Noctalia Shell
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 24 desktop environments by recommenders
Recommended as a polished Wayland desktop shell that works well out of the box. Caveats: some quirks, and slightly more RAM and CPU than Waybar.
Recommended as a polished Wayland desktop shell that works well out of the box. Caveats: some quirks, and slightly more RAM and CPU than Waybar.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 96%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 23 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Smooth, pleasant daily use
“I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream.”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Chuwi Minibook X: the netbook we deserve” “I'm continuously delighted by the lack of astonishing behavior”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “If you're a button, you have one job” “I haven't had this much fun with computers in years.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses” - Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”
- Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Your Dotfiles Are Not a Distro”
Good performance and low RAM
“makes it even more appealing if you care about the performance”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released” “I switched to noctalia so I get all the performance benefits”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released” “noctalia is already in the ballpark of a waybar-based setup”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released” - Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “KaOS: The first Linux distro to ship dinit, Noctalia v5 without systemd and KDE”
Works well out of the box
“instantly replaced a load of brittle and stupid hacks I was relying on, what an amazing out of the box experience”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers” “It does have it's own quirks, but it is quite nice and works out of the box.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)” “Noctalia seems a bit more refined out of the box.”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Noctia: A sleek and minimal desktop shell thoughtfully crafted for Wayland” Complete desktop with no dependencies
“It's a complete, standalone shell with no Quickshell dependency.”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS” “it really feels like a complete desktop”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Has some quirks
“It does have it's own quirks, but it is quite nice and works out of the box.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)”
Other desktop environments people recommend
The four most recommended other desktop environments, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KDE Plasma | 650 | 264 | 71% | 13 | 2 yrs79 owners | Approved |
| GNOME | 340 | 464 | 42% | 12 | 5 yrs29 owners | — |
| Xfce | 183 | 48 | 79% | 12 | 10 yrs29 owners | Approved |
| COSMIC desktop | 75 | 28 | 73% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| Noctalia ShellThis page | 23 | 1 | 96% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
23 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's a complete, standalone shell with no Quickshell dependency.”
“I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride”
“Niri or Umbriel with Noctalia shell is a wonderful experience”
“noctalia is already in the ballpark of a waybar-based setup”
“Noctalia uses about 70MB more RAM, and a little more CPU than Waybar. No brainer.”
“makes it even more appealing if you care about the performance”
“I switched to noctalia so I get all the performance benefits”
“I'm continuously delighted by the lack of astonishing behavior”
“I'm using Niri and Noctalia as my desktop setup”
“it is amazing powerful for its RAM usage”
“I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream.”
“It is a pretty solid experience.”
“It does have it's own quirks, but it is quite nice and works out of the box.”
“It is cohesive, easy to style, has good defaults”
“it looks like exactly what I needed”
“I recommend grabbing Noctalia Shell to run alongside”
“I haven't had this much fun with computers in years.”
“it supports multiple Wayland compositors”
“Noctalia seems a bit more refined out of the box.”
“That is exactly the only feature I would like to disable. (have custom theming already)”
“I'm especially excited about the automatic theme by background image”
“instantly replaced a load of brittle and stupid hacks I was relying on, what an amazing out of the box experience”
“it really feels like a complete desktop”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.