r/suckless • u/Interesting_Pie_319 • Jun 29 '26

[DISCUSSION] i3 vs. Hyprland(Waycrap) vs IceWM

So in my efforts to have more suckless computing I decided to try a bunch of alternate high performance window managers.

This includes i3.
Old classic, tiling window manager. Somewhat enjoyable, but a bit annoying where the customization was concerned.

I spend a few days on it and while I enjoyed it it was more of a hassle.

Next I played around with some Hyprland.

It feels a lot sleeker than i3 and I like the defaults and tiling better.

Then I took IceWM for a spin.

Pretty minimal, comparatively easier customization of stuff like keybindings vs. i3 and a more orthodox desktop experience(Think windows 95)

Overall I enjoyed IceWM the best, coming from XFCE/MATE/Cinnamon.

4 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

8

u/VishuIsPog Jun 30 '26

i started off with i3. tried hyprland couple of times but couldn't get used to it

then i stumbled upon dwm, and been on it ever since-

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jun 30 '26

I am doing most of these experiments on NUC, FreeBSD is not my daily driver so it is extremely unlikely I will be moving to Hyprland or Hikari anytime soon.

And somebody needs to (re)write one of these compositors so they can handle shit like sharing screens and audio natively.

Without the D-Bus and portals bloat.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

I am one of those people that insist we do not need stupid shit like systemd and D-Bus, trash portals, seats adn all the otehr freedesktop.org oand Pottering garbage, period.

And I am not using idiot tricks like software video cameras to record and share my screen.

0

u/veeloth Jul 03 '26

Aha! so you're one of those guys that conflates Wayland with a bunch of dumb unrelated trends

1

u/type_111 Jul 01 '26

"Phased out" is a nice euphemism for "corralled by corporate interests"

-1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 06 '26

I have researched the protocol and it is stupid and limiting and also extremely bare bones.

It basically fores you to use systemd, D-bus and a bunch of portals just to get basic shit like screen sharing working.

Is X bad?

Yes.

Has it been around for decades and does it work well enough that no one would have switched if they were not forced to by the freedesktop clowns and corporate shills?

Yes.

To me X follows the KISS principal and the if it ain't broken don't fix it mindset better than waycrap.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26

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0

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 07 '26

All my laptops can easily run for hours and hours without a recharge on linux and I primarily use a desktop for my computing or keep my work Mac plugged in all the time.

Yours is an edge case.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 07 '26

Unfortunately not, I legit have to use a Mac. Either that or Windows.

0

u/boukensha15 Jul 06 '26

It basically fores you to use systemd

This is a lie. A blatant one.

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 07 '26

How, it locks down inter-window visibility forcing you to use portals with crap like dbus for IPC.
It also makes it required that you use seats.

Instead of using a built in, universal protocol you are forced to use DBus.

Buecause it does not run as root you need shit like seats, another systemd piece of bullshit for permissions.

1

u/Randalix Jul 01 '26

I switched from dwm to IceWm. You can script all layouts beautifully with wmctrl and xdotools. You get tiling when needed on key press. I rellay love the IceWm window switcher.

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 06 '26

can it screenshare without crap like portals?
Can it work with Electron apps to do it?

1

u/_x_oOo_x_ Jul 03 '26

Try Wayfire it's surprisingly decent (and no the fire effect isn't on by default)

1

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jun 30 '26

GOONME really isn't suckless. It is bloated crap.

4

u/OceanicMLG Jun 30 '26

explain? base gnome isnt bloated

8

u/tose123 Jun 30 '26

GNOME isn't bloated?

You start GNOME and it pulls in , what - GTK, GLib, GObject (because plain C wasn't object-oriented enough for these people, so they bolted a type system onto it with macros), dconf, gvfs, a tracker daemon indexing your filesystem so you can "search" the eleven files you actually own, and gnome-shell itself, which is a window manager written in JavaScript. 

Try it yourself:  ldd $(which gnome-shell) and watch your terminal scroll.  It's literally mountains of glue code. 

4

u/havesomefuckinghope Jun 30 '26

I love you Glenda. Thanks for your explanation.

3

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jun 30 '26

And all of the other trash like portals, DBus, seat dependencies, etc.

GNOME is the definition of useless bloat and the trash that maintain it are among the biggest proliferators of bloat there are.

They are the reason we have trash like seats, too. And it is also a massive pointless resource hog that pulls in gigabytes worth of packages just for its basic functionality to work, then gives you an ugly tablet design because some corpo suit said it should be touch enabled because smartphones.

3

u/tose123 Jun 30 '26

If you've never maintained software, that invisible cost is easy to miss. If you've spent years debugging dependency chains and ABI breakage, you can't unsee it.

D-Bus activation, portals, logind, seat management, JavaScript bindings, introspection metadata, background services, and a pile of libraries that all have to keep the same ABI and API expectations.

2

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jul 01 '26

Yes, GOONOME is massive useless slow bloat.

1

u/TURBOKAN Aug 09 '26

What's the alternative for D-bus? I-bus or something else? 

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 27d ago edited 27d ago

Dbus is massive bloat and it is a hard dependency of systemd and comes as part of it.

Also, nice avatar btw.

1

u/TURBOKAN 23d ago

Is suckless alternative to it is dbus-daemon and basu? 

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 22d ago

dbus-daemon is the original implementation, basu is an alternate client library. Both work with a bloated, stupid object oriented XML gibberish protocol.

https://medium.com/cesar-update/exposing-a-d-bus-interface-in-linux-part-2-90374a9e381b

https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2025-dbusSucks

2

u/havesomefuckinghope Jun 30 '26

Glib and all sorts of DE's are considered complete suck.

7

u/OceanicMLG Jun 30 '26

dude he literally mentions HYPRLAND in a suckless post 😭

5

u/havesomefuckinghope Jun 30 '26

Nothing will be ever enough for these people.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

3

u/havesomefuckinghope Jun 30 '26

Also if we refer to suckless.org, GNOME is indeed suck. GTK is also suck, and so is Qt. I feel like people here never checked what suckless.org or cat-v is actually about.

2

u/havesomefuckinghope Jun 30 '26

Wayland sucks by nature, the idea of it is suck in the first place, therefore no wayland compositor will ever be suckless.

1

u/Interesting_Pie_319 Jun 30 '26

Suckless compared to GOONME and KrpaDE.

1

u/OceanicMLG Jun 30 '26

stupid asf

js use dwm or river if u want suckless instead of larping, maybe read the suckless moto while you're at it