Published Apr 15, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT
Roine Bertelson is a Stockholm-based tech writer, translator, and digital strategist with more than twenty years of hands-on experience in AI tools, Linux, consumer tech, cybersecurity, and SEO-driven content. He's known for turning complex topics into clear and practical guidance that helps readers solve real problems. People trust his work because he actually uses and tests the tools he writes about, breaks things on purpose, and translates the chaos of modern technology into advice that feels human, honest, and useful.
There’s a very specific kind of pressure that only exists in Linux circles. Not the loud kind. Not the “THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE” YouTube thumbnail kind. The quiet and dangerous kind. The kind where multiple people you trust casually mention the same thing, as like it’s already part of the furniture. This time, I kept hearing:
“Try Niri.”
Related
No pitch or urgency. Just this calm, slightly smug certainty that you’ll get there, eventually. So I did. Fired it up on my Ubuntu 25.10 machine, half expecting another “cool idea, won’t last a week” experiment. And here’s the annoying part. I liked it, but not enough to stay.
Niri’s approach is genuinely refreshing
The horizontal flow solves a problem most window managers ignore
The first few minutes with Niri feel … different. Not flashy, different, or “look at these animations” different. More like someone discreetly rearranged your brain while you weren’t looking. No grids, no splits, and no constant resizing like you’re negotiating with your own screen real estate. Instead, everything lives in a horizontal flow. One window at a time. Move left, move right, done. It sounds almost too simple. And yet, it works.
With something like Hyprland or i3, there’s always this low-level hum of decision-making. Where should this go? Is this layout still working? Should I just tweak that one thing … again? Niri just cuts the wire. You open something, and it appears. Full focus with no competition. No visual noise elbowing its way into your attention span. For deep work, it’s borderline dangerous how effective it is. The kind of setup where you sit down “just to check something” and suddenly an hour is gone, and you’ve actually finished what you started. Which is rare. Extremely rare.
Ubuntu 25.10 handles Niri without drama
The install is clean, the experience is stable
Credit: Shaun Cichacki/MUO
Now, I was fully prepared for this part to go sideways. Because new compositor plus Ubuntu usually equals “this almost works if you sacrifice your weekend and your dignity.” But no, Ubuntu 25.10 actually behaves here. The install is straightforward, the dependencies don’t throw a tantrum, and Wayland doesn’t feel like it’s held together by hope and a forum thread from 2019.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:avengemedia/danklinux
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:avengemedia/dms
sudo apt install niri dmsLog out. Switch session. Log back in. That’s it. No dramatic “and then nothing worked” moment. No dependency rabbit hole. No late-night regrets. Which almost makes it worse, because now I can’t blame the setup if it doesn’t click.
Where it started to lose me
The same simplicity that helps focus can limit flexibility
This is where things get a bit uncomfortable. Not bad. Just … slightly off. Niri is fantastic when your workflow is clean, linear, and one task at a time. Open something, do the thing, move on. But my actual workflow? It’s a bit messier than that. Controlled chaos and organized clutter. The digital equivalent of having multiple tabs open in your brain at all times. I like seeing things side by side. A browser next to an editor. A terminal lurking nearby. Something I can glance at without having to go looking for it, like I misplaced my own thoughts.
Niri doesn’t do that for me. Everything becomes sequential. One window. Then the next. Then the next. And while navigating is fast, it adds this tiny layer of friction. Not enough to break anything, but enough to make me notice. That subtle “wait, where was that again?” moment creeping in just often enough to interrupt the flow it’s trying to create. It’s minimalism doing its job a little too well.
It clicked … just not enough to stay
Niri works exactly as intended, and that’s the point
Here’s the part that makes this slightly frustrating to admit. Niri didn’t fail me. It didn’t crash, but it did annoy me. It didn’t send me running back to my old setup in a fit of rage. It stayed consistent, calm, and predictable. Anyone who knows me can attest that I like those qualities. In Niri's case, it wasn't my cup of tea. But I can absolutely see why people fall into it hard. There’s a clarity to it. A kind of enforced focus that strips away the nonsense. No tweaking spiral. No “just one more config edit.” No endless fiddling with layouts like it’s a personality trait.
There’s something almost offensive about how sensible that is.
You sit down. You work. You leave. There’s something almost offensive about how sensible that is. But it’s also rigid in a very specific way. Niri isn’t trying to adapt to you. It’s saying, “This is how this works,” and leaving it at that. If that aligns with your brain, you’re golden. If it doesn’t, you’ll feel it.
Sometimes “not for me” is still exactly what you needed
After a few days, I caught myself drifting back. Not dramatically. No uninstall rage. Just… quietly opening my old setup again, as nothing happened: familiar and flexible. Slightly chaotic in a way that fits how I actually think. And that’s when it really clicked. Niri didn’t need to win me over to be valuable. It forced me to question how I work. It stripped things down to the point where I could actually see what mattered and what was just habit dressed up as productivity.
Turns out, I like a bit of controlled chaos. I like shaping my workspace. I like having things visible, even if I don’t need them right this second. Niri showed me the alternative, as clean, focused, and intentional. It just wasn’t my default state. And that’s fine, because sometimes the best Linux experiments aren’t the ones you keep. They’re the ones that make you understand why you don’t.
Niri
Niri is a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor, mainly written in Rust.