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ZDNET Highlights
- Fedora Miracle blends a tiling window manager with this top distro.
- Unfortunately, the distribution is not usable, and this points to a problem.
- I’ve experienced this problem before, and developers must know how frustrating it can be.
There are a figurative metric ton of Linux distributions available. That sheer amount of options can cause problems for some people, especially new users. However, there is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed: broken software that is not labeled as such.
This bothered me a week ago, when I installed Fedora Miracle for testing and wasted two hours on it before figuring out why it was unusable.
Fedora Miracle relies heavily on the Miracle Tiling Window Manager. Tiling window managers are attractive. On paper, they seem like the most effective way to interact with your desktop. You open an app, and the tiling window manager automatically positions it to make the most of your current screen real estate. You don’t have to open an app, place it where you want, and then adjust its size to fit the screen.
Feels great, doesn’t it? It’s like window snapping on steroids.
The problem is that many tiling window managers are overly complex. To use these window managers, you’ll have to forget how you’ve interacted with your desktop for years and learn keyboard shortcuts.
This is too much.
Also: This fun tiling window manager may be rough around the edges — but it has big potential
But not all tiling window managers are created equal. Take Fedora Miracle Spin, for example. This version of Fedora Linux uses the Miracle Window Manager (Miracle WM for short), which aims to greatly simplify learning and use.
In theory.
the miracle that was not
I’ve used Miracle before, and it seemed like a solid entry in the tiling window manager space. So, I decided to try its new spin to see if it was up to the task.
Miracle WM is based on Canonical’s Mir Display Server and looks somewhat like i3 and Sway. This new form of tiling window manager is highly configurable, supports customizable keyboard shortcuts, allows tiles and floating windows on the same workspace, provides animations for window transitions/movement, and also includes a plugin system for adding other features and capabilities.
Then the situation became worse.
Miracle Window Manager, for some time, depended on nw-shell. Unfortunately, Miracle-WM has transitioned from NW-Shell to QuickShell for Fedora 44, which is based on DankMaterialShell. Due to this transition, Miracle SIG (Standardized Information Storage) has orphaned those packages, and Fedora Miracle has not yet made changes to DankMaterialShell..
the key to this is soonBecause the current iteration of Fedora Miracle still includes nw-shell… which is broken.
fix linux requirement
This kind of thing keeps happening. I’ve seen this happen many times with open-source software over the past few decades, but such changes can happen quite quickly and seamlessly. However, in this case, Fedora Miracle appears to be broken for some time, and the developers have neglected to mention it on the official spin site. I had to do a lot of research to figure out why things weren’t working during my review.
This is a big problem, and can cause a lot of frustration…especially for people who are new to Linux. When projects are at breaking point, developers need to mark it as such. Front and center on the distribution’s main page, display something like “Warning: This software is currently broken, and we’re working to fix it.” They then require them to delete the download files, so that people who don’t read such warnings can’t download the app/OS and install it, only to discover after the fact that it’s broken.
Hopefully, the transition to DankMaterialShell will happen soon (the transition was decided in February 2026), so that Fedora Miracle can live up to its name.
With that in mind, let’s talk about the current state of Fedora Miracle. Just remember: What is broken will soon be unbroken.
What to expect from Fedora Miracle
The first thing to expect from the current build of Fedora Miracle is… not much.
Miracle Window Manager is supposed to have a top bar, but no matter how many times I installed Fedora Miracle, or upgraded Fedora – that evil top bar refused to show itself. I tested it on both Virt-Manager (using KVM) and VirtualBox.
Also: I installed this Arch-based distro in less than 5 minutes – you can do the same
Strangely, the nwg-panel settings app opened, so I thought there was hope. I moved the panel to different locations and resized the panel with no luck.
This is a shame, because panel tiling is an important aspect of the window manager.
At the time, I had no idea what changes Miracle WM was undergoing, so I decided to spin up an Ubuntu virtual machine and install Miracle-WM with:
sudo snap install miracle-wm –classic
Guess what? Miracle installed via snap (recommended method) also doesn’t work.
Fun times.
My last attempt was motivated by the possibility that the problem was caused by running Fedora Miracle as a virtual machine. I tried with both Virt-Manager/KVM and VirtualBox. To test that theory, I burned the Fedora Miracle ISO as a bootable USB drive and ran it on the laptop to see what would happen.
Same result.
I installed Fedora Miracle on two different virtual machine apps and bare metal – with similar results. That’s when I dug deeper and discovered the real problem.
Why is it bad for Linux?
There are three main reasons why this situation is bad, not just for Fedora Miracle, but for Linux in general.
- This weakens trust.
- This repels new Linux users.
- This wastes people’s time and effort.
Linux is on a serious run at the moment, and with the new changes in Wine 11, my guess is that this will continue. Now more than ever, Linux developers need to be extra careful about the status of their software.
If you know something is broken, flag it. Transparency is the heart and soul of open-source software.
I spent over two hours trying to get Fedora Miracle into working condition, but it just wasn’t happening. This was not only a waste of my time but also very frustrating.
Imagine how this would make someone new to Linux feel? My guess is they’ll go back to Windows or macOS and never look back.
This is not a good look for Linux, especially as its popularity grows.
And if you break a user’s trust, you may never get that trust back.
As far as other tiling window managers I try, my favorite is Hyperland via the Stratos Linux distribution.
