Hyprland is an open source Wayland compositor based on wlroots, a project I started back in 2017 to make it easier to build good Wayland compositors. It’s a project which is loved by its users for its emphasis on customization and “eye candy” – beautiful graphics and animations, each configuration tailored to the unique look and feel imagined by the user who creates it. It’s a very exciting project!

Unfortunately, the effect is spoilt by an incredibly toxic and hateful community. I cannot recommend Hyprland to anyone who is not prepared to steer well clear of its community spaces. Imagine a high school boys’ locker room come to life on Discord and GitHub and you’ll get an idea of what it’s like.

I empathise with Vaxry. I remember being young, smart, productive… and mean. I did some cool stuff, but I deeply regret the way I treated people. It wasn’t really my fault – I was a product of my environment – but it was my responsibility. Today, I’m proud to have built many welcoming communities, where people are rewarded for their involvement, rather than coming away from their experience hurt. What motivates us to build and give away free software if not bringing joy to ourselves and others? Can we be proud of a community which brings more suffering into the world?

Update: Response from Vaxry, Hyprland Developer

  • rjek@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I struggle to be interested in any bling project written by C++ “coders” since they were 9 who don’t even know how copyright works so use a pseudonym there instead - they’re almost always inexperienced children. And children are almost always sociopaths.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    this guy just learned about discord general chats lol

    they’re all this bad, and also they’re absolutely dogshit for open source software so I have no idea why people make them

  • CypherPsycho@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Who gives a fucking shit lol. Guy makes software I like, I use it. I don’t care if he has slaves on treadmill generating his electricity.

      • michaelmelanson@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Hyprland is itself a fork of wlroots, a project that the author of this post created, so this has happened before and they definitely have the skills to bootstrap a new project.

        • aard@kyu.de
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          1 year ago

          Hyprland is itself a fork of wlroots, a project that the author of this post created

          No, it is not. wlroots is plumbing containing parts a compositor commonly would need to implement, and many compositors - including hyprland - sit on top of that to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again.

      • InstallGentoo@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        His response is perfectly rational. You need to stop getting offended over every small thing on the internet.

        • zwekihoyy@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          treating people respectfully is not getting offended. please touch some grass and open your eyes.

          • InstallGentoo@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            Did you read his response? These were a few small incidents blown out of proportion. Maybe grow a thicker skin?

            • zwekihoyy@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              that’s not really the point considering this didn’t occur in a vacuum. this one event can come to just be a grift and what I said will still be true.

              • InstallGentoo@lemmy.zip
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                1 year ago

                I only have two things to say:

                1. Stop bringing your politics into free software and creating unproductive drama
                2. Stop being so fragile to get offended by random teenagers on the internet
      • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeahhh, he’s like “everything was taken out of context to smear me”, he shows the context and it doesn’t make him look any better.

        It’s a shame bc I really wanted to get into hyprland, but I won’t get involved with a project that is okay harassing people for being trans.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
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      1 year ago

      The final bit is interesting. Vaxry says Q (who was openly bigoted) got punished, but doesn’t mention prisj (who was slightly less open about it).

      #general does indeed sometimes have jokes that some people might treat as “controversial”.

      And if you really need a place with controversial jokes, split it off from your support server or something.

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    the moderators of the Discord server engaged in a harassment campaign against a transgender user, including using their moderator privileges to edit the pronouns in their username from “they/she” to “who/cares”

    Well, apparently those moderators care. Why else edit it?

  • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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    1 year ago

    I can personally vouch for how toxic the Discord server and its moderators/admins are. Went there for support (Hyprland was crashing on startup on AMD, sway worked fine), and was told something along the lines of “if you can’t figure this out you’re stupid and you should stop using Linux”. Figured out the issue on my own and stopped using and recommending Hyprland after that.

    • d6GeZtyi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I empathize a lot with this comment.

      In tech (though I would guess as in many other technical domains), many people do seem to easily bully people for not knowing things or making mistakes. I’m guessing it’s just people having high insecurities themselves, it’s even more of an ego thing when considering that computer things are considered as a “nerd” pastime (a group considering itself “smart”). Not knowing things - even things that we would have thought are really simple - should be OK on an help channel as long as you’re not abusing the helpers’ patience.

      I’ve been a witness of these situation countless times, the sane way of handling this for me have been to just consider that these are mostly people externalizing their poor self esteem and to just continue conversation (at worst with the other people) as normal.

    • vildis@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I wonder if this comes from the only help / discussion being on Discord which has an infamously horrible search feature.

      A forum could even be indexed by search engines so no need for:

      1. A discord account
      2. Annoying the developers with frequently asked questions
    • piexil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Vaxry’s themselves does this all the time. He’s an asshole. Like I get OSS developers don’t owe anyone anything, but some people think that means they can be an asshole to their users for no reason too.

      Just look at this for example. Someone asked a clarifying question and Vaxry basically said “stop making noise”. Ironically producing more noise instead of just, idk, answering them? https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/issues/1817

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        3 months ago

        Sorry to be dragging a comment out of the aether as I read into Hyprland controversies, but its absolutely wild this guy was rude across the span of an entire week about a pretty typical issue request, and then later down the road was like “it was one bad comment I might have been having a bad day” and its like… Dude it was 7 days

  • GenBlob@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It sucks that cool projects like hyprland are usually riddled with toxic weirdos that ruin it. It also sucks that there’s not much to choose in the wayland space that’s usable and actively developed but I refuse to use hyprland after seeing this.

  • piexil@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    From Vaxry’s response:

    opinion - has no place in a serious blogpost

    Sir, what do you think a BLOG is for?

  • xavier666@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Your first mistake was joining a Discord group for a software product. Github pages / bug-tracker or GTFO.

  • leastprivilege@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I just switched to hyprland and although the discord general chat isn’t for everyone, they have been helpful when I ask stupid questions and need a little help.

  • starman@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    As someone on HackerNews said:

    I’ve never felt the need for any “community” for my window manager of choice

    • phario@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Hmmm. If abuse happens, is the right idea to say that “I don’t need this community”?

      I’m not sure how that HackerNews comment helps in the slightest. If my university has an obscure basket weaving community and people are getting abused in that community, should I just say “Eh we don’t actually need a basket weaving community”.

      It’s also amusing to me that a commenter on a relatively obscure and niche website is complaining that that don’t need (or care about abuse that transpired on) a niche community from another website. And then this comment is echoed in yet another niche community.

      • starman@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I just wanted to point out that it’s ridiculous to form some kind religion¹ around a wayland compositor.

        Also, I don’t want anybody to think I’m supporting what’s happening there. I just don’t really care about Hyprland’s community because I’m not part of it.

        ¹Hyprland’s discord server is named “Church of Hyprland”

      • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        “You shouldn’t use this window manager because their community is toxic”

        “I’m not going to interact with the community”

        Seems fair enough

        • NeededWorthyOponents@ttrpg.network
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          1 year ago

          For real. Not everything needs to be a fucking subculture. Next they’ll be saying, “The WinRAR community is toxic”. Like no, your discord server is poorly moderated. The problem starts and ends there.

    • wispydust@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Hmm, I feel like there’s some nuances around Hyprland (and it’s kind of window managers) that makes having a place for discussion valuable.

      • Plugin development discussions
      • Configuration recipes and troubleshooting (Configs for tiling wm’s often are like 500-line software projects)
      • …and sometimes its just fun to chat with like-minded people who share a similar philosophy on the tools they use on their computers

      I’m not a hyprland user, but I find it valuable to lurk around SwayWM communities on Discord and Reddit.

  • sky@codesink.io
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    1 year ago

    [A trans person] joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns […] because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them because people were referring to them as “he” [misgendering them], which, on the Internet, let’s be real, is the default.

    Damn I didn’t know women didn’t exist on the internet! Also “making a big deal out of ones pronouns” is almost never the case, it’s always just a normal request for the respect of addressing someone properly.

      • sky@codesink.io
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        1 year ago

        given I am a woman who is currently on the internet, I am aware there are women on the internet.

        thanks for explaining that for me 😉

    • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Does drew not know about the existence of singular they? I use that unless i know their gender properly

      • drspod@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        These are not Drew’s words, he is quoting something said by the project dev. The context that the previous commenter ommitted is:

        Following my email conversation with Vaxry, he appeared on a podcast to discuss toxicity in the Hyprland community. This quote from the interview clearly illustrates the attitude of the leadership:

        [A trans person] joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns […] because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them because people were referring to them as “he” [misgendering them], which, on the Internet, let’s be real, is the default. And so, one of the moderators changed the pronouns in their nickname to “who/cares”. […] Let’s be real, this isn’t like, calling someone the N-word or something.