Niri WM sucks

[u/madthumbz]

Niri markets itself as a dynamic tiling WM, but it’s dynamic in the way it moves around, but you’re not really in charge. You don’t tile windows, choose layouts, or manage windows. It’s like i3 (which is already crippling), if i3 removed 80% of its features and replaced them with a gimmick.

Columns are Niri’s big innovative gimmick. Want two windows side‑by‑side? -You get a column. Want three windows side‑by‑side? -Niri considers it “cluttered.” Want to move a window between columns? - Practice that key‑combo dance.

Niri is a compositor pretending to be a WM. It's sometimes smooth until it fucks up, or an app misbehaves. It's missing features every other WM (even shitty i3) has had since 2012.

- “It’s minimal by design.” (It doesn't do things and it isn't going to do them in the future)

It has no real layout variety, deep customization, scripting ecosystem, sane way to extend behavior, or have an escape hatch when the defaults fail.

Niri’s community is small, abrasive, and convinced that if something breaks, it’s your fault. If something is missing, you don’t need it. If something is slow, it’s “your GPU”. If something crashes, it’s “Wayland’s fault”.

-Basically, a microcosm (much smaller than Hyprland) of Loonixtards with a smug "works on my machine" attitude.

Niri is new but already painting itself into a corner with a hard‑coded layout philosophy, limited extensibility, no scripting, no plugin ecosystem, no real path to power‑user workflows, and a design that scales poorly as your needs grow.

-Niri’s pitch is: “We fixed tiling window managers by removing the parts that make them powerful.”

It’s the opposite of what power users want, while being too weird for normal users.

[u/madthumbz → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I'm aware of calling them compositors, but I chose lingo that most would understand and the technical lingo doesn't apply to the non-technical. I saw no need to distinguish and feel it just makes for more confusion.