#1 2026-03-26 06:14:54

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,147

Website

The Wayland plugin for Carbon

This was mentioned in the release notes and got a certain amount of attention, so maybe it would be good to release something ASAP.

@micko01 and I discussed the basic idea at some length on GitHub at the end of 2024 (!): https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-configs/issues/134

I think we've got the basic idea down, and Carbon has  been arranged so as not to make things too difficult for Wayland, so if no unexpected issues come up (they often do though) then it shouldn't take too much work at this point.

Basic Idea
Users can install a metapackage bunsen-meta-wayland-addon on top of an existing Carbon installation. At the next login a new item should appear on the login menu "Bunsenlabs Wayland" giving a rather basic stripped-down Wayland session. Users can add new apps etc and tweak it as they like, but the original Xorg based Carbon session will always be available for the times when something can't be done on Wayland.

Some time in the future, maybe there will be a self-standing Wayland-only install, but for now this is an addon for the regular Xorg session. All the regular Carbon apps will be installed of course, but some of them won't work on Wayland. Exactly how we handle that is one of the questions we want to consider now.

details
bunsen-meta-wayland-addon depends on bunsen-configs-wayland-base (or possibly bunsen-configs-wayland) and a selection of necessary apps:
labwc
...what else? We already have xfce4-panel, xfce4-terminal, xwwall, nwg-look which work on both Xorg and Wayland. lightDM seems to work OK for starting Wayland sessions (although itself it uses X).
bunsen-configs-wayland-base will configure any Wayland-only apps and the user startup script ~/.config/bunsen/autostart-wayland, and add /usr/share/wayland-sessions/bunsenlabs-wayland.desktop for the lightdm login menu item.

still needs thought
The menu is the big one IMO. It doesn't look as if we can just use jgmenu: https://github.com/jgmenu/jgmenu/issues … 4080018142
I haven't looked at labwc's native menu at all yet - even whether it supports pipemenus, though I guess it might. We'll probably have to write an xml menu like what we used with openbox before the days of jgmenu, trying to make it as similar as possible to the default Carbon menu.

xbindkeys: does it work on Wayland?

xsettingsd: same question

Especially @micko01 but all are welcome to jump in, what else needs adding to the above lists?
Or, any other comments?

links

The GitHub discussion: https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-configs/issues/134

Other older discussions:
"Wayland and BunsenLabs" https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=8843
"Organizing the Carbon BunsenLabs sessions for Wayland and X11" https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=9081

jimjamz' recent report: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 38#p149038

Last edited by johnraff (Yesterday 01:58:26)

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( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

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micko01

void main()

From: Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2024-04-07

Posts: 576

Website

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

Labwc's native menu does support pipemenus and I have a few examples already.

Labwc (or other wayland compositors) does not support xbindkeys nor xsettingsd.

Labwc supports keybinds and mouse binds in it's native rc.xml.

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#!/bin/sh
echo '#include <stdio.h>\nvoid main() { printf("Hi, bunsenlabs\\n"); return; }' > bunsen.c
gcc bunsen.c -o bunsen
./bunsen

PackRat

jgmenu user Numero Uno

Registered: 2015-10-02

Posts: 2,865

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

The xfce4-panel menu plugin should work. I don't know if xfce4-panel supports multiple config files so that something like:

xfce4-panel -c labwc-config

would work. Otherwise it would call the existing BL carbon menu.

Thunar, xfce4-terminal, xfcce4-screenshot, and geany all work with wayland.

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You must unlearn what you have learned.
    -- yoda

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,793

Website

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

I don't know if xfce4-panel supports multiple config files

It does, via Xfce Panel Profiles, though not "on the fly" as I understand it...

https://docs.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-panel-profiles/start

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johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,147

Website

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

As to the xfce4-panel menu plugin, that's going to be an auto-generated menu based on the apps' .desktop files I guess. As appears in "All Applications" in the default BL menu. Two points:

1) We want to display our own menu with all its useful shortcuts and pipemenus. That's going to mean writing an openbox-style xml menu for labwc I think. The Menu launcher we've put on Carbon's xfce4-panel runs a tiny BL script 'bl-menu' which looks at the session type and runs 'jgmenu_run' on Xorg, and some as yet undefined wayland_menu command on Wayland. That much is already done. It would be nice if the labwc menu could be triggered directly by a command, but as far as I've been able to tell, it needs a keyboard shortcut. I'd love to be wrong on that, but we can still work round it with some xdotool (or maybe ydotool) command to trigger the keyboard press.

2) The auto-generated menu is going to have some items which don't work on Wayland, and possibly some Wayland-only apps tht won't work on Xorg. I don't think there's any way at the moment for .desktop files to specify which sesson type they should be used in, ie some kind of 'OnlyShowIn=Wayland' as there is to distinguish between desktop environments like XFCE or GNOME. Again, I'd love to be wrong on that. But anyway a hodge-podge of Xorg and Wayland apps is not what we want to present our new users with in the default menu.

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Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,147

Website

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

Labwc's native menu does support pipemenus and I have a few examples already.

Good news, thanks!

Labwc (or other wayland compositors) does not support xbindkeys nor xsettingsd.

I guess we can live without xbindkeys. It was brought in to give users more freedom to switch window managers, but if it doesn't work on Wayland then that road is coming to an end, and we can (will have to) go back to configuring the keybinds directly  in labwc's xml file. It means developers and users having to maintain two keybind config files unfortunately, one of them being in the much-loved xml.
A little utility to read xbindkeysrc and automatically add the xml to labwc's config file???

xsettingsd is a daemon which gives instant updates on theming changes, so users don't have to log out/in to see their lxappearance/nwg-look changes on the desktop. It would be nice if there was a Wayland equivalent...

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,147

Website

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

Added a couple of links to previous discussions to the OP.

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Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

unklar

Back to the roots 1.9

From: #! BL

Registered: 2015-10-31

Posts: 2,902

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

1) We want to display our own menu with all its useful shortcuts and pipemenus. That's going to mean writing an openbox-style xml menu for labwc I think. The Menu launcher we've put on Carbon's xfce4-panel runs a tiny BL script 'bl-menu' which looks at the session type and runs 'jgmenu_run' on Xorg, and some as yet undefined wayland_menu command on Wayland. That much is already done. It would be nice if the labwc menu could be triggered directly by a command, but as far as I've been able to tell, it needs a keyboard shortcut. I'd love to be wrong on that, but we can still work round it with some xdotool (or maybe ydotool) command to trigger the keyboard press.

^xdotool will not work on wayland.
Maybe wtype is also worth a look.
https://orioninsist.org/blog/wayland-br … w-xdotool/
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/wtype