I see there’s no discussion about Niri, a new scrolling tiling WM which appears to be a new and very convenient way to manage windows. I like the way KDE allows switching desktops with 3-finger swiping left or right, but prefer 100% mouse. This seems to be it!
I’m running Fedora 44 rawhide which survived 2 upgrades since 42 rawhide, but a year ago i tried to test Hyprland and installed it with ML4W scripts which unfortunately did not go well at all, something did not work out and it was barely configured. I ended up using KDE which I like a lot anyway, especially as it keeps improving rapidly.
This year Niri came out and it’s such a compelling concept.
I tried installing it from yalter/niri copr, it did install, but does not show up in ssdm on plasma logon screen. It starts fine and even runs (in a window), but I cannot logon to it directly.
Is this normal and requires further configuration? Has anyone succeeded in installing it properly?
(my system is bloated with lots of software development stuff and is begging for a fresh reinstall anyway, so I’m just wondering)
I’m regularly testing this package, so it should work as expected - though I have only ever launched it from GDM, never from SDDM. So if it doesn’t show up as an option under SDDM, that’s probably a bug somewhere …
Sorry, but that’s just bad advice. I’m not even sure if that works, and it also means you lose out on a couple of features, especially session management and xwayland integration.
" After installing, start niri from your display manager like GDM. Press SuperT to run a terminal (Alacritty) and SuperD to run an application launcher (fuzzel). To exit niri, press SuperShiftE.
If you’re not using a display manager, you should run niri-session (systemd/dinit) or niri --session (others) from a TTY. The --session flag will make niri import its environment variables globally into the system manager and D-Bus, and start its D-Bus services. The niri-session script will additionally start niri as a systemd/dinit service, which starts up a graphical session target required by some services like portals."
Just remember that the OP is using SDDM. Could it be that while starting SDDM the session tries to open still as x11 while niri is wayland? @andym was your Rawhide 42 install free of x11?
An alternative would be to test it with a DM like LightDM.
Thanks Matt,
i tried exactly this: logged on in TTY3 and started it with niri-session. Was able to switch between Plasma & Niri with Ctrl-Alt-F1/F3.
Nope, I’m on wayland but it should still have the X11 option. There used to be Plasma (Wayland) and Plasma (X11) drop down list on the login screen, but a few months ago it got updated to a more beautiful one and now it only says “Plasma“ and it’s no longer clickable (even more, if you click it you won’t be able to login as the password won’t be accepted, reboot only).
Also noticed: when i go to KDE settings - SDDM, there there are 3 options: 1 Plasma and 2 Niris.
