in ♥️ with linux

A what? What is a scrollable-tiling compositor?

The beauty of Linux is the choice. You are not restricted to just one distribution, but also not restricted to one user interface. KDE or Gnome are certainly well known and there is a dispute as to which is the best interface. Then there is sway or Hyprland for the keyboard enthusiasts.

After using sway for a while, I have now discovered Niri.

Niri is a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor written in Rust. In my opinion, the relatively young system (the first release is from March 2024) is already very stable.

What does that mean? Well, let me quote Niri's github page:

Windows are arranged in columns on an infinite strip going to the right. Opening a new window never causes existing windows to resize. Every monitor has its own separate window strip. Windows can never “overflow” onto an adjacent monitor. Workspaces are dynamic and arranged vertically. Every monitor has an independent set of workspaces, and there's always one empty workspace present all the way down. The workspace arrangement is preserved across disconnecting and connecting monitors where it makes sense. When a monitor disconnects, its workspaces will move to another monitor, but upon reconnection they will move back to the original monitor.

My personal highlights in Niri from the perspective of a non-professional Linux user:

• stability
• fractual scaling with beautiful font rendering
• simple configuration file
• helpful community ( including via Matrix)

Basically, however, I particularly like the approach that apps on each workspace are located next to each other as a band and the width of the apps can be customised. This is extremely practical for working with two or three apps in parallel. The width can be quickly adjusted using a key combination. Very clearly structured.

A screenshot tool is also built in and I can also hide windows via a rule for screencasts. X programme (like Steam) run wonderfully via xsatellite, waybar already has modules for Niri ... so the future looks good.

After some Linux distro hopping (Fedora, Debian) I finally came back to the distro with which I had my first Linux experiences in the mid-90s: openSUSE. I have to say, a lot has happened during this time and I am particularly fond of the rolling release Tumbleweed.

Tumbleweed is a rolling release distro, i.e. there are no versions. The system updates itself constantly. What is different with tumbleweed, however, is that new packages are first run through a test system and then published as a snapshot.

Speaking of snapshots: After each installation, the system automatically creates a snapshot and if something goes wrong ... simply revert to a previous version.

This brings stability, but also always very up-to-date packages.

Basically, I have also found (almost) no software that is not available for tumbleweed. This means that I have not yet needed to install anything via Flatpak.

So no problem to use a release candidate of Gimp 3 or Gnome 47. But smaller and newer projects such as Niri are also quickly installed.

Thus: I could also rename this blog ‘in love with opensuse’. I am so very enthusiastic and actually a little bit in love.