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.

  • WFHOPEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Haha I’ve already been using Forge for weeks :D

    I like the concept of it, but it lacks Hyprland’s smoothness.

    • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
      1·
      7 months ago

      Yep, I see it the same.

      I didn’t use Hyprland, or any other TWM, yet, due to the same reasons as you.
      I just want something preconfigured that “just works”. Hyprland seems to be very very smooth, but barebones.
      I’m not that much into ricing and don’t want to spend many weekends DIYing my desktop.

      I wish Forge would implement some animations, then it would be perfect.

      There is a Hyprland-Silverblue-image called Hyprgreen that provides that sort of, maybe you could test that? It is a rather small project and still on F38, but should still work fine.

      • flashgnash
        1·
        7 months ago

        Forge/gnome is a great mixture but proper tiler will always be better once set up

        I’m using it on my PC because Wayland, Nvidia and gaming don’t mix very well, but it can be laggy and is missing a lot of features

        Steam for example won’t resize smaller than a certain size and will overlap with other tiled apps, whereas hyprland forces it to I believe (and it looks fine)