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I accidentally got this, and now it defaults to Wayland which completely broke my workflow. That is because, in Wayland, there is no API to list what windows ar

I accidentally got this, and now it defaults to Wayland which completely broke my workflow. That is because, in Wayland, there is no API to list what windows are on your desktop! [1] Managed to get back to X11, for some reason the logoff button does not work anymore but at least my monitoring scripts do. [1] https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#linux-notice https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#lin...

adlpz 3y ago
Your comment reminds me so vividly of the time when I had time and I could invest tens of hours deep in that sort of nonsense. No thank you.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  Oh Gerald, do wheel me back into my pleasure dome please, I've had quite enough of this silliness.
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  For real dude... "my logout button doesn't work"? Crazy! I used to love tinkering with linux in college, started with Ubuntu 7.04(?) Feisty Fawn. Today I use Linux Mint 22(?) - what distro do you use that's hands off?
  - adlpz 3y ago
    MacOS
  - sodality2 3y ago
    I'm in college and still prioritize stability (at least in day-to-day use). Which doesn't always work out, because yesterday my laptop wouldn't boot...
  - okanat 3y ago
    Windows 11 with WSL
    - sergiotapia 3y ago
      My brother uses this as well. It didn't work out well for me but it may have just been too soon, I tried to use WSL when it came out. Must be much better and seamless now.
      - okanat 3y ago
        The first WSL was a Linux system call emulator using Windows NT kernel's multi identity features. While it is an impressive feat of engineering showing off NT's strengths, many of the syscalls were missing. The programs had to operate on Windows file system which likes bulk operations and try and fail kind of a pattern. So it was slow. WSL2 is fantastic. It is a lightweight Hyper V VM so programs run at native speed. You can do nested virtualization with W11. The file system is ext4 on a virtual HD file so, progams optimised for Linux don't suffer. It even comes with its own Wayland compositor running on top of a high performance GL <-> DX translation layer. It comes with systemd support so one can run regular systemd services like nix daemon.
  - zilti 3y ago
    OpenSUSE.
yoavm 3y ago
Many Wayland compositors provide an API to list the windows. I don't know about Plasma 6, but in Wayland it's up to the compositor to provide such API as far as I know.
- Filligree 3y ago
  So you need a separate implementation for each compositor? Count me out.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Most compositors use a common framework like wlroots. Those that don't, like kwin, provide their own API support which their own tools consume.
    - ColonelPhantom 3y ago
      Yep. The only compositors of any significance that do not use wlroots are Gnome/Mutter and KWin. I guess Weston is also an independent compositor, but I don't think anyone actually uses that.
      - creatonez 3y ago
        Weston is mostly used for car entertainment systems, as a replacement for Windows CE. It, along with the more modern wlroots-based alternative Cage, have become the de-facto Wayland window manager for when you don't actually want to display framed windows, and just want to fork the codebase and display some fullscreen GLES-based graphics in a kiosk instead. These IoT use cases were part of the original motivation for Wayland in the first place.
        bitwize 3y ago
        I'm on proprietary NVIDIA, so haven't actually quite joined the Glorious Wayland Master Race yet. I use Weston on X11 to host Waydroid for my Android game development. Works rather well. I hope Weston development doesn't end up moribund because a few folks like me actually use it.
Longhanks 3y ago
How did you "accidentally" manage to get this? It isn't even in Arch stable yet? The only distro shipping it right now seems to be KDE neon, whose entire premise is shipping KDE stuff as soon as possible...
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  Yes.
  - oynqr 3y ago
    Did you also garbage collect the old generation by accident?
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  NixOS unstable has it too I think. It was merged yesterday at least.
- zilti 3y ago
  And openSUSE Argon/Krypton
csmattryder 3y ago
I used to be a user of Wayland but since Firefox defaulted to it and I found that Picture-in-Picture doesn't work, I've since dropped back to X. DuckDucking it, I couldn't find a solution, but I hope someone can tell me there is. Outside of things like this (and finding the right screen recording program) I didn't really notice a difference.
- NekkoDroid 3y ago
  To my knowledge there currently isn't a solution, but it is being worked on/discussed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    That is the state of a lot of things in Wayland. They seem to remain that way for a long time, alas.
- paranoidxprod 3y ago
  What compositor? I use Hyprland and Firefox/Chromium Picture in Picture, and as far as I can tell, works as expected. I just hit the PiP button and it pops the video out into a new tiled window that I can toggle floating if I want. Just tried on a windows machine and, as far as I could tell, it was the same.
- tombh 3y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but Picture-in-Picture has worked for years in Wayland Firefox for me. You do have to enable it in `about:preferences`, there's a toggle called: "Enable picture-in-picture video controls"
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
    Are you sure it wasn't running under XWayland? Firefox has had wayland support turned off by default until just recently.
tombh 3y ago
There's an experimental tool `wlrctl`: https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl It's not well documented, but you can do this to get a list of your windows: `wlrctl toplevel list` And this to get the currently focussed window(s): `wlrctl toplevel list state:focused`
- roenxi 3y ago
  It says a lot about the difficulty of writing great software that it has taken around 15 years to get a list windows out of Wayland. But it looks like wlroots was a tipping point where the ecosystem started to function in a healthy manner.

adlpz 3y ago

Your comment reminds me so vividly of the time when I had time and I could invest tens of hours deep in that sort of nonsense. No thank you.

mistercheph 3y ago
Oh Gerald, do wheel me back into my pleasure dome please, I've had quite enough of this silliness.
sergiotapia 3y ago
For real dude... "my logout button doesn't work"? Crazy! I used to love tinkering with linux in college, started with Ubuntu 7.04(?) Feisty Fawn. Today I use Linux Mint 22(?) - what distro do you use that's hands off?
- adlpz 3y ago
  MacOS
- sodality2 3y ago
  I'm in college and still prioritize stability (at least in day-to-day use). Which doesn't always work out, because yesterday my laptop wouldn't boot...
- okanat 3y ago
  Windows 11 with WSL
  - sergiotapia 3y ago
    My brother uses this as well. It didn't work out well for me but it may have just been too soon, I tried to use WSL when it came out. Must be much better and seamless now.
    - okanat 3y ago
      The first WSL was a Linux system call emulator using Windows NT kernel's multi identity features. While it is an impressive feat of engineering showing off NT's strengths, many of the syscalls were missing. The programs had to operate on Windows file system which likes bulk operations and try and fail kind of a pattern. So it was slow. WSL2 is fantastic. It is a lightweight Hyper V VM so programs run at native speed. You can do nested virtualization with W11. The file system is ext4 on a virtual HD file so, progams optimised for Linux don't suffer. It even comes with its own Wayland compositor running on top of a high performance GL <-> DX translation layer. It comes with systemd support so one can run regular systemd services like nix daemon.
- zilti 3y ago
  OpenSUSE.

yoavm 3y ago

Many Wayland compositors provide an API to list the windows. I don't know about Plasma 6, but in Wayland it's up to the compositor to provide such API as far as I know.

Filligree 3y ago
So you need a separate implementation for each compositor? Count me out.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Most compositors use a common framework like wlroots. Those that don't, like kwin, provide their own API support which their own tools consume.
  - ColonelPhantom 3y ago
    Yep. The only compositors of any significance that do not use wlroots are Gnome/Mutter and KWin. I guess Weston is also an independent compositor, but I don't think anyone actually uses that.
    - creatonez 3y ago
      Weston is mostly used for car entertainment systems, as a replacement for Windows CE. It, along with the more modern wlroots-based alternative Cage, have become the de-facto Wayland window manager for when you don't actually want to display framed windows, and just want to fork the codebase and display some fullscreen GLES-based graphics in a kiosk instead. These IoT use cases were part of the original motivation for Wayland in the first place.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        I'm on proprietary NVIDIA, so haven't actually quite joined the Glorious Wayland Master Race yet. I use Weston on X11 to host Waydroid for my Android game development. Works rather well. I hope Weston development doesn't end up moribund because a few folks like me actually use it.

Longhanks 3y ago

How did you "accidentally" manage to get this? It isn't even in Arch stable yet? The only distro shipping it right now seems to be KDE neon, whose entire premise is shipping KDE stuff as soon as possible...

hobo_mark 3y ago
Yes.
- oynqr 3y ago
  Did you also garbage collect the old generation by accident?
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
NixOS unstable has it too I think. It was merged yesterday at least.
zilti 3y ago
And openSUSE Argon/Krypton

csmattryder 3y ago

I used to be a user of Wayland but since Firefox defaulted to it and I found that Picture-in-Picture doesn't work, I've since dropped back to X. DuckDucking it, I couldn't find a solution, but I hope someone can tell me there is. Outside of things like this (and finding the right screen recording program) I didn't really notice a difference.

NekkoDroid 3y ago
To my knowledge there currently isn't a solution, but it is being worked on/discussed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
- rcxdude 3y ago
  That is the state of a lot of things in Wayland. They seem to remain that way for a long time, alas.
paranoidxprod 3y ago
What compositor? I use Hyprland and Firefox/Chromium Picture in Picture, and as far as I can tell, works as expected. I just hit the PiP button and it pops the video out into a new tiled window that I can toggle floating if I want. Just tried on a windows machine and, as far as I could tell, it was the same.
tombh 3y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but Picture-in-Picture has worked for years in Wayland Firefox for me. You do have to enable it in `about:preferences`, there's a toggle called: "Enable picture-in-picture video controls"
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  Are you sure it wasn't running under XWayland? Firefox has had wayland support turned off by default until just recently.

tombh 3y ago

There's an experimental tool `wlrctl`: https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl It's not well documented, but you can do this to get a list of your windows: `wlrctl toplevel list` And this to get the currently focussed window(s): `wlrctl toplevel list state:focused`

roenxi 3y ago
It says a lot about the difficulty of writing great software that it has taken around 15 years to get a list windows out of Wayland. But it looks like wlroots was a tipping point where the ecosystem started to function in a healthy manner.