Stuck in learning Arch & Hyprland

[u/BlaznPhoenix]

My prior experience has only been with Mint, and I really enjoyed it. However, being on Linux, I really wanted to embrace the customization that comes with it. Through my research, I've become really eager to learn Arch, specifically with Hyprland as my WM. I really see the appeal of that kind of work flow, and I love the idea of building up own desktop environment.

I have my system dual booted currently now with Windows and Arch. I've made a conscious effort to read the wiki thoroughly and not use ArchInstall so I actually learn. There were still some confusing parts I didn't understand, so I turned to Youtube guides (which is how I've taught myself most things prior). I still tried my best to take the time and understand why they are doing those things, but everyone seems to do things differently. In the end, I still got Arch installed, but I'm by no means comfortable with the system yet.

Now entering Hyprland, is where I get really confused. I try and use the wiki, but the wiki isn't exactly clear to me as a beginner. There's a lot of commands that either don't work for me, or are not explicitly written that are confusing for me to execute. I thought I could turn to YouTube but again, everyone does things so vastly different, and no one really explains why. Someone urges using yay over pacman, someone says to switch from bash to Zsh, this way is better than this way, etc. Hyprland now also uses lua files instead of conf, which I don't understand the difference between or how that effects things.

How do you guys recommend I go about actually learning this distro and WM. I don't want to just steal someones setup, and I also don't want to use AI either. Maybe I'm not looking in the wiki correctly, but they seem to confuse me more than help. I know I'm new and in over my head a bit, but I want to actually learn this system and I am more than willing to put in that time and effort, I just feel lost on how to do that currently.

[u/lritzdorf]

As other comments have mentioned, yes, Lua configs for Hyprland are relatively new. Do go with that, though, since hyprlang (the old config language) will be disappearing in 0.57, the next release.

One tip that might help, depending on how you like to learn: the hyprctl repl command will give you an interactive Lua shell (aka a "read-evaluate-print loop," or REPL) within Hyprland. You can experiment with stuff there, so that you don't have to edit your config and send notifications (or whatever) to display results you're curious about.

Edit: the really major difference between Lua and hyprlang is, Lua is an actual programming language, rather than a config format. That means, for example, you can use a for-loop to generate your workspace keybinds (the example config does this; look at that if you're curious. It lives at /usr/share/hypr/hyprland.lua in case you've edited the one in your home directory).

[u/BlueGoliath]

All you have to do is set an anime waifu background and you've mastered Arch and Hyprland.

[u/promisedconsortraddy → u/BlueGoliath]

lmfao and add blur to terminal

[u/xXBongSlut420Xx]

you may consider installing a more traditional de while learning arch, and then move to hyprland. right now you're trying to learn both at once which isn't going to help you.

[u/JoseLopezC11]

I would recommend to first learn arch using a wm you're already familiar with and then when you're comfortable with it you can begin learning hyprland. Learning both at the same time will confuse you when debugging something (you might blame arch for a hyprland issue and viceversa).

[u/archover → u/JoseLopezC11]

+1 That's been my thought, and advice to others for a long time.

Good day.

[u/chikamakaleyley]

whenever i make some significant changes to my system (including fresh install on a new system) after i get the most essential things usable, I spend some time addressing any errors (and some warnings) in journalctl

and so i spend some time understanding what those errors are, why i'm getting them, how to resolve. Some of them won't even apply to your system, for whatever reason, and can be considered noise

you come out of it having a bit more understanding of whats happening on your system, and in my case, unlocking some performance.

if youre a developer, is a great place to get some practice debugging, those skills are transferrable.

Re: wiki/videos/forums - personally i feel like you should find out what medium you learn best and keep going with it BUT - remember the correct answer is 99% of the time in the wiki. When i started out, I would search youtube/reddit, because i can't always line everything up in my head, i need to find a solution in a similar if not the same use case. Eventually as I understood more about what I was doing, it made the wiki easier to digest

[u/jcheeseball]

Just run hyprland with mint

[u/NinjaTrek2891 → u/jcheeseball]

Which is actually good advice. But most installation tutorials are Arch based, which would make it harder for a learner.

[u/Correct-Caregiver750]

You haven't really described which part is confusing you

[u/AdministrativeFile78]

just watch a tutorial and then once u have something setup u just tinker with it

[u/Suspicious_Punk84]

https://wiki.hypr.land/

[u/mok000]

If you want to use Hyprland on Mint, go ahead, it’s in the apt repo. The issue isn’t Mint vs. Arch, it’s writing the config files which are in Lua, and selecting a shell such as waybar and configuring it. I have used dmw, sway and hyprland all on Mint LMDE, no problem.

[u/promisedconsortraddy]

there is no problem in using someone else dotfiles, you have established dotfiles , when you will tinker with it you will understand easily, try jakoolit dotfiles, his structure is very easy to understand and customisable, then once you have understood make your own rice

[u/ManoDu57 → u/[deleted]]

for yay vs pacman: Dont use yay util you understand how to read PKGs builds and/or trust the maintainer, as it is having lots of malware currently.

Now, go to wiki.hypr.land and read their official wiki (which IS adapted to lua) and try to understand from that.

[u/zenyl → u/[deleted]]

Clanker comment.

[u/xXBongSlut420Xx → u/[deleted]]

why would you not use yay for installing normal packages? it wraps pacman, and it will tell you if a package you are installing is from the aur.