this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
114 points (99.1% liked)

Linux

47993 readers
1194 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Will be doing a fresh install on an old laptop in the near future and was considering trying wayland.

Can you recommend a decent & light window manager & terminal emulator?

I've played around with wayland but always ended up back on xorg, was gonna give it another shot.

top 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] MaliciousKebab@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sway and foot work pretty decently. Might want to check them out.

[–] jsnc@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • imv as an image viewer
  • emacs has wayland support
  • zathura for pdf viewing

Check Awesome Wayland for more.

[–] aard@kyu.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In case you're already using emacs I wouldn't bother with a separate pdf viewer - pdf-tools for emacs is imo the best PDF viewer nowadays available on linux.

[–] jsnc@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Well, I gotta leave something for those who choose to reside with the beast: Neovim

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

imv looks good, thanks for the link

I'm a bit confused, I left Reddit to escape emacs users....should I be on kbin instead?

[–] jsnc@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

There is no saving your soul; Emacs is life, Emacs is death. /j

[–] famfo@social.dn42.us 2 points 1 year ago

In case you want eye candy (or how I call it: the Wayland compositor doing compositing) you can also check out swayfx. Personally, I use it with kitty and waybar.

[–] iloverocks@feddit.de 13 points 1 year ago

I use hyprland and kitty on my modern desktop and my 12 year old i3 laptop If you want to have a really minimal Wayland compositor take a look at dwl

[–] PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most of my machines are KDE on X, but I have one where I've been feeling stuff out in Wayland-land. The most appealing thing I've tried has been Hyprland with Waybar. It's a little bit of a kit in traditional WM fashion, but easy to configure from straightforward config files, fairly light, and not "Just like this X WM, but broken because of missing Wayland functionality" (I know, I know, it's not technically Wayland deficiencies, its "not yet complete extensions", because it's all extensions, the Wayland protocol itself does almost nothing).

I've been using Kitty for a terminal emulator and it's pleasing as well.

I haven't found a launcher I love, I have fuzzel right now and the only major issue is it doesn't currently support mouse interaction, and I prefer a "use whichever input device your hand is on at the time" to keyboard-only.

[–] dino@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does hyperland configuration compare to sway? Or is it exactly the same?

[–] PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

They're both simple text formats, but Hyprland uses a "key = value" type config with section labels. Sway is largely compatible with i3 config files which are more like an unstructured script.

[–] png@artemis.camp 1 points 1 year ago

Have personally been using KDE Wayland on EndeavourOS for a while, and It's been free of major bugs save for some games going to a black screen after tabbing out of them.

[–] atomkarinca@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

stacking wm -> wayfire

tiling wm -> sway [corrected, i don't know what was going through my mind]

terminal emulator -> alacritty or foot

[–] Retiring@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sway is a tiling wm and wayfire looks like a floating wm to me. I don’t know what a „stacking“ wm is, but afaik you can stack in sway.

[–] atomkarinca@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

thanks for the correction, i don't what i was thinking while writing that. i guess i couldn't decide floating or stacking for wayfire so the whole thing broke down :)

[–] mrvictory1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I thing they meant "floating".

[–] Drito@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Vivarium

Please don't blame the lack of popularity, Vivarium works and its feature complete. The dev answers to the recent github issues.

i3-like WMs are underfeatured and Hyprland is less minimal than Vivarium.

[–] Duckytoast@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sway with Alacritty, been my daily driver for the past year.

[–] lrabbt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I just wanted alacrity OSC133 support so much

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I have i3 & kitty atm so not a huge leap.

I'm personally fond of Sway and Kitty

[–] cow@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I use sway wm with the foot terminal emulator. If you do not like manual tiling I have heard good things about river wm.

[–] communist@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Hyprland or sway, anything wlroots based really, and I use alacritty.

[–] mister_monster@monero.town 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use sway and foot, which comes with sway.

[–] janWilejan@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

foot does not come with sway. why do you think foot comes with sway? foot and sway are unrelated.
they're both good wayland software, though

[–] mister_monster@monero.town 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm pretty certain that foot is the default terminal for swaywm.

[–] janWilejan@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

interesting.
the default config file is basically "Drew's preferences watered down a bit for a general audience"
alacritty used to be Drew's preferred terminal for sway.
sway does not come packaged with any terminal.

[–] Retiring@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Manjaro sway comes with foot. Maybe he/she meant that…

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

fedora sway too

[–] PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like puppy linux as a distro for old laptop refurb, starts lean and mean, allowing older laptops to recapture some of their former glory.

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Void is my plan. I went with Fedora last time as I couldn't be bothered setting up Void properly and Fedora was the only distro with a generic kernel that seemed old mac trackapd/keyboard friendly at time. I've not tried Puppy for a long time, I tend to opt for AntiX or Porteus in that kinda area.

[–] Certainity45@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Try RedoxOS: https://www.redox-os.org/faq/

If you're into developing or willing to learn Rust, it can even offer you a paid summerjob. RedoxOS runs even on Pentium III.

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Cheers, looks interesting but don't think it can cover my daily drivers needs.

[–] Iamnotyourbroom@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Labwc is really a decent window manager that can pretty much be used on its own without a panel (I think). I think foot is pretty fast, but I just use gnome console, because I'm a savage.

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Cheers, will give it a look