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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Fedora Miracle blends a tiling window manager with this top distro.
- Unfortunately, the distribution isn’t worth using, and it points to a problem.
- I’ve experienced this issue before, and developers need to know how frustrating it can be.
There are a figurative metric ton of Linux distributions available. That vast amount of choice can cause problems for some, especially for new users. However, there’s a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed: Broken software that isn’t labeled as such.
This tripped me up 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 leans heavily into the Miracle tiling window manager. Tiling window managers are fascinating. On paper, they sound like the most efficient way to interact with your desktop. You open an app, and the tiling window manager automatically places it to make the most of your current screen real estate. You don’t have to open an app, place it where you want it, and then adjust its size to fit the screen.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s like window snapping on steroids.
The problem is that many tiling window managers are overly complicated. To use these window managers, you have to forget how you’ve interacted with your desktop for years and learn keyboard shortcuts.
That’s a lot.
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, for instance, the Fedora Miracle spin. This version of Fedora Linux uses the Miracle Window Manager (Miracle WM, for short), which aims to vastly simplify learning and using.
In theory.
The Miracle that wasn’t
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(ish) spin to see if it succeeds at the task.
Miracle WM is based on Canonical’s Mir Display Server and somewhat resembles i3 and Sway. This new take on the tiling window manager is highly configurable, supports customizable keyboard shortcuts, allows tiled and floating windows on the same workspace, offers animations for window transitions/movements, and includes a plugin system for adding other features and capabilities.
That’s when things took a turn for the worse.
The Miracle Window manager, for some time, depended on the nw-shell. Unfortunately, Miracle-WM has transitioned from nw-shell to QuickShell, which is based on DankMaterialShell, for Fedora 44. Because of this transition, the Miracle SIG (Standardized Information Gathering ) has orphaned those packages, and Fedora Miracle has yet to make the change to DankMaterialShell..
The key to this is soon, because the current iteration of Fedora Miracle still contains nw-shell… which is broken.
The fix Linux needs
This sort of thing happens. I’ve seen it occur many times over the past few decades with open-source software, but such transitions can happen fairly quickly and seamlessly. In this case, however, the Fedora Miracle seems to have been broken for a while, and devs neglected to mention this on the official spin site. It took me considerable digging to find out why things weren’t working during my review.
That’s a big problem, one that could lead to a lot of frustration… especially with those new to Linux. When projects are in a state of brokenness, the developers need to flag 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.” Then they need to remove the download files, so those who don’t read such warnings can’t download the app/OS and install it, only to find out after the fact that it’s broken.
Hopefully, the transition to DankMaterialShell will happen soon (the transition was decided in February 2026), so Fedora Miracle can live up to its name.
With that in mind, let’s talk about the current state of Fedora Miracle. Just remember: That which is broken will soon be unbroken.
What to expect with Fedora Miracle
The first thing to expect from the current build of Fedora Miracle is… not much.
There’s supposed to be a top bar in the Miracle Window Manager, but no matter how many times I installed Fedora Miracle, or upgraded Fedora — that rascally top bar refused to show itself. I tested this on both Virt-Manager (using KVM) and VirtualBox.
Also: I installed this Arch-based distro my way in under 5 minutes – so can you
Oddly enough, the nwg-panel Settings app did open, so I thought there was hope. I moved the panel to different locations and resized the panel with no luck.
That’s a shame, because a panel is a crucial aspect of the tiling window manager.
At the time, I had no idea of the changes Miracle WM was going through, so I decided to spin up a Ubuntu virtual machine and install Miracle-WM with:
sudo snap install miracle-wm –classic
Guess what? Miracle, installed via Snap (the suggested method), doesn’t work either.
Fun times.
My last-ditch effort was inspired by the possibility that the issue stemmed from 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 a laptop to see what would happen.
Same outcome.
I installed Fedora Miracle on two different virtual machine apps and on bare metal — with the same results. That’s when I dug deeper and discovered the real problem.
Why is this bad for Linux?
There are three main reasons why this situation is bad, not just for Fedora Miracle, but for Linux in general.
- It undermines trust.
- It repels new Linux users.
- It wastes people’s time and effort.
Linux is on a serious uptick at the moment, and with the new changes in Wine 11, I predict that 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 to a working state, but it simply wasn’t happening. It was not only a waste of my time but also very frustrating.
Imagine how that would make someone new to Linux feel? My guess is that they’d go running back to Windows or MacOS and never look back.
This isn’t a good look for Linux, especially with it growing in popularity.
And if you break a user’s trust, you might never get it back.
As for other tiling window managers to try, my favorite is Hyprland via the Stratos Linux distribution.