Hyprland: What is it and how is it installed? Can it be used on Debian and Ubuntu?
Like every passionate Linux fan, surely for a few years now, you have been reading, listening and experimenting about the rapid evolution and implementation of new technologies on the diverse and growing GNU/Linux Distributions. Being, 3 good examples of them, the development, consolidation and implementation of SystemD replacing SysVinit, PipeWare replacing PulseAudio, and Wayland replacing Xorg. And surely, there are other very good examples, which can go to the level of applications such as LibreOffice by OpenOffice, or important elements of the Operating System such as Desktop Environments and Window Managers.
But, focusing on the graphic or visual part of the GNU/Linux Distributions, without a doubt, Wayland is developing and moving forward little by little, but solidly in the running for being an excellent and highly functional alternative to Xorg. For this reason, lately we have learned of news such as that Cinnamon 6.0 will arrive with experimental Wayland support, or that Fedora 40 will say goodbye to the X11 session in KDE to leave only Wayland. And because of this and more, today we will dedicate this small entry to a first exploration of the Window Manager for Wayland called “Hyprland”. In order to do so, know its characteristics, its installation method, and know if today it is possible to have it installed on base Distros such as Debian and Ubuntu.
Cinnamon is a desktop environment for GNU/Linux-based operating systems, initially developed by the Linux Mint project as a fork of GNOME Shell.
But, before you start reading about this interesting free and open development of a dynamic tile window manager for Wayland called "Hyprland", we recommend one previous related post with the use of Wayland:
Hyprland: A new dynamic tile window manager for Wayland
What is Hyprland?
Both in his Official website as its official section on GitHub, "Hyprland" It is briefly described as follows:
Hyprland is a dynamic Wayland tile composer based on wlroots that doesn't sacrifice appearance. It provides the latest Wayland features, is highly customizable, has all the cool visuals, the most powerful plugins, easy IPC (Inter Process Communication), plus many more features and quality elements than other similar composers based on wlr and others. .
However, it is worth adding and highlighting that, Hyprland as Tiling window manager for Wayland, is characterized by its fluid animations. And he is very similar to Sway, because he also uses the wlroots library. Besides, It is implemented in C++ and is very focused on user experience, in order to offer a more conformable experience for the user.
Wayland It is a replacement for the X11 window system protocol and architecture with the goal of making it easier to develop, extend, and maintain. Wayland is the language (protocol) that applications can use to communicate with a display server in order to make themselves visible and obtain information from the user (a person). A Wayland server is called a “composer.” The applications are Wayland clients. Wayland also refers to a system architecture. It is not just a server-client relationship between a composer and applications. There is no single common Wayland server as it is Xorg for X11, but each graphical environment comes with one of many composer implementations. Window management and end-user experience are often tied to the composer rather than interchangeable components. What is Wayland? - Official Web site
Features
Among its many technical and functional features The following 10 stand out:
- A high customization capacity and the implementation of customized Bézier Curves for better animations.
- Includes cool visual eye candy such as: Gradient borders, blur, animations, shadows and more.
- Adds Tearing support for better gaming performance, and support for native IME and input panels.
- Frequently incorporates cutting-edge features. Meanwhile, it closely follows what was developed in wlroots-git.
- Provides global keybinds and tiled/pseudotiling/floating/full screen windows.
- Powerful plugin support along with an efficient built-in plugin manager.
- An easily extensible and readable code base, featuring rapid and active development.
- It is capable of instantly reloading your modified settings upon saving the same.
- Fully dynamic workspaces and a socket-based IPC.
- Two built-in designs and more available as add-ons.
Installation Ways
Its installation is not something that is usually considered easy and universal for all current GNU/Linux Distributions. However, to accomplish this task, its developers offer different Installation Methods with different degrees of ease/difficulty. The easiest ways being those dedicated to Distros such as Arch Linux, NixOS, OpenSUSE, Fedora, and Gentoo, among others. However, although there is an official method for Ubuntu 23.04; for example, for Debian GNU/Linux it is reported that it is only experimentally available for Debian 13 Trixie.
However, as usual, in Internet and the Linuxverse in general, there are interesting and useful unofficial methods like the following, which we invite you to explore and try:
Finally, we will leave you these useful and interesting links that will surely facilitate the installation of the latest version of Hyprland and its main components:
- Latest version of Hyprland: Wiki y GitHub.
- Latest version of Wayland: GitLab.
- Latest version of Wayland Protocols: GitLab.
- Latest version of the libdisplay-info Library (EDID / DisplayID): GitLab.
Summary
In short, this new, light, beautiful and very customizable dynamic tile window manager for Wayland called "Hyprland" It has been attracting a lot of attention from a good percentage of users in the Linux Community, who are betting on the use of small, simple and light Window Managers to replace the complete, complex and heavy Desktop Environments. And above all, because it is developed for the future, that is, thinking about Wayland's future victory over Xorg. However, there is still a long way to go for both Wayland and Hyprland. But, if you are one of those who already uses Wayland and Hyprland on a GNU/Linux Distro, we invite you to let us know your user experience with both developments, via comments.
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