Experimental native Ubuntu ARM64 support progress (without forced Nix path)

[frosthecker]

## Current progress

I’ve been experimenting with getting illogical-impulse / dots-hyprland working natively on Ubuntu 26.04 ARM64 (Raspberry Pi 4), without relying on the forced --via-nix path.

At the moment, I already have:

• Hyprland running
• Quickshell launching successfully
• Qt6/QML stack functioning
• most shell components loading correctly

The setup is currently running on:

• Ubuntu 26.04 ARM64
• Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB)

Main discovery

I noticed that Debian-like distros are always forced into:

INSTALL_VIA_NIX=true

inside:

sdata/lib/dist-determine.sh

Specifically:

elif [[ "$OS_DISTRO_ID" == "debian" || "$OS_DISTRO_ID_LIKE" == "debian" ]]; then
  OS_GROUP_ID="debian"
  INSTALL_VIA_NIX=true
  print_os_group_id_functions=(print_os_group_id{,_unsupported})
fi

Because of this, native installers placed inside:

sdata/dist-debian/

are ignored even if they exist.

What I’m trying

I created:

sdata/dist-debian/install-deps.sh

to experiment with a native apt-based dependency installation flow.

I also tested many required Qt6/QML/Kirigami dependencies manually and managed to get Quickshell working outside the Nix wrapper path.

Current status

Working:

• Quickshell launches
• Hyprland works
• Qt6/QML dependencies mostly resolved
• Wayland session functional

Still incomplete:

• proper dependency mapping
• installer cleanup
• package verification
• testing on x86 Ubuntu/Debian
• GPU/performance optimizations for weaker ARM GPUs

Proposed direction

I think Debian/Ubuntu support could potentially move from:

print_os_group_id{,_unsupported}

to something closer to:

print_os_group_id{,_unofficial}

once native dependency installation becomes usable. As the new ubuntu 26.04 features packages that seem more like bleeding-edge

Goal

I’d like to help experiment with:

• native Ubuntu/Debian installation
• ARM64 compatibility
• reducing dependency on the forced Nix route
• improving installer support for non-Arch distros

If anyone is interested in testing or contributing, feedback would be appreciated.