I'm still running an older version (ain't broke, won't fix), but I keep getting recommended the newer versions for features. I'll check them out eventually.

can you paste a link?

I'm away from the computer at the moment, but I believe I'm on 0.1.3 [0].

Noting the release notes, it does have many animations already enabled (but I have some or all of them disabled through config).

I'm not recommending anyone run this in favor of newer versions, but it's working for me.

[0] https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.3

What does xwayland-satellite do that normal xwayland doesn't ?

This is addressed on the linked page.

Quote:

We're using xwayland-satellite rather than Xwayland directly because X11 is very cursed. xwayland-satellite takes on the bulk of the work dealing with the X11 peculiarities from us, giving niri normal Wayland windows to manage.

xwayland-satellite works well with most applications: Steam, games, Discord, even more exotic things like Ardour with wine Windows VST plugins. However, X11 apps that want to position windows or bars at specific screen coordinates won't behave correctly and will need a nested compositor to run. See sections below for how to do that.

Kind of interesting about the X11 position issue, since that is exactly the issue that I have with Hyprland