 I have been meaning to try Hyperland for quite some time and I have tried Hyperland several times over the course of the last two months but as is traditional with me when it comes to anything having to do with Wayland I completely failed and my biggest stumbling block up until now has been getting OBS to actually record the screen. Now I think I have that solved so let me actually show you my screen right now and I think you'll see hopefully this shows up that I'm in fact running Hyperland right now and I've done some customization now here's the thing this is a little bit of a tease because I'm not actually going to be talking about Hyperland at all today not in any detail anyways I'm going to do a separate video on Hyperland in a couple days so make sure you're subscribed for that but what I wanted to talk about today was Wayland itself because my opinion on Wayland has shifted somewhat not a lot but somewhat my opinion up until now it has been that Wayland is not ready for basically anybody especially people who make content and I'm slowly coming around to the idea that Wayland is ready for most people like if you use GNOME or you use KDE and in the future if you use XFCE you're going to be able to use Wayland just fine you know the future has been accepted and has arrived when XFC has adopted something that's just kind of that's the measuring stick of hey is it the future yet has XFC adopted it then we can justify that it is in fact the future so Wayland for most people if you're using a desktop environment is perfectly functional and most people probably don't even realize that they're using Wayland these days it's just something that works really really well if you're in a desktop environment and you're using an AMD card if you're using an Nvidia card while that has gotten better over the course of the last year is still not quite as good as it is on an AMD card so there are still some provisos there some stumbling blocks if you will if you're using Wayland on a desktop environment but it's much better than it used to be and I can finally say that Wayland is ready for most people the problem is Wayland is not ready for the people who use window managers it's just not now if you are going to use a Wayland compositor which is what they've chosen to call call window managers now under Wayland the best one for you to use probably is Sway it's the most feature complete it's the most stable and it's the most supported it has a very large community around it and they've done a really good job of ensuring that it's easy to customize easy to install easy to use now all that stuff is true but obviously when you're switching to a Wayland compositor there are going to be certain things that are important in a window manager that aren't necessarily important in a desktop environment or more specifically there are tools that you need inside of a window manager that are built already for desktop environments things like screen captures screen shotting tools screen shooting tools whatever you want to call them things like that things like color pickers are going to work better in a desktop environment all that stuff that is usually included inside of a desktop environment making it a desktop environment are things that you're going to need alternatives for when you have a window manager you're going to have to build all those tools yourself and the issue here becomes that you have to find alternatives to all that stuff so things like color pickers things like hotkey demons things like ways of setting your wallpaper things of things like setting your gtk themes and your covantum themes and all this stuff all this stuff is either different or somewhat different when you're using a Wayland compositor so if you were to switch to sway you'd have to find all of these alternatives to the things that you would normally use in a desktop environment or if you were coming from a window manager that uses xorg you'd still have to find all those alternatives because a lot of stuff when you're switching from xorg to Wayland just doesn't work right because it's not going to be the same if the developer hasn't made any changes to those applications to run on x Wayland or on Wayland itself those things just won't work right now I've talked about that issue before where you have to keep finding all these are current alternatives and it takes more effort than it should because of that process you have to go through the biggest issue that I've found coming to hyperland is that a lot of the tools that were built for sway don't work on hyperland and you're thinking like how can that possibly be the case they're both using Wayland the thing is about Wayland is that it's not a standard so the developers behind sway have done things one way and they basically as far as I know are also the developers behind WL roots the idea is that those developers have done things in a certain way and made certain decisions and developers who have made applications for sway have had to go along with those decisions making those applications work on sway the developers behind hyperland while also Wayland and even using a lot of the WL roots stuff have done things in another way they have done things in a different way and that means that a lot of the tools that were made for sway don't work on Wayland so this is the biggest problem I have with Wayland right now as I said at the beginning I think that it's ready for regular people who use desktop environments I think it's there if however you are a window manager user and you're the kind of person who likes to switch between window managers or compositors you're going to have a harder time because a lot of the tools that work in one place aren't necessarily going to work in another so I've been setting up hyperland and a lot of the things that make sway really cool and really easy to use are the tools that they've developed to go along with things like sway idle sway background things like that and those tools work sometimes on hyperland sometimes they don't it's really kind of a toss up whether or not they work or not and obviously some of that is because they rely on tooling that was built for sway other times it's because of Wayland so it really is hit or miss and that means that the hyperland guys have had to go through and make a whole bunch of their own tools to do the things that sway has already done things like setting your background things like figuring out how to idle your screen all this stuff is separated between the two compositors and they've it just has created a lot of work for the developers but it also has made it very very confusing for users who have switched between the two of them now that's obviously just one part of it the other part of it is that if you're switching from an Xorg based window manager like I am I'm coming from Qtile and I'm coming to hyperland which requires a whole suite of other applications to do the things that I've been doing for years in Xorg window managers things like sending the wallpaper things like having a clipboard manager right clipboard managers you wouldn't think really would rely on Xorg but the one that I use apparently does like things like being able to move something from the terminal to the clipboard through a pipe or something like that it has a program that is reliant on Xorg it's X clip for whatever reason requires Xorg doesn't work on Wailin and another example that I have is Tilex Tilex is a terminal emulator that I have used in the past and I was going to use it this time because hyperland doesn't do a very good job with scratch pads it has a half-assed implementation of the i3 way of doing scratch pads where you can open up a window send it to the scratch pad space and then bring it back it doesn't seem like there's a good way to launch something inside of a scratch pad there is a way to do it but it's not great so I was going to use Tilex for my scratch pad basically just use it in the quake mode and have it drop down and I just use that as the scratch pad the problem is that it doesn't work natively under Wailin at all you have to use an environment variable in order to get to work there and it's it's janky like it's not it's not fantastic and especially in hyperland where there doesn't seem to be a way for newly opened windows to grab focus like it shows focus but it doesn't grab the cursor in order to give it focus so it's it's not great so I end up having to still reach for me reach for my mouse in order to give the scratch pad focus it's it's it's a mess and it's not great still the point is is that I've been using hyperland now for a day I was really excited because I finally got OBS to work and I was like yeah I'm gonna finally be able to make a video about it and it's just been one process after another of trying to get things to work well because I keep having to find alternatives to literally everything the biggest example I have of this is bars now there are some bars that work on both Xorg and Wailin EWW is the the biggest one you or whatever it's called I didn't care for you when I tried it all that much I did a live stream about it maybe four months ago or so I never actually got it all the way set up it was just kind of a mess and maybe it's time for me to give that another look but there are a couple bars that can cross platforms like that but the vast majority of them do not so like I can't use poly bar because it doesn't work on Wayland so you know that's an option that option is out as far as I know tend to doesn't work on Wayland maybe I'm wrong about that I haven't used in two years so I can't actually say it but I wouldn't think that it would work on Wayland so the normal bars that I normally use aren't an option so I had to look at Wayland specific bars that can work on Wayland and the biggest one that people seem to use is Waybar and I'll make my own video on Waybar in the future if I can find anything positive to say about it because as of right now 24 hours in I can't find a single positive thing is to say about Waybar I don't think that it's Waybar's fault well it is kind of they use JSON as their syntax for their configuration file I'd rather them use YAML to be honest with you and everybody knows how I hate YAML it's not it's not great I don't like JSON at all the I've even gotten used to that it's just it's not it's not a good bar just the needless to say and there aren't very many good alternatives there's one called iron bar that I'm looking at now that looks kind of like a tint to bar I haven't looked into it too much so I could be completely off base there I've just found it or somebody pointed out to me today there are a couple other ones that I'm gonna look into the point is that I have to find these alternatives and the bar is a big one right the bar is obviously something that is very important to me in a window manager and it has to work well with hyperland also has to work well with the Wayland components and finding one has been kind of a pain in the ass so it's a struggle and that's kind of the point that's the whole point of this video is that if you're using a Wayland compositor or a Wayland window manager it can be a struggle finding the alternatives to stuff that you need because a lot of the stuff that you've been using for years just doesn't work and that's a big deal it's just it makes it feel less user friendly than it should be right and it's not as if I expect window managers to be like new friendly like I understand that I mean from years of using it I know that there's effort that has to be put in in order to make your window manager good but it shouldn't be that much effort right you shouldn't have to completely rebuild your software stack from the ground up in order to make it work you shouldn't have to find new tools for literally everything you do now there has been some improvements to like the last time I was seriously trying a Wayland compositor was Sway Rofi wouldn't work all that well they actually had a fork Rofi and make a different version of it and it was still kind of janky it's gotten way better since then an actual Rofi package now does work on Wayland so I've been using that which is good because a lot of the Wayland specific launchers aren't good at all I've tried a few of them or at least they weren't granted that's been over a year so it's possible that they've gotten better since then but my memories of those haven't you know aren't positive so I'm glad that Rofi works there have been some surprises that where applications that I've used on Xorg have started working on Wayland better so that's good but the there still needs to be a ton of progress made there in order for Wayland to be ready in terms of window managers right and the last thing I want to talk about just real quick is that if Wayland is going to be the future and we've all agreed that it is and the future is kind of here already if we're all at that point window managers need to catch up right so the thing about window managers is that the developers behind them don't like to do change all that well right none of them move particularly fast they're usually small pteens of developers so they don't move fast they can't move fast because there's not a lot of them right and they don't adopt new technologies either at all or very quickly and that's fine that you know last thing we want them to do is adopt a technology you know quickly and then not do it very well right so that's not a big deal but the thing is is that one of the greatest parts about a window manager at least in my opinion is that there's a lot of choice here right if you want to use a window manager you can choose between i3 QTAL X MONAD DWM a DK window manager you know left WM you just the Herps love WM the list goes on and on and on and those are just the major ones there's many different smaller ones that you could try when it comes to Wayland window managers or compositors there's not that many you know options out there there's sway there's hyperland there's river QTAL has a version of Wayland that I can't get to work and that's basically it there might be a couple other small ones that I'm forgetting about but you know there's not a lot of them and I think that over time we'll see more but what I would love to see and I hope that this happens is that established window managers on the XORG side start to think about how they're going to support Wayland because eventually XORG is going to die off and that means those window managers are going to be either abandoned or you know just kind of stuck in the land of XORG and it'd be nice to see some kind of talk about what happens at that point so that's it for this video a little bit of a rambly video I'm using hyperland right now I've used it for 24 hours I like I said at the beginning I'm gonna make another video about hyperland where I don't complain about Wayland for the entire time that's why I wanted to separate them out because there are a lot of good things about hyperland and I feel like they would have gotten buried if I'd spent 20 minutes you know bitching about Wayland in that video so this way my bitching about Wayland is out of my system for now you know I'm sure I'll come back to it it's kind of become my hobby that way I can just talk about the good and bad of hyperland without having to talk about the mixed feelings I have towards Wayland so that's it for this video you can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey those links will be in the video description if you have thoughts on Wayland you can leave those in the comment section below can leaving a thumbs up or leaving a comment really does help up the video so if you could do that I'd really appreciate it thanks everybody for watching you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast you can also support me on the bear pay or YouTube those links will be in the video description thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon YouTube guys are all absolutely amazing without you the challenge would not be anywhere near where it is right now so thank you so very very much for your support I truly do appreciate it you guys are awesome without you just I don't know where I'd be so thank you so very much how I wouldn't be YouTubing that's probably for sure anyway thanks to everyone for watching I'll see you next time