8 ms·

Way Cooler: A tiling window manager for Wayland written in Rust

94 points by pimeys 10y ago

based2 10y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4xgcbd/announcing_way_cooler_a_tiling_window_manager_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4xgcbd/announc...
cm3 10y ago
I wish they had picked libweston instead because it's less buggy and Xwayland integrations has less problems as well. You can get libweston the 1.12 release (aka current git master or the new release in probably two weeks). There's also libweston-desktop that provides more abstractions and helpers for writing desktop compositors which should land in weston.git soon. But since wlc 0.0.5 is out there, I can understand why they'd base it on that despite the deficiencies. It's good to see more Wayland compositors and I hope that means someone will port urxvt or xterm to Wayland for those of us who miss too much in vte-based emulators or want something more stable than EFL-based Terminology.
shadeless 10y ago
Also check out sway, i3 compatible window manager for Wayland: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway
- cm3 10y ago
  I've never used i3, but I've tried sway and it works, though isn't at feature parity with i3. It's usable though. And as I wrote in a sibling comment, Xwayland integration is even more buggier in libwlc (used by way-cooler and sway) than it is in libweston, so be prepared for weirdness with X11 apps. Floating window support is also wonky.
  - Lapsa 10y ago
    tried it half a year ago. wasn't usable - constantly crashed
    - cm3 10y ago
      If you're speaking of sway, it's usable now, but Xwayland is wonkier than in Weston.
- benwr 10y ago
  sway is awesome! It's got almost all the features I'm used to from i3 (major exception being mouse support for the bar), and it's only a _little_ buggy :-)
  - brnl 10y ago
    Since v0.9, sway has mouse support for swaybar (check out the changelog: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/releases/tag/0.9 https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/releases/tag/0.9).
transfire 10y ago
An Electron powered status bar? So we have Rust, Lua and Javascript in there. Hmm... Maybe someone can port (nwm)[https://github.com/mixu/nwm https://github.com/mixu/nwm] to Wayland?
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > An Electron powered status bar? Chromium and Javascript to run a status bar? A panel is a relatively simple program; it shouldn't be using more than ~1MB of memory (maybe more with large icons). Using Chromium adds many useless layers of abstraction (e.g. HTML, JS engine) and wastes an incredible amount of memory.
  - cm3 10y ago
    I wouldn't use it myself, but I guess the justification is that you have the full power of a web page, crammed into a widget bar, and there are many frontend devs who are most familiar with HTML+CSS+JS. Again, I wouldn't use it, and agree it's a bad idea as long as browser engines are monstrosities.
    - dbl9 10y ago
      The programming and styling like a web page might be it and maybe it's also easier to consume random web feeds.
  - nilved 10y ago
    My status bar would use 1MB of memory if it had a 900 KB animated gif clock.
  - cm3 10y ago
    You're right and the memory use of KDE, GNOME, XFCE is unjustifiable. Even sway (the i3-inspired Wayland compositor) uses a lot of money for a simple tiling compositor that doesn't have fancy "bling". It's three times the memory use as xmonad and xmobar, but maybe it's an architectural issue with wayland. I mean, Weston isn't light-weight either.
lkiux 10y ago
Client-side decorations, visible in the screenshot, are a true PITA. It's stupid that each widget set has to replicate this behavior. It results in visual differences, and it's doubly stupid that this is touted as an "advancement" just for the rate case that you want to override the title bar. You could have done the inverse, as currently done with X11 (server-side decoration by default, but overridable). This incurs in stupid behavior for all tiling window managers in wayland, as they cannot enforce the client to remove the title bar. For a tiling window manager user, this a significant downgrade in wayland. The WM protocol in X11 is one of the few areas that let X11 innovate a lot compared to all other desktops. The number of (wonderfully) different window managers is proof. Server-side decorations, in particular, should have been a no-brainer!
- cm3 10y ago
  Another unsolved feature in Wayland is ssh-agent/gpg-agent support. I haven't found a way to make it work yet. It's either multiple agents or many fresh agents running.
  - jorams 10y ago
    Why does Wayland need any sort of ssh-agent/gpg-agent support? I can't think of any reason for Wayland to have anything to do with their functionality, but I'm not at all familiar with Wayland.
    - cm3 10y ago
      The way this works in X11 is that you usually start your X11 env such that the environment variable pointing to the agent (which got started) is shared and the agent is accessible by applications. That way running ssh or gpg in any xterm will just work. This is not possible at the moment in Wayland. Think of it like OSX's keychain.
      - eeZi 10y ago
        Why shouldn't it be possible? You can just setup your agent before you start Wayland, it inherits the environment.

94 points by pimeys 10y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4xgcbd/announcing_way_cooler_a_tiling_window_manager_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4xgcbd/announc...

cm3 10y ago

I wish they had picked libweston instead because it's less buggy and Xwayland integrations has less problems as well. You can get libweston the 1.12 release (aka current git master or the new release in probably two weeks). There's also libweston-desktop that provides more abstractions and helpers for writing desktop compositors which should land in weston.git soon. But since wlc 0.0.5 is out there, I can understand why they'd base it on that despite the deficiencies. It's good to see more Wayland compositors and I hope that means someone will port urxvt or xterm to Wayland for those of us who miss too much in vte-based emulators or want something more stable than EFL-based Terminology.

shadeless 10y ago

Also check out sway, i3 compatible window manager for Wayland: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway

cm3 10y ago
I've never used i3, but I've tried sway and it works, though isn't at feature parity with i3. It's usable though. And as I wrote in a sibling comment, Xwayland integration is even more buggier in libwlc (used by way-cooler and sway) than it is in libweston, so be prepared for weirdness with X11 apps. Floating window support is also wonky.
- Lapsa 10y ago
  tried it half a year ago. wasn't usable - constantly crashed
  - cm3 10y ago
    If you're speaking of sway, it's usable now, but Xwayland is wonkier than in Weston.
benwr 10y ago
sway is awesome! It's got almost all the features I'm used to from i3 (major exception being mouse support for the bar), and it's only a _little_ buggy :-)
- brnl 10y ago
  Since v0.9, sway has mouse support for swaybar (check out the changelog: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/releases/tag/0.9 https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/releases/tag/0.9).

transfire 10y ago

An Electron powered status bar? So we have Rust, Lua and Javascript in there. Hmm... Maybe someone can port (nwm)[https://github.com/mixu/nwm https://github.com/mixu/nwm] to Wayland?

pdkl95 10y ago
> An Electron powered status bar? Chromium and Javascript to run a status bar? A panel is a relatively simple program; it shouldn't be using more than ~1MB of memory (maybe more with large icons). Using Chromium adds many useless layers of abstraction (e.g. HTML, JS engine) and wastes an incredible amount of memory.
- cm3 10y ago
  I wouldn't use it myself, but I guess the justification is that you have the full power of a web page, crammed into a widget bar, and there are many frontend devs who are most familiar with HTML+CSS+JS. Again, I wouldn't use it, and agree it's a bad idea as long as browser engines are monstrosities.
  - dbl9 10y ago
    The programming and styling like a web page might be it and maybe it's also easier to consume random web feeds.
- nilved 10y ago
  My status bar would use 1MB of memory if it had a 900 KB animated gif clock.
- cm3 10y ago
  You're right and the memory use of KDE, GNOME, XFCE is unjustifiable. Even sway (the i3-inspired Wayland compositor) uses a lot of money for a simple tiling compositor that doesn't have fancy "bling". It's three times the memory use as xmonad and xmobar, but maybe it's an architectural issue with wayland. I mean, Weston isn't light-weight either.

lkiux 10y ago

Client-side decorations, visible in the screenshot, are a true PITA. It's stupid that each widget set has to replicate this behavior. It results in visual differences, and it's doubly stupid that this is touted as an "advancement" just for the rate case that you want to override the title bar. You could have done the inverse, as currently done with X11 (server-side decoration by default, but overridable). This incurs in stupid behavior for all tiling window managers in wayland, as they cannot enforce the client to remove the title bar. For a tiling window manager user, this a significant downgrade in wayland. The WM protocol in X11 is one of the few areas that let X11 innovate a lot compared to all other desktops. The number of (wonderfully) different window managers is proof. Server-side decorations, in particular, should have been a no-brainer!

cm3 10y ago
Another unsolved feature in Wayland is ssh-agent/gpg-agent support. I haven't found a way to make it work yet. It's either multiple agents or many fresh agents running.
- jorams 10y ago
  Why does Wayland need any sort of ssh-agent/gpg-agent support? I can't think of any reason for Wayland to have anything to do with their functionality, but I'm not at all familiar with Wayland.
  - cm3 10y ago
    The way this works in X11 is that you usually start your X11 env such that the environment variable pointing to the agent (which got started) is shared and the agent is accessible by applications. That way running ssh or gpg in any xterm will just work. This is not possible at the moment in Wayland. Think of it like OSX's keychain.
    - eeZi 10y ago
      Why shouldn't it be possible? You can just setup your agent before you start Wayland, it inherits the environment.