Back to basics

Arch and its little surprises

Since my switch from Windows and macOS, I have been running Arch Linux. It's a fine and stable distro, and I wouldn't want anything else anytime soon. Like any operating system, Arch has its quirks. Some things you assume are included by default, but on Arch you have to install something extra. You're not always aware of that until you come across it.

This weekend, I made the final switch of window manager for the time being. And I say for the time being, because those who follow me a little know that I switch quite often. Time for a review of that journey, and why I have now ended up with something that has actually been around for years.

Python as config, which appealed to me

My time on Arch started with Qtile as window manager. I was very happy with that for a long time. Python as a configuration language feels natural to me, and it just works. Only "ricen" everything, as it's called in the community, takes a lot of time. I had come pretty far with that, but in the meantime I saw more and more nice screenshots coming along on Reddit of a Wayland compositor called Hyprland.

One developer, one point of failure

Hyprland attracted me for two reasons. Ricen seemed easier, and it was an instant switch from X11 to Wayland. That sounded good to me, and I must say, it certainly was. It looked beautiful and the animations were fluid.

But there was a pattern. Often, after an update, some piece of my config would break. Something I had put effort into getting nice and working was suddenly broken. I found that seriously annoying. When I did some further reading, I found out that at its core there is actually only one main developer of Hyprland, namely Vaxry. There are contributors, but Vaxry wields the sceptre. So I really see this as a one man show.

I think impulsive changes there are the cause of those breaking configs. To me, that is not production-worthy, no matter how nice the system is. I know better than anyone else that one is none. I have experienced that myself up close in my work with infrastructure. Someone can drop out and then it's done. I did not find that dependency acceptable in my daily work environment.

Scrolling tiling sounded like the solution

I still had some issues on Wayland that made me long for Qtile again, so I went back to stable on that for a long time. Until nice screenshots reappeared on Reddit, with a slightly different slant. A scrolling tiling window manager. The idea made me curious. Smooth animations, a good club of maintainers, and stable. That became Niri, and I've been trying it out for the last three months.

In the beginning, things went nicely. Niri combined with DankMaterialShell went very smoothly, DMS provided some nice gimmicks, and the configuration was fine. On paper, I had everything I wanted.

Where is that window now?

But still I kept getting annoyed, and at first I wasn't even sure where that came from. Until the penny dropped: where was that window now? With my three monitors, it eventually became an endless mess. Swiping up and down and left and right just became too much. It felt like using a factory hall to service a Mini Cooper and your tools were scattered everywhere. There was no end to it.

On top of that, when windows are wider than your screen, Niri automatically swipes along as soon as you touch the mouse. Small detail, but if you unintentionally trigger that all day, it will drive you crazy.

i3 has been around for years, and for good reason

So I asked myself: what do I really want? Back to basics, but rather no more X11. Qtile and Wayland don't mix very well, and there are now better alternatives. I looked at where the basics were, and that is i3. The inplace replacement for i3 on Wayland has become Sway.

I have now converted my Niri config and keybinds to Sway, and switched back from DMS to Waybar. For now, it feels like coming home:

• Windows are again where I expect them to be.
• No staggered screens when a popup or scratchpad overlay appears.
• When I touch the mouse, my screen just stays put.
• Three monitors feel like three monitors again, not one endless rolling screen.

Sway also has a mature development team, a long track record and a config format that is almost identical to i3. That also means it has a huge amount of documentation and examples.

Boring is a feature

For now, I feel like my computer is predictable, boring and usable again. And that is exactly what I want. So it's not always the case that more is better.

If you focus on productivity, a tiling window manager is great. But for me, nothing else needs to change. No scrolling, no endless workspaces, no animations that grab my attention. Just windows in fixed places, on the monitor where I put them.

Sometimes the best upgrade is a step back to what has worked for years.