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Choosing a hybrid Wayland Compositor (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 months ago by boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net to c/linux@programming.dev

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I am very unlikely to switch away from KDE Plasma 6
I would anyways like to try Sway or the like
I dont use virtual desktops and find just navigating through a bottom taskbar makes more sense for me
I have many apps fullscreen, and would never tile more than once vertically, as I am on a Laptop
I want: NightLight, tray icons, a good app menu, many KDE Apps (Dolphin, Kate, Ark, Gwenview, Spectacle Edit feature at least)

Are Wayland WMs ready for this use case? What would you recommend to fill these exact requirements?

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Alright, well, I haven't looked into the Wayland tiling window managers yet, so I can't say, if there's maybe something that fits exactly right, but anyways.

KWin rules dont work that well for me, as I get tons of dialog windows in fullscreen.

You should be able to customize the rule to fix that. In the property "Window types", deselect "Dialog Window" (or frankly probably everything except "Normal Window").

As for a more lightweight option, you could keep an eye out for LXQt. They don't have Wayland support ready yet, but plan a release this autumn: https://lxqt-project.org/blog/2024/04/15/wayland_faq/

It integrates various things from KDE and the KDE apps should feel at home there, while they're also pursuing the goal of using few resources.
I don't know how that impacts which dependencies are being used, but there probably is an impact.

LXQt kind of lets you choose what window manager you want to use inside of it. See "Which compositor is used?" and following questions in the link above.

I don't believe, it comes with a NightLight feature out if the box, but there's probably sone standalone application for that.
And well, whether its app menu is good, that's certainly a matter of taste. It's definitely serviceable, as far as I remember, but it doesn't have the amazing search of Plasma, for example.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

you could keep an eye out for LXQt.

I did. Looked at the desktop and it looks horrendous. pcmanfm-qt is the only usable app (and I find it second best filemanager after dolphin).

Their packages are supposedly very outdated on Fedora, which I didnt verify. And using Ubuntu base is a nogo for irrational reasons.

On Fedora they still rely on tons of Qt5 just like Plasma, which I find unacceptable.

Also I never used a Desktop where compositor settings are simply unsupported. It may run, but you still need config files, and I wonder why use settings then.

I really dont need so switch, KDE is awesome. It is not a pain anymore since plasma 6, Fedora Kinoite is very well maintained, Flatpaks work well, it has the best app support of all, legacy support, theming, cursors.

Its literally just for the curiosity.

I have a spare SSD where I try COSMIC too. Its tiling is usable thanks to some random dude that joined Fedora and created a SIG 2 months or so after that and now packages all the apps (He added drag to tile support). Thanks btw.

But it looks pretty ugly, it mimics the useless GNOME top bar, the app menu is kinda bad, so you would need to write at least 2 applets and replace the preinstalled ones.

Not a dealbreaker, and it works really good.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, LXQt is certainly a matter of taste. They introduced Qt6 support with the recent 2.0 release, which might not yet be on Fedora. You can also set its theme and icons to look like Plasma, although it's still not as consistent.

But yeah, if you don't care for LXQt's applications, you might rather like to try a minimal window manager, where the configuration is done via config file and the panel etc. is mostly DIY.

Although, it certainly still does not sound to me like you'd prefer it over KDE...

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Haha no not really.

I look forward to pure Rust COSMIC, which works pretty well. But they need to do so much ground work, and their UX (overview, app menu, ...) is in parts pretty ugly.

I wonder what the best alternative to KWin is. Wayfire? Labwc?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, I haven't tried any of them. Apparently, LabWC is built to work similarly to Openbox, which I used before switching to KDE Plasma.

Openbox could do most things that Kwin could, although it had some big omissions, like no way to tile a window by dragging it to the screen edge (you could set up a keyboard shortcut to resize and move a window, though).

According to the LXQt link above, it also doesn't have desktop effects, if you want/need those.

But yeah, I know nothing about Wayfire...

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 months ago

Openbox could do most things that Kwin could

And that was back when both used XOrg to do the heavy lifting.

Wayfire is used in a lot of minimal desktops. Raspberry PiOS uses it for their new Wayland desktop.