[rapnie]

Tangential. This is a cool project. But I notice how many projects similar to this one make it hard to find that out. The landing page says:

> Wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.

Now a visitor should know what "wayland" is, and then what a "wayland compositor" is, and only then can they decide if the project is interesting. The description assumes this knowledge, but many people will not take the time to figure it out and just surf to the next interesting thing. Opportunity missed.

[stonogo]

Opportunity for what? This isn't a sales environment, and I'm not sure what the benefit is of attracting users who don't know the tools they use. What is the opportunity cost of losing a user who doesn't understand the benefits of the project?

[rapnie]

Nothing sales related. I am a FOSS contributor checking HN regularly and may think "Oh, what's this?" but not spend 2min. in that session. A simple different text could avoid me losing interest. Unless the goal is "If you don't already know about wayland (compositors) this project isn't for you".

[pxc]

Most F/OSS projects probably don't want users who will ignore all but highly productized presentations of their work. That's almost certainly a counter-signal of a user's likelihood to file useful bug reports, let alone contribute.

But regarding this project in particular, you have lots of clues. There's a screenshot right there on the page. 'WM', short for 'window manager' is right there in the GitHub organization name. 'Compositor' is a standard term in this domain. It links to the most famous ever compositing window manager on its platform as a source of inspiration.

There are basically two groups of people that actively choose a specific window management stack instead of just choosing a whole operating system: advanced or growing Linux hobbyists, and the makers of Linux distros. Both of those groups will absolutely know what Wayland is, and will be able to tell what Wayfire is. And being a member of either requires more than the scant patience you've indicated you have for projects like this.

If you don't know what Wayland is and you're committed to not learning it instead of taking '2 minutes' to look it up, you're not the type to choose a window manager or configure a bespoke desktop environment.

[ammen99]

What wording would you use? I honestly have no idea how to describe Wayfire in other terms that would be more understandable to the majority of people.

[olddustytrail]

Maybe rather than saying what it is straight away, say what it does and why you'd want it. "Wayfire: awesome visual effects for your Linux desktop" and then go on to say what it is.

You might even have a short bullet list of reasons to use it rather than just a tagline.