Other Step-by-step guide for a working, usable Sway (or another) Wayland-based environment?

W

woody_road_9

Dear community,

I'm trying to migrate from Linux Debian/X11 + MATE to FreeBSD/Wayland and struggling with graphic desktop. My aim is to implement a stable, usable, non-bloated Wayland-based environment on my AMD laptop. Based on what I seen so far, Sway seems like a way to go.

I installed FreeBSD 14.2 with drm-61-kmod and tried to follow "6.5. The Sway Compositor" of the handbook. I tried to follow it exactly:
# pkg install sway swayidle swaylock-effects alacritty dmenu-wayland dmenu
% mkdir ~/.config/sway
% cp /usr/local/etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway
<content from the handbook here>

but when I launched
% seatd-launch sway
I got an empty Sway graphic desktop without mouse and squares instead of font.

After some research I found that installation of
pkg install noto-basic
required. After this, I seen the current date but empty desktop without mouse and still have no idea what to do with it.

I seen a lot of resources regarding Sway on the Internet, but the problem is they typically provide a lot of details and configurable options I don't need yet, while I'm trying to understand the basics -- what specific packages to install / how to configure them to implement a minimal but usable, working desktop. Ideally, I'm looking for a current step-by-step guide for beginners.

I'm flexible with other options instead of Sway if they are stable, usable, and (ideally) non-bloated (but no GNOME, please!). I like MATE and aware that they implemented Wayland support in 1.28 but not sure how to implement it and it is probably not stable yet. KDE Plasma 6 seems to be not stable also. Also, I would prefer to implement a Wayland desktop with pre-compiled packages only.

Highly appreciate if you could share a guide. And should I go with FreeBSD 15 as it has the latest packages that might be important in case of Wayland?

Thank you in advance!
 
NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'freebsd dwl wayland tiling window manager install'

freebsd dwl wayland tiling window manager install with patches in a separate git branch.


the reason why you need to build dwl on freebsd rather than using the port or packages
is because the dwl package lets you set an variable called DWL_HOME_CONFIG that points to a dwl config.h file
which is used to customize dwl

the problem is that a lot of the dwl patches like movestack have changes in other files like dwl.c
and since the dwl package only uses the config.h file most of the patches wont work with the dwl package or port

in this video i cover install dwl on freebsd...
  • Thanks
  • Like

NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'labwc a stacking wayland window manager inspired by openbox'

Labwc is a wlroots-based window-stacking compositor for wayland,
inspired by openbox.


In this video i cover window placement , setting the theme, creating keyboard shortcuts to switch workspaces and move windows to different workspaces and monitors

How to warp your cursor between monitors, create keyboard shortcuts to increase, decrease and mute the volume

labwc doesnt have independant workspaces per monitor,
but you can set windows to be dsplayed on all workspaces using a keyboard shortcut

you can also create rules for particular windows like chromium, mpv and...
  • Thanks

NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'Freebsd 14 Wayland and Wayfire using Nvidia on Dell XPS 15'

Freebsd 14 Wayland running the Wayfire compositor on a Dell XPS 15 2019 using a Nvidia graphics card


All the hardware works but you need to use wifibox for the wifi drivers,
and nvidia on freebsd doesnt yet support nvenc and cuda

the packages needed are nvidia-driver nvidia-settings nvidia-drm-515-kmod libva-intel-driver libva-utils

and the kld_list looks like this
kld_list="i915kms nvidia-modeset nvidia-drm linux linux64"

In this video i also cover tofi a wayland dmenu rofi clone
github.com

GitHub - philj56/tofi: Tiny dynamic menu for Wayland

Tiny dynamic menu for Wayland. Contribute to philj56/tofi development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Setting up mpv to open videos on the second...
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miscreant said:
I have not used Sway or Wayfire yet but another video you can watch about getting Wayfire up and running

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWcctyaBA2U&t=5s
Click to expand...
NapoleonWils0n said:
NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'freebsd dwl wayland tiling window manager install'

freebsd dwl wayland tiling window manager install with patches in a separate git branch.


the reason why you need to build dwl on freebsd rather than using the port or packages
is because the dwl package lets you set an variable called DWL_HOME_CONFIG that points to a dwl config.h file
which is used to customize dwl

the problem is that a lot of the dwl patches like movestack have changes in other files like dwl.c
and since the dwl package only uses the config.h file most of the patches wont work with the dwl package or port

in this video i cover install dwl on freebsd...
  • Thanks
  • Like

NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'labwc a stacking wayland window manager inspired by openbox'

Labwc is a wlroots-based window-stacking compositor for wayland,
inspired by openbox.


In this video i cover window placement , setting the theme, creating keyboard shortcuts to switch workspaces and move windows to different workspaces and monitors

How to warp your cursor between monitors, create keyboard shortcuts to increase, decrease and mute the volume

labwc doesnt have independant workspaces per monitor,
but you can set windows to be dsplayed on all workspaces using a keyboard shortcut

you can also create rules for particular windows like chromium, mpv and...
  • Thanks

NapoleonWils0n

Thread 'Freebsd 14 Wayland and Wayfire using Nvidia on Dell XPS 15'

Freebsd 14 Wayland running the Wayfire compositor on a Dell XPS 15 2019 using a Nvidia graphics card


All the hardware works but you need to use wifibox for the wifi drivers,
and nvidia on freebsd doesnt yet support nvenc and cuda

the packages needed are nvidia-driver nvidia-settings nvidia-drm-515-kmod libva-intel-driver libva-utils

and the kld_list looks like this
kld_list="i915kms nvidia-modeset nvidia-drm linux linux64"

In this video i also cover tofi a wayland dmenu rofi clone
github.com

GitHub - philj56/tofi: Tiny dynamic menu for Wayland

Tiny dynamic menu for Wayland. Contribute to philj56/tofi development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Setting up mpv to open videos on the second...
  • Thanks
  • Like
Click to expand...
Many thanks, NapoleonWils0n and miscreant! Yes, I missed YouTube but it is incredible for this purpose as the entire installation process is visible end-to-end. Thank you once again!
 
dwl is the only wayland compositor i know of on Freebsd with independent workspace per monitor
and it has a panel

with labwc and wayfire you have to create rules so certain applications are always visible on the second monitor
also labwc doesnt come with a panel so you have to install one separately, wayfire does have a panel
 
Dang there's an ancient post of mine where I told how I did it with openbox on the Arch forums, but I can't find it. I think I was using X tools though. Ah, found it, but I use xdotool.
I was going to tell you to ping NapoleonWils0n as he's my go to person for all things Wayland but I see he's already on this thread. I see that sway has a ydotool and it's in packages, so here's a link to my Arch thread from 2015. It's the second to last post in the thread and maybe it can help.

Openbox and Xinerama and desktops (and 2 other questions) / Applications & Desktop Environments / Arch Linux Forums

bbs.archlinux.org bbs.archlinux.org
 
i came across a weird bug with emacs
not sure if it only happens on wayland, or if X11 has the same issue

i start dwl on the command line after logging at the tty
instead of using a gui login manager

after you login you are in your home directory
eg

Code: 
~

so normally i start dwl from my home directory

emacs has a command to open files called find-file
normally when you run that command in emacs the default start location is your home directory

20250208_22h56m44s_grim.png



but i recompile dwl in the following directory

Code: 
~/git/freebsd/dwl-freebsd/dwl-v0.7/dwl-freebsd-xps

which creates a new dwl binary,
but you have to log out of dwl to copy the new binary into place
because you cant replace a running version of dwl with a new version

so in the tty dwl-freebsd-xps directory i copy the new dwl into place

Code: 
doas cp dwl /usr/local/bin

if i then start dwl from dwl-freebsd-xps directory
emacs find-file seems to default to the directory where dwl was started from in the tty

so instead of the home directory being the default
it was the deeply nested dwl-freebsd-xps directory

20250208_23h10m53s_grim.png


which was really annoying

took me ages to figure out what the issue was

in summary
emacs find-file seems to default to the directory where dwl was started from in the tty
 
woody_road_9 said:
but when I launched
% seatd-launch sway
I got an empty Sway graphic desktop without mouse and squares instead of font.
Click to expand...
Hi, I found this thread while looking up something else, and have a fix I'd like to share.

I've encountered these issues on fresh Sway installs on Thinkpads running on both AMD and intel chips. I'm usually launching with ly, but I've experienced it launching Sway straight from tty too. One other difference in my install is I'm using bemenu(1) instead of dmenu(1). I think I've still had my mouse when it's happened to me. The only hotkey that works is $mod+shift+e, and even when I have a config with $mod set to alt, it defualts to the windows key. It could also be that the mouse was present but invisible. I know I've been able to exit and boot into other desktop environments, when present.

When it first happened, I searched fonts in pkg and lucked out with my first guess, the Xorg fonts metaport. This fixes the text rendering issues and allows Sway to read the config file and function properly:
# pkg install xorg-fonts-7.7_1

If you're still having issues, you may need to copy an example config from /usr/local/etc/sway/ to ~/.config/sway/config, or wherever you set $XDG_CONFIG_HOME to if applicable.

Hope this helps someone!
 
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