Back to basics

Arch and his little surprises

Since switching from Windows and macOS, I’ve been running Arch Linux. It’s a great, stable distro, and I can’t see myself wanting to use anything else any time soon. Like any operating system, Arch has its quirks. There are some things you’d expect to be included by default, but on Arch you have to install a little extra. You’re not always aware of this until you come across it.

This weekend, I’ve made what is, for the time being, my latest switch of window manager. And I deliberately say for the time being, because anyone who follows me even a little knows that I tend to switch quite often. It’s time to look back on that journey, and explain why I’ve now ended up with something that’s actually been around for years.

Python as a configuration language – that appealed to me

My time on Arch began with Qtile as my window manager. I was very happy with it for a long time. Python as a configuration language feels natural to me, and it just works. It’s just that ‘ricing’ everything, as it’s known in the community, takes a lot of time. I’d got quite far with that, but in the meantime I kept seeing more and more lovely screenshots on Reddit of a Wayland compositor called Hyprland.

One developer, one point of failure

Hyprland appealed to me for two reasons. Ricen seemed easier, and it meant making the switch from X11 to Wayland straight away. That sounded good to me, and I have to say, it certainly was. It looked stunning and the animations were smooth.

But there was a pattern. Often, after an update, part of my configuration would break again. Something I’d put a lot of effort into getting to look good and work properly would suddenly stop working. I found that really annoying. As I read on, I discovered that there’s actually only one lead developer at the heart of Hyprland: Vaxry. There are contributors, of course, but Vaxry calls the shots. So I really see this as a one-man show.

I think impulsive changes are the cause of those broken configurations. To me, that’s not production-ready, however good the system may be. I know better than anyone that ‘one’ is ‘none’. I’ve experienced that first-hand in my work with infrastructure. One component can fail and that’s it. I found that level of dependency unacceptable in my day-to-day working environment.

Scrolling tiling sounded like the solution

I was still having a few issues with Wayland that made me long for Qtile, so I went back to using that stably for quite a while. Until some lovely screenshots appeared on Reddit again, showing a slightly different approach. A scrolling tiling window manager. The idea piqued my curiosity. Smooth animations, a good team of maintainers, and stable. That turned out to be Niri, and I’ve been trying it out for the last three months.

It went well at first. Niri, combined with DankMaterialShell, ran very smoothly; DMS provided a number of nice features, and the configuration was straightforward. On paper, I had everything I wanted.

Where on earth is that window?

But I still found it annoying, and at first I didn’t even really know where that feeling was coming from. Until it dawned on me: where on earth was that window? With my three monitors, it eventually turned into a complete mess. All that swiping up and down and left and right just became too much. It felt like using a factory hall to service a Mini Cooper, with your tools scattered everywhere. There’s no end to it.

What’s more, with windows that are wider than your screen, Niri automatically scrolls as soon as you touch the mouse. It’s a small detail, but if you keep triggering it accidentally all day long, it drives you mad.

i3 has been around for years, and for good reason

So I asked myself: what do I actually want? Back to basics, but I’d rather not use X11 anymore. Qtile and Wayland don’t work very well together, and there are now better alternatives. I looked into what the foundation was, and that’s i3. The in-place replacement for i3 on Wayland has turned out to be Sway.

I’ve now switched my Niri configuration and keybindings over to Sway, and switched back from DMS to Waybar. For now, it feels like coming home:

• Windows are back where I expect them to be.
• No screen shifting when a pop-up or scratchpad overlay appears.
• When I touch the mouse, my screen stays put.
• Three monitors feel like three monitors again, not like one endless conveyor belt.

Sway also has a well-established development team, a long track record and a configuration format that is virtually identical to i3. This also means that there is a vast amount of documentation and examples available.

Boring is a feature

For now, I feel that my computer is predictable, boring and usable again. And that’s exactly what I want. So it’s not always the case that more is better. Endless options are confusing, and that secretly gets really annoying.

If you’re focused on productivity, a tiling window manager is brilliant. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to change anything else about it. No scrolling, no infinite workspaces, no animations to distract me. Just windows in fixed positions, on the monitor where I’ve placed them.

Sometimes the best upgrade is a step back to what’s been working for years.