Wayland and BunsenLabs

hhh · 2024-06-19 05:19:22

^ Agreed, we'll have to see what happens in sid till the trixie release. I edited my post, see the thunar/DM bit.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 05:21:30

hhh wrote:

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 is yad usable on Wayland? EDIT: reading micko's post, it looks as if it is.

...micko01 is using greetdm

Greetd (same as greetdm?) looked interesting I thought, for a light tweakable setup like BL.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Greetd

Last edited by johnraff (2024-06-19 05:23:54)

hhh · 2024-06-19 05:23:55

I think that's it, yes. Pretty sure yad will use Xwayland, but so what? No way any setup is getting away from Xwayland by the trixie release. Maybe on Arch you could run pure Wayland.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 05:32:05

I was thinking it would actually be cooler to get something set up that didn't need xwayland. Even if it had to be pretty spartan. Then build up on that, as better apps arrived.

That's why I see X11 as the main BL release for a bit longer. A hacked-together wayland/X mix doesn't sound very attractive. And, think of our users - we have to be able to offer them some concrete benefit to justify this:

malm wrote:

Don't expect things to be like-for-like. Accept that it'll only be 90+% the same, but don't hang out for 99.9%.

At least things like clipboard and drag-and-drop will have to work.

hhh · 2024-06-19 05:38:52

For sid/trixie, there's already wl-clipboard, though the basic clipboard functions work in Wayland fine for me without a manager. Also drag & drop between thunar windows/tabs works as expected.

https://packages.debian.org/sid/wl-clipboard

johnraff · 2024-06-19 05:44:52

Less frequent perhaps, but isn't drag-and-drop between apps a problem? Stuff like this I keep reading "it's up to the compositor to enable...".

But good to know the clipboard will work. Amazing how annoying the lack of it can be when working eg on a VM that's still only got a CLI interface. Or any TTY for that matter.

hhh · 2024-06-19 05:52:02

johnraff wrote:

Less frequent perhaps, but isn't drag-and-drop between apps a problem? Stuff like this I keep reading "it's up to the compositor to enable...".

I'm able to drag an image in thunar to a new tab in Firefox, give me another example to test. No idea what influence Xwayland has in this.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 06:02:23

Hmm, Firefox again but a frequent case is dragging a file from Thunar into some site's Firefox upload window.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 06:03:52

hhh wrote:

No idea what influence Xwayland has in this.

Uninstall it? What app are you using that needs it?

hhh · 2024-06-19 06:14:48

^ Uninstalling it will remove my GNOME session and gdm3. I'll have to test this later (about to go to bed now )

Posting it here until we get a dedicated thread for labwc... Adding XKB_DEFAULT_OPTIONS=caps:none to ~/.config/labwc/environment disables the CapsLk key.

johnraff · 2024-06-19 06:39:10

おやすみなさい！

(I like to use CapsLock as a Compose key.)

unklar · 2024-06-19 07:26:52

After initial attempts with labwc on Beardog, in February 2024 I installed
labwc on noX from siduction because I noticed that Debian offered the labwc package with all the basic dependencies.

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 68#p132368

I started with the files documented by @johnmalm:
autostart
environment
menu.xml
rc.xml
readme
themerc

Further applications were then Thunar, Mousepad, Vieb, Keepassxc and xfce4-terminal, waybar, grim, slurp. Conky only works satisfactorily for me with the variable 'override'.

The left and right click menu was copied from openbox.
It is started from tty1 with 'labwc'.

At the moment I have no access to the installation.

Last edited by unklar (2024-06-19 07:30:09)

micko01 · 2024-06-19 07:56:55

@johnraff

Osamu Aoki links:
His github.io website: https://osamuaoki.github.io - a treasure trove of info!
From his site, how he setup his personal repo: https://osamuaoki.github.io/en/2022/08/20/deb-repo-1/
Official debian reprepro guide which he mostly wrote: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepositor … thReprepro (some dead links)
His github source page for his site: https://github.com/osamuaoki/osamuaoki.github.io - you can browse his personal debian repo there

That will keep you busy

More from me a bit later, oh and some great ground work ^^^there @hhh

johnraff · 2024-06-19 08:32:57

micko01 wrote:

Osamu Aoki links:
His github.io website: https://osamuaoki.github.io - a treasure trove of info!

You said it!
Thanks for that great find.

From his site, how he setup his personal repo: https://osamuaoki.github.io/en/2022/08/20/deb-repo-1/
Official debian reprepro guide which he mostly wrote: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepositor … thReprepro (some dead links)
His github source page for his site: https://github.com/osamuaoki/osamuaoki.github.io - you can browse his personal debian repo there

I don't think I saw that reprepro tutorial when I was searching around, but I think I've got it pretty much down now, at least for my purposes. Good to have it confirmed from another source though.
EDIT: in fact some stuff there which is new to me, or new ways of doing some things. ( thought... )

The manual:
https://deb.moep.com/manual.html

Some other hints:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reprepro
https://docs.opendev.org/opendev/system … repro.html

But Aoki san!! Excellent. Weeks of reading there...

Last edited by johnraff (2024-06-19 11:50:45)

micko01 · 2024-06-19 10:28:08

Just a note on Xwayland - the official trixie Labwc package has it enabled by default, and probably more user friendly if it is. That said, Xwayland can't handle every or any old X package that you throw at it.

IMHO, part of the problem is that Ubuntu went 'all in' on MIR and it really didn't go to plan as many were not keen to adopt it. Since then, the heavyweights, KDE and Gnome have gone full bore on wayland, but with their expansive eco systems, and if the user is prepared to buy into those eco systems then no problem.

I have hardly ever used Gnome and gave up on KDE at about KDE-3, although I did give trinity a bit of a go.

So where does that leave us? ('us' as in those who prefer a light weight, user friendly desktop not necessarily depending on any 'eco system'.)

Again, IMHO, developers of light weight apps continue to use X as their basis for graphical interaction, even big projects like GIMP. It is still GTK+-2.0 after all these years that GTK+-3.0 has been out! Let us not forget that GTK was originally (still is?) the Gimp Tool Kit!

GTK-2.0 is not wayland compliant and only runs on wayland with Xwayland. So no, Xwayland, no GIMP! That would be a show stopper for anyone that wants to edit photos, or graphic designers, whatever. I used it 20 minutes ago to scale an image for my website (see the 'website' link of mine on the left side of this post if on a desktop, the CC0 Public Domain badge, that I scaled down a bit. I was too lazy to fire up Alacritty and scale it with `pamscale` (part of `netpbm` package - which I use a lot).

Moving on, wayland and Weston (the wayland 'reference' compositor) are around 10 years old; so why hasn't some sort of maturity been reached? Probably simply lack of adoption by developers, and hence users follow suit. Many of us are creatures of habit (many.. most?) and tend to use the same applications that have been getting the job done for us for years. 'Weston' is nothing more than a demo. That's it. Even the 'wlroots' library which all light weight compositors rely on (sway, labwc, river, hyprland, wayfire etc, etc) has a 'reference' compositor called 'tinywl'. About as useful as 'Weston'.

sway is only 8 years old; 0.1 was released March, 2016. It is the most mature compositor, but not for everybody. An entirely keyboard driven tiling compositor, with configs based on I3. And that was a pre-release. But out of that 'wlroots' was born.

labwc had a 5 year gestation period, born in March 2021. I've been using it since November 2021. No problem for me to 'drag 'n' drop' a file from Thunar to Vivaldi ( a chromium clone - which runs natively as Xwayland - but can use the 'ozone' switches common to all chromium variants to run as native wayland). This has been fine for a while now (18 months?).

So, the upshot is that wayland isn't ready but it isn't far off, as long as Xwayland is there. Once 'wlroots' reaches adolescence then things will change. That's probably another 3 or 4 years away but could be sooner rather than later.

@johnraff, it is fine to base Carbon on X, and I don't expect anything other than that but I do think that an 'experimental' wayland variant should accompany Carbon - Carbon-13 - with appropriate caveats.

Just one final thought for anyone unfamiliar with wayland: X is a graphical server. Openbox, JWM, Kwin, and whatever else are just window managers, based on protocols built into X. Wayland is just a library, as is wlroots. Sway, labwc, wayfire et-al are both the graphical server and the compositor (window manager in X speak).

If you got this far, thanks for enduring this post!

johnraff · 2024-06-19 12:06:16

@micko01 thanks for filling in a lot of fine detail there.

micko01 wrote:

...even big projects like GIMP. It is still GTK+-2.0
... GTK-2.0 is not wayland compliant and only runs on wayland with Xwayland. So no, Xwayland, no GIMP! That would be a show stopper for anyone that wants to edit photos, or graphic designers, whatever.

It certainly would. So the choice would be: install xwayland or stay with X11.

But I still think our experimental "base" system should be able to run without xwayland. ie we shouldn't use any panel or other important element that needs xwayland. Remove xwayland and Gimp stops working, but the system remains usable.

@johnraff, it is fine to base Carbon on X, and I don't expect anything other than that but I do think that an 'experimental' wayland variant should accompany Carbon - Carbon-13 - with appropriate caveats.

Very much my thinking too. Possible name Beakerland? But that would need a version tag too - Beakerland-13 or Carbon-Beakerland or something...

Bearded_Blunder · 2024-06-19 12:49:03

johnraff wrote:

But I still think our experimental "base" system should be able to run without xwayland. ie we shouldn't use any panel or other important element that needs xwayland. Remove xwayland and Gimp stops working, but the system remains usable.

Sounds reasonable to me, particularly as something to build on towards all wayland or a wayland default if that's how the climate shifts.

Very much my thinking too. Possible name Beakerland? But that would need a version tag too - Beakerland-13 or Carbon-Beakerland or something...

I'd just tag (and possibly name) the "non-mainstream" one Element-Isotope were it me, you can carry that through right up to Neon & beyond, & if you want a shorthand for version numbering there's always the number of the less common isotope available as a suffix.

hhh · 2024-06-19 17:07:24

Yes, xwayland is a hard depends of labwc on trixie/sid, I didn't notice that last night.

micko01 wrote:

So no, Xwayland, no GIMP!

Check it out, gimp-devel has support for native Wayland.
https://packages.debian.org/experimental/gimp

-edit-

If anyone on sid wants to test it, on sid...

sudo apt install gimp-plugin-registry libcfitsio10t64 libappstream-glib8

Change your source to experimental and...

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -t experimental gimp

Revert your source to sid and sudo apt update. I don't have any other graphics programs installed yet except for mpv/celluloid and loupe image viewer, so those steps should bring everything. Seems to be running like normal GIMP, but it's too soon to tell.

Last edited by hhh (2024-06-19 17:31:54)

Bearded_Blunder · 2024-06-21 18:33:56

Well that certainly makes the chances of a Wayland Carbon-Isotope for at least the base variant look easier.

I've not looked at it at all myself, but if it's something people can get excited about, I'm not against the idea, at least, not unless I'm both forced & it blows.. like a certain init I shan't name.

micko01 · 2024-06-21 22:24:22

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

Well that certainly makes the chances of a Wayland Carbon-Isotope for at least the base variant look easier.

Yes that's the idea. I'm treating it like a 'holding area' until official trixie packages come online, but I'll also hold special configs and the like much like the packages.bunsenlabs.org repo until they are stable then hopefully @johnraff can pick them up. Much easier than trying to merge in wayland stuff with bunsen configs etc.

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

I've not looked at it at all myself, but if it's something people can get excited about, I'm not against the idea, at least, not unless I'm both forced & it blows.. like a certain init I shan't name.

Pid eins?

When that annoys I'll boot slackware, devuan or void. (runnit is actually pretty good).

The actual wayland libraries are developed mostly by Xorg/red hat developers.

The wlroots libraries, the basis of sway, wayfire, labwc et-al are nothing to do with red hat and developed by sway developer Drew Devault with help of course. He has even set up an independent git server on which anyone can create an account, SourceHut.

#121 2024-06-19 05:19:22

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#122 2024-06-19 05:21:30

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#123 2024-06-19 05:23:55

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#124 2024-06-19 05:32:05

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#125 2024-06-19 05:38:52

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#126 2024-06-19 05:44:52

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#127 2024-06-19 05:52:02

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#128 2024-06-19 06:02:23

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#129 2024-06-19 06:03:52

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#130 2024-06-19 06:14:48

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#131 2024-06-19 06:39:10

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#132 2024-06-19 07:26:52

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#133 2024-06-19 07:56:55

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#134 2024-06-19 08:32:57

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#135 2024-06-19 10:28:08

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#136 2024-06-19 12:06:16

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#137 2024-06-19 12:49:03

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#138 2024-06-19 17:07:24

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#139 2024-06-21 18:33:56

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

#140 2024-06-21 22:24:22

Re: Wayland and BunsenLabs

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