A Quick First Look At The Niri Window Manager

So recently I made a video showing you how to run Qtile in Wayland. Qtile is a tiling window manager that was originally written as an X11 window manager. It's been around for a number of years. It's a fantastic tiling window manager and they have an experimental Wayland session that kind of works. I did a video showing Qtile running in Wayland and for the most part I would say it's like 95% of the way there. There were a couple of apps that I require to use on a daily basis that for whatever reason I just couldn't get to work in Qtile on Wayland. But I was pretty impressed with Qtile in Wayland. But on that video I got a lot of comments, hey DT you should check out Neary. Like if you want to actually check out one of these Wayland compositors Neary is the one to check out. So I went ahead and installed Neary and I've been playing around with it here in the last couple of days and I gotta say I kind of like this one. So Neary is a little bit of a different take on tiling. Instead of a proper tiling window manager with your master and stack layout like you would have in something like a Xmonad or a Qtile, with Neary it is a scrolling window manager. So when you open a window it opens the first two windows side by side and then the third one it just scrolls to the right, scrolls to the right. You get this infinite scroll of windows all the to the right. And if you want to move these windows, I've got this key binding here, supershift H, to move a window all the way to the right. A standard kind of Vim key binding, right, Vim directions. Or if I want to move it back, you know, to move it back through the stack. And I've keybinded supershift C to close windows because that's the key binding I've used forever in all of my tiling window managers. That's one of the original DWM slash Xmonad kind of key bindings that I started learning like 20 years ago, right? So those kinds of key bindings stick with me. So I've configured some of the default key bindings here in Neary to kind of mimic what those original like Xmonad bindings were back in the day. But I've left a lot of the standard default key bindings alone. So inside Neary, if I do a supershift and slash or a super question mark is really what it is, right? And that's showing important hotkeys. It's basically your help screen. So super question mark or supershift slash because shift slash is the question mark, right? So that is how you get this little overview of key bindings here in Neary. So it tells you some of the important ones. And again, I've changed some of the defaults here, but I may have to refer back to it on occasion if I get confused about what some of the key bindings are, because again, I'm rather new to this. I've only been playing around with it really just a couple of hours. So what makes Neary unique obviously is the scrolling aspect, right? It's this infinite scroll to the right. And now sometimes you don't want to have a million windows infinitely scroll to the right. Well, you can always go down to a new workspace. If I do super O for the overview, you can actually see there is a workspace down here that I could click on, or I could move with the key binding. But I go to the second workspace where I only have the one window open. I have the Brave browser, which I have done full screen because by default it would have opened half a screen, but I've got super F in this case to toggle full screen. And this is the Neary GitHub and Neary is free and open source software licensed under the GPL V3. And if you want to read more about Neary, if you're brand new to it, kind of like I am, I need to go to the wiki, right? I need to go into the documentation and, you know, look up various things like, you know, how to control the layout because I can control, for example, the gaps between windows. I can control the size of, you know, these splits, you know, the size that it takes up on the screen. So you can configure all of this stuff on shadows, et cetera. Now, if I want to go back up to the first workspace, right, the one on top of this workspace, I would do super page up. And I go back to this workspace where I had all these terminals open. If I do super page down and go back to the second workspace, I do super page down a third time. I am at a brand new empty workspace. There's no super page down the next one because it only adds these workspaces as they're needed. So you always have one extra workspace. So they're dynamically created, I guess. But if I do super page back up, I go back up one more time and one more time again. Now, if I want to move, for example, this window down to the second workspace, I believe I would have to do super control page down. Yeah. And it shifted that window down to the second workspace next to the full screen browser, right? So that's why it's, you know, it was kind of looking odd there. Now, of course I can adjust the browser to where it's only half a screen. And now the half screen terminal fits in here. If I want to, you know, adjust it with super plus or super minus, you know, of course you can size the windows with those keys. Those are standard kind of tiling window manager, key binding, super plus, super minus the size, the windows appropriately. So let's talk about how to get up and running with Neary if you're brand new to Neary. So let me do a super page up and let me close all of these terminals. So the very first thing you need to do, if you want to install Neary is in Arch Linux or on CacheOS, which is what I am running. I would do a sudo pacman dash capital S and you need to install, of course, Neary. You'll also probably want a panel, right? So the panel is Waybar and you're also going to need a way to set a background. So I use Waypaper, the Waypaper program, which needs a backend of some sort. I would use SwayBG. You also need a lock screen. So I would use SwayLock. And there's a couple of other things that you probably are going to want to install later, but you definitely are going to need this group. And once you have all of that installed, you will, you know, of course have your default Neary window manager and your default Waybar. Luckily, I already had a Waybar config from configuring it for Hyperland a couple of years back and that kind of worked. I think I changed two or three lines, but it's basically the same config I was using back then. But other than that, let's get into the config for Neary. So I'm going to open your home directory slash dot config slash Neary slash config dot KDL. And this is the Neary config. It's got these blocks that are, you know, using braces and are indented. I'm not exactly sure what this syntax and what this particular KDL format is, but you know, it's akin to something like YAML or TOML and stuff like that. You know, make sure that when you're doing the blocks that you keep the braces correct, you know, as far as the pairing and make sure you keep your indentation correct. But for the most part, it's a pretty easy configuration to go over. If I scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see some of the stuff I've already played with a little bit. I'm starting on startup Kanchi. So because of my multi monitors, we covered this on the QTAL on Wayland video is Kanchi helps keep my monitors in the correct order because I've got three monitors and then we launch Waybar. We launch Waypaper. We want to restore the wallpaper using Waypaper. And I actually should do something else here. I should actually make sure that dash dash backend sway BG is part of that command. Now, because when I'm switching between, for example, QTAL on X11 and QTAL on Wayland, and then Neary obviously on Wayland, Waypaper is going to be confused about what it should use to draw the wallpapers. Well, I can specify in all of my configs, you know, whether it be an X11 window manager or Wayland window manager, what backend for Waypaper to restore the wallpaper with. That way I always get that wallpaper drawn. I also have the Emacs Daemon starting. I have Nextcloud starting. One interesting line is this one here, XWayland Satellite. So this is a program that you need to have installed with sudo pacman-S do XWayland-Satellite. And this program is what I needed for Java apps to work. Because one of the programs that I have to use on a daily basis, that's just, you know, I am a trader. I trade options every day. When the stock market is open, I run a second YouTube channel where I teach about trading. And it's very important that I have this program working, right? My trading program. Otherwise, I'm just not going to be able to use the window manager. And this was a problem with QTAL on Wayland. And you know what, now that I've installed this XWayland Satellite package, I'm kind of curious if this program would now work on QTAL on Wayland. Because now that I think about it, that might have solved my QTAL problem. But without this package, this app, which is TastyTrade, this Java program would not launch at all. Wouldn't launch it. I couldn't get it to launch. But now with that, you know, now I can actually launch it. The menu systems, which were the problem in QTAL, the menus just wouldn't load at all. They do load in Neary. They look kind of funny, but at least I can use them. So I can at least use the app here on Neary, where I couldn't use it at all on QTAL on Wayland. One other thing I did is in the config. So our config.kdl for Neary, let me zoom back in, is I did add this section, this block of code here, specifically for Java window managers, non-re-parenting. And I set that to one. I found that with Gemini. I asked Google's Gemini AI, why is my Java app not working in Neary? And it gave me this block of code. And it also told me about the ex-Wayland satellite program. So one of those or both of those together did fix that problem. And then if we scroll down, you've got stuff about gaps. I really didn't play with the theming. All the gap and border stuff, all of that looks fine. I'm actually fine with the defaults for most of this stuff. I did play a little bit with the colors, making sure the colors fit my color scheme. I don't know what the color was by default, but I set the border to be blue for the active window. Shadows are on. You got examples for various window rules, which I haven't played with. The only thing I really played with was key bindings. I wanted to make sure that my terminal was Alacrity and I wanted that set to super enter because that's what I always use for that. I also wanted my run launcher to be Rofi. So Rofi works on Wayland and I was using it in Qtel on X11. So I'm going to use it on Qtel on Wayland. I'm also going to use it on Neary on Wayland. There's no reason for me to use a different run launcher for each window manager. So I'm going to stick with that. By default, they wanted me to use something called Fuzzle, which I did install and it is a neat little run launcher. I may play with it at some point, but because I already have Rofi configured the way I want it, I'm just going to stick with Rofi. Other than that, setting key bindings is pretty self-explanatory. Mod plus a key, mod plus shift plus a key, and then the commands to run. Pretty easy config file to work with. This is not complicated stuff at all. Now you do have the ability, I should mention, to add a description to your key binding. For example, if I go back up and I see run an application Rofi, this is the title. And then of course, this is the command for what that key binding does. When I do the super shift slash or the super question mark, if I go in here and find super enter, you can see open a terminal colon alacrity, right? Open a terminal colon alacrity was the title. And then the Rofi was running an application with Rofi. So let's do that. Let's do the super question mark and go to super shift enter, running an application with Rofi is there. Lock the screen with sway lock, right? Right there. So that's kind of neat that you can add descriptions that automatically populate this help menu. So that's kind of cool. Now you do have the ability to toggle on and off floating. For example, if I go in here and open a second terminal and I want this window to float, I can do super V toggles floating, and then I can size this, move this around. And if I want to toggle between focus of the tiled windows or the scrolled windows and the floating windows, I would do super shift V and the focus goes back to the window. Now behind this, that was part of the scrolling layout, super shift V again, puts focus back on that floating window. If I want to toggle the floating window back into the scrolling mode, super V puts it back inside that mode. And then of course, if I close the window, I'm back to just the one screen here. Overall, I got to say this window manager out of the box kind of works. So like I made minor adjustments and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I actually kind of like the default layout as far as the infinite scroll. It kind of makes sense, right? You just open windows and they always go to the right, and you can move them and close them. If you need a new workspace, you do the super control page down to move to the lower workspace where you've got, I've still got this stuff down here. If I want to go back up and I would do super page up, but right now I just have the one workspace, right? And they're in this empty now. And it's really deceptively simple for somebody that's used to using things like Xmonad and Qtile and Awesome and DWM, the things that you could configure infinite amounts of different layouts that do different things. And you could switch between them. The fact that this thing really has one layout, it's scrolling. And if you ever need a window to float, you can make it float. Other than that, resizing the windows as they scroll. I mean, you can make windows bigger and smaller with the key bindings, but it's really quite intuitive. And now Waybar here, I've got three monitors. That's why I've got three monitors highlighted here. And then you've got two workspaces on each monitor right now. The one I'm on is the highlighted one. The darker one here is the second workspace, right? And so you didn't see that because that was the workspaces for the monitor to the far left. But let me do this one. I think this is this monitor. This is the workspace I'm on. This would be the second one. Oops. Nope. That's not it either. Let's try this one. They're out of order. It looks like on the Waybar. So that is something I would have to adjust. So that is interesting, but I'm glad I got that on camera because this is something I do need to, I guess, fix is the order of the monitors because I am adjusting the order of the monitors with Kanji. Put them in the correct order, but it looks like my monitors are not in the correct order on Waybar itself. Now, oddly enough, I don't really need Waybar to like tell me the workspaces or monitors or anything because the way Neri's scrolling works and you're going to be dealing with so few workspaces most of the time. Anyway, I'm not even sure. To be honest, I'm not even sure if you really need a panel to use Neri. If you need a sys tray, you might want Waybar there. But other than that, I mean, do you really need workspaces or widgets? You know, you might want a clock. I mean, you might want something simple there. But of course, a lot of people that use tiling window managers, I've never been one of those people, but a lot of people do run tiling window managers without panels. And certainly if you're one of those people, I think you could get away with not using a panel with Neri. Overall, you know, having not spent a lot of time with it, maybe just a few hours in total, I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. And this may be one that I pay attention to. I could see myself potentially using this one. Like my first impressions of this one was like, yeah, I could make that work. I actually like this. And again, in just the little bit of time I spent with it, I like this a lot more than I liked Hyperland, if I'm being honest. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. Matt, Steve, George, Darloff, Lee, Mark, Methos, Erjan, Peace Archon, Fedora, Roland, Wargentuin, Ubuntu and Willy. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this episode about the Neri Wayland compositor wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen as well. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. And if you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software like Neri, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. Peace, guys.