my labwc experiment :)

[wizard10000]

caution: bloggish!

As one of those oldtimers who's run openbox since their Crunchbang days I'm experimenting with Wayland using labwc as a window manager. labwc was inspired by openbox and config formats are similar. Still working on it and I imagine getting everything set up the way I want will take me awhile and some things just might not work but am happy to share what I've learned so far.

Required reading:

labwc documentation

Examples you can use to get things going:

~./config/labwc/rc.xml
~./config/labwc/autostart

You'll need some kind of a menu to get things started. Here's an example ~./config/labwc/menu.xml you can use if you want - be sure to change the name of your terminal emulator if you're not using alacritty (I'm not):

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<openbox_menu>
<menu id="root-menu" label="">
  <item label="Web browser"><action name="Execute" command="firefox" /></item>
  <item label="Terminal"><action name="Execute" command="alacritty" /></item>
  <item label="Reconfigure"><action name="Reconfigure" /></item>
  <item label="Exit"><action name="Exit" /></item>
</menu>
</openbox_menu>

What you need to install besides labwc:

If you want a panel waybar is a good place to start. A sample ~./config/waybar/config is here - https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/blob/ ... ces/config

Application menu/launcher choices are still fairly limited, I'm using the default menu listed above with a few tweaks plus bemenu bound to a hotkey as a gmrun alternative, bemenu is bound to Alt-F3 in labwc's default config - it's worth installing. I'm also using fuzzel bound to my right mouse button as an emergency application menu and it's worth exploring. I've read about a few folks getting jgmenu running under Wayland but it's not 100% and I may try to play with that a little.

I don't use a display manager so I can type either startx to start openbox or labwc to start a Wayland session. I have run both on separate consoles and experienced some weirdness like my gooey file manager opening in a wayland session even if I started it under X.

Anyway, I've got labwc working well enough to use it but there's still a heck of a lot of tweaking that needs to be done. I need to configure a decent menuing system, and I've got a remote conky that's starting in the wrong location on the screen but a local conky is working fine. Everything seems to work but it usually takes me a couple weeks after an install to get everything working the way I want so this is a work in progress

edit:

I compiled labwc-menu-generator from here - https://github.com/labwc/labwc-menu-generator

Requires build-essential and libglib2.0-dev but it was an easy compile. Stuck the executable in /usr/local/bin and you can use it to create a menu like this

Code: Select all

labwc-menu-generator > ~/.config/labwc/menu.xml

There's currently a bug reported where "Reconfigure" and "Exit" are missing from the generated menu but I manually added them - I'll have to make submenus for the stuff I prepend and append to the default menu but it works.

And a clickable screenshot of what I've got so far -

[@ttila]

This is my DE:



I picked and edited config here.

[wizard10000]

I see you're using lxqt-panel. waybar really isn't making me happy so I think I'll try that next.

Thanks for the screenshot and the linkage

[manyroads]

You might try this bar as well... I found it worked best for me (not to be confused with working well).
YATBFW:

https://github.com/stefonarch/LXQt-Wayl ... /README.md

https://github.com/selairi/yatbfw

FWIW there are 'a few' undocumented' features in the bar as well.

[wizard10000]

My preferred gooey file manager (spacefm) doesn't care much for Wayland, I guess. spacefm is unmaintained so I think this one isn't gonna get fixed.

I prefer a file manager that splits panes by default and spacefm has been my choice for a bunch of years. Old clickable screenshot showing what I mean - I use different icon themes for local, remote and root accounts, that's why you see three sets of icons


Anyway, drag and drop between panes works not at all, cut or copy and paste works just fine.

[oswaldkelso]

I don't want to side track the thread but re spacefm take a look at zzzfm. I've been using it for a while on a few systems with out issue
https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/zzzfm

[wizard10000]

I don't want to side track the thread but re spacefm take a look at zzzfm. I've been using it for a while on a few systems with out issue
https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/zzzfm

Thanks - looks interesting. Gonna play with this a bit

[tynman]

FWIW... I found the jgmenu menu works fine in labwc. As far as I can remember, I didn't need to do anything special to get it to work, i.e. it's working with the same setup/config files I use in Openbox.

[wizard10000]

Thank you for that, tynman - I heart jgmenu. I'd heard that the menu would open but not close - you had to click on a menu item to get the menu to go away.

[tynman]

I'm not sure what action you (or anyone) would expect to close the jgmenu menu - other than selecting a menu item . On the other hand I confess I have noticed over the years, in Openbox, that occasionally when I had the menu "active", and then maybe I get distracted and want to switch to another application/window (e.g. with Alt-Tab), I can't because I need to "close" the menu first. The main way I do that is:

1. Click on some menu item
2. press the escape key
3. mouse click anywhere other than on the menu

I just checked. The jgmenu menu closes for me the same in Labwc as it does in Openbox, as described above. But maybe I'm missing something.

For the record, I'm running the Labwc package I installed with apt on a Debian Bookworm - Unstable(SID) system.

[wizard10000]

...The jgmenu menu closes for me the same in Labwc as it does in Openbox, as described above.

That works for me. Guessing the person who said jgmenu wouldn't close without selecting a menu item probably had other issues