Sway - the Wayland drop in replacement for I3

[paxmark1]

I do keep an I3 tiling wm on some installs  that use testing in case "parts" of graphics goes seriously wrong, and also because some of my kit is quite old.

I wiped my 32G sdhc on the tiny old netbook of an I3 install of Sparky and presently have a sid install that I update in tty

I see the tutorial for Buster and Sway on the sway github, but I am waiting patiently for the sway in experimental to drop to sid.  I ran Wayland/weston in early 2016, only thing that would work was mpv, and it worked perfectly.  I have other fish to fry and lots of painting and house fix up stuff - but if anyone has had any luck with a pure wayland, you can post here. 

It is a 32 bit cpu, I still have a several year old Sparky on the hard drive, but well - not as many options in distros for 32 bit for a fresh install.   

[paxmark1]

There is always
https://sparkylinux.org/sway/

So what is the purpose of this?  Sparky users can test and evaluate sway, kick the tires. My usage will be a more "staid" or conventional  or debian approach, I might encounter problems 5 days before testing does.   Another reason is that posts like this about ongoing new trends in linux might yield more eyes to Sparky via search engine searches.

Notes    via https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki

Sway does not work well (or at all) in a vm - from another source.

Nvidia users
All proprietary graphics drivers are unsupported.

Login managers
Some login managers support Wayland, and others don't.    ##tty  is the easiest

My results

Up and running.  import of config from etc worked. Did not start from a tty1 under root with tmux splitscreen.  It did start in a flash from tty2 via typing 'sway" 

Investigting terminals.  Hello trusted name.  Kovid Goyal.    (Calibre fame)
https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/        ## however kitty wont play   

https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/2770     ##

mod-enter yields lxterm. 

[manyroads]

[off-topic] I'd love to see an equivalent level of enthusiasm for bspwm.  Just sayin'  ;) [/off-topic]

[paxmark1]

I noticed    lami07 's desktop picture of waybar.  Quite the slog through the mud (think friction and effort - not dirt) to get it to compile. I had to keep adding dependencies for it to build in meson.  When finally done - Rather tall in my tiny screen, but I have not worked with the config.  I continue burning candles on both ends in multiple dimensions. 

Sway is still in experimental. It does not feel like it is experimental, but I have no idea how it would work in Po Tolo - Debian testing  at this moment as I am evaluating it in Sid-unstable.  Waybar is one of several hundred gits that need a Debian mentor.  Someone started it, then stopped.  If you should have a choice between a Ubuntu package in somoeones repository or builiding - as always I would say avoid the Ubuntu repository and build from scratch.   

peace out. 

[lami07]

You can grab newest waybar from sparky-unstable repo. I intend to keep ''debianizing'' waybar for sparky.

I can share my waybar config and style files if any one is interested.

[paxmark1]

Via Planet Debian. 

Switching from Gnome to a tiling window manager
https://blog.freesources.org//posts/2019/12/switch_to_sway/lls

He is a dev I believe
He documents what he did to get sway installed onto a stable Debian desktop.  And the configuration changes and what he going to officially backport to Debian Stable Backports and his goal of getting moved over to py3status for his sway install. 
https://github.com/ultrabug/py3status

Me, I am just coasting along just having the standard sway install presently.  Busy busy.  Back to the muriatic acid on the ancient concrete block shower.  Neutralize, Paint.  ...

[aus9]

If this post allows some discussion of sway
I have not enabled any unstable /sid repos and a quick search for launchers  (command line search and execute command tool)
did not reveal dmenu or bemenu. YMMV

I did find j4-dmenu-desktop which is used with bemenu.

What are you guys using for a launcher or are you just using a terminal?

EDIT
enable sparky unstable shows bemenu but no dmenu.
I built sway on Tinycore with XWayland support so dmenu can be run.
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86_64/tcz/src/sway/build-sway.sh

[lami07]

For Sway I use bemenu. For i3 I go with rofi.

Dmenu is privided by ''suckless-tools'' package.

[aus9]

thanks just found wofi which I have never tried too.

edit
OOOPS I forgot to install xwayland...ignore what I wrote earlier

[paxmark1]

Sway is in testing now. 
https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/sway

I would have thought suckless-tools would have been a dependency, but it is only a recommendation.   

Your Debian Sources - stable versus testing ...  Wayland will have much better support in testing - rolling.   Your inxi would let us know.

Thanks for the heads up on bemunu

https://github.com/Cloudef/bemenu

Looks like you have to compile it.  60 hour weeks for me taking care of vulnerable people, passing meds, ...  it will be a hot zone some day.  If you can cite sources for the development of bemenu, feel free.   

[aus9]

I did dl rolling but manually disabled unstable and then re-enabled as per above post

Code Select Expand

inxi
System:    Host: box Kernel: 5.4.0-4-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: SparkyLinux 6 (Po-Tolo[
snip

and FWIW xwayland is not a recommendation.

Code Select Expand

apt info sway
snip
Version: 1.4-1
snip
Depends: libgl1-mesa-dri, swaybg, libc6 (>= 2.28), libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0), libevdev2 (>= 0.9.1), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.31.1),
libgles2, libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libinput10 (>= 1.6.0), libjson-c4 (>= 0.13.1), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.22.0), libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.22.0),
libpcre3, libpixman-1-0 (>= 0.25.2), libsystemd0 (>= 243), libwayland-client0 (>= 1.9.91), libwayland-cursor0 (>= 1.0.2), libwayland-server0 (>= 1.14.91),
libwlroots5 (>= 0.10.0), libxcb1, libxkbcommon0 (>= 0.7.0)
Recommends: suckless-tools, sway-backgrounds, x-terminal-emulator
Suggests: swayidle, swaylock
snip

[aus9]

@paxmark1

If you can cite sources for the development of bemenu, feel free

sorry can not help there. My eyesight only find 0.3.0 which you have already taken care of thanks.

I could try to build a  deb using a version number something like
git-ddmmmyy inlieu of version 0.3.0-1

I did build an earlier release for tinycore so am not completely shy on code but never built a deb if interested?
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86_64/tcz/src/bemenu/build-bemenu.sh

but the way I do things may not be acceptable....and the build will differ as I need to show apt install commands.
here is example but using sway...where I have yet to get around to the actual deb command, just to test something.

Code Select Expand

P=sway
V=1.3
SRC=$P-$V

sudo apt install sway # mainly to dl the dependencies
sudo apt remove sway
sudo apt install libwlroots-dev scdoc meson cmake libjson-c-dev libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev

cd /tmp
/usr/bin/wget -nc --no-check-certificate \
https://github.com/swaywm/$P/archive/v$V.zip
unzip v$V*zip

cd /tmp/$SRC
mkdir build && cd build
meson --strip --prefix=/usr -Ddebug=false --buildtype=plain -Dfish-completions=false -Dzsh-completions=false
meson configure # to show options  below are some not all
##############################
# debug           false
# strip           true
# prefix         /usr
# sysconfdir     /etc

#  bash-completions  true          [true, false]             Install bash shell completions.               
#  default-wallpaper true          [true, false]             Install the default wallpaper.                 
#  fish-completions  false         [true, false]             Install fish shell completions.               
#  gdk-pixbuf        auto          [enabled, disabled, auto] Enable support for more image formats in swaybg
#  man-pages         auto          [enabled, disabled, auto] Generate and install man pages                 
#  tray              auto          [enabled, disabled, auto] Enable support for swaybar tray               
#  xwayland          auto          [enabled, disabled, auto] Enable support for X11 applications           
#  zsh-completions   false         [true, false]             Install zsh shell completions
################################################################
ninja
sudo ninja install

# did not create deb package

[lami07]

You lost me here folks. Why do you consider compiling bemenu on your own? Its already in sparky unstable repo.

[paxmark1]

Sorry, I haven't fired up my sparky in a couple of days, I was just looking at Debian.