First impressions w/ messing around on with Niri/DMS

uConsole
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I’ve had my uconsole for a few months and been really happy with it in general. I’m running a stock cm4 w/ the HackerGadgets NVME board+aiov1.

I have pretty bad eyes and had been finding the screen a little too small and often cluttered. I tried adjusting font size etc on Rex’s Trixie image but wasn’t happy with the results. I haven’t taken the time to do any benchmarking, it’s all vibes based from here on out.

I read about Niri, a scrollable compositor and a build of it called Dank Material Shell that provides a full desktop environment.

It took a few tries to get it to work. On my first attempt I somehow managed to get the regular desktop, an instance of Niri and DMS all on top of each other.

After getting that cleared up it’s been a pretty smooth experience. I like the DMS ui quite a bit and the combination of scrolling thru windows and comprehensive keybinds make it easy to stay organized and not cluttered. It is a more slick environment but haven’t noticed a huge performance hit once it’s loaded. Speaking of loading the boot up time is noticably longer than the default environment. I haven’t timed it but it’s long enough to be noticable but not long enough to be irritating. The sd card is a whole other thing, it noticably lags when booting up.

Once everything is on the temp and CPU usage are pretty similar, DMS seems like it’s a little heavier but again I haven’t made the time to benchmark. I think I can trim a fair amount from install but haven’t tackled that yet.

Anyone else using a similar set up for their desktop environment?

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I use a deeply customized Niri/DMS combo on the Arch build for the Radxa CM5 version of the HackerGadgets board. I’ve gotten it to the point I practically don’t even type on it outside of terminal commands. It’s very, very fast navigation once you configure the window rules and set some shortcuts using the game controller buttons. I love it…so much faster than my ipad now that I’ve finally got it stabilized.

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I’m def going through a learning curve, this is my first time using a set up like this.

Slowly getting my keybinds dialed in. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Edited to add: did you have to mess around much to get the battery monitor working correctly? It’s stuck at 100% for me currently but is able to tell when it’s plugged in/running off battery.