January 29, 2026
Scroll Wars: The Dank Awakens
The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers
Scroll, don’t tile: Linux fans hype “Dank” desktop while others groan about hardware
TLDR: Scrolling desktops like Niri are taking off, and the new “Dank” bundle aims to make them easy to use. Commenters cheer Rust-powered progress but complain about graphics-card needs and missing old-school panning, while the name sparks memes—signaling a real shift in how Linux on the desktop feels.
Move over tiling—today’s cult favorite is the “scrolling” desktop, where apps slide like a photo reel. Fans say the combo of the sleek niri window manager and a new “batteries-included” setup called Dank Linux (with its DankMaterialShell) is the smooth, swipey vibe they’ve wanted for years. It riffs on ideas from the beloved PaperWM and tries to fix the hardest part: setup hell. Think: plug it in, get a modern look, still tweak like a power user. Even better for headline writers: it’s built on Wayland (a modern display system) and some of it’s written in Rust, the programming language du jour—cue the victory laps.
And the community? Pure drama. Old-schoolers pine for X11’s lost “virtual panning” (“let me scroll the whole screen so my tiny cyberdeck can show popups!”), while VM testers grumble that these shiny setups demand graphics acceleration—no easy try-before-you-commit. One cheerleader flexes that a Rust-based Wayland compositor was “impossible”…until it wasn’t. Another says niri’s latest build finally feels out-of-the-box good, especially with add-ons that make it a full desktop. Meanwhile, everyone’s giggling at the name—“Dank” making the big leagues is meme fuel. Verdict: a stylish new desktop is rising, but the battle lines are clear—tinkerers vs. normies, Wayland vs. nostalgia, scroll vs. tile—and the comments are absolutely eating it up.
Key Points
- •Scrolling window managers, exemplified by PaperWM, offer sliding window navigation and have matured beyond experimental status.
- •GNOME’s prescriptive nature makes integrating new UI paradigms challenging, motivating interest in standalone Wayland window managers.
- •Niri, a Wayland-based scrolling window manager under three years old, has rapidly grown, doubling GitHub stars in six months.
- •Dank Linux provides a “batteries-included” Wayland desktop, centered on DankMaterialShell to simplify setup for niri and similar WMs.
- •DankMaterialShell, built on Quickshell and using Material Design, integrates tools, remains extensible via configs, and recently released DMS 1.2 with many new features.