Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

vikramr · 2023-05-30 16:28:10

I'm a happy IceWM user and like it. Unfortunately wayland compatibility is not in the road-map so I'm looking for something similar in compositors. Any recommendations ? I don't want a full DE, I've used i3 but it never felt natural. I prefer to do one thing at a time fulls screen so tiling WMs have never been my thing. I have to use windows for work so things like alt tab to see and switch windows and similar keyboard shortcuts would be great.

Also how bad are the security flaws in Xorg ? I wouldn't mind sticking to IceWM. I use xinit to start Xorg as a regular user as a part of my fish login shell so display manager comparability is not an issue.

Lone_Wolf · 2023-05-31 12:39:47

I've been running Xorg since i started with linux almost 20 years, switched from kde to lxde to lxqt .
A specific type of panel is important for me and the lxqt panel comes close . There are 1 or 2 wayland compositors I keep an eye on, but they are not a good enough match yet.

In my opinion the severity of the discovered security flaws depend heavily on the environment a system is used in .
For a home user the biggest threats tend to be related to usage of internet through browsers, email clients, online games etc.

Neither Wayland nor X protect against those threats.

Trilby · 2023-05-31 13:41:20

I switched to wayland due to unsolvable debilitating graphical issues on one of my systems with Xorg. And when I made the change, I dove in 100% to be sure I learned about the new system I was using (now I use a compositor I wrote and create a handful of wayland tools for my daily use). But had it not been for the unresolvable graphics glitches, I'd still be using Xorg. Most of the arguments about "security issues" are overstated and not applicable to a majority of use-cases.

The primary exceptions could be the ease with which any X11 client can log all keystrokes or otherwise monitor all sorts of I/O, while under wayland this ability is (mostly) limited to the compositor (or clients that get run as root). You may, however, assess how big of a concern this would be - it's quite unlikely that any X11 key logger would be packaged in a repo package. It's also reasonably unlikely to be found in any well-known / well-used AUR packages. So as long as you aren't running code randomly downloaded from completely unknown sources, this risk is fairly small - and if you are running random untrusted code, you'll have plenty of other problems, whether you're using Xorg, Wayland, or neither of them.

So if you like IceWM, and it works for you, use it. Xorg isn't going away anytime soon. It might tend to get less and less care, and so eventually you may run into problems like the one I did and that might compell you to change. But until then, if it ain't broke, don't wayland it.

Last edited by Trilby (2023-05-31 13:42:06)

seth · 2023-05-31 14:34:33

The primary exceptions could be the ease with which any X11 client can log all keystrokes or otherwise monitor all sorts of I/O, while under wayland this ability is (mostly) limited to the compositor

Which is why after more than a decade and various, compositor specific, attempts to undermine this security, global shortcuts are now to be implemented through flatpak (well, "xdg-portal")
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/ … equests/56

Trilby · 2023-05-31 15:24:50

Yup. In fact most of the things that Xorg was criticized for by wayland advocates were simply due to wayland compositors not providing any way to do all of the things that users expect from a desktop system. It's easy for software (or a protocol) to not do anything problematic when it also doesn't do anything useful.

An additional irony is that one recurring critique of xorg was that there were so many extensions needed to do anything and it was just layers and layers of solutions tacked on after the fact. Wayland is far far worse in this regard. Hey, we don't need add on extensions to get perfect rendering, yay! Oh, wait, you want to be able to bind keys? Or tile windows? Or share your desktop? Or copy and paste? Or even maximize / minimize a window? Or have a window stitcher, or panel? Or even type with a normal keyboard ... shit, I guess we need some extensions.

But I can run a browser on wayland without getting a migraine from ridiculous diagonal-line distortions anytime the page changes or scrolls.

Wayland is less than the mutt of display servers: all display servers suck, wayland just sucks less ... on my current hardware.

Last edited by Trilby (2023-05-31 15:29:39)

tpfkanep · 2023-05-31 16:08:08

How about sway...? I know you tried i3 (inspiration for sway), but this

I prefer to do one thing at a time fulls screen

is how I use sway. My setup has all windows fullscreen arranged in a tab-like fashion. I switch between them with a key-combo, It is highly configurable and is a joy to use.

vikramr · 2023-05-31 16:53:44

thanks appreciate the feedback. I'll stay on IceWM for now and maybe try sway in the future. One thing I like about IceWM is that I can occasionally hand over my laptop to family members if they need it. what also worries me is their ability to retrieve data if something were to happen to me. That would be difficult with a tiling WM . Linux would be hard enough. Unfortunate things have happened to my friends who were younger than I am

Trilby · 2023-05-31 18:25:05

FWIW if you do switch to wayland, sway would not seem to be a good match for your goals / preferences, but one of the openbox-like wayland compositors would probably be best (I think labwc is the currently maintained one). This can be customized to provide a user experience fairly similar to icewm (and in turn relatively comfortable for other users coming from the other OSs).

seth · 2023-05-31 19:25:03

Weston?

Trilby wrote:

But I can run a browser on wayland without getting a migraine from ridiculous diagonal-line distortions anytime the page changes or scrolls.

Sounds like the intel tessellation issue (well, used to be long time ago - no idea whether it's the cause of recent issues) - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 6#p2079616 ?

vikramr · 2023-05-31 20:34:51

Trilby wrote:

FWIW if you do switch to wayland, sway would not seem to be a good match for your goals / preferences, but one of the openbox-like wayland compositors would probably be best (I think labwc is the currently maintained one). This can be customized to provide a user experience fairly similar to icewm (and in turn relatively comfortable for other users coming from the other OSs).

Yes an openbox equivalent would be closer to what I am looking for. labwc is interesting I'll keep an eye on the project.

CarbonChauvinist · 2023-06-01 02:30:21

For some reason hikari gets no love when folk throw out recs for wayland wms. Its creator described it as an ode to CWM and it has a very interesting take on wms which decidedly doesn't fall line with all the other tilers as it's a stacking compositor (but one that can also tile).

This video is a pretty good demo of its workflow, I'd encourage you to at least try it and see if it agrees with you.

Last edited by CarbonChauvinist (2023-06-01 02:34:05)

dogknowsnx · 2023-06-01 06:42:21

CarbonChauvinist wrote:

For some reason hikari gets no love

Last time I tried 'hikari' I experienced a fair amount of cpu spiking for no (obvious) reason (no apps running etc), which has never happened before or after with probably a dozen wayland compositors I've tested - so you may want to monitor your cpu in case you decided to give 'hikari' a shot...

Last edited by dogknowsnx (2023-06-01 06:48:34)

ideasman42 · 2024-08-02 06:46:30

@vikramr suggest trying out LABWC ( https://labwc.github.io ) (with sfwbar or similar), it's quite stable and can be setup similar to minimal Xorg window managers.
Although it's more a clone of openbox so if your looking for something like an exact match to icewm - it's not that.

Last edited by ideasman42 (2024-08-02 06:47:40)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-08-02 16:40:59

I would also recommend labwc, the developer is awesome.

paolomi · 2024-09-27 20:26:16

tpfkanep wrote:

How about sway...? I know you tried i3 (inspiration for sway), but this
I prefer to do one thing at a time fulls screen
is how I use sway. My setup has all windows fullscreen arranged in a tab-like fashion. I switch between them with a key-combo, It is highly configurable and is a joy to use.

Very interesting: could you please share your config files? Thanks a lot!

tpfkanep · 2024-09-29 05:37:29

# ~/.config/sway/config

### Variables
# Logo key. Use Mod1 for Alt.
set $mod Mod4

seat seat0 xcursor_theme "capitaine-cursors-light" 30

# Home row direction keys, like vim
set $left h
set $down j
set $up k
set $right l

# Your preferred terminal emulator
set $term alacritty

# Font
font pango:JetBrains Mono 14px

# Your preferred application launcher
# Note: it's recommended that you pass the final command to sway
set $menu dmenu_path | wmenu -f 'JetBrains Mono 13' -p "▶" | xargs swaymsg exec --

### Output configuration
# Default wallpaper (more resolutions are available in /usr/share/backgrounds/sway/)
output * adaptive_sync on bg "#090A09" solid_color

### Idle configuration
exec swayidle -w \
    timeout 300 'swaymsg "output * dpms off"' \
        resume 'swaymsg "output * dpms on"'

### Input configuration
input "1133:49948:Logitech_USB_Keyboard" {
   natural_scroll enabled
   xkb_numlock enabled
    repeat_delay 250
    repeat_rate 30
}

### Key bindings
# Basics:
# Start a terminal
bindsym $mod+Return exec $term

# Multimedia keys.
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id amixer -q sset Master 12% && amixer -q sset Master toggle
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -3%
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +3%

bindsym $mod+p exec copyq show

# Select region to screenprint
bindsym --release Print exec grim -g "$(slurp)" ~/pix/$(date +'%Y-%m-%d-%T_grim.png')

# Kill focused window
bindsym $mod+Shift+q kill

# Start your launcher
bindsym $mod+d exec $menu

# Drag floating windows by holding down $mod and left mouse button.
# Resize them with right mouse button + $mod.
# Despite the name, also works for non-floating windows.
# Change normal to inverse to use left mouse button for resizing and right
# mouse button for dragging.
floating_modifier $mod normal

# Reload the configuration file
bindsym $mod+Shift+c reload

# Exit sway (logs you out of your Wayland session)
bindsym Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace exec swaymsg exit

#
# Moving around:
#
# Move your focus around
bindsym $mod+$left focus left
bindsym $mod+$down focus down
bindsym $mod+$up focus up
bindsym $mod+$right focus right
# Or use $mod+[up|down|left|right]
bindsym $mod+Left focus left
bindsym $mod+Down focus down
bindsym $mod+Up focus up
bindsym $mod+Right focus right

# Move the focused window with the same, but add Shift
bindsym $mod+Shift+$left move left
bindsym $mod+Shift+$down move down
bindsym $mod+Shift+$up move up
bindsym $mod+Shift+$right move right
# Ditto, with arrow keys
bindsym $mod+Shift+Left move left
bindsym $mod+Shift+Down move down
bindsym $mod+Shift+Up move up
bindsym $mod+Shift+Right move right

#
# Workspaces:
#
# Switch to workspace
bindsym $mod+1 workspace 1
bindsym $mod+2 workspace 2
bindsym $mod+3 workspace 3
bindsym $mod+4 workspace 4
bindsym $mod+5 workspace 5
bindsym $mod+6 workspace 6
bindsym $mod+7 workspace 7
bindsym $mod+8 workspace 8
bindsym $mod+9 workspace 9
bindsym $mod+0 workspace 10
# Move focused container to workspace
bindsym $mod+Shift+1 move container to workspace 1
bindsym $mod+Shift+2 move container to workspace 2
bindsym $mod+Shift+3 move container to workspace 3
bindsym $mod+Shift+4 move container to workspace 4
bindsym $mod+Shift+5 move container to workspace 5
bindsym $mod+Shift+6 move container to workspace 6
bindsym $mod+Shift+7 move container to workspace 7
bindsym $mod+Shift+8 move container to workspace 8
bindsym $mod+Shift+9 move container to workspace 9
bindsym $mod+Shift+0 move container to workspace 10
# Note: workspaces can have any name you want, not just numbers.
# We just use 1-10 as the default.

#
# Layout stuff:
#
# You can "split" the current object of your focus with
# $mod+b or $mod+v, for horizontal and vertical splits
# respectively.
bindsym $mod+b splith
bindsym $mod+v splitv

# Switch the current container between different layout styles
bindsym $mod+s layout stacking
bindsym $mod+w layout tabbed
bindsym $mod+e layout toggle split

# Make the current focus fullscreen
bindsym $mod+f fullscreen

# Toggle the current focus between tiling and floating mode
bindsym $mod+Shift+space floating toggle

# Swap focus between the tiling area and the floating area
bindsym $mod+space focus mode_toggle

# Move focus to the parent container
bindsym $mod+a focus parent

#
# Scratchpad:
#
# Sway has a "scratchpad", which is a bag of holding for windows.
# You can send windows there and get them back later.

# Move the currently focused window to the scratchpad
bindsym $mod+Shift+minus move scratchpad

# Show the next scratchpad window or hide the focused scratchpad window.
# If there are multiple scratchpad windows, this command cycles through them.
bindsym $mod+minus scratchpad show

#
# Resizing containers:
#
mode "resize" {
    # left will shrink the containers width
    # right will grow the containers width
    # up will shrink the containers height
    # down will grow the containers height
    bindsym $left resize shrink width 10px
    bindsym $down resize grow height 10px
    bindsym $up resize shrink height 10px
    bindsym $right resize grow width 10px

    # Ditto, with arrow keys
    bindsym Left resize shrink width 10px
    bindsym Down resize grow height 10px
    bindsym Up resize shrink height 10px
    bindsym Right resize grow width 10px

    # Return to default mode
    bindsym Return mode "default"
    bindsym Escape mode "default"
}
bindsym $mod+r mode "resize"

for_window {
  [shell="xwayland"] title_format "%title"
  [app_id="firefox"] inhibit_idle fullscreen
  [app_id="org.kde.falkon"] inhibit_idle fullscreen
  [instance="vivaldi-stable"] inhibit_idle fullscreen
  [instance="chromium"] inhibit_idle fullscreen
  [app_id="HexChat" title="Uploads and Downloads - HexChat"] resize set 960 540
  [app_id="gnumeric" title="Gnumeric Spreadsheet"] floating enable
  [title="Volume Control"] floating enable
  [title="alsamixer"] floating enable
  [title="Picture in picture"] floating enable
  #[title="Picture in picture"] resize set 640 480
  [title="Picture in picture"] resize set 800 600
  [app_id="com.github.hluk.copyq"] floating enable
  [title="Save file as..."] floating enable
  [title="Download Manager"] floating enable
  [app_id="mpv"] inhibit_idle fullscreen
  [window_role="pop-up"] floating enable
  [window_role="bubble"] floating enable
  [window_role="dialog"] floating enable
  [window_type="dialog"] floating enable
  [window_type="utility"] floating enable
  [window_type="toolbar"] floating enable
  [window_type="splash"] floating enable
  [window_type="menu"] floating enable
  [window_type="dropdown_menu"] floating enable
  [window_type="popup_menu"] floating enable
  [window_type="tooltip"] floating enable
  [window_type="notification"] floating enable
  # terminal
  [app_id=$term_id] move to scratchpad, scratchpad show, $t_pos
  [app_id=$other_term_id] move to scratchpad, scratchpad show, t_pos
}

# Autostart these apps
exec mako
exec copyq
exec $term

#
# Status Bar:
set $highlight #90EE90

bar {
    swaybar_command waybar
    font pango:FontAwesome Condensed 13
}

#
# Colors #93cee9
# class                     border  backgr. text    indicator  child_border
    client.focused          #4c7899 #285577 #ffffff $highlight $highlight
    client.focused_inactive #333333 #5f676a #ffffff #484e50    #5f676a
    client.unfocused        #333333 #222222 #888888 #292d2e    #222222
    client.urgent           #2f343a #900000 #ffffff #900000    #900000

include /etc/sway/config.d/*

paolomi · 2024-09-29 14:22:52

tpfkanep wrote:

# ~/.config/sway/config

[cut]

Thank you very much for your reply, because it is a very useful example for me to start with. Now I can switch to sway! Thanks a lot

Arch Linux

#1 2023-05-30 16:28:10

Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#2 2023-05-31 12:39:47

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#3 2023-05-31 13:41:20

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#4 2023-05-31 14:34:33

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#5 2023-05-31 15:24:50

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#6 2023-05-31 16:08:08

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#7 2023-05-31 16:53:44

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#8 2023-05-31 18:25:05

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#9 2023-05-31 19:25:03

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#10 2023-05-31 20:34:51

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#11 2023-06-01 02:30:21

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#12 2023-06-01 06:42:21

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#13 2024-08-02 06:46:30

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#14 2024-08-02 16:40:59

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#15 2024-09-27 20:26:16

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#16 2024-09-29 05:37:29

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

#17 2024-09-29 14:22:52

Re: Wayland compositor recommendations for IceWM user

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