I used Codex to customize my Hyprland desktop - and learned a valuable AI lesson

This year, I discovered my fondness for tiling window managers, and among them, Hyprland stands out as my favorite. However, for those new to tiling window managers, be warned: they can be daunting. They rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts and require configuration via text files.

Hyprland's configuration file, hyprland.conf, located in ~/.config/hypr/, can be particularly overwhelming for beginners. Before making that first edit, it's essential to understand what you're getting into. I've spent some time customizing Hyprland's dotfiles, but I decided to experiment with AI to see if it could create a hyprland.conf file based on my prompts.

I started fresh with a CachyOS installation, selecting both Hyprland and KDE Plasma desktops. I then tried three AI tools: Opera's Aria, Ollama, and Codex. Of the three, Codex was the only one capable of generating a remotely usable configuration.

I provided the following prompt: "Create a hyprland.conf configuration file for Hyprland version 0.55.2 that uses Waybar with a glassy, rounded-corner theme, a color palette of purple and pink, and uses the following keybindings: Super+t to open the terminal, Super+b to open the web browser, and the default keybindings for moving windows and window focus." Upon running the query, all AI services I used informed me that many configuration options would be placeholders and that I would need to customize them to fit my needs. After a few attempts, Codex provided a .conf file, which you can view in my GitHub repository. I had doubts about its functionality, but I added the contents to the config file and reloaded the window manager.

I encountered numerous errors, some of which I spotted before copying the output. The errors included issues that required additional installations, such as kitty, Waybar, and Rofi, to make Hyprland functional. After resolving these issues, I was surprised that the .conf file worked, albeit not perfectly.

It didn't apply the color scheme I specified, but I had a skeleton .conf file to further tweak. Initially, I had installed only Hyprland on CachyOS, and the desktop was essentially non-functional. That's when I realized the importance of having a backup desktop environment.

I installed CachyOS a second time, this time with KDE Plasma, to have a fallback option. With KDE Plasma available, I could reboot, log in, and fix the issues within the Codex-derived .conf file. Once I addressed all the problems, Hyprland worked as expected, although it required many tweaks to achieve my desired look.

This experiment reinforced my opinion that AI is often wrong but can serve as a starting point. Even with explicit instructions about the Hyprland version, Codex used options that are no longer viable. To those interested in migrating to Linux, I recommend Hyprland only for experienced users.