative distros.

Features, configuration & ecosystem

  • Appreciated features: floating windows, tabbing/stacking, scratch‑like workflows via scripts, window rules (per‑app sizes/behavior), IPC for external launchers, overview mode, shaders/animations.
  • New support for config includes/overrides makes sharing dotfiles across machines easier.
  • Ecosystem: bars/shells (DankMaterialShell, Noctalia, waybar), launchers (Vicinae, fuzzel), helpers (niriswitcher, niri‑float‑sticky).

Critiques & mixed reactions

  • Some find horizontal scrolling unnatural or worry about “losing” windows; overview and good habits mitigate this but don’t eliminate concern.
  • One user notes ending up with hundreds of forgotten terminals; others see this as a “tmux without tmux” style feature.
  • Animations are polarizing: some see them as distracting fluff, others say fast transitions are essential for orientation in a scrolling layout.
  • A scratch/floating overlay layer (for chat/media) is still a desired first‑class feature.

MacOS and ethics side threads

  • Several commenters lament macOS window management, sharing tools like Yabai, Hammerspoon + PaperWM, Aerospace, and flashspace as partial approximations.
  • Brief debate around an Arch‑based distro (Omarchy): some avoid it due to the creator’s politics; others argue FOSS use should be separable from personal views.