tpaau/shell
| Languages | Repo | License |
|---|---|---|
| QML | https://github.com/tpaau/shell | GPL-3.0 |
My custom desktop shell made with Quickshell for Niri. It is tailored primarily to single-monitor laptop setups, although multi-monitor support is somewhat functional as well.
I recently ceased working on it, mainly because I got bored with Quickshell and I didn’t feel like I was moving forward by developing the project. I would often find Qt bugs, quirks, and limitation even the Quickshell community had trouble going around.
Additionally, the RAM usage of Quickshell is horrible. My shell, for instance, uses 300MB of memory on
average (if I disable hardened_malloc for it it
drops by ~80MB). This isn’t even a skill issue! Other popular Quickshell-based shells such as
DMS, Caelestia, and
end-4 all suffer from this.
Nevertheless, I still do use my shell on my own laptop, simply because it fits my workflow really well. I even occasionally fix bugs I encounter during daily use. I designed it for my needs, and so far it still does a fairly good job at doing that.
Note
UPDATE: I switched away from my shell in favor of DMS. Over time, Qt updates caused some things to break, and I grew tired of fixing all the bugs.
The project died before it reached maturity - you can still use it (and it will probably work fine), but some major features are missing, and you should generally consider the project unmaintained.
I plan on making a second shell, this time built from the ground-up with Rust and a Rust-native UI framework. I haven’t decided which one it will be yet, but so far iced looks like a good candidate.
