Don’t get me wrong. Hyprland is great. I like it a lot. It looks fresh, it’s easy to configure and the keybindings are super easy to implement, but it’s also very barebones. Most of the functionality expected from a DE come from external software. Be it a top bar, an app launcher, a notification daemon or anything else. Each has to be configured independently, which is good for some people, but not really for me. I could probably make Waybar look good if I spent a lot of time on it, but as of today, meh. Rofi is neat, fast and minimalist, but looks straight from the 90’, and as a result feels janky next to the hypermodern look and feel of Hyprland (Edit: OK I’ve found some nice themes for Rofi, just need to find a way to add blur behind the window). Quick settings are inexistant, or could be implemented with a collection of shell or Python scripts I’m not really motivated enough to pursue. A full Hyprland DE with top bar, quick settings and app launcher, with unified looks and centralized setings would actually be awesome and might make me switch (I know it’s not the philosophy of this project).
Which brought me back to Gnome 45. I wouldn’t use vanilla Gnome without extensions, but with a few QOL or eyecandy extensions like dash-to-dock and Blur My Shell, it can look as fresh and modern as you want. The quick settings popup may have made me lazy, but it’s an incredibly efficient tool for switching Wifi networks, audio devices or power profiles. All the media keys work out of the box. Gnome Settings is what a settings app should be, complete yet simple to navigate and use. I love the new workspace indicator in the top bar.
Gnome is “boring” in a good way. It’s a complete and unified experience, works great out of the box, is predictable and lets you be as productive or procrastinating as you want without getting in your way, while being infinitely extensible to let you tweak as little or as much as you want.
Thank you Gnome devs for your awesome work. Thank you Hyprland devs for letting me try something new and fresh, even if it’s not for me.
The difference, as I understand it, is that Hyprland is not a DE, it’s a Windows Manager. So it should be compared with the likes of Sway, i3 and Awesome.
Everything you said is true, though I feel it’s ultimately a comparison between apples and oranges. Hyprland is awesome because it’s a tiling window manager that you can configure to your most niche desires. Gnome is awesome because it’s a comprehensive desktop environment that sets everything up for you.
True. Although this post is less a comparison of the two than a renewed appreciation of what makes Gnome fantastic, especially the QOL parts taken for granted for so long ;)
Have look at nwg https://github.com/nwg-piotr/nwg-shell I believe it has what you are looking for. Panel, app drawer, dock, settings. It is a shell for sway and Hyperland.
I use xmonad as my main WM, so Hyprland would be a very easy transition. I would have switched by now but I just love Haskell
so much.
I’m not talented enough to port Hyprland to Haskell (at least the configuration aspect) but I wish someone wanted to do that. What I like about xmonad is that its core is actually formally verified.
I use Arch BTW. jk
I agree. Even though I use extensions for dock, desktop icons and appindicators, I respect the Gnome devs for keeping things opinionated. It allows them to focus on implementing core functionality well, rather than having to support every customization option, which would clutter the settings and slow down development.
Exactly. KDE people praise its flexibility and tweakability, but I feel it tries to cater at too many use cases at once, and looks much harder to maintain as it always felt buggy and a bit janky to me.
Gnome devs may have very strong opinions and that seems to anger some people, but their approach is actually the best for small teams: focus on a single use case, make it as polished as possible, and let users develop extensions to cater to their own use cases.
In my opinion Plasma has gotten much better with the last couple of releases. Around 5.21 the defaults actually got pretty good and since 5.24 Wayland support is quite good, on par with GNOME in my opinion.
After using GNOME Shell for a decade I have recently switched to Plasma 5.27 on my desktop due to its VRR support (I have two 170 Hz QHD monitors). A couple of weeks later I also moved my laptops to Plasma, even though I wanted to keep GNOME on them, since Plasma has gotten so nice!
Just wanted to give a heads-up in case you haven’t tried Plasma in the last couple of years. ;) But especially if you rely on dynamic workspaces and don’t want to adapt your workflow (like I did when I switched to Plasma), there’s just no alternative to GNOME and it has gotten really polished and nice as well.
