Niri is awesome, it's the type of computer interface I've always imagined I wanted, let alone a wm. I've previously used i3, and then Hyprland, which were both very good, but they always felt a bit restrictive and missing something. I didn't like how if I open just one app or window, it has to fill the whole screen until I open a second app/window. And it bothered me that I can't center the left most window if I wanted to. Niri does both things out of the box. If feels very flexible and intuitive.

I'll be honest, I don't know if Niri increases my productivity, but it definitely improved my user experience.

In my mind, having windows open at full height and be continuously added to horizontally just makes sense. However, it is also flexible enough where you can tile windows vertically as well.

I like being able to put my personal apps in one workspace, and then all my work apps on the next workspace down. With i3 or hyprland, I need about two for my personal and three or four for my work. I can easily have up to 9 workspaces with regular tiling wm's, and that gets out of hand in terms of organization and trying to find that one app I needed. With Niri I will use at most 4 workspaces. I think that's a good amount and works well for me.

I really like the somewhat new Overview function, it works well. Sure it does seems like something obvious to have, but honestly, if Niri didn't have it, I would still be happy since everything else is pretty much exactly what I wanted.

For me, Linux is about having options. And Niri fits this ideal very well, because you can use Niri in a similar way to regular wm's and more.

I'm a cheapskate, but Niri is such a good project, I will definitely donate to them. Now I just need to overcome my laziness. :P