Been using this for close to a year (wrote about it here when it was still called Dank Material Shell: <a href="https://tedium.co/2026/01/29/niri-danklinux-scrolling-window-managers/" rel="nofollow">https://tedium.co/2026/01/29/niri-danklinux-scrolling-window...</a>); it is endlessly slick, and I think good enough to help mainstream Niri.<p>It also just added official support for atomic distros like Bazzite; it was previously kind of an annoying gap given the popularity of those distros.
I'd honestly recommend giving Mangowm a try. While Niri is beautiful, Mango is just more functional and more focused on getting basic features right IMO,<p><a href="https://mangowm.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://mangowm.github.io/</a>
> HDR Support added 4 months ago<p>Wow! This is actually enough for me to try it. Given that the only tiling wm on wayland with HDR support was Hyprland, which is backed by DHH, I was left feeling a bit sour about this.
my squinting eyes read this as mangrown
I was confused for a second, but turns out DMS rebranded the 'Dank' to 'Dux' a few weeks ago [1]. I've been running DMS + Niri for nearly a year now with no intentions of switching anytime soon. Given how often I've historically changed shells/DEs, this is the ricing equivalent to settling down, getting married, and having kids.<p>[1] <a href="https://duxlabs.dev/blog/v2-0-release" rel="nofollow">https://duxlabs.dev/blog/v2-0-release</a>
This looks at lot like Android.<p>I am not sure how I feel about the curl | sh installation. This seems lile the kind of project which should become part of a Linux distro and thoroughly reviewed before it can be trusted unconditionally.
Piping curl to sh is pretty much always a bad practice.
Yeah, definitely ripped straight from Material Design. That clock widget looks like an exact copy of one from a phone I had.<p>I assume this project is all vibe-coded?
> I assume this project is all vibe-coded?<p>You know what happens when you assume, right?<p><a href="https://github.com/duxlabs-dev/dux-shell?tab=contributing-ov-file#generative-ai" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/duxlabs-dev/dux-shell?tab=contributing-ov...</a><p>Quoting in part from that:<p>> Using an LLM to help write code is fine. Submitting its output unread is not.<p>> * You are responsible for every line you submit. You have read it, tested it, and can explain it in review.<p>> * Say in the PR when a meaningful part of the code was AI generated.<p>> * Write PR descriptions, issues, and comments yourself. No AI-written or AI-rewritten text. A few plain sentences in your own words beat a page of generated summary. PRs and issues with AI-written text get closed without review.<p>> ...<p>> * PRs that read like unreviewed output, with narrating comments, invented APIs, or style that ignores the file they are in, get closed without review.<p>That looks <i>very clearly</i> non-vibe coded to me. (Also, it's a mature project with 79 releases over the last year and a bit, and 321 contributors.)<p>As much as I respect the abilities of agentic coding LLMs, I don't <i>think</i> we're yet at the point that you could vibe-code a novel Wayland DE. This is not trivial stuff!
There’s a new vibe coded Wayland shell every week now. It’s actually unfortunate DMS renamed when they did. I saw this and assumed it was just another vibe coded abandonware without realizing what it was.
It isn't really a wayland DE. It's a shell that can be used with niri, hyprland, sway, etc. And is also built on top of quickshell.
> You know what happens when you assume, right?<p>Judging by the text you quoted, you guess correctly?<p>> As much as I respect the abilities of agentic coding LLMs, I don't think we're yet at the point that you could vibe-code a novel Wayland DE.<p>You definitely could. Have you tried?
I'm not saying you do this, but I do enjoy complaints about piping cURL to shell when so many people are giving LLMs full access to do whatever they want on their computers.<p>Sometimes they're the same people such at it is fun seeing the mental gymnastics to draw the line just under one's self.
None of them seems to be aware that "Dux" is not really a good word, because it's the name used by Benito Mussolini for himself.
It reads the same as calling this WM "Fuhrer". Not a good name choice.
Average look, from the software part, not mature enough compared to other setups such as hyprland or sway.
LLLms brought the ui renaissance! Every forgotten by the god use case now has a pretty ui/tui! Heck even simple scripts now have well documented APIs. I love this.<p>The downside is that we are likely too late. I don’t see desktop/ apps / window metaphors etc surviving the AI apocalypse.
<a href="https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap</a>
My most anticipated development roadmap these days.
Haha, yeah. Once XFCE is fully wayland driven, I will probably be back on xfce.
Agreed, it's the only mainstream desktop with Windows 2000-era ergonomics, which I particularly like. I reluctantly use GNOME now for its better security.
Same here, it is either XFCE or KDE, when on GNU/Linux.<p>Ideally WindowMaker, but there is not much development going on there nowadays.
Does KDE not have that? I don't know a lot about this and have just been using whatever DE comes default. Gnome3 does seem like it's trying to be "different," and I remember Gnome2 being more normal.
KDE seems surprisingly decent now (I tried Plasma out the other day).<p>Personally, I'm still using Unity 7 on X11, but as that DE's project is now seemingly dead again, I keep looking for a replacement. This one also looks pretty interesting!<p>I would really like to find something that handles fractional scaling as efficiently as Unity/Compiz. That, the dash, and (I'm ashamed to admit) wobbly windows are what keep me using it.
I stuck with Unity 7 for a long time, but almost all of it can be replicated with KDE these days (I always liked the a top bar with the Window title and buttons, saves space on laptop screens). I'm surprised you find fractional scaling better on Unity/Compiz though, that was one of the reasons why I switched away (especially using fractional scaling at different levels on multiple displays). I still miss the HUD though.
No, KDE is kind of a mess and is far from the look and feel of classic desktop UIs.
I use it daily. There was a learning curve since I was used to GNOME Shell, but Niri and the ability to build my own widgets with QML ended up being the killer features for me. I've built several custom widgets and small apps, and I'm happy with my workflow
DMS is extremely solid but at this point is becoming more all-encompassing than I honestly want<p>I've been wanting to try Noctalia with this River-based multi-paradigm compositor (which supports DMS) <a href="https://github.com/greenm01/triad" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/greenm01/triad</a>
I knee-jerk moved to Noctalia because the Mango functionality was broken (due to config syntax change). Guess is a good opportunity to switch back.
When I moved from x to Wayland; I just moved from my bswpm setup to plasma because I couldn't get similar workflow that I set up in bspwm in either hyprland or sway. Then river entered my radar; but I think the development moved towards becoming a protocol rather than a WM. Nice to see river being used, might give this a try.
Funny you say that, I just started doing specs, planning for a river based compositor based on Niri & Umbriel. After mentioning the idea a couple months ago. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49093022">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49093022</a><p>Umbriel is a Niri- like scrolling wm from the Noctalia devs, have really been enjoying it. But I do want something more configurable, easier to play with. And river certainly seems like the main go-to base for that.<p>Running Noctalia is a must for me. It's a great shell, from a great team. The v5 took a lot of lessons from the past & really spun a very elegant beautiful new user product with a great architecture. Great stuff, not to be missed imo. Happy convert from DMS too.
That's awesome, I'm excited to see what you come up with because Umbriel is definitely cool.<p>I def recommend studying that Triad project: it excites me because it represents the idea that if River had an extra layer on top of you'd have the WM customization potential that normally just comes with building a custom WM or compositor but through config and having Niri/Noctalia/DMS compatibility solved by default
Here I am with Waybar and a few fuzzel scripts still wondering what all the fuss is about.
Great rename, Dux/Tux, keeping the "d" at the start..<p>Plus, in school the dux is the person who came top of the class.<p>It's been turning into a very complete desktop env for a while now, surprising it doesn't get talked about more. Glad to see it get exposure on HN.
I'm always surprised by how beautiful these make Linux, but they also turn away from the minimalism I appreciate about my Linux desktop. I'm OK with pulling up a web browser to view the weather! I've historically used a variety of "bars", and being able to tailor them down to "only show me info X" has done wonders for my focus and comprehension.<p>I think it's great that the year of the Linux Desktop has come and is beautiful, but it's not for me.
I was deciding between DMS and Noctalia; and noctalia's move away from quickshell due to resource usage made me decide on noctalia. But nice to see Dux developing.
On my system<p><pre><code> qs - 330m
niri - 49m
dms - 90m
</code></pre>
Passable, I'd say
Yeh that was my biggest issue when trying DMS. What's the reason Quickshell is heavy?
I have been using a pretty basic DWM I customized with the old #! Linux keybindings I love so much for years now. I have been very reluctant to change this setup but Wayland does seem much better these days. I feel I may need to switch up soon. Kinda feels like the end of an era lol.
Been using this and niri since the inception of both, 0 complaints, 0 maintenance. I had a period(s) of going completely crazy with customizations, tons of dot files, i3, bspwm, way (and other) bars, modules, all of it and I probably forgot 90% of it. and just suddenly I settled on these 2 and kept using it.
I love what these shells do for the linux desktop, but on laptops it makes me bit concerned about battery life. The last time I checked out Dank Material Shell, I saw an impact on power consumption over vanilla Niri.
Currently running Noctalia and interested in anyone who has switched to Dux & can talk out pros and cons. Particularly interested in creating custom widgets.
if you install it on top of gnome , the design of a show-apps gnome extension i made for myself which is android inspired would fit really nicely with this i think. <a href="https://github.com/y0av/cubby" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/y0av/cubby</a>
anyone have extended thoughts using this (DMS?) vs Noctalia? i’ve been running a Noctalia fork for like a year now and I’m quite happy with its development. easy to upstream PRs too!
The design language looks heavily ChromeOS-inspired.
It's a design based on Material Design, created by Google and used in Android and Chrome OS, yes
It's made with Quickshell and "Quickshell is configured in QML, a simple language designed for creating flexible user interfaces." - <a href="https://quickshell.org/" rel="nofollow">https://quickshell.org/</a>
I dont mean to be too pedantic but open source for a linux desktop environment kinda should go without saying?<p>Rather, I couldn't imagine using a closed source one.
They exist, for example SteamOS has closed source desktop shell based on Steam client
fwiw I can remember all the turmoil when Qt had no free tier and KDE was work of the devil
If you or anyone else want a trip down memory lane around that topic, peppered with some interesting revelations, this video is worth checking out:<p>KDE: The Documentary — The Story of Free Software Underdogs<p><a href="https://youtu.be/1Vyzla9mx4g" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/1Vyzla9mx4g</a>
Github contributions, Claude, oh well.<p>At least some brownie points for using Go, I guess.
This project will end up hanging upside down.
nice project, bad naming :)
so its a full shell now not just a theme, wonder when it becomes heavy enough that people start wanting something lighter on top of niri
Curious to see the difference with Regolith.
Seems...about the same as Noctalia?
nice I might switch to this. I'm just using sway and a couple of gnome things clobbled together
looks pretty cool ill give it a try!
One problem I have with all these wayland desktops is that they don't work in virtual machines... like at all or very buggy.
It is so crazy how normal it looks that a random website suggest you to do a "curl -fsSL <a href="https://install.duxlabs.dev" rel="nofollow">https://install.duxlabs.dev</a> | sh" to install anything, and most people would stupidly do it without even thinking about it.<p>Someone coming from 10 to 15 years in a past would think that people are crazy now. And looks like that he would be right when you see the amount of vulnerabilities and stupid breaches like people being pawned just by doing an update with npm or so.
How is it for resource use? I tried to make labwc+lxqt work for a low-gpu desktop to free up GPU for local LLM but lxqt is very not good without Openbox and I don't like switching back to X.<p>(I prefer KDE Plasma generally but it uses more GPU)
This looks like almost like cealistia and its shell
Dux is how Mussolini was called under Fascism in Italy, just FYI if the developers are reading.
It's also the name of a fabulist whose stories Jean-Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport was based on as well as his eponymous martial arts style, Dux Ryu Ninjutsu.
It's also what you call the top student in a school year. I think that waters down the association enough.
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I went from Omarchy to DMS and then back to Omarchy. IMO, much better overall.
nice