hypoland.org

Hyprland for GPUs that stop at OpenGL ES 2.0.

Hypoland is a fork of the Hyprland tiling Wayland compositor with a renderer rewritten for GLES 2.0. It runs a complete desktop on a 2008 ThinkPad X200 at 60 fps, and your Hyprland config, hyprctl and scripts keep working.

Source on GitHub Build it

tty1: ThinkPad X200 console

Omarchy 7.2.5-4-omarchy (tty1)

$ Hyprland
eglCreateContext failed with both GLES 3.2 and GLES 3.0
Hyprland received signal 6(ABRT)
Have you tried asking Hyprland politely
not to crash?

$ hypoland
Using: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 26.2.3
# bar, wallpaper, notifications, windows,
# Xwayland. At 60 fps.

why: the short version

Hyprland needs OpenGL ES 3.0. Plenty of laptops that still work fine top out at GLES 2.0, and on them Hyprland does not start at all.

Hypoland keeps the compositor and replaces what the GPU can't do: the renderer and all shaders are GLES 2.0 / GLSL ES 1.00, and the GPU-heavy extras are either gone or off by default. aquamarine, Hyprland's rendering backend library, is modified the same way so that it runs on GLES 2.0, and ships built into Hypoland.

The name: hypo- means "under". The O in the logo is a potato, hanging below the line.

btop: ThinkPad X200, Core 2 Duo, GMA 4500MHD, 1280x800

0.1%compositor CPU on an idle desktop

60 fpsGPU client, compositor at 3–9% CPU

58–60fps with 4 windows, blur, shadows, rounding and animations on

55 MiBcompositor PSS on an idle Omarchy desktop

127glmark2-es2-wayland score

Measured on the test machine running the full Omarchy session (Quickshell bar, wallpaper, notifications). Stock Hyprland 0.56.2 aborts at startup on the same machine. Hypoland's own optimizations for this hardware include drawing straight into the scanout buffer, clearing only damaged areas and double-buffered shm uploads.

lspci: target hardware

Intel GMA 4500MHD / GM45 (Gen4.5), the tested target
Intel GMA X3100 / 965GM (Gen4)
Other GPUs with OpenGL ES 2.0 under Mesa should work, but are untested

Developed on a ThinkPad X200 with Mesa's crocus driver.

removed

Color management and HDR
Motion blur
Blur variants other than dual Kawase
Plugins and hyprpm
Logo background and splash

Their config options stay registered and are ignored, so your config loads without errors.

changed defaults

Blur, shadows and animations are off, turn them on if you like
XCursor themes instead of hyprcursor
quirks:skip_non_kms_dmabuf_formats is off, so transparent clients work on Gen4

compat: a drop-in replacement

What	In Hypoland
Config	`~/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua`, same options	same
IPC	`hyprctl`, sockets, command names, JSON output, events	same
Desktop name	`XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Hyprland`, so the portal and apps detect it	same
Protocols	The Hyprland Wayland protocols (Quickshell, portals, global shortcuts)	same
Binary	`hypoland` and `start-hypoland`, there is no `Hyprland` command	renamed
Screen shaders	Must be GLSL ES 1.00, Hyprland's GLSL ES 3.00 shaders do not compile	differs
Plugins	Not supported, `hl.plugin.load()` warns and does nothing	removed

foot: ~/src

# same dependencies as Hyprland, but aquamarine
# is embedded and udis86 is not needed
$ git clone https://github.com/hegjon/hypoland
$ cd hypoland
$ cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

# or, on Arch: a package that replaces hyprland
$ cd packaging/arch && makepkg -f

README: building

See the Hyprland wiki for the dependency list. Hypoland builds aquamarine from its own tree, patched for GLES 2.0, and never uses the system one.

Build on a fast machine and copy the result over? Target baseline x86-64. Do not use -march=native, your desktop CPU knows instructions a Core 2 Duo doesn't.

The Arch package provides and conflicts with hyprland, and ships its own hyprctl so the versions match.

man hypoland: questions

Will it run on my GPU?

If Hyprland dies with eglCreateContext failed and eglinfo shows OpenGL ES 2.0 but no 3.0, Hypoland is meant for you. Gen4 Intel is tested; anything else is untested, and reports are welcome.

I have a modern GPU. Should I use it?

No, use Hyprland. It has color management, HDR, plugins and more effects. Hypoland only exists because those machines can't run it.

Does Omarchy work?

Yes. Omarchy 4 is what the test machine runs: the Quickshell bar, notifications, wallpaper, windows and Xwayland all work. Chromium runs, but falls back to software rendering because it wants GLES 3 itself.

Can I keep blur?

Yes, dual Kawase blur is kept and costs about 1% CPU on the X200. It is off by default, turn it on in your config. The same goes for shadows, rounding and animations.

Is this an official Hyprland project?

No. Hypoland is an independent fork, not affiliated with or endorsed by Hyprland or its developers. All credit for the compositor goes to Hyprland and its contributors.

Why aren't these changes part of Hyprland?

The OpenGL ES 2.0 support was offered to Hyprland, and its maintainer declined it: he maintains the code base and does not want it there (discussion). That is his call to make, so the support lives on in this fork instead.