DesktopHut vs Hydra
DesktopHut
desktophut.comHydra
github.comSide by side
| Figure | DesktopHut | Hydra |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Desktop Wallpaper Software | 8.9 (#3) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Documentation | The official Handbook covers browsing, downloads, submissions, the Wallpaper Library, Motion Photo Editor and troubleshooting. | The project links to a Hydra User's Guide, NixOS Wiki material, hydra-cli, and a build-farm setup presentation. |
| Integrations | DesktopHut wallpapers are standard MP4 files compatible with DesktopHut, Wallspace for macOS, Lively Wallpaper, and Wallpaper Engine. | Hydra jobset inputs can use Git checkout sources, and the documented examples use GitHub repositories. |
| What it does | DesktopHut provides a free library of video, image and interactive live wallpapers plus software for playing and creating them. | Hydra is a continuous-integration service for projects based on Nix. |
Plans
In their own words
DesktopHut
DesktopHut offers a library of live wallpapers and software for displaying them on desktop and mobile devices. Its site lists more than 67,000 live and animated wallpapers organized by categories and tags. The built-in Motion Photo Editor turns photos into animated wallpapers using 65 motion presets and about 30 particle assets. It can export MP4, GIF and WebP files, HTML live wallpapers, or native .dh packages. DesktopHut Studio supports different wallpapers on multiple displays, span mode and restoration of per-monitor assignments. Performance controls include hardware decoding, quality settings, FPS limits, Low Resource Mode and automatic pausing during fullscreen apps, games and screen lock. Studio supports video, animated and static image files; DesktopHut wallpapers in standard MP4 format are also compatible with Wallspace for macOS, Lively Wallpaper and Wallpaper Engine. The free Studio plan is for Windows 10/11 64-bit, has no subscription or premium tier, and is limited to personal, non-commercial use. DesktopHut describes its community as enthusiasts, gamers and artists.
Hydra
Hydra is a continuous integration service for projects based on Nix. It checks out project source periodically or continuously, builds it, runs tests, and produces reports. Work is organized into jobsets whose inputs can trigger builds when they change; jobsets can also depend on one another. Flake jobsets are supported when their outputs expose a hydraJobs attribute set. Jobs can produce packages, ISO images, or tarballs, and jobset inputs can use Git checkout sources. Hydra also provides a JSON API. It is aimed at Nix and NixOS package developers, not people who only need to use NixOS. Hydra is open source under GPL-3.0 and listed at free. It is self-hosted, with no hosted option listed, and running it is currently supported only on NixOS; the repository recommends the NixOS module for production. Flake evaluation is restricted from accessing files outside the Nix store. Some state is stored in the database, so backups are needed, and the wiki reports that hydra-queue-runner can sometimes leave queued builds unscheduled.