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Oh. I was planning on trying out i3 for the first time this weekend. I assume you’d recommend swaywm instead, given that it says its basically a drop in replace

Oh. I was planning on trying out i3 for the first time this weekend. I assume you’d recommend swaywm instead, given that it says its basically a drop in replacement for i3? What else does it give you that i3 doesn’t, or make it a better choice than i3? Besides being a wayland compositor; or is that the main reason to choose it?

iod 8y ago
I came from i3, so I pretty much copied over my i3 config mostly intact. Had to add the output configuration for non-default resolutions. Had to add environment GDK_BACKEND=wayland to applications to tell them to use wayland instead of x11 via Xwayland such as firefox (65 and newer has wayland enbaled by default), vlc, gedit, terminal and anything else that supports wayland. Downsides to Sway is that's it has only just entered beta and doesn't really have nice packaged/maintained releases yet. Also I use X11 gnome-panel overlay on top of the swaybar panel, because I wanted a real taskbar, which is kind of a hack and also why I know about the window manipulation features.
- dkersten 8y ago
  Thanks!
nizmow 8y ago
Presumably yeah, because i3 doesn't work on Wayland.
p4bl0 8y ago
A friend of mine recently tried out Wayland and swaywm and blogged about it here: https://a3nm.net/blog/wayland.html https://a3nm.net/blog/wayland.html. It might interest you :).
adrusi 8y ago
Sway should have all the benefits that come with being a Wayland compositor, like security and less screen tearing. It's also got a few extra features. Here's a few that I find neat: Window drag-and-drop (a bit janky still, but functional) Including other files in the config file (this is important for my idiosyncratic usage) Input/output configuration. Since Sway doesn't have Xorg running, it's responsible for configuring keyboard/mouse/monitors. This is well documented and very simple to do for simple use cases (and more complex use cases can be supported via IPC). I much prefer this to the clusterfuck you get with X. You also lose a couple features from i3 though: Layout save/restore (this feature won't be ported, but it's possible to achieve the same effect using IPC). Tools like xbindkeys, xdotool don't work. If you find some unusual case where you can't set up a keybinding in the sway config, you're out of luck. This is the cost of Wayland's security advantages.
zdragnar 8y ago
I went back to i3 after trying sway because I couldn't get screen sharing to work in video calls, no matter what I tried. There were a few other bugs, but that was the only show stopper for me.

iod 8y ago

I came from i3, so I pretty much copied over my i3 config mostly intact. Had to add the output configuration for non-default resolutions. Had to add environment GDK_BACKEND=wayland to applications to tell them to use wayland instead of x11 via Xwayland such as firefox (65 and newer has wayland enbaled by default), vlc, gedit, terminal and anything else that supports wayland. Downsides to Sway is that's it has only just entered beta and doesn't really have nice packaged/maintained releases yet. Also I use X11 gnome-panel overlay on top of the swaybar panel, because I wanted a real taskbar, which is kind of a hack and also why I know about the window manipulation features.

dkersten 8y ago
Thanks!

nizmow 8y ago

Presumably yeah, because i3 doesn't work on Wayland.

p4bl0 8y ago

A friend of mine recently tried out Wayland and swaywm and blogged about it here: https://a3nm.net/blog/wayland.html https://a3nm.net/blog/wayland.html. It might interest you :).

adrusi 8y ago

Sway should have all the benefits that come with being a Wayland compositor, like security and less screen tearing. It's also got a few extra features. Here's a few that I find neat: Window drag-and-drop (a bit janky still, but functional) Including other files in the config file (this is important for my idiosyncratic usage) Input/output configuration. Since Sway doesn't have Xorg running, it's responsible for configuring keyboard/mouse/monitors. This is well documented and very simple to do for simple use cases (and more complex use cases can be supported via IPC). I much prefer this to the clusterfuck you get with X. You also lose a couple features from i3 though: Layout save/restore (this feature won't be ported, but it's possible to achieve the same effect using IPC). Tools like xbindkeys, xdotool don't work. If you find some unusual case where you can't set up a keybinding in the sway config, you're out of luck. This is the cost of Wayland's security advantages.

zdragnar 8y ago

I went back to i3 after trying sway because I couldn't get screen sharing to work in video calls, no matter what I tried. There were a few other bugs, but that was the only show stopper for me.