Hyprland

My Journey to Hyprland

I have made it pretty clear I am not a big fan of windows, I switched to linux only a few years ago and will never go back to that hell hole.

So I started my journey on XFCE, it's a lightweight DE and one of the few I knew somewhat about when I started using linux more. When I started my journey I mainly knew GNOME, KDE and some about XFCE. I had used GNOME and wasn't a big fan. I also didn't want something that is too much like windows, XFCE was lightweight and fit my needs so that's what I went with. I enjoyed this for a long time.

So why did I switch if I was so happy with XFCE? I simply wanted something with Wayland. At the point I knew about Wayland and had decided I wanted to move to something with Wayland I had already tried many DEs. I didn't like any of them as they either didn't have Wayland or I felt they were too bloated etc.

I knew what I wanted and was fine putting in some work. I saw some posts about Hyprland and decided I wanted to try this. After a few days I was hooked and still am.

So now that we have a little context, let's get into it.

What is Hyprland?

Hyprland is a tiling compositor that you can customize down to the smallest details.

Hyprland alone is just going to be a wallpaper if you start like I did, going straight into it...

So I read the docs, read more docs and read guides.

So after gathering some knowledge I went back to it. I decided to get Kitty as it was recommended by Hyprland. So this time we had a terminal in Hyprland, with this I changed some simple keybinds just to get started. Now I was able to launch my browser so read docs while using Vim to set up my Hyprland.

Some software I went with was Waybar and Rofi Wayland fork.

• Waybar: a bar you customize yourself
• Rofi Wayland fork: the launcher I thought looked the best (Obviously opinion based)

So now I could use my desktop in Hyprland and it was fine.

But wouldn't it be nice to see notifications? I went with swaync for this as again I just liked how it looked and was simple enough to add to Waybar to see all my notifications.

After a while I wanted to use a Bluetooth speaker, but wait there is no nice applet laying up on Waybar. I used the GUI from Blueman as I had it from XFCE, but I wanted some GUI and also wanted to make this as minimal as possible. I went searching around and found a few Rofi scripts, well that was nice as I already had that. I also found some for WiFi which I didn't need on my desktop with ethernet but why not. I also set up some scripts for shutdowns/reboots/etc.

For lockscreen I added Hypridle and Hyprlock simply because it was made by Hypr devs and seemed simple enough to set up.

After a long time with fine tuning lasting to this day I liked my desktop layout and had fun setting it up exactly how I want. I no longer have XFCE installed, all applications that can run on Wayland. I found alternatives to make my system be Wayland only if I couldn't use flags or find any support for Wayland. Some things like the Steam launcher couldn't run without XWayland but that was fine as I got the games up with Gamescope.

As you might be able to tell I had to learn a lot of different programs, but hey knowledge is power right. And since I found it fun to learn Linux this was just a good time. I don't think I would recommend Hyprland to any of my friends or new comers. I have seen there are some Hyprland setups that do all so do everything for you but I never used those myself (Example is Hyde).

But yea I just felt sharing a new Linux thingy I like. Now go touch some grass!