Is Hyprland a good choise for the long run?

Message

logrusx · Post by **logrusx** » Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:24 pm

I recently got fed up by Gnome and its developers and moved to Hyprland.

It's been great so far, I don't suffer the reduced video playback performance that appeared in Gnome 46, it also solved some of my problems wrt keyboard shortcuts limitations, also it has better workspace management. But as I understood Hyprland might not be the most reliable choice. And it's not the most stable DM either.

Some people have expressed concerns about the stability of the community behind it and questioned its future.

So what do you think, is it safe choice for the long run? I'd rather migrate to something else now, while I'm on the page, rather than be forced to do it in an inconvenient moment. I understand Sway is similar, but is it better?

Best Regards,
Georgi

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Jan 30, 2025 4:17 pm

I used hyprland in the past, pre leaving wlroots, so haven't been keeping up.
As far as a tiling manager it's similar to sway (and many others), but it has lots of bling/decorations, etc.
I typically shut off animations and decorations as I find no benefit from them other than an occasional amusement

Sway is a good solid tiling compositor, follows wlroots very closely, no extraneous animation, etc.
Though (supposedly) one can use swayfx for animations and gee-wiz effects.

It's not hard to go from one compositor to another (well, if you ignore gnome and kde) as they mostly all use wlroots under the hood.

flexibeast · Post by **flexibeast** » Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:42 pm

Anon-E-moose wrote:they mostly all use wlroots under the hood.

Although Hyprland in particular no longer does so.

A while back i created a list of wlroots-based compositors on the 'wlroots' wiki page. Additions/corrections welcome.

logrusx · Post by **logrusx** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 5:47 am

flexibeast wrote:
Anon-E-moose wrote:they mostly all use wlroots under the hood.
Although Hyprland in particular no longer does so.

It does. And it is still wlroots based and it will be in the future. Only it ported it to C++ and integrated it into their code base. Everything wlroots works, and it should work on Hyprland. If it doesn't, it's bug.

Either way they've always bundled it and attempts to unbundle it have been futile as upstream does not want to support that case.

Best Regards,
Georgi

flexibeast · Post by **flexibeast** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:51 am

logrusx wrote:
flexibeast wrote:
Anon-E-moose wrote:they mostly all use wlroots under the hood.
Although Hyprland in particular no longer does so.
It does. And it is still wlroots based and it will be in the future. Only it ported it to C++ and integrated it into their code base. Everything wlroots works, and it should work on Hyprland. If it doesn't, it's bug.

This post from July last year says otherwise:

Hyprland is no longer a wlroots-based Wayland compositor, and instead, a fully independent implementation of the protocol.

Don’t worry though, all your wlroots apps will still work.

Have they since moved back to being wlroots-based? The following suggests they haven't:

Code: Select all

$ equery g --depth=5 hyprland-0.46.2-r1 | grep wlroots
$

logrusx · Post by **logrusx** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 7:32 am

flexibeast wrote:
logrusx wrote:
flexibeast wrote: Although Hyprland in particular no longer does so.
It does. And it is still wlroots based and it will be in the future. Only it ported it to C++ and integrated it into their code base. Everything wlroots works, and it should work on Hyprland. If it doesn't, it's bug.
This post from July last year says otherwise:

Hyprland is no longer a wlroots-based Wayland compositor, and instead, a fully independent implementation of the protocol.

Don’t worry though, all your wlroots apps will still work.
Have they since moved back to being wlroots-based? The following suggests they haven't:
Code: Select all
$ equery g --depth=5 hyprland-0.46.2-r1 | grep wlroots
$

No they haven't. If you read your own link you'll find references to what they've actually done. And it's no more different than what it has been to this day. I'll say it once again:

They've rewritten wlroots. It's not much different to what it already has been as they have been bundling a specific version of wlroots all along and it has been practically impossible to unbundle it, as I've already pointed out. Please read further the material you've linked for better understanding.

Also see what I've put in bold your quote.

p.s. actually I should read it too to get more clarity on my own OP question.

p.s.2. I'm not sure what meaning you put in "wlroots based", but here's a useful quote I was searching for words to express on my own but English is not my first language:

Wlroots' wayland protocols are still supported, so apps designed for wlroots compositors will still work (just like most do work on e.g. KDE too) so you can sleep safe with regards to that.

Best Regards,
Georgi

flexibeast · Post by **flexibeast** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 8:17 am

logrusx wrote:No they haven't. If you read your own link you'll find references to what they've actually done.

i did in fact, read the link, and what was done. i also literally quoted Vaxry, the author of the page i linked, saying in the text at the link that "Hyprland is no longer a wlroots-based Wayland compositor", which tallies with my original comment that "Although Hyprland in particular no longer [uses wlroots under the hood]." Further, the text at the link explicitly contrasts the new code with "wlroots implementations":

All protocol implementations are now integrated into Hyprland itself, and written with C++. This should reduce the amount of memory issues and bugs compared to wlroots implementations and has already been doing that.

It then goes on to say:

The backend rendering stuff has been migrated into a library written from scratch called aquamarine.
Aquamarine is not a competitor to wlroots - wlroots is a library for building Wayland compositors, while aquamarine is a tiny library providing an abstraction on top of the very low-level backend stuff, that also allows your program to run on either a Wayland compositor (in a window) or on a DRM session (tty).

That is, the new backend, 'aquamarine', is specifically distinguished from wlroots.

wlroots is a specific library, not an abstract specification that happens to be implemented by a library also named `wlroots`. Re-implementing the functionality provided by wlroots, such that the specific library named `wlroots` is no longer involved, is why Vaxry wrote that "Hyprland is no longer a wlroots-based Wayland compositor".

If you want to disagree with how the creator of Hyprland himself describes the situation, take that up with him; personally, i'll defer to his assessment. i'm out.

logrusx · Post by **logrusx** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 8:27 am

flexibeast wrote:
If you want to disagree with how the creator of Hyprland himself describes the situation, take that up with him; personally, i'll defer to his assessment. i'm out.

I disagree with artificial understanding and will end it here.

New at Gentoo · Post by **pietinger** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:20 am

logrusx wrote:I disagree with artificial understanding and will end it here.

Could you explain to me what you mean by “artificial understanding”?

logrusx · Post by **logrusx** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:23 am

pietinger wrote:Could you explain to me

I understand it might have disturbed you but I won't go there.

Best Regards,
Georgi

New at Gentoo · Post by **pietinger** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:30 am

Moderator note:
Locked until moderation has reviewed the complaint.

@logrusx: You are welcome to answer my question via e-mail.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Fri Jan 31, 2025 11:22 am

The chain of events regarding hyprland to my knowledge:

uses wlroots and 3rd party tools requiring wlroots should work
forks/rewrites wlroots as aquamarine, most of the 3rd party wlroots requiring tools should still work
future is unknown if and how 3rd party tools requiring wlroots will continue to work

I think it's that simple. Anybody is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, at this point I wouldn't count on hyrpland stability. I'd wait a little longer, unless wm/compositor-hopping isn't a problem.

EDIT: And looks like things heated up once again and topic got locked.