Noctia: A sleek and minimal desktop shell thoughtfully crafted for Wayland

The Linux style police have a new crush: Noctalia, a lavender-tinted, minimalist desktop shell that promises to get out of your way. It runs on the modern Wayland display system and supports popular window setups like Niri, Hyprland, and Sway. Built on Quickshell for speed, it’s plug‑in friendly, easy to theme, and even does a party trick: it can automatically match its colors to your wallpaper. One fan cheered, saying their live-updating background now “tweaks the theme,” and yeah, the vibes are immaculate.

But the comments are where the glitter turns to sparks. A hardware pun immediately landed: “Should pair well with my tons of Noctua fans,” with a wink — and then someone swooped in to correct the name with a coder’s jab: “s/Noctia/Noctalia/g.” The bigger brawl? Power users arguing whether dank-material-shell already does this better, especially on NixOS (a popular DIY Linux setup). Others loved Noctalia for slimmer builds that want to ditch clutter like waybar. And then came the classic Linux divide: X11 loyalists (the older window system) saying “no Wayland for me” until remote desktop works; cue the bug report receipts: link. Minimalist shell, maximal drama — and a lot of lavender in the crossfire.