bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

johnraff · 2026-07-28 07:03:50

The long-promised Wayland plugin is finally ready for first trials.
There's a new package in the repos bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin and by installing that, people running BL Carbon should get a "Bunsenlabs Wayland" option at the lightdm login screen.

First, it might be a good idea to make a backup of your current xfce4-panel settings, just in case: User Settings > Xfce4-panel > xfce4-panel Profiles

To get this with the minimum disruption: first do a regular apt update/upgrade so bunsen-configs gets upgraded to 13.7.
Then log out and back in. You will get some popups about overwriting user config files - if you haven't made many changes to your desktop since installing then it will probably be OK to click OK on each, otherwise give it some thought, look at the diffs and make your decision. Anyway it will make backups of your files before overwriting them.

One case though: ~/.config/bunsen/autostart: if you are starting up xfce4-clipman there then even if you decline the offer to overwrite the file you should comment out that line. The panel will be configured to use xfce4-clipman-plugin, and starting up clipman directly from autostart will break the new panel configs. The clipman plugin uses a different icon from clipman in the systray, but it works the same. The important point is that the systray clipman does not work on Wayland while the clipman panel plugin works on both X11 and Wayland. If you get in a mess over the panel configs with this then you can always go in and fix it up manually using the menu User Settings > Xfce4-panel > xfce4-panel Preferences, to add the clipman plugin.

Once bunsen-configs has upgraded to 13.7, probably best to logout/in one more time before doing 'sudo apt install bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin'.

Log out again and you should see the "Bunsenlabs Wayland" option at the lightdm login screen. Give it a try!

---
In fact, there is still work to do, in particular the session startup sequence goes through the Debian shell snippets in /etc/X11/Xsession.d and we need a new approach to that so the useful bits are still picked up but the X11-only stuff is not. (I've already got an idea how we can do that.) ~/.xsession-errors still has a log which might give you some hints. At the very least it should start "Wsession: Wayland session started for <user> at <date>..."

For now, please post any glitches you find (I'm sure there are plenty) and we can list them up here.

Last edited by johnraff (2026-07-29 07:05:09)

hhh · 2026-07-29 00:59:15

Damn, I just deleted my testing partition.

Look for feedback from me this weekend.

johnraff · 2026-07-29 07:02:10

Looks just like X11 Carbon:

Sorry imgbb trimmed off xfce4-panel in the thumbnail - it's there in the full-sized linked image.

unklar · 2026-08-03 15:35:22

Worked as described.
Since there are no applications yet stored in the menu, keepassxc and LocalSend a were started from the terminal/Alt+F2(with varying degrees of success).

Thanks, @john!

unklar · Yesterday 09:07:15

^I find the color change to yellow/orange of the BL icon particularly cool when selecting the desktop.

Perhaps this could also be continued in the default Conky to show the user at a glance which BL desktop they are currently in.
To do this, this line would have to be inserted next to SYSTEM in the Default/Carbon-Conky:

S Y S T E M ${alignr}${execpi 86400 inxi -S | tail -n 1 | head -n 3 | awk '{print $2}'}

❯ inxi -S
System:
  Host: carbon3 Kernel: 6.12.100+deb13-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: LabWC v: N/A Distro: BunsenLabs GNU/Linux 13 (Carbon)

or, do I shoot sparrows with cannons here using inxi. Is there an easier way to read the desktop in use?

I could now only show an image from "Openbox" because in LabWC both xfce4-screenshooter and grim -slurp do not take images.

unklar · Yesterday 09:12:51

^Maybe I'm too far ahead and @johnraff wants something different first...
Suspend mode works well. However, the user sees the desktop he left for a second and then the PW login mask.

DeepDayze · Yesterday 15:13:26

unklar wrote:

^I find the color change to yellow/orange of the BL icon particularly cool when selecting the desktop.
Perhaps this could also be continued in the default Conky to show the user at a glance which BL desktop they are currently in.
To do this, this line would have to be inserted next to SYSTEM in the Default/Carbon-Conky:
S Y S T E M ${alignr}${execpi 86400 inxi -S | tail -n 1 | head -n 3 | awk '{print $2}'}
❯ inxi -S
System:
  Host: carbon3 Kernel: 6.12.100+deb13-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: LabWC v: N/A Distro: BunsenLabs GNU/Linux 13 (Carbon)
or, do I shoot sparrows with cannons here using inxi. Is there an easier way to read the desktop in use?
I could now only show an image from "Openbox" because in LabWC both xfce4-screenshooter and grim -slurp do not take images.

Any alternative screenshooters available that work on Wayland?

unklar · Yesterday 16:02:01

DeepDayze wrote:

Any alternative screenshooters available that work on Wayland?

Sorry, I spelled that wrong.
Both tools, xfce4-screenshooter and grim/slurp, take pictures of the entire desktop. What didn't work was "selecting with the mouse", i.e. a specific area.

Of course there are alternatives, but I haven't tried them because grim and slurp satisfy me.
See here and that's definitely not all:
https://github.com/natpen/awesome-wayland#screenshots

johnraff · Today 01:21:43

Thanks for the feedback!

unklar wrote:

...xfce4-screenshooter and grim/slurp, take pictures of the entire desktop. What didn't work was "selecting with the mouse", i.e. a specific area.

xfce4-screenshooter is known to only do full-screen shots when running on Wayland.
But the grim+slurp combination for selecting part of the desktop with the mouse worked OK for me.
Did you try the key combo Ctrl+Print? Or this command directly:

grim -g "$(slurp)"

But there doesn't seem to be a way on Wayland to do a screenshot of the "active window". I use that a lot, but it seems to be very difficult to do on Wayland.

Last edited by johnraff (Today 01:50:49)

johnraff · Today 01:34:37

unklar wrote:

I find the color change to yellow/orange of the BL icon particularly cool when selecting the desktop.

Glad you like it! In fact I just threw that yellow icon in as a placeholder until someone more graphically gifted came up with a cool BunsenLabs-Wayland icon that looked OK at the very small size that lightdm uses.

Perhaps this could also be continued in the default Conky to show the user at a glance which BL desktop they are currently in.
...or, do I shoot sparrows with cannons here using inxi. Is there an easier way to read the desktop in use?

Two things here:
1) I may be wrong but I understood from looking at the conky github that it wasn't really ready for Wayland yet. That's why I just left it out of the plugin for now. It might end up that we need a separate conky for wayland anyway, which would make it unnecessary to do any special tests for X11 vs wayland.
2) There is a very easy way for any script to test if it's running on Wayland or not: check the BUNSEN_SESSION_TYPE environment variable, eg:

case "$BUNSEN_SESSION_TYPE" in
x11)
    do this
    ;;
wayland)
    do something else
    ;;
*)
    oops...
    ;;
esac

In fact there are many ways to test for a wayland/x11 session, but the above environment variable is set by the BunsenLabs session itself, so should be reliable.

johnraff · Today 01:44:12

unklar wrote:

Since there are no applications yet stored in the menu, keepassxc and LocalSend a were started from the terminal/Alt+F2(with varying degrees of success).

The goal for the Wayland plugin will be to have all the items in the standard X11 jgmenu menu working as-is in Wayland too, or else replaced by something else that does work. The pipemenus can probably all be rewritten to test for x11/wayland and do the right thing (some already have been).

I was pleasantly surprised to find that gmrun worked fine on Wayland just as it is, so the Alt+F2 keybind too.

Alt+F3 had to be switched from dmenu, which does not work on Wayland, to a previuusly unknown (to me) app called tofi, which does. The tofi config needs polishing to make it look like the BL dmenu, but it seems to do the job of finding and running apps.

As many keybinds as possible should work exactly the same on Wayland using labwc as they do on X11 using openbox.

If anyone finds one that doesn't work, please post here and I'll start a TODO list in the Original Post in this thread.

johnraff · Today 01:48:49

unklar wrote:

Suspend mode works well. However, the user sees the desktop he left for a second and then the PW login mask.

This seems to be a long-standing issue with lightdm, and not a good thing at all because it shows whoever is at the controls a quick view of the previous desktop even if they aren't the session owner. Nobody seems to be doing anything about it, so the only workaround is not to have any sensitive information visible when you suspend or lock the session. This has been the case for years I think.

unklar · Today 11:21:18

johnraff wrote:

Thanks for the feedback!
unklar wrote:
...xfce4-screenshooter and grim/slurp, take pictures of the entire desktop. What didn't work was "selecting with the mouse", i.e. a specific area.
xfce4-screenshooter is known to only do full-screen shots when running on Wayland.
But the grim+slurp combination for selecting part of the desktop with the mouse worked OK for me.
Did you try the key combo Ctrl+Print? Or this command directly:
grim -g "$(slurp)"
But there doesn't seem to be a way on Wayland to do a screenshot of the "active window". I use that a lot, but it seems to be very difficult to do on Wayland.

I didn't know that xfce4-screenshoter only takes full screens.
The Ctrl+Print key combination only creates empty png files. Whereas Print calls up the xfce4 screenshot and a full screen can be taken.

grim and slurp need to specify the image path to be saved. I already know this from other installations with labwc, mango, hyprland, niri.

grim
or
grim - > ~/Pictures/scrot-$(date +%F_%T).png
or
grim -g "$(slurp)" - > ~/Pictures/scrot-$(date +%F_%T).png

also do the job here in BL.

unklar · Today 11:49:35

johnraff wrote:

unklar wrote:
Since there are no applications yet stored in the menu, keepassxc and LocalSend a were started from the terminal/Alt+F2(with varying degrees of success).
The goal for the Wayland plugin will be to have all the items in the standard X11 jgmenu menu working as-is in Wayland too, or else replaced by something else that does work. The pipemenus can probably all be rewritten to test for x11/wayland and do the right thing (some already have been).
I was pleasantly surprised to find that gmrun worked fine on Wayland just as it is, so the Alt+F2 keybind too.
Alt+F3 had to be switched from dmenu, which does not work on Wayland, to a previuusly unknown (to me) app called tofi, which does. The tofi config needs polishing to make it look like the BL dmenu, but it seems to do the job of finding and running apps.
As many keybinds as possible should work exactly the same on Wayland using labwc as they do on X11 using openbox.
If anyone finds one that doesn't work, please post here and I'll start a TODO list in the Original Post in this thread.

I probably need a clean reinstall.
gmrun doesn't work at all here. Alt+F3, on the other hand, does, without starting an application.
tofi shows nothing.
The key commands of the default conky on the right of the desktop all work, except for Super+v (Volume Control).

unklar · Today 17:32:44

johnraff wrote:

But there doesn't seem to be a way on Wayland to do a screenshot of the "active window". I use that a lot, but it seems to be very difficult to do on Wayland.

OT
Interestingly, 'niri' does this with the keyboard shortcut Alt+Print for a screenshot of the active window. This is what the configuration file says:

screenshot-path "~/Pictures/Screenshot from %Y-%m-%d %H-%M-%S.png"
	Print { screenshot; }
    	Ctrl+Print { screenshot-screen; }
    	Alt+Print { screenshot-window; }

So far I haven't found where these keyboard shortcuts are defined.
OT

#1 2026-07-28 07:03:50

bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#2 2026-07-29 00:59:15

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#3 2026-07-29 07:02:10

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#4 2026-08-03 15:35:22

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#5 Yesterday 09:07:15

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#6 Yesterday 09:12:51

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#7 Yesterday 15:13:26

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#8 Yesterday 16:02:01

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#9 Today 01:21:43

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#10 Today 01:34:37

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#11 Today 01:44:12

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#12 Today 01:48:49

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#13 Today 11:21:18

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#14 Today 11:49:35

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

#15 Today 17:32:44

Re: bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin available for testing

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