The Wayland plugin for Carbon

johnraff · 2026-03-26 06:14:54

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 (2026-03-27 01:58:26)

micko01 · 2026-03-26 06:39:08

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.

PackRat · 2026-03-26 09:57:09

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.

hhh · 2026-03-26 16:11:59

PackRat wrote:

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

johnraff · 2026-03-27 01:30:50

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.

johnraff · 2026-03-27 01:45:21

micko01 wrote:

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...

johnraff · 2026-03-27 01:59:20

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

unklar · 2026-03-27 16:42:57

johnraff wrote:

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

johnraff · 2026-03-29 02:53:49

^Thanks. Yes, looking round the labwc github most people seem to be using wtype for this:
https://github.com/labwc/labwc/commit/2 … 72b547e788
That looks easy enough.

Another option might be wlrctl but I can't find a lot of documentation.

And programmers might be interested in the uinput kernel module.

And this: https://www.semicomplete.com/blog/xdoto … mentation/

Last edited by johnraff (2026-03-29 02:57:45)

micko01 · Today 01:25:05

johnraff wrote:

micko01 wrote:
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???

I had a look at the format of .xbindkeysrc and it would be no easy feat to make a utility to write to .config/labwc/rc.xml. Also possibly a watch might be needed on the file to update rc.xml whenever xbindkeysrc is modified.

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...

I don't think that's needed for labwc apart from actual labwc theme changes which just need a simple "labwc -r" (-r = --restart)

At the moment I have carbon installed with dev tools on my main laptop. I wiped windows completely so I have more SSD for work. I have only ever booted windows on it twice! It did have a boron install upgraded to carbon but a clean slate is the best place to start.

There are certainly going to be a lot of differences as there are not lilke for like replacements in wayland for X11 apps. All part of the adventure.

johnraff · Today 05:00:36

micko01 wrote:

There are certainly going to be a lot of differences as there are not lilke for like replacements in wayland for X11 apps.

One thing we need to do fairly soon is to draw up a list of apps that will be needed for a basic Wayland desktop. I'm hoping that with xfce4-panel, xwwall, nwg-look and xfce4-terminal already Carbon Xorg defaults, we've got a lot of it covered already.

johnraff · Today 05:07:23

micko01 wrote:

I had a look at the format of .xbindkeysrc and it would be no easy feat to make a utility to write to .config/labwc/rc.xml.

Likely not. Pity, not so much for devs as for users to have to wrangle with two separate files. Can't be helped I guess.

I'm just now playing with the idea of a jgmenu csv to labwc xml migration tool. Mainly for devs to save time pecking on the keyboard and reduce the chance of typos when updating the menus. Remains to be seen how practical it turns out to be.

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...
I don't think that's needed for labwc apart from actual labwc theme changes which just need a simple "labwc -r" (-r = --restart)

So GTK theme and icon changes get reflected immediately on Wayland?

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

The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#2 2026-03-26 06:39:08

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#3 2026-03-26 09:57:09

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#4 2026-03-26 16:11:59

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#5 2026-03-27 01:30:50

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#6 2026-03-27 01:45:21

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#7 2026-03-27 01:59:20

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#8 2026-03-27 16:42:57

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#9 2026-03-29 02:53:49

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#10 Today 01:25:05

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#11 Today 05:00:36

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

#12 Today 05:07:23

Re: The Wayland plugin for Carbon

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