The difference, as I understand it, is that Hyprland is not a DE, it's a Windows Manager. So it should be compared with the likes of Sway, i3 and Awesome.

Everything you said is true, though I feel it’s ultimately a comparison between apples and oranges. Hyprland is awesome because it’s a tiling window manager that you can configure to your most niche desires. Gnome is awesome because it’s a comprehensive desktop environment that sets everything up for you.

Have look at nwg https://github.com/nwg-piotr/nwg-shell I believe it has what you are looking for. Panel, app drawer, dock, settings. It is a shell for sway and Hyperland.

I use xmonad as my main WM, so Hyprland would be a very easy transition. I would have switched by now but I just love Haskell

so much.

I'm not talented enough to port Hyprland to Haskell (at least the configuration aspect) but I wish someone wanted to do that. What I like about xmonad is that its core is actually formally verified.

I use Arch BTW. jk

Same here. being subscribed to unixporn community, hyprland always makes me wanna try it. but everytime i did, i just couldn't make it as my norm. Then i return to my good old Gnome.

(what sereral months of DE/WM hopping made me realize was i am not good at using WM's. The only one i used atleast few months was openbox in archcraft )

I agree. Even though I use extensions for dock, desktop icons and appindicators, I respect the Gnome devs for keeping things opinionated. It allows them to focus on implementing core functionality well, rather than having to support every customization option, which would clutter the settings and slow down development.

That's just the difference between desktop environments and window managers. Window managers are just one part of a full featured DE. Deciding to use a specific WM means you have to install and configure several things you expects and takes for granted from complete DEs.

Same here. You just end up building your own DE. It's great for some people, but I'm already plenty satisfied with GNOME + some extensions

Instead of rofi I'd recommend using anyrun.

I made a quick plugin to also run stuff from path, and am currently working on a proper ssh plugin for that - extending them is a bit more involved than the simple rofi/wofi scripts, but there's a lot more things an anyrun plugin can do.

In your case I would just start by copying a full setup someone else made and then customizing it, starting from scratch always takes a lot of effort. Reddit's unixporn was great for that, the alternatives on lemmy are sadly still a little empty.

Try Forge. It's a Gnome extension that provides you a tiling window mode, just like the one from the Pop shell. You will love it!

A full Hyprland DE with top bar, quick settings and app launcher, with unified looks and centralized setings would actually be awesome and might make me switch

Not trying to immediately change your mind, but Garuda added a Hyprland spin with their latest release. Boot into the live ISO and see what you think.

As a hyprland user, gnome is great and I would recommend it to pretty much anyone

Hyprland is great if you consider your machine a toy as well as a tool and enjoy spending hours customising and theming

I would choose my hyprland setup over gnome 9 times out of 10, but I'd choose gnome over someone else's setup every time because they actually know what they're doing and make a great one size fits all DE (my hyprland config takes very heavy inspiration from GNOME with a few changes to suit my personal preference)

Starting with someone's dotfiles is a much better way to start with these minimalist window managers. You can see what they did and only tweak the the things you want to work different. Still not as easy as a DE's unified settings, but if you like that fine grained control it can be worthwhile. My setup is quite basic, but having everything bound to the keys I want lets me do what I want quickly.

After going back and forth from Gnome and more traditional DE's, the latest Cinnamon scratched this itch for me. Shoutouts to the Mint team as well 👍

I had a similar issue when I started with Hyprland to set up all the additional programs which usually come with a DE. But there are preconfigured setups which give you a "full DE" experience out of the box and you can customize from there.

I recommend SolDoesTech or My Linux for Work. Both have full guides on Youtube as well for "easy" Arch + Hyprland installs.

Anybody with experience with Cagebreak? I like ratpoison but maybe not having to port a lot of configuration by hand would be nice

Why are you using hyprland synonymous for tiling window managers? Change title please.