Dux Labs shipped Dux Modular Shell 2.1 “Stormborn” on November 4 — two weeks after a full rebrand from DankMaterialShell, and right as Wayland crosses 60% adoption on Linux desktops. The headline feature is native video wallpaper support. Drop an mp4, webm, or mkv where you’d drop an image; the shell handles playback without an external player. No mpvpaper, no swaybg hacks, nothing to wire up. That alone will get attention in the Hyprland community, where animated wallpapers have been a persistent gap for two years.
Video Wallpapers Without the Plumbing
DMS now plays video wallpapers natively. Supported formats are mp4, webm, mkv, mov, m4v, and avi. Install ffmpeg alongside it and you get automatic thumbnail generation plus Material color extraction from video frames — meaning your shell accent colors can be pulled from whatever video you set as the background.
The integration is thorough. Per-monitor wallpapers work. The video pauses automatically when the screen locks or when an app goes fullscreen. The CLI call is dms ipc call wallpaper set /path/to/video.mp4. This is the feature X11 users had through Wallpaper Engine while Wayland setups accumulated workarounds — Dux finally closes that gap at the compositor-agnostic layer.
Interface Density: Four Modes
A new density setting applies shell-wide: Spacious, Comfortable (the default), Compact, and Dense. It adjusts text size, search field padding, and control sizing across the entire interface. If you run DMS on a laptop, Dense mode reclaims meaningful screen real estate. On a large monitor, Spacious gives it room to breathe. Small feature, outsized day-to-day impact.
The release also adds a DMS Classic UI style — consistent corner radius, plain icons — for users who want something less animated than the Material 3 Expressive default.
Hyprland: Time to Migrate Your Config
DMS 2.1 drops support for hyprland.conf entirely. Hyprland configuration is now Lua-only, and you need Hyprland 0.55 or newer. If you have a traditional conf setup, migrate before updating. Run dms migrate dux --dry-run first to preview changes, then apply without the flag.
dms migrate dux --dry-run # preview changes
dms migrate dux # applyThe Lua path unlocks wobble window damping controls, monitor profiles using desc: identifiers instead of connector names, and function bind support. The tradeoff is real migration work upfront — but Hyprland’s Lua config is more capable, and the conf format was always temporary.
The Suite Is Now a Full Desktop Environment
Dux started as a shell. It ships 2.1 with a complete application suite: file manager (Dux Files), calendar, system monitor, app search, greeter, and an on-screen display layer. Each component advances in this release.
- Dux Files: Folder color and icon customization, full-window image/PDF previews, game library integration, improved SMB/WebDAV support
- System Monitor: Rebuilt with side-rail navigation, SMART disk data, per-process GPU/VRAM metrics, Markdown bug report export
- Media Player: Synced lyrics, squiggly seekbar, new album art display modes
- Dux Calendar: Better Google Calendar and CalDAV sync
These close gaps that previously required separate applications. The release also adds Fedora Atomic support — Silverblue, Kinoite, and Bazzite users can install Dux without fighting immutable-OS constraints.
Installing Dux Shell 2.1
Fresh install:
curl -fsSL https://install.duxlabs.dev | shPackages are available on Arch (extra), Fedora/RHEL (COPR), Ubuntu (Launchpad), Debian and openSUSE (Open Build Service), and Void (XBPS). The full changelog on GitHub covers every breaking change per compositor.
The Bigger Picture
DMS started as a hobby project in December 2025. Eleven months later it has a rebranded identity, a full application suite, 39 contributors, and a release cadence fast enough to ship a major update two weeks after a rebrand. Wayland needed a unified desktop layer — something that replaces waybar, swaylock, mako, and fuzzel with an integrated, consistently styled experience. Dux is filling that role faster than any other project in the space. Full release notes are on the Dux Labs blog. For background on the project’s rebranding, Linuxiac has a solid write-up.
