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?
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[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.
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.
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
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
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.
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:
- A discord account
- Annoying the developers with frequently asked questions
As someone on HackerNews said:
I've never felt the need for any "community" for my window manager of choice
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.
"You shouldn't use this window manager because their community is toxic"
"I'm not going to interact with the community"
Seems fair enough
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.
Removed by mod
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"
This is a pretty old joke. See "Church of Emacs".
Another toxic community founded and maintained by the socially inept. Yep, checks out.
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.
Yeah.
At maximum a bug/issue tracker is needed.
That's great for you but that might not be true for someone you recommend it to, or decides to give it a try after you mention you use it. Someone might go looking for help or tips there.
File a bug, read FAQ, StackOverflow? If you are messing around with window managers on Linux, a certain level of competency is expected. However, I'm more concerned about the weirdos hanging around in a discord chat of said window manager, harassing strangers. Such a strange hobby.
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
I'm in the max server limit, 100 right now, and many of those are people who treat discord as github, which is so annoying (but many projects are of questionable legality, like Dan's palace which makes and distributes completed android and vita ports of other games for free).
One time I got excited since there was announcement for the half life 2 android source port discord. I thought it was a big update or maybe a new game, but what I saw was something like:
the memes channel is for memes, not child porn
It's just discord that has these issues. Matrix or IRC don't have these problems. Discord just creates a kind of culture that fosters this stuff.
yeah it really attracts the young gamer crowd, not exactly for serious discussion
This. I'm tired of all short responses that don't want to discuss the problem or steer the topics to a direction.
Nope it's all over matrix as well.
I haven't encountered any of these issue on matrix, but admittedly I haven't joined a lot of matrix chats.
I was/am a mod for a LGBT room. I had to take a break it's gotten so bad lately.
If your discord general chat looks like this you are in the wrong discord
You frontin like there's any better quality chat then that
The guy who develops hyprland is a known transphobe, I'm surprised this is just now coming out.
That usually isn't a problem as long as they keep it to themselves and away from the community. There are many Foss developers who are like that - they don't cause a controversy. This one seems to be different and openly toxic.
I stopped using it because of a couple shitty interactions on Discord. I don't know anything about the developer himself but the company he keeps sucks. Using the word "cucked" when talking about breaks in dependencies… and being told "see if I care" when pointing out a race condition I found in initialization that caused problems with multimonitor setups.
No thanks. Sway works great. No need for eye candy.
Your first mistake was joining a Discord group for a software product. Github pages / bug-tracker or GTFO.
Fucking right? Let alone a open source project.
All this over some discord server drama. I cant blame the dev for wanting to code and not waste his time moderating.
Then don't run a discord instance?
"Hey, the server is getting pretty toxic and I can't be bothered moderating it - this is no longer an official communication channel, I'm not going to be hanging out here anymore, if you need help ask in the GitHub discussion forum"
That douchebag can't even moderate himself. I wasn't considering trying out hyprland, but after this I wouldn't feel safe running his code on any of my computers. I can imagine that it would do some "prank" if it found out that I'm thinking differently
It's the developer's responsibility to moderate the discord server properly.
It's the moderation staff's responsibility. Sorry for nitpicking, I understand in this case it's likely the same people.
I just get triggered when I hear that an open source software developer should have any responsibilities at all (maybe apart from some extreme examples), and I wouldn't like this idea to stick in anyone's head.
He doesn't have the responsibility to open a discord server for his project, absolutely agree.
But if you open a server, you do in fact have to moderate it.
I agree, open source devs don't owe anyone anything (unless they're accepting commissions or something). Also, generally speaking, being a good developer does not translate to being a good community moderator. There should be no expectation of the latter.
The developer owes you nothing.
The developer doesn't owe us anything, but if they're creating an online community like Discord there are inherent responsibilities that come with that. If they don't want to moderate, then they shouldn't create a Discord/Matrix/Whatever server.
Just like how even if the developer doesn't owe us anything, that doesn't mean it's fine for them to push malware as an update to their previously fine code after they've established trust.
"server"
That's what they're called over there, yes.
Hyprland dev's response to blog post: https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2023-hyprlandsCommunity
What a tone-deaf response, yikes.
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.
His response is perfectly rational. You need to stop getting offended over every small thing on the internet.
treating people respectfully is not getting offended. please touch some grass and open your eyes.
The internet is not your daycare you retarded faggot
Maybe you're right. Being "daycared" shouldn't happen on the internet, it should be a prerequisite.
People who default to stringing multiple slurs together for a response just to prove a point should just be banned on sight and sent back to daycare. Maybe they could learn something.
Did you read his response? These were a few small incidents blown out of proportion. Maybe grow a thicker skin?
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.
I only have two things to say:
- Stop bringing your politics into free software and creating unproductive drama
- Stop being so fragile to get offended by random teenagers on the internet
there is nothing political here you dunce holy shit
Interacting with people without harassment is hardly "politics".
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).
#generaldoes 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.
Who cares about the community? If it's useful and works I will use it. It's not like I'm paying for it. If the community is toxic people will not contribute to the project. If they don't need contributors they can do whatever they like.
Because it's important to call people out for their bullshit and not tacitly approve of it by keeping quiet?
IMHO calling people out for everything easily turns into vicious witch haunts and doesn't really change anything. They weren't nice to you? Don't use their software. The whole world really doesn't need to know about each alleged asshole. Not shouting at every person I disagree with is not approving of anything.
I generally agree that it's not necessary to bring unrelated problems into a space.
But this post reads like "this software is good but the community is not welcoming, I don't recommend getting into either". I think that's valid.
I don't think it's valid. Using some software does not actually mean I support or agree with its creators. It's FOSS, the devs invest their time and give it out for free. By using this software I don't make it easier for them to spread their word. There's a lot of cases where I would say it's valid like. let's say Elon Musk is giving me a free Tesla. He lost money on it but me driving around in his car is still a form of promotion so I'm helping him sell his cars, make money and promote his opinions so I would not take it. But here using this software is totally personal matter. By installing it I don't promote it or provide founds to the authors. If they are assholes every person offended by them is free to decide no to use it. Posting all over the internet that they were not nice to you is just petty. All it does is create silly shitstorms and angry posts.
You're still giving them a platform by installing their code though?
If you use software coming from someone you inherently disagree with, especially a desktop environment/compositor, you depend on that person for your computer's day-to-day functionality. Isn't one of the key points of the FOSS community that we disagree with large controlling companies like Google and Microsoft? That, even when they make FOSS contributions, it should be taken with a huge grain of salt?
Imo, this is the exact same thing. Even if it's good software, not wanting to rely on code from someone you don't agree with or trust (even if those concerns are unrelated to the given codebase) is completely reasonable and valid
'Giving them platform'? What is that supposed to mean? It's not like they gaining anything from my CPU cycles. No one knows what software I'm running on my computer.
I'm not depending on any software as long as there are alternatives. And no, the point is not to disagree with large companies. Big corporations make contributions to Linux kernel all the time. As long as it's truly FOSS and they don't control it it's not an issue. If the company controls it it's not really FOSS (like Chrome or Android).
Also, not using their code is not the same as telling everyone else they should not use it. You can use whatever you like. Complaining online that some community was not nice to you is IMHO silly.
Depending on something isn't necessarily tied to how many alternatives there are.
For example: I use a heavily configured qtile setup on my desktop. I'm depending on that setup working every time I turn my computer on. Sure, I could switch to i3 or sway or Hyprland, but that would take a considerable amount of time and effort. In this case, I'm depending on qtile working for me, so I can get work done instead of messing with a bunch of config files. The only time this wouldn't happen is when one solution can be a completely (or almost completely) drop-in replacement for the other, e.g. how sway claims to be with i3.
This is especially true with tiling window managers, where people spend many hours configuring setups to behave how they want. Moving to a different alternative isn't exactly simple.
To your point about FOSS: chrome and android may not be FOSS, but as much as I dislike it AOSP and Chromium definitely are, even if Google controls the repos for both. Your definition is a slippery slope because by that definition software like Ubuntu, Manjaro, etc. also aren't FOSS because the repos are controlled by a single company.
To your last point: telling someone else they shouldn't use a piece of code for the same reason you don't is also perfectly valid. It's not like it's an order, they don't have to follow it. People can choose to agree or disagree with you if they want. Ultimately, the decision to install software in Linux lies with the user, and the most any online opinion can do is give a persuading or dissuading argument. Just like I could say, "don't use this software, it's built on some old deprecated library that will probably break in a month", I could also say "don't use this software, the main dev is a bad person because xyz…" and it would still be up to the user to make a decision. If you don't mind disagreeing with the author of software you use, that's fine, but not everyone is like that, and that's also fine.
If you use this software, You will likely come across the community, in at least a passive way. as this is a piece of software with extensive manual configuration. Most people will be reading blogs and forums to figure out their configuration.
Rare to see people with common sense these days.
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.
Just dont interact with the community. Theres an excelent wiki that details everything.
From Vaxry's response:
opinion - has no place in a serious blogpost
Sir, what do you think a BLOG is for?
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.
