TL;DR: Hyprland 0.55 switched from Hyprlang to Lua, breaking everything. I spent days tweaking my setup, only for the dev to announce the change weeks after I felt it was finished. Switched to Niri in under 2 hours.
The Breaking Point
I was a Cybersecurity undergrad / Jr DevOps / part-time blogger / gamer with a perfect Hyprland setup. Then 0.55 dropped. Suddenly:
- Config files broken
- Plugins non-functional
- Workspace rules gone
- Days of debugging for nothing
The dev announced the Lua migration right after I thought I’d finally stabilized things. That was the signal to leave.
Why Niri?
- Scrolling + tiling (no more manual window snapping)
- Config based on my old Hyprland layout (easier migration)
- Thanks to DankMaterialShell’s Quickshell + styling, I got a polished UI fast
- Total migration time: <2 hours vs. weeks of Hyprland rewrites
The Tradeoff
- Less community support right now (it’s newer)
- Different workflow (scrolling vs. traditional tiling)
- But honestly? Stability > features at this point.
For anyone else stuck:
If you’re on the fence about the Lua migration or just tired of config breakage, Niri might be worth a spin. It’s not perfect, but it’s working, and that’s what matters for productivity.
Full story on my site:
https://angelsantiago.me/why-i-left-hyprland
Top comments (0)