hyde-project/hyde

HyDE is a pre-configured desktop environment setup for Linux, built around Hyprland, a modern window manager that uses a compositor called Wayland instead of the older X11 display system. A window manager controls how application windows are arranged, animated, and styled on screen. HyDE layers on top of Hyprland with a collection of themes, configuration files, scripts, and companion tools to produce a visually polished desktop that works out of the box. The project is aimed at users who want a highly customized, aesthetically focused Linux desktop without having to piece together each component themselves. It includes support for switching between multiple visual themes, toggling between dark and light modes, and changing wallpapers in a way that adjusts the color scheme of the entire desktop to match. The community around the project places emphasis on appearance, which is common in the Linux customization hobby often called "rice" or "unix porn." Installation is handled by a shell script and is designed for Arch Linux, a distribution known for being highly configurable but also requiring more manual setup than consumer-oriented distributions. The script also works on some Arch-based distributions. It detects NVIDIA graphics cards automatically and installs the appropriate drivers, though it modifies boot configuration in the process, which the README flags as something to be aware of. NixOS users are pointed to a separate community-maintained port. Updating HyDE involves re-running the install script, which overwrites configuration files. Prior configurations are backed up automatically before being replaced. The project has a Discord community and documentation wiki for support.