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Hyprland, btw
(Arch Linux Experience pt. 2)

Thursday, 13 March 2025

As promised in the previous blog, I tried Hyprland. In this blog I’m gonna tell you my journey to set up my Hyprland, and also the whole Arch Linux experience in the last 2 months of daily driving it. Spoiler alert: full of frustration.

2 Months With Arch (btw)

1st month: Honeymoon Phase

After I did some set up on my Arch and KDE, I can finally use it in peace. Just let you know that I’m not a heavy user. I spend most of the time in the browser to watch Youtube, reading blogs & forums, and surfing the web. Even for my college, I used Microsoft 365 (the online version of MS Office) and other web apps like Canva and Figma. Games? I barely played games here. Only Gameboy games and I’m using Retroarch as the emulator.

That’s why I don’t really mind moving from Windows to Linux. Though I faced some limitations, so far I can find a way around it. No Microsoft Office? we got the web version and LibreOffice. No Adobe? we got DaVinci Resolve, Photopea, Krita, and many other alternatives. Gaming sucks? my laptop can’t even run CSGO without reaching 5 fps. A hassle to install? has a very steep learning curve? I don’t care, I love wasting my time troubleshooting.

As a note, my laptop is not that powerful. My productivity is very limited with the 4 gigs of RAM, and the biggest flaw is that, it still using HDD. Yes, I got some spinning disks under my hood. Why I don’t upgrade? because I’m broke. That’s it.

So far, my experience with Arch is very good, at some point even better than using Windows 10. It’s lightweight, extremely customizable, and… It’s Arch!

2nd Month: My Brain Is Bloated

This is where I started to spot some flaws. First, the booting is REALLY long. Even longer than it took to boot Windows 10. It could be my fault for skipping some steps, or The hard drive’s fault. Probably both. I’m sure it’s both.

I did some research. From reading the wiki, to the forums. I even search it on Reddit because to be honest, I don’t really understand the solutions I’ve found on the forum. They’re too subtle. You can bully me for not understanding my Arch better but come on, if the solution is “JusT ChEcK ThiS ParT oF ThE WiKI” I’d rather ask an AI to find the solution for me. Which I never did, because I have trust issues with them.

Just like I said, I’m just too stupid for Arch. I may be enjoy learning something new and something hard, but this is just too much for me. Especially when I’m accidentally broke my Arch. For several times.

And then comes the second problem, that comes from the desktop environment I installed, KDE Plasma. I think, KDE is too bloated. Don’t get me wrong, some of the features and apps it gave me are really good and improve my overall experience. So I don’t need to search and install what I need. It already came bundled with the window manager and stuff. They also came with the bloat.

Maybe I installed the wrong package idk. Because mine comes with unnecessary education and games applications. Not only that, but many other junk that I couldn’t remember. I tried to uninstall them one by one, But after the new semester starts I don’t have as much time as before. So I just let them be.

Trying Hyprland: What Am I Doing…

Worth The Time?

As I promised in the previous blog, I’ll try to use Hyprland as my window manager. Little did I know that I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole. With Desktop Environment, almost everything is ready to use. But if you want to use Hyprland, you need to set everything from scratch. Like, the status bar, app manager, touchpad configuration, and many other configurations.

As a beginner, I encountered many problems and did some mistakes. A crucial one that almost broke my disc partition… Arch itself is not very beginner friendly. Combined with a raw window manager like Hyprland, it becomes a perfect combo to broke my brain.

I wanted to learn, but I’ve been feeling too lazy. So you know what I did? I stole other’s dotfiles. Welp, I didn’t stole it really. They’re available at Hyprland’s official page as a preconfigured setups. The one I use is ML4W by Stephan Raabe. Why I choose that? because it’s at the very top of the list. And seems like a safe option. I installed it, set em up, and… Ta-da!

It’s so beautiful I’m in love with it. My best riced up desktop so far. Not only that, Hyprland is very lightweight. Because of that, my laptop can finally run browser with 6 tabs where it’s impossible in Win 10, and would be laggy in KDE Plasma. It’s hard to adjust with the workflow because the dependency on hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts.

So far, I enjoy daily driving it. Everything feels fast. From booting to running apps. Using hotkeys also improved my productivity (a little bit), and I don’t really having a problem for it using Wayland display server protocol. Until, now

Oh No... My Hyprland... It's Broken...

Yup, it’s not an Arch experience if nothing is broken. In this case, it seems like I’m having a problem with Wayland.

For some reason, I couldn’t enter Hyprland. After I put my username and password, press enter, it shows nothing and then back to the display manager. Which in this case I use Ly. Ignoring the fact that the official Hypr Wiki said it works poorly. Because I like the simplicity. At first, everything works flawlessly. So I’m not sure if it’s the one who cause the problem.

Because my Hyprland is unusable, I reinstalled KDE Plasma using the unbloated package. I won’t do the same mistake okay…

And this is where I’m getting sure that my Wayland is broken. Because when I tried to open Plasma using the Wayland protocol, it suddenly become VERY laggy. But when I switch to X11, everything works normally.

Sooo, this is where I ended my journey of using Hyprland
And Arch Linux, for now

No Linux, For Now

I’ve reached my limit at this point. It was fun, and I learned a lot about how Linux works. But now, I need to use a reliable operating system so I can finish my study in peace. That’s why I’m back to using Windows 10.

Will I use Linux again? huge yes, after I bought an SSD. I’m still gonna use the dual boot strategy, but like before, I’ll daily drive Linux. Am I gonna use Arch again? maybe. And maybe I’ll use Hyprland again. But the chance of me using another, more out-of-the-box distro is there. Either Mint or Fedora, because both looks promising.

As today, Windows is getting near to it’s death. Doesn’t mean I can’t use it anymore. Microsoft just gonna stop giving Win10 security updates. And I don’t want to risk my personal data to a bloated, spyware invested, heavy and laggy operating system. And no, I will not upgrade my shitty laptop to Win11. Except if I got a new and more compatible laptop to run it.

- Dz, has no right to say "Arch btw" again… -

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