NixOS module for River 0.4.0+ (AKA river-next)

While the new iteration of river now exists in Nixpkgs, given how the compositor works, a dozen or so of window managers would still need to be packaged to actually run something in it. This repository does exactly that: it builds the new River package, along with all supported window managers (see below) and a NixOS module.

I plan to update packages roughly once a week, ideally on Mondays. Package versions (aside from River) will reflect this if they receive changes. Later I plan to adjust this to update based on their actual commit histories.
Last package update: 05-07-2026.

This is the main branch, thus all the packages here are pulling changes against their respective main branches. Combined with their varying development statuses, there is always non-zero chance of a breaking change!
If you are looking for something less unstable, I suggest looking at the stable branch.

Contents

This repo has/will contain the following:

• River 0.5.0 (from main branch)
• Builds for window managers as listed upstream:
  • anvl - Minimal river based tiling window manager inspired and influenced by dwm and tinyrwm
  • argen - Task-oriented tiling window manager designed for keyboard + IPC workflows
  • ashrwm - Minimal dynamic tiling window manager with tiling, and grid layouts, hot reloading and more
  • beansprout - DWM-style tiling window manager with built-in wallpaper and a clock/bar, with configuration in Kdl
  • bridge - Horizontal-tiling window manager with built-in icon bar
  • Canoe - Stacking window manager with classic look and feel, written in Rust
  • CoW - Stacking window manager with a fvwm/mwm look and feel
  • croffle - Static tiling window manager
  • JrWM - Simple dynamic tiling window manager that's easy to build, read, and modify
  • kuskokwim - Tiling window manager with composable keybindings and first-class support for process management, written in Python
  • kwm - DWM-like dynamic tilling window manager with scrollable-tiling support, includes a simple status bar, written in Zig
  • machi - Minimalist window manager with cascading windows, horizontal panels and vertical workspaces
  • mousetrap - Minimal stumpwm/ratpoison-like window manager, using modern c++
  • notion-river - Static tiling window manager inspired by Notionwm (formerly Ion3)
  • orilla - Dynamic tiling window manager inspired by XMonad, written in Rust
  • pwm - Tiling window manager with SSD titlebars and Python API
  • reka - Emacs-based WM for river (similar to EXWM)
  • rhine - Tiling window manager with a bsp layout, some Hyprland IPC for bars and ambitions of modularity
  • rijan - Small dynamic tiling window manager in 600 lines of Janet
  • rill - Minimalist scrolling window manager with simple animation, written in Zig
  • ropotamo - StumpWM-like tiling window manager for River
  • rrwm - Tiling window manager with a cosmic/bspwm layout, written in Rust
  • tarazed - Non-tiling window manager focusing on a powerful and distraction-free desktop experience
  • Triad - Multi-paradigm window manager with embedded Janet scripting
  • Weir - Tiling window manager inspired by XMonad and Rivercarro, dynamic CLI configuration
  • zrwm - Dynamic tiling window manager configured using a CLI tool
• River module: programs.river-next
  • See available options here

Importing

To install the module, you can do the following (assumes npins installation, but others can work just fine too):

• Run npins add --name "river-next" github dmkhitaryan river-next-nix-module -b main
• Add river-next = sources.river-next; in a let statement in your configuration (or don't!).
• Import the module either by adding "${river-next}/river-module.nix" or (import river-next).nixosModule in your imports.

Notes

It is highly recommended for users with multi-monitor setups to to configure outputs via tools like kanshi (see the module config). This is because not all window managers support output management on their own, which will lead to incorrectly positioned windows or even crashes altogether.

reka's desktop session will not launch via GDM. TTY or something similar like ly will launch it correctly, though.
Might just be a "GDM moment", but I do not plan to investigate further. That said, below are some tips:

1. If you are going to launch it through TTY, run exec /nix/store/...river-reka-launcher and enjoy.
2. If running through ly or similar, look for the River (Reka) entry in the session list. Select it, log in, and enjoy.

(06-06-2026): certain commands in Triad will not function on NixOS. Particularly, trying to execute triad doctor-live or triad live-reload will hit OSErrors due to the immutability of /nix/store.

(06-06-2026): Weir does not make use of typical configuration file setup. Instead, like classic River, it puts its config in an init script. Given the structure of this repo, a config option has been added to account for this nuance, weirConfig.

(14-06-2026): JrWM configuration is based on files that are adjusted pre-build. To facilitate customization, users can pass custom configuration files via jrwmConfig.