sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-16 14:21:47

Sway is a new window manager for Wayland. It's compatible with i3, and unlike i3way, it's not vaporware.

If you want to try it out, configuration is seriously this simple:

mkdir ~/.config/sway
cp ~/.config/i3/config ~/.config/sway/

A full list of i3 feature support is here. Sway is a work in progress, and many features are missing and many bugs are present. Good luck!

(click for a bigger screenshot)

ewaller · 2015-08-16 14:51:25

I may be trying this out later this afternoon
In the meantime, I am going to move this thread to Community Contributions.

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-16 14:51:54

ewaller wrote:

I may be trying this out later this afternoon
In the meantime, I am going to move this thread to Community Contributions.

Thanks, I wasn't sure what the best subforum would be.

ewaller · 2015-08-16 14:57:37

No problem. Hey, I have never run Wayland. On my system, I always use startx. How do I start this beast from a cli?

karol · 2015-08-16 14:58:15

ewaller wrote:

No problem. Hey, I have never run Wayland. On my system, I always use startx. How do I start this beast from a cli?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland

Edit: Ah, I thought your were asking about wayland.

https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway linked in the OP says right at the bottom:

Running
sway
If you run this while xorg is running, it'll run inside of an x window (useful for testing). Otherwise, it'll run wayland properly.

Last edited by karol (2015-08-16 15:00:38)

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-16 14:58:32

ewaller wrote:

No problem. Hey, I have never run Wayland. On my system, I always use startx. How do I start this beast from a cli?

Just run "sway".

ewaller · 2015-08-16 14:59:13

That's too easy. Thanks.

ngoonee · 2015-08-17 01:33:50

Looks awesome, but don't have the time to be experimenting now, especially since the feature support list doesn't look like it has i3bar yet. ewaller how's your experience?

ewaller · 2015-08-17 03:12:46

I was asked by my beautiful wife, whom I deeply love, to help her with yard work..... in 40C weather. I'll get to this later this week

Awebb · 2015-08-17 07:02:18

Do you work with the i3 code and turn it into a wayland vompatible thing, or do you look at the list of features and re-interprete them?

sekret · 2015-08-17 16:53:05

Instead of dmenu you could use bemenu, which works natively on wayland.

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-17 17:59:04

Awebb wrote:

Do you work with the i3 code and turn it into a wayland vompatible thing, or do you look at the list of features and re-interprete them?

The latter.

sekret wrote:

Instead of dmenu you could use bemenu, which works natively on wayland.

I would like to, but bemenu has issues with tiling WMs. Orbment supports it through a hack that I'm not willing to implement.

ewaller · 2015-08-18 04:25:28

Not much joy When I run sway, either from inside i3 and xorg, or from a console cli, I get a really pretty blue screen with some orbiting orb things on the right. I've a feeling that is Wayland. If I run it from urxvt under i3, my window splits, I get the same pretty screen, and a whole bunch of many errors complaining about errors in my config file (the one I'd copied from my i3 config.). Remove and touch .config/sway/config (empty file) same pretty screen, no error messages complaining about my config anymore. Copy config from the root of the git structure to .config/sway/config, lots of new and different errors; same pretty blue screen.

I suspect that were I to start removing the offending parts of my original config (from i3) it may run. Its been a long frustrating day at $DAYJOB, perhaps I'll chip away at this some more tomorrow.

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-18 10:39:18

ewaller wrote:

Not much joy When I run sway, either from inside i3 and xorg, or from a console cli, I get a really pretty blue screen with some orbiting orb things on the right. I've a feeling that is Wayland. If I run it from urxvt under i3, my window splits, I get the same pretty screen, and a whole bunch of many errors complaining about errors in my config file (the one I'd copied from my i3 config.). Remove and touch .config/sway/config (empty file) same pretty screen, no error messages complaining about my config anymore. Copy config from the root of the git structure to .config/sway/config, lots of new and different errors; same pretty blue screen.
I suspect that were I to start removing the offending parts of my original config (from i3) it may run. Its been a long frustrating day at $DAYJOB, perhaps I'll chip away at this some more tomorrow.

The default behaviour is not to open anything. The errors are not fatal, it's just waiting for you to tell it to do something. Try using some keyboard shortcut to run your terminal emulator from within sway. Reminder that if you run it under x and you have i3 going, i3 will intercept any key bindings it has before sway can see them. I personally test sway with my meta key set to Alt (Mod1), while i3 uses the logo key (Mod4).

Also, common pitfall is to forget to install xwayland. Make sure you have that.

ewaller · 2015-08-18 15:09:36

I had tried my keyboard shortcuts. Notably my Mod-enter combination used to open a urxvt terminal. And Mod-e to start emacs client. I also had tried my brightness and volume keys that are bound to the appropriate actions.

I ssh'ed into my box, and I do not have xwayland installed. I'll give that a shot tonight when I am in front of the machine.

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-18 15:14:30

ewaller wrote:

I had tried my keyboard shortcuts. Notably my Mod-enter combination used to open a urxvt terminal. And Mod-e to start emacs client. I also had tried my brightness and volume keys that are bound to the appropriate actions.
I ssh'ed into my box, and I do not have xwayland installed. I'll give that a shot tonight when I am in front of the machine.

Without xwayland, you cannot run x apps (like urxvt) on wayland. That'd help a lot Your brightness is probably set through xbacklight, though, right? That won't work on Wayland. Your volume control probably would have worked, though, assuming that (if you use pulse) pulseaudio was running. Were you making any noise with which to hear that it was working?

ewaller · 2015-08-18 15:38:15

I've a lot to learn about Wayland As to the backlight control, it is a home grown 'c' program that does basically the same thing as xbacklight - a cli program that parses parameters on the command line ans acts on them. Xbacklight on my system has a horrible latency -- probably a function of HP's brain dead DSDT in their ACPI implementation. I was not playing audio, I was punching mute looking for the mute annunciator to change from green to amber. Everything I had tried were Xorg apps. Like I said, I've a lot to learn, this was my first attempt at Wayland.

Last edited by ewaller (2015-08-18 15:38:32)

SirCmpwn · 2015-08-18 22:05:51

Happy to answer more questions if you've got them. I also added an FAQ:

https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/wiki

Hopefully it'll work for you with xwayland installed.

ewaller · 2015-08-19 03:56:21

Okay it works -- for the most part I can launch urxvt and emacsclient; and they work. I was going to use firefox to post my victory from inside sway, but it seemed unhappy on many fronts. No borders around windows; My i3 setup uses one pixel borders that change from red to green for the selected window; no go under sway. Touch-pad works, but none of my custom settings defined in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf work I suppose that is to be expected under Wayland.

Anyway, terrific effort. Thank you. As Wayland increases in popularity, I look forward to this project's development.

stozi · 2015-10-13 02:32:35

The current version of qupzilla browser will run in sway without xwayland Other than tiling and the bar, my main concern now is how to enable touchpad tapping. Sway is fantastic btw, thanks so much, looking forward to watching it progress. Though I have to say, the contribution graph on github doesn't look promising...

Btw, if you're ever thinking of a logo, bamboo sways in the wind, but is very strong, and it's segmented structure is kind of analogous to the tiling layout...

Last edited by stozi (2015-10-14 22:40:26)

SirCmpwn · 2015-11-20 00:37:46

Haven't posted an update here recently. New things since the last time (2015-08-16):

Wallpapers
Screenshots (ish)
Floating windows
XDG config support
Resizing/moving tiled windows with mouse
Gaps
Output configuration (resolution, position)
IPC (i3 compatible)
Moving the mouse between outputs works
Dozens of i3 commands now supported
A website

New screenshot:

sekret · 2015-11-20 14:46:33

Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look at it again this weekend. Seems like you are developing the only usable wm for wayland right now!

Rasi · 2015-11-20 21:38:54

ah, mouse can be switched between display. but can i also move windows now?

Last edited by Rasi (2015-11-20 21:39:24)

SirCmpwn · 2015-11-20 22:57:05

Rasi wrote:

ah, mouse can be switched between display. but can i also move windows now?

You can't move windows between displays. You can use your keybindings to move the window to a workspace on another display, though.

sekret wrote:

Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look at it again this weekend. Seems like you are developing the only usable wm for wayland right now!

I don't want us tiling users to get left behind

mke21 · 2016-01-16 21:34:12

Looks great and very familiar for this i3wm user. I installed from the aur and it worked.
Some problems I got: I don't see borders, I've got a 1 px border in my own I3 setting but don't see it in sway. Not a real dealbraker bit nevertheless. Seccond, My Also, pulldown menu's in X programs don't seem towallpaper did not appear. work. This renders the current version useless for daily use indeed sadly. Still, I really love it and I'm looking forward to use it more when it is more mature. Keep up the good work!

Arch Linux

#1 2015-08-16 14:21:47

sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#2 2015-08-16 14:51:25

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#3 2015-08-16 14:51:54

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#4 2015-08-16 14:57:37

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#5 2015-08-16 14:58:15

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#6 2015-08-16 14:58:32

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#7 2015-08-16 14:59:13

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#8 2015-08-17 01:33:50

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#9 2015-08-17 03:12:46

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#10 2015-08-17 07:02:18

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#11 2015-08-17 16:53:05

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#12 2015-08-17 17:59:04

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#13 2015-08-18 04:25:28

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#14 2015-08-18 10:39:18

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#15 2015-08-18 15:09:36

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#16 2015-08-18 15:14:30

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#17 2015-08-18 15:38:15

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#18 2015-08-18 22:05:51

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#19 2015-08-19 03:56:21

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#20 2015-10-13 02:32:35

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#21 2015-11-20 00:37:46

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#22 2015-11-20 14:46:33

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#23 2015-11-20 21:38:54

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#24 2015-11-20 22:57:05

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

#25 2016-01-16 21:34:12

Re: sway - an i3-compatible WM for Wayland

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