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.
This is because you are not Italian. If in Italy you find a wall writing with Dux on it, there is 100% only one thing it can mean. To me this sounds as weird as someone naming their project Führer
There are several other mentions of this in other threads. Its entirely possible it is an oversight. Yet I would also not be entirely surprised if (at least for some people) it is a well-chosen subtle troll, given that there are people that would find such a thing funny in this space (= recent heavily LLM-driven wayland ricing, aka hyprland, omarchy, also neovim, etc).
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,
Mango uses wlroots as underlying wayland compositor library and has been established for almost a decade now thanks to sway. Niri is using a new universal rust-based library (smithay), which doesnt implement all wayland extensions yet, but it get better all the time. background-effects blur for example was added in the last months!
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.
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.
Have there been any notable incidents where mistrusting a curl | sh was the cause? I hear people say not to do it way more than I hear people talking about actual incidents it's caused.
More just very badly made install scripts, which (in good faith) destroy some part of my operating system.
Messing up repositories added to package manager, creating dependency conflicts, overwriting config files I used. Even removing full folders - "because it's MINE" syndrome. --dry-run modes that are destructive. A lot of install scripts treat my computer as disposable machine meant for their app only.
MS Storage makes google play store look reasonable.
For Linux package management I am used to decent standards, where packages have maintainers that care about the whole ecosystem. I wish this would scale to the insane amount of software we nowadays have.
Personally wherever OS package manager is lacking, I tend to use Aqua (https://aquaproj.github.io/) as it failed me the least. Some decent work was put into this.
One coverage tracker used something like this for recommended CI setup, script was hijacked, users were advised to rotate all credentials available in CI.
it'll just print an error message because / is a directory. There's also a good chance curl starts first and fails to connect to the server that's not running yet.
Not as bad as giving it your root password which it asks on step 3. Not via sudo or run0, it asks you a password which it saves so it can then use sudo or run0. Uuuh no.
It’s not a good look, but: if you’re installing this, you already trust it with your password, since its UI is the lock screen and the login screen, etc. where you enter your password.
> Using an LLM to help write code is fine. Submitting its output unread is not.
> * You are responsible for every line you submit. You have read it, tested it, and can explain it in review.
> * Say in the PR when a meaningful part of the code was AI generated.
> * 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.
> ...
> * PRs that read like unreviewed output, with narrating comments, invented APIs, or style that ignores the file they are in, get closed without review.
That looks very clearly non-vibe coded to me. (Also, it's a mature project with 79 releases over the last year and a bit, and 321 contributors.)
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. 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.
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.
Sometimes they're the same people such at it is fun seeing the mental gymnastics to draw the line just under one's self.
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.
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).
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!
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.
I just want it to look and work like Windows or Mac. Those aren't perfect designs, but they will probably not be bested by a barely-funded FOSS project, and even if that happened, familiarity is more important. KDE looks like Windows.
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.
I think Mussolini commonly went by "il duce", while dux seems to be going back all the way to ancient Roman times, where it's a noun related to the verb for "to lead", meaning leader, essentially. It and its root gave us "duke", "duct", "produce", among many others.
And Führer means "driver", and the fact it means driver is irrelevant to why it would be a terrible name choice for a piece of software unless you're trying to appeal to a very specific audience. I'm not sure what point you think you're making.
Dux is just Latin for leader, so it's the control center of your OS I guess. The app that's in charge. Why does everything have to be about fascism or politics?
However, I can also understand that for some, words like DUX or Führer have a specific connotation based on where they are from, especially if it becomes personal...
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. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49093022
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.
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.
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
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
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.
The downside is that we are likely too late. I don’t see desktop/ apps / window metaphors etc surviving the AI apocalypse.
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.
How easy are all these tiling WMs for beginners? Is there one that's mouse-first (i.e. usable without the keyboard) and easily configurable without config files?
I tried Omarchy at the beginning of the year, but didn't really warm up to Hyprland.
Would be interested to know too. The config hell you find yourself in with most of them is just not worth it to me.
These days I just install COSMIC Desktop (developed by system76) and call it a day. It has pretty good tiling features built in and is very easy to use.
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.
I think it's great that the year of the Linux Desktop has come and is beautiful, but it's not for me.
You can pick and choose which aspect of the UI you want. I have win n mapped to pop up the system tray widget, and win d mapped to pop up the calendar. No other parts of the UI show, so it's a nice balance of minimalism and functionality.
Currently running Noctalia and interested in anyone who has switched to Dux & can talk out pros and cons. Particularly interested in creating custom widgets.
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 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.
I love Dux. Use it on everything other than my primary gaming PC. It is an amazing tiling manager and they are developing very quickly. Shoutout to the team behind 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.
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!
depends on when that fork happened. noctalia v5 moved away from quickshell and is way more performant and lightweight than DMS even if a bit more limited in what you can do
I'm curious, what is the worst that could happen if people ignored your warning? Some agent runs the installer and accidentally tricks the user into aligning with ideologies you are not supposed to align with?
Ho aperto la zona commenti solo per verificare ci fosse questo commento ahah.
(I only opened the comments to see if someone had already mentioned this haha.)
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. https://github.com/y0av/cubby
It's made with Quickshell and "Quickshell is configured in QML, a simple language designed for creating flexible user interfaces." - https://quickshell.org/
While Dux looks very very beautiful without a doubt, what is the main premise for its existence? With no offense to the makers of Dux, maybe I'm dense but what does it bring that other DE's may not? For example, when Cosmic DE came out, in my mind it felt like it sits on a spectrum between Gnome and KDE Plasma, with maybe leaning a bit closer to Gnome. Now, to me at a glance, Dux sits in that same spectrum but leans a bit closer to KDE Plasma. Is that sort of the design intent, like, as "pretty" as Gnome, but as "flexible/tunable" as KDE Plasma? Forgive me if my comparisons are too obtuse...but i sincerely wish to understand what is it about Dux that the makers had in mind...I'm not seeing a premise stated anywhere that's obvious. If someone would kindly share any info.
By the way, I mean no offense to anyone who invested so much time making Dux! I'm just trying to understand/learn. :-)
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.
(I prefer KDE Plasma generally but it uses more GPU)
It is so crazy how normal it looks that a random website suggest you to do a "curl -fsSL https://install.duxlabs.dev | sh" to install anything, and most people would stupidly do it without even thinking about it.
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.
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.
[1] https://duxlabs.dev/blog/v2-0-release