this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
123 points (99.2% liked)

Linux

48363 readers
358 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Will be doing a fresh install on an old laptop in the near future and was considering trying wayland.

Can you recommend a decent & light window manager & terminal emulator?

I've played around with wayland but always ended up back on xorg, was gonna give it another shot.

all 37 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] MaliciousKebab 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sway and foot work pretty decently. Might want to check them out.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • imv as an image viewer
  • emacs has wayland support
  • zathura for pdf viewing

Check Awesome Wayland for more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In case you're already using emacs I wouldn't bother with a separate pdf viewer - pdf-tools for emacs is imo the best PDF viewer nowadays available on linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, I gotta leave something for those who choose to reside with the beast: Neovim

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

imv looks good, thanks for the link

I'm a bit confused, I left Reddit to escape emacs users....should I be on kbin instead?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

imv is the absolute best

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There is no saving your soul; Emacs is life, Emacs is death. /j

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In case you want eye candy (or how I call it: the Wayland compositor doing compositing) you can also check out swayfx. Personally, I use it with kitty and waybar.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I use hyprland and kitty on my modern desktop and my 12 year old i3 laptop.

If you want to have a really minimal Wayland compositor take a look at dwl

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, will give dwl a spin as I've been quite comfortable on dwm.

[–] Drito 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Vivarium

Please don't blame the lack of popularity, Vivarium works and its feature complete. The dev answers to the recent github issues.

i3-like WMs are underfeatured and Hyprland is less minimal than Vivarium.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks, looks cool.

I find i3 & dwm a bit much out of the box and need to remove titles, borders & hide the status bar. Hyprland had a lot going on, will check out Vivarium.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most of my machines are KDE on X, but I have one where I've been feeling stuff out in Wayland-land. The most appealing thing I've tried has been Hyprland with Waybar. It's a little bit of a kit in traditional WM fashion, but easy to configure from straightforward config files, fairly light, and not "Just like this X WM, but broken because of missing Wayland functionality" (I know, I know, it's not technically Wayland deficiencies, its "not yet complete extensions", because it's all extensions, the Wayland protocol itself does almost nothing).

I've been using Kitty for a terminal emulator and it's pleasing as well.

I haven't found a launcher I love, I have fuzzel right now and the only major issue is it doesn't currently support mouse interaction, and I prefer a "use whichever input device your hand is on at the time" to keyboard-only.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How does hyperland configuration compare to sway? Or is it exactly the same?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They're both simple text formats, but Hyprland uses a "key = value" type config with section labels. Sway is largely compatible with i3 config files which are more like an unstructured script.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I like sways configuration file more because the naming on hyprland isn't stellar. But hyprland has a config for anything I'd ever need which is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Have personally been using KDE Wayland on EndeavourOS for a while, and It's been free of major bugs save for some games going to a black screen after tabbing out of them.

[–] Duckytoast 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sway with Alacritty, been my daily driver for the past year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I have i3 & kitty atm so not a huge leap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I just wanted alacrity OSC133 support so much

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'm personally fond of Sway and Kitty

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I use sway wm with the foot terminal emulator. If you do not like manual tiling I have heard good things about river wm.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like puppy linux as a distro for old laptop refurb, starts lean and mean, allowing older laptops to recapture some of their former glory.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Void is my plan. I went with Fedora last time as I couldn't be bothered setting up Void properly and Fedora was the only distro with a generic kernel that seemed old mac trackapd/keyboard friendly at time. I've not tried Puppy for a long time, I tend to opt for AntiX or Porteus in that kinda area.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use sway and foot, which comes with sway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

foot does not come with sway. why do you think foot comes with sway? foot and sway are unrelated.
they're both good wayland software, though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm pretty certain that foot is the default terminal for swaywm.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

interesting.
the default config file is basically "Drew's preferences watered down a bit for a general audience"
alacritty used to be Drew's preferred terminal for sway.
sway does not come packaged with any terminal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Manjaro sway comes with foot. Maybe he/she meant that…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

fedora sway too

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Labwc is really a decent window manager that can pretty much be used on its own without a panel (I think). I think foot is pretty fast, but I just use gnome console, because I'm a savage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cheers, will give it a look

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am using kde with wayland. Works pretty well. Even with nvidia 3080.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

May give KDE another spin someday when I have a machine better suited but not for this potato.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Try RedoxOS: https://www.redox-os.org/faq/

If you're into developing or willing to learn Rust, it can even offer you a paid summerjob. RedoxOS runs even on Pentium III.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cheers, looks interesting but don't think it can cover my daily drivers needs.