6 ms·

Wayfire is a Wayland compositor based on wlroots

89 points by memorable 4y ago

dark-star 4y ago
The demo video looks like some of those Enlightenment-WM demos from 15+ years ago, which feature cool effects on the first glance but then people remember that they want to get work done and use a different WM (or compositor, in this case) cool, but ultimately not very useful
- berkes 4y ago
  I fondly remember those. Sure, they may not be efficient or even useful. But what a boring life I would have if I only ever can have things that are fully efficient or entirely useful. "Just fun" is, imo enough reason for these silly, wobbly burning Windows to exist.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Now, if only someone would get xscreensaver working under Wayland.
    - berkes 4y ago
      Yea! Shame on "these developers" spending their free time and hobby on things they like instead of on the stuff that matters to me! /s
- current_thing 4y ago
  Someone wrote a goddamn wayland compositor and you shrug it off like it’s nothing? Nobody gives a rats ass about your opinion about its usefulness. I’m installing this tonight. I have to bet you have released little or no open source software.
  - mnd999 4y ago
    Wlroots does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and that is by design. It’s now much easier to write Wayland compositors than it used to be. So yeah, we can have these enlightenment style things that get used once again.
- arendtio 4y ago
  Actually, I wonder if you are referring to the Xgl [1] demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYk09CHOZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYk09CHOZs Maybe Enlightenment WM started using Xgl too, but AFAIK Compiz was the first implementation to make it usable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl
  - exitb 4y ago
    That’s a cool video, I’m also going to leave this here, from around the same time, but a totally different world: https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g
  - dark-star 4y ago
    Indeed, the 3D cube effect is inspired by Xgl or Looking Glass and the like... But from an abstract point of view it feels like the kind of things Enlightenment did around the year 2000: You could have windows zooming in and out, swooshing from left to right, accompanied by matching sounds and graphical effects like jelly or bursting in flames. It was totally fun and awesome, especially when compared to Windows 9x at the time, and everyone used it as showcase on how cool a Linux desktop is compared to Windows. But then again, to actually work with the computer, they switched back to FVWM, KDE, or whatever "boring normal" window manager they had. Still, it's a cool showcase for what a compositor with some added shaders can do
- nemothekid 4y ago
  It takes inspiration from compiz so I imagine it has all the compiz flare, like spinnan cubes, burning applications and wobbly windows. It's kind of nostalgic that new WMs are still showing off the same demos as when I first discovered linux.
- rvz 4y ago
  > but then people remember that they want to get work done... > cool, but ultimately not very useful You know when you put it like that you're right and it's probably the reason why many choose macOS or Windows just to get their work done rather than switching around system components or essentially doing things in order to get things done i.e play around with their OS. This isn't 2009 and generally it is not early days for the Linux Desktop and we are still trying to find alternatives of alternatives just to get it working. Instead we have yet another compositor demo with shiny effects that are a distraction and basically gets in the way. So yes, not at all very useful in general.
- ammen99 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm the main developer of Wayfire From the README: "It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance." The primary goal are features after all, and figuring out how to share code between various paradigms. If Wayfire was only about effects, we wouldn't have simple-tile (a tiling plugin), or vswipe (using laptop touchpad to switch workspaces). Of course, Wayfire is not (and will never be) very feature-rich, it is only meant as a base for a fully-featured desktop environment. The videos demo mostly the effects, as those are the easiest to show off :) But Wayfire has enough features for daily usage, and in fact there are already quite a few people with different workflows who use it.
tuxie_ 4y ago
What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? I feel that as a community we want to work on impressive things but we forget the small, boring stuff that actually makes a difference. That's why then my Linux desktop has every app icon with a different style, the margins are slightly off, the fonts are clunky, and overall just doesn't look as polished as the proprietary options.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  Maybe, it's possible that the skillset and motivations of somebody working on a Wayland compositor is different than somebody working on font rendering? On second thought: everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent.
  - tuxie_ 4y ago
    > everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent. Correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like you are downplaying the importance of the UX, and that's kind of my point. We talk about "making sure app icons are consistent" like it's a demeaning thing to do. I don't think they should be making anything but what they want to work on. I do wonder, however, what's the use case for what they are building because, honestly, my first reaction was "wow, impressive", followed by "I remember compiz doing this 15 years ago and it didn't stick". And finally, I was piggybacking on this post to talk about the more general issue of Linux desktops never looking as sharp as the proprietary options. Sorry, I don't mean to criticize the devs' work, it was more of a general though about the "state of Linux on the desktop".
    - oblak 4y ago
      Was anyone else doing OpenGL desktop rendering at the time? Yes, almost no one cared for the wobbling windows, virtual desktops being rendered on a cube, etc. Me included. True. But I have to ask: did none of it result in anything useful? I, for one, think having the ability to zoom out can be useful. I literally cannot browse without the ability to zoom in/out a web page. I feel that we've barely scratched the service with GUI in general, not just desktop Linux. MacOS and Windows desktop environments used to be better than what was available on *nix but that is no longer the case. I say that as someone who dislikes KDE and absolutely hates Gnome 2, including its countless derivatives.
harel 4y ago
As cool and fun as it looks (compiz eat your heart out ;-) ), my excitement is slightly diminished because the basic function of sharing my entire screen is still not there. I know a lot might be related to specific apps, but the inability to share my entire screen in meeting is something I sorely miss.
- any1 4y ago
  Doesn't xdg-desktop-portal-wlr work with wayfire?
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    It does. I've used it before.
- temp0081726 4y ago
  Wdym by this? I share my whole screen and virtual desktops from the browser when on discord. I use sway which is also based on wlroots but afaik pipewire is responsible for sharing screen. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_sharing https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_shar...
  - harel 4y ago
    From Chrome it works. but that's about it. Zoom and Teams client cannot share screen. Some previous versions it worked on Zoom, but not currently. Also my CPU usage goes up the roof when I am on video calls. So if I started a call on Zoom client, and want to share my screen I have to reconnect via browser. Most recent hack that works sometimes - using OBS as a virtual camera.
    - kfajdsl 4y ago
      I think (not sure though) that's because of them using an outdated version of electron. So things just working should get better as app devs upgrade their dependencies.
solarkraft 4y ago
The demos on the page are a bit outdated. Here is a more recent and "real life" demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL6pvXLnrm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL6pvXLnrm4 It takes a bit to configure just right, so you're welcome to have a look at my configuration: https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/f46421295b8c211b2eb56b3acc118cc4 https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/f46421295b8c211b2eb56b3ac... Wayfire is a pretty good general purpose desktop. Sadly development has died down a little recently and I have switched platforms. It's still very extensible with many interesting plugins and it just gets some things completely right. Know how Windows, X, many Wayland desktops and even macOS sometimes do weird things when you move windows between differently scaled displays? Wayfire has 0 - absolutely no - artifacts (glitchiness, things jumping around, etc). And that's at any (floating-point) scale. It also has "finger following" touchpad desktop switching gestures, which no other compositor had for a long time. It also has blur behind windows. So it's not really about the flashy window-flames for me that you see on the surface, it also just has a really solid core.
- sprash 4y ago
  > Sadly development has died down a little recently Isn't this true for all Wayland projects? There seems to be zero community mindshare.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Sway, gnome, and kde are all alive and well. That already covers basically all use cases.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- floatboth 4y ago
  > "finger following" touchpad desktop switching gestures Ha. I'm the author of the vswipe plugin, glad you like it :) > blur behind windows KDE is ahead of everyone in blur tbh, they've had client-controlled blur for ages.
ramigb 4y ago
Could be awesome for VR desktops I guess!
TavsiE9s 4y ago
So the Linux Desktop with Wayland seems to be moving back to compiz eye candy/wobbly windows instead of providing a user experience that works out of the box without fiddling. Surely 2023 will be the year of the Linux Desktop! /s
- artogahr 4y ago
  Gnome would disagree :)
Sloppy 4y ago
I played with a similar compositor when they first became possible and concluded that they were pretty and wow-able but 95% useless for your GUI.

89 points by memorable 4y ago

The demo video looks like some of those Enlightenment-WM demos from 15+ years ago, which feature cool effects on the first glance but then people remember that they want to get work done and use a different WM (or compositor, in this case) cool, but ultimately not very useful

berkes 4y ago
I fondly remember those. Sure, they may not be efficient or even useful. But what a boring life I would have if I only ever can have things that are fully efficient or entirely useful. "Just fun" is, imo enough reason for these silly, wobbly burning Windows to exist.
- hedora 4y ago
  Now, if only someone would get xscreensaver working under Wayland.
  - berkes 4y ago
    Yea! Shame on "these developers" spending their free time and hobby on things they like instead of on the stuff that matters to me! /s
current_thing 4y ago
Someone wrote a goddamn wayland compositor and you shrug it off like it’s nothing? Nobody gives a rats ass about your opinion about its usefulness. I’m installing this tonight. I have to bet you have released little or no open source software.
- mnd999 4y ago
  Wlroots does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and that is by design. It’s now much easier to write Wayland compositors than it used to be. So yeah, we can have these enlightenment style things that get used once again.
arendtio 4y ago
Actually, I wonder if you are referring to the Xgl [1] demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYk09CHOZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYk09CHOZs Maybe Enlightenment WM started using Xgl too, but AFAIK Compiz was the first implementation to make it usable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl
- exitb 4y ago
  That’s a cool video, I’m also going to leave this here, from around the same time, but a totally different world: https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g
- dark-star 4y ago
  Indeed, the 3D cube effect is inspired by Xgl or Looking Glass and the like... But from an abstract point of view it feels like the kind of things Enlightenment did around the year 2000: You could have windows zooming in and out, swooshing from left to right, accompanied by matching sounds and graphical effects like jelly or bursting in flames. It was totally fun and awesome, especially when compared to Windows 9x at the time, and everyone used it as showcase on how cool a Linux desktop is compared to Windows. But then again, to actually work with the computer, they switched back to FVWM, KDE, or whatever "boring normal" window manager they had. Still, it's a cool showcase for what a compositor with some added shaders can do
nemothekid 4y ago
It takes inspiration from compiz so I imagine it has all the compiz flare, like spinnan cubes, burning applications and wobbly windows. It's kind of nostalgic that new WMs are still showing off the same demos as when I first discovered linux.
rvz 4y ago
> but then people remember that they want to get work done... > cool, but ultimately not very useful You know when you put it like that you're right and it's probably the reason why many choose macOS or Windows just to get their work done rather than switching around system components or essentially doing things in order to get things done i.e play around with their OS. This isn't 2009 and generally it is not early days for the Linux Desktop and we are still trying to find alternatives of alternatives just to get it working. Instead we have yet another compositor demo with shiny effects that are a distraction and basically gets in the way. So yes, not at all very useful in general.
ammen99 4y ago
Disclaimer: I'm the main developer of Wayfire From the README: "It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance." The primary goal are features after all, and figuring out how to share code between various paradigms. If Wayfire was only about effects, we wouldn't have simple-tile (a tiling plugin), or vswipe (using laptop touchpad to switch workspaces). Of course, Wayfire is not (and will never be) very feature-rich, it is only meant as a base for a fully-featured desktop environment. The videos demo mostly the effects, as those are the easiest to show off :) But Wayfire has enough features for daily usage, and in fact there are already quite a few people with different workflows who use it.

tuxie_ 4y ago

What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? I feel that as a community we want to work on impressive things but we forget the small, boring stuff that actually makes a difference. That's why then my Linux desktop has every app icon with a different style, the margins are slightly off, the fonts are clunky, and overall just doesn't look as polished as the proprietary options.

cmeacham98 4y ago
Maybe, it's possible that the skillset and motivations of somebody working on a Wayland compositor is different than somebody working on font rendering? On second thought: everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent.
- tuxie_ 4y ago
  > everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent. Correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like you are downplaying the importance of the UX, and that's kind of my point. We talk about "making sure app icons are consistent" like it's a demeaning thing to do. I don't think they should be making anything but what they want to work on. I do wonder, however, what's the use case for what they are building because, honestly, my first reaction was "wow, impressive", followed by "I remember compiz doing this 15 years ago and it didn't stick". And finally, I was piggybacking on this post to talk about the more general issue of Linux desktops never looking as sharp as the proprietary options. Sorry, I don't mean to criticize the devs' work, it was more of a general though about the "state of Linux on the desktop".
  - oblak 4y ago
    Was anyone else doing OpenGL desktop rendering at the time? Yes, almost no one cared for the wobbling windows, virtual desktops being rendered on a cube, etc. Me included. True. But I have to ask: did none of it result in anything useful? I, for one, think having the ability to zoom out can be useful. I literally cannot browse without the ability to zoom in/out a web page. I feel that we've barely scratched the service with GUI in general, not just desktop Linux. MacOS and Windows desktop environments used to be better than what was available on *nix but that is no longer the case. I say that as someone who dislikes KDE and absolutely hates Gnome 2, including its countless derivatives.

harel 4y ago

As cool and fun as it looks (compiz eat your heart out ;-) ), my excitement is slightly diminished because the basic function of sharing my entire screen is still not there. I know a lot might be related to specific apps, but the inability to share my entire screen in meeting is something I sorely miss.

any1 4y ago
Doesn't xdg-desktop-portal-wlr work with wayfire?
- solarkraft 4y ago
  It does. I've used it before.
temp0081726 4y ago
Wdym by this? I share my whole screen and virtual desktops from the browser when on discord. I use sway which is also based on wlroots but afaik pipewire is responsible for sharing screen. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_sharing https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_shar...
- harel 4y ago
  From Chrome it works. but that's about it. Zoom and Teams client cannot share screen. Some previous versions it worked on Zoom, but not currently. Also my CPU usage goes up the roof when I am on video calls. So if I started a call on Zoom client, and want to share my screen I have to reconnect via browser. Most recent hack that works sometimes - using OBS as a virtual camera.
  - kfajdsl 4y ago
    I think (not sure though) that's because of them using an outdated version of electron. So things just working should get better as app devs upgrade their dependencies.

solarkraft 4y ago

The demos on the page are a bit outdated. Here is a more recent and "real life" demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL6pvXLnrm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL6pvXLnrm4 It takes a bit to configure just right, so you're welcome to have a look at my configuration: https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/f46421295b8c211b2eb56b3acc118cc4 https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/f46421295b8c211b2eb56b3ac... Wayfire is a pretty good general purpose desktop. Sadly development has died down a little recently and I have switched platforms. It's still very extensible with many interesting plugins and it just gets some things completely right. Know how Windows, X, many Wayland desktops and even macOS sometimes do weird things when you move windows between differently scaled displays? Wayfire has 0 - absolutely no - artifacts (glitchiness, things jumping around, etc). And that's at any (floating-point) scale. It also has "finger following" touchpad desktop switching gestures, which no other compositor had for a long time. It also has blur behind windows. So it's not really about the flashy window-flames for me that you see on the surface, it also just has a really solid core.

sprash 4y ago
> Sadly development has died down a little recently Isn't this true for all Wayland projects? There seems to be zero community mindshare.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Sway, gnome, and kde are all alive and well. That already covers basically all use cases.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
floatboth 4y ago
> "finger following" touchpad desktop switching gestures Ha. I'm the author of the vswipe plugin, glad you like it :) > blur behind windows KDE is ahead of everyone in blur tbh, they've had client-controlled blur for ages.

ramigb 4y ago

Could be awesome for VR desktops I guess!

TavsiE9s 4y ago

So the Linux Desktop with Wayland seems to be moving back to compiz eye candy/wobbly windows instead of providing a user experience that works out of the box without fiddling. Surely 2023 will be the year of the Linux Desktop! /s

artogahr 4y ago
Gnome would disagree :)

Sloppy 4y ago

I played with a similar compositor when they first became possible and concluded that they were pretty and wow-able but 95% useless for your GUI.