Wayland and BunsenLabs

micko01 · 2024-06-16 07:35:19

^I haven't had a problem since switching to wayland pre labwc-0.4 (a few years now) and I haven't looked back.

If there is some GUI tool missing I usually write my own either in yad or gtkdialog (a complex graphical GUI program used in the likes of pclinux-os, tinycore, porteus and puppy - but doesn't get any love these days). I do plan to write a few in C/gtk4 once I learn gtk4! Writing things in pure wayland is a bit of nightmare, probably because of the lack of maturity. I'm sure one day some will write something like motif with widgets and everything or another possibility is SDL2. I think FLTK is thinking about wayland also.

I have a whole yad suite almost ready to go for theming becuase lxappearance throws a segfault. A lot of the lx stuff is moving to Qt anyway so I doubt it will get the love it needs since most Qt6 stuff at least is wayland ready.

hhh · 2024-06-16 16:52:13

For an lxappearance replacement, use nwg-look...

https://github.com/nwg-piotr/nwg-look

johnraff · 2024-06-17 03:26:33

^It looks as if nwg-piotr has made a whole load of utilities we might want to use.
https://github.com/nwg-piotr/nwg-shell

hhh · 2024-06-17 03:46:57

^ nwg-look is not in the Debian or Ubuntu repos yet, so it's my first Debian package-build project. First xcur2png, which for some reaon is a dependency of nwg-look...

https://github.com/eworm-de/xcur2png

That should be a good starter package, since it's got a debian folder in it with changelog and control files (from 2009!) but is no longer in the Debian or Ubuntu repos.

Then nwg-look, which just has a binary and some additional files. They're both built and installed on my sid setup, send good thoughts.

nwg-look is being built for Debian by Maytham Alsudany, though, but only for arm64...

https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/nwg-look_0.2.7-1.html

johnraff · 2024-06-17 05:57:17

There are already some nwg packages, so the others might follow eventually:
https://packages.debian.org/search?suit … ywords=nwg-

Anyway nwg-look looks like a great package to debianize, even if an official package arrives later. You've already built it locally right?

The xcur2png debianization is 7 years old, and I bet debian/rules could be much simpler now, with the modern debhelper, but it might well build OK just with an updated changelog. If it doesn't, then it might get complicated...

...that 700 line makefile.

nwg-look might be more amenable with any luck.

Last edited by johnraff (2024-06-17 06:06:15)

hhh · 2024-06-18 02:38:16

I was able to build amd64 *.deb packages for both xcur2png and nwg-look using checkinstall. I have to install sid/trixie on a second box to confirm they install and work as expected.

I also have started messing with debmake and dpkg-source. Progress. Slow, slow progress.

In other news, nwg-bar (a Wayland/wlroots GUI exit utility like bunsen-exit) is now in sid and trixie...

https://packages-pkgmirror-csail.debian … 11/nwg-bar

https://github.com/nwg-piotr/nwg-bar

johnraff · 2024-06-18 04:43:12

hhh wrote:

In other news, nwg-bar (a Wayland/wlroots GUI exit utility like bunsen-exit) is now in sid and trixie...

Yeah I posted that yesterday

johnraff wrote:

There are already some nwg packages, so the others might follow eventually:
https://packages.debian.org/search?suit … ywords=nwg

BTW what's this packages-pkgmirror-csail.debian.org thing?

johnraff · 2024-06-18 04:53:17

hhh wrote:

I was able to build amd64 *.deb packages for both xcur2png and nwg-look using checkinstall. I have to install sid/trixie on a second box to confirm they install and work as expected.

I think checkinstall's said to be fine for building local debs for personal use, but not really for sharing, so installing on a different machine might not be guaranteed. I haven't looked into it though.

I also have started messing with debmake and dpkg-source.

debmake's fairly new - anyway it's supposed to be an improvement on dh_make and I must try it out soon and see what it comes up with. It might be a good shortcut over debianizing a source package from scratch.

I've only once had to interact with dpkg-source, and even that might just have been reading the manual. I think it's something which gets called automatically by dpkg-buildpackage, in turn often called by debuild, which might be invoked by pbuilder, sbuild or something. Even if you're using a high-level tool, you still often have to dig down in those lower-level man pages. Yes, it's pretty slow...

Last edited by johnraff (2024-06-18 07:51:09)

johnraff · 2024-06-18 08:15:57

I've been thinking about this a bit more...

johnraff wrote:

malm wrote:
Ponder the balance between only using upstream Debian packages vs developing some 'glue' and maintain some bespoke packages. For example, if Azote is deemed a good replacement for nitrogen, do we start maintaining a deb package? Or raspberry-pi's arandr fork.
In-house built Debian packages are something I've preferred to avoid if possible...

When CrunchBang started it had quite a lot of custom packages. Later on, some issues came up because of that, especially related to upgrading and version clashes. Some users' systems had a whole bunch of packages auto-removed because apt didn't know the right thing to do. For that and the reasons I mentioned above, I still think the main BL release should be 99% Debian Stable packages, as it is now.

But if people working on a Wayland fork had to wait for all the utilities and libraries they needed to arrive in Debian Stable - or even Testing - then there'd be a good year or more to wait before development of even a minimal desktop could continue. So some kind of channel for apps currently only available on GitHub to be accessible to BL users and devs...

How about creating a new Experimental BL package repository? People on this forum who've successfully built debian packages could be encouraged to post the links here, and I would be willing to put them in such a repo, as long as most of the work had already been done, and at least one other forum member confirmed that they were OK. If that sounds vaguely sensible I'll start a dedicated topic in Dev Discussions to talk about if/how it could work sensibly.

micko01 · 2024-06-18 09:49:16

johnraff wrote:

But if people working on a Wayland fork had to wait for all the utilities and libraries they needed to arrive in Debian Stable - or even Testing - then there'd be a good year or more to wait before development of even a minimal desktop could continue. So some kind of channel for apps currently only available on GitHub to be accessible to BL users and devs...

Indeed! So read on..

johnraff wrote:

How about creating a new Experimental BL package repository? People on this forum who've successfully built debian packages could be encouraged to post the links here, and I would be willing to put them in such a repo, as long as most of the work had already been done, and at least one other forum member confirmed that they were OK. If that sounds vaguely sensible I'll start a dedicated topic in Dev Discussions to talk about if/how it could work sensibly.

Thanks to our friend Osamu Aoki (introduced here) there is a way to host a proper debian repo on github. I've already started some ground work so I can upload some packages in a formatted debian repo using reprepro. I haven't generated my gpg keys yet but I'll do that tomorrow and hopefully by the week end I can start hosting packages there and if someone wants to upload a package it is as simple as issuing a PR (pull/merge request - yet to be tested - may not work due to signing) to the repo or just send me a link to the package.

I think this is a better idea than you shouldering all the responsibility for 'unofficial' packages and saves pollution and the subsequent cleanaup of packages.bunsenlabs.org.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 02:17:03

^@micko this sounds great.

Can you give me a link to Aoki san's repo-on-github guide?

In fact I dug around and found this:
https://github.com/johnraff/helium-dev-repo-exp
It was just a tryout 7 years ago but I think it worked OK. There's a clone on my computer - if I remember right, I used reprepro locally to update the contents, then pushed to github.

Your work flow might be different though - if you don't want to download all the packages then push the repo back up, you'll likely need some mechanism to import packages on gihub directly. You'll need to build the binary .deb files from the source too. I seem to recall github had some tooling to run processes on the cloud, but have never looked into it.

Another thing that crossed my mind last night was dependencies. Both build-deps on libraries needed to build the package and dependencies of the .deb itself. I'm not sure about building with libraries that aren't in the target system, but anyway if the built packages have dependencies on libraries that aren't yet in Debian Trixie then those libraries will need to be built and hosted too. And if they turn out to be libraries that already exist in Trixie but with different versions, then some interesting times might be ahead...

Anyway that alternative repo looks like quite an attractive option for users who want to play with Wayland and get hold of some packages that aren't yet available from Debian - they can add your repo to their apt sources along with BL Carbon (which should be complete quite soon). Hopefully, in a year or so they'll be able to get everything from Debian, or else there'll be alternative utilities available.

hhh · 2024-06-19 02:46:50

This all sounds like we're in good shape for a Wayland transition for Carbon, or definitely for... Nitrogen? Sorry, I never took chemistry.

Debian experimental is moving fast. xfce4-panel built for Wayland is in the repo, but none of the dependencies are yet. Hoping to be able to install it in the next few weeks, because I haven't been able to get a wlroots panel (waybar, nwg-panel, eww, yambar) to show workspaces for labwc yet. Trying to build xfce4-panel 4.19 on sid failed miserably, again because of dependencies.

hhh · 2024-06-19 02:56:44

On the plus side, toggling apps in Waybar's taskbar works great by setting ' "on-click" : "minimize" '.

I'm about ready to start a thread on setting up labwc on sid. It's working pretty fabulously, but I could use some input.

I think I'll have to start with a thread on setting up minimal GNOME on sid first, though, because I can't imagine trying to set up labwc without having a GUI environment already in place, and GNOME is the lightest one I've found that is easy to install without bringing in all of Xorg/X11.

labwc on sid...

johnraff · 2024-06-19 02:59:59

hhh wrote:

This all sounds like we're in good shape for a Wayland transition for Carbon, or definitely for... Nitrogen?

My current feeling is that Carbon will likely still be X11 based, but I think we should push to have some kind of Wayland alternative too - maybe really basic, maybe almost as full-featured as the "main" release.

But things are moving, so who knows? If Carbon can seriously shift to Wayland, then the reverse situation: ie an "alternative" X11 version. I'm pretty sure a certain percentage of users will need it whatever happens.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 03:02:03

hhh wrote:

I think I'll have to start with a thread on setting up minimal GNOME on sid first, though, because I can't imagine trying to set up labwc without having a GUI environment already in place, and GNOME is the lightest one I've found that is easy to install without bringing in all of Xorg/X11.

Doesn't the default Debian Gnome install run on Wayland already?

hhh · 2024-06-19 03:08:32

^ My thoughts exactly. And yes, but installing standard GNOME on sid, even just gnome-core, brings in all of xorg and a bunch of GNOME applications. Install gnome-session, gnome-control-center and gdm3 with --no-install-recommends and you can create a Wayland-only GNOME environment with not even a terminal installed. A much better starting point, IMO, than having evolution, nautilus, etc... dragged in to start. It will also install/setup pipewire/wireplumber, which is nice.

hhh · 2024-06-19 03:12:52

I just checked this command...

lab@wayland:~$ sudo nala purge gdm3 gnome-control-center gnome-session
[sudo] password for lab: 
==================================================================================================
 Auto-Purging                                                                                     
==================================================================================================
  Package:                        Version:                                                 Size:  
  apg                             2.2.3.dfsg.1-6                                          151 KB  
  dconf-cli                       0.40.0-4+b2                                              86 KB  
  gnome-control-center-data       1:46.1-1                                               18.2 MB  
  gnome-keyring                   46.1-2                                                  4.9 MB  
  gnome-keyring-pkcs11            46.1-2                                                  407 KB  
  gnome-session-bin               46.0-2                                                  499 KB  
  gnome-session-common            46.0-2                                                  1.4 MB  
  gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio         1.24.4-1+b1                                             134 KB  
  libcolord-gtk4-1t64             0.3.1-1                                                  67 KB  
  libgnome-bluetooth-ui-3.0-13    46.0-1                                                  234 KB  
  libgnome-rr-4-2t64              44.0-5                                                  172 KB  
  libgoa-1.0-0b                   3.50.2-1                                                348 KB  
  libgoa-1.0-common               3.50.2-1                                                1.3 MB  
  libgoa-backend-1.0-2            3.50.2-1                                                335 KB  
  libgsound0t64                   1.0.3-3.2+b3                                             43 KB  
  libldb2                         2:2.9.0+samba4.20.1+dfsg-5                              639 KB  
  libmalcontent-0-0               0.12.0-1.1                                               79 KB  
  libpam-gnome-keyring            46.1-2                                                  367 KB  
  librest-1.0-0                   0.9.1-6+b1                                              123 KB  
  libsmbclient0                   2:4.20.1+dfsg-5                                         248 KB  
  libtalloc2                      2.4.2-1+b1                                               93 KB  
  libtevent0t64                   0.16.1-2                                                142 KB  
  libwbclient0                    2:4.20.1+dfsg-5                                         145 KB  
  p11-kit                         0.25.3-5                                                1.5 MB  
  p11-kit-modules                 0.25.3-5                                                1.9 MB  
  samba-libs                      2:4.20.1+dfsg-5                                        25.8 MB  
  tecla                           46.0-1                                                  241 KB  
  webp-pixbuf-loader              0.2.7-1                                                  39 KB  
                                                                                                  
==================================================================================================
 Purging                                                                                          
==================================================================================================
  Package:                        Version:                                                 Size:  
  gdm3                            46.0-2+b3                                               6.0 MB  
  gnome-control-center            1:46.1-1                                                6.0 MB  
  gnome-session                   46.0-2                                                  133 KB  
                                                                                                  
==================================================================================================
 Summary                                                                                          
==================================================================================================
 Auto-Purge 28 Packages                                                                           
 Purge       3 Packages                                                                           
                                                                                                  
 Disk space to free  71.8 MB   
                               
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

So it's not a heavy install to remove and only a few packages might need to be reinstalled. gnome-keyring and gstreamer?

johnraff · 2024-06-19 04:13:06

... and sounds like a nice enough platform to build on.

Down the road, decisions will need to be taken about which of those gnome-apps - if any - we still want to keep.
I have no personal attachment to eg lightdm, but would like to keep Thunar if possible.

---
But anyway, even if we can set up a nice Wayland base, that still leaves a lot of the current BunsenLabs stack in question. Maybe conky will be OK but it looks as if tint2 will have to go, along with bl-tint2-manager and friends. BLOB for sure won't work as-is because of all the x-commands it uses. Bunsen-utilities?? Bunsen-pipemenus?? Bunsen-welcome?? So a full Wayland transition by Carbon release time might not be on.

hhh · 2024-06-19 05:10:59

^ Yes, all good observations. At the outset, it'll probably have to be straight Debian with some git apps built for Debian. No BL packages except for maybe themes and icons, and our own configs of the existing apps.

I have a fairly nice config going for nwg-bar as an exit app though, that uses swaylock to lock the screen on suspend...

BTW, I'm using thunar as the file manager here. The display manager is gdm3, but there is also ssdm and micko01 is using greetdm, from earlier in this thread.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 05:16:34

hhh wrote:

At the outset, it'll probably have to be straight Debian with some git apps built for Debian. No BL packages except for maybe themes and icons, and our own configs of the existing apps.

So hardly a candidate for the default BunsenLabs Carbon system I guess. It really does look to me like the alternative Wayland "base" setup idea.

All depending on what timescale "at the outset" refers to.

#101 2024-06-16 07:35:19

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#102 2024-06-16 16:52:13

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#103 2024-06-17 03:26:33

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#104 2024-06-17 03:46:57

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#105 2024-06-17 05:57:17

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#106 2024-06-18 02:38:16

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#107 2024-06-18 04:43:12

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#108 2024-06-18 04:53:17

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#109 2024-06-18 08:15:57

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#110 2024-06-18 09:49:16

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#111 2024-06-19 02:17:03

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#112 2024-06-19 02:46:50

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#113 2024-06-19 02:56:44

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#114 2024-06-19 02:59:59

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#115 2024-06-19 03:02:03

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#116 2024-06-19 03:08:32

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#117 2024-06-19 03:12:52

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#118 2024-06-19 04:13:06

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#119 2024-06-19 05:10:59

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#120 2024-06-19 05:16:34

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

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