Wayland

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Wayland is a new windowing protocol for Linux. Utilization of Wayland requires changes to and re-installation of parts of your system's software. For more information on Wayland see its homepage.

Warning: Wayland is still under development and some features may be incomplete.

Requirements

Currently Wayland will only work on systems utilizing KMS.

Installation

Wayland is most likely installed on your system already, as it is an indirect dependency of gtk2 and gtk3. If it is not installed, you will find the wayland package in the official repositories.

Usage

As Wayland is only a library, it is useless on its own. To replace X Server, you need a compositor (like Weston).

Weston

Installation

You need to install weston from the official repositories.

Usage

Keyboard Shortcuts (super = windows key - can be changed, see weston.ini) Ctrl-b
Cmd Action
Ctrl + Alt + Backspace Quit Weston
Super + Scroll (or PageUp/PageDown) Zoom in/out of desktop
Super + Tab Switch windows
Super + LMB Move Window
Super + MMB Resize Window
Super + RMB Rotate Window !
Super + Alt + Scroll Change window opacity
Super + K Force Kill Active Window
Super + KeyUp/KeyDown Switch Prev/Next Workspace
Super + Shift + KeyUp/KeyDown Grab Current Window and Switch Workspace
Super + Fn Switch to Workspace n
Super + S Take a screenshot
Super + R Record a screencast.

Now that Wayland and its requirements are installed you should be ready to test it out.

It is possible to run Weston inside a running X session:

$ weston

Alternatively, to launch Weston natively, try switching to a terminal and running:

$ weston-launch

Then at a TTY within Weston, you can run the demos. To launch a terminal emulator:

$ weston-terminal

To move flowers around the screen:

$ weston-flower 

To test the frame protocol (runs glxgears):

$ weston-gears

To display images:

$ weston-image image1.jpg image2.jpg...

To display PDF Files:

$ weston-view doc1.pdf doc2.pdf...

Configuration

Example configuration file for keyboard layout, module selection and UI modifications. See man weston.ini for full details:

~/.config/weston.ini
[core]
### uncomment this line for xwayland support ###
#modules=xwayland.so

[shell]
background-image=/usr/share/backgrounds/gnome/Aqua.jpg
background-color=0xff002244
panel-color=0x90ff0000
locking=true
animation=zoom
#binding-modifier=ctrl
#num-workspaces=6
### for cursor themes install xcursor-themes pkg from Extra. ###
#cursor-theme=whiteglass
#cursor-size=24

### tablet options ###
#lockscreen-icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/256x256/actions/lock.png
#lockscreen=/usr/share/backgrounds/gnome/Garden.jpg
#homescreen=/usr/share/backgrounds/gnome/Blinds.jpg
#animation=fade

[keyboard]
keymap_rules=evdev
#keymap_layout=gb
#keymap_options=caps:ctrl_modifier,shift:both_capslock_cancel
### keymap_options from /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst ###


[terminal]
#font=DroidSansMono
#font-size=14



[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/apps/utilities-terminal.png
path=/usr/bin/gnome-terminal

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/apps/utilities-terminal.png
path=/usr/bin/weston-terminal

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/firefox.png
path=/usr/bin/firefox

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/apps/arts.png
path=./clients/flower

[screensaver]
# Uncomment path to disable screensaver
path=/usr/libexec/weston-screensaver
duration=600

[input-method]
path=/usr/libexec/weston-keyboard

###  for Laptop displays  ###
#[output]
#name=LVDS1
#mode=1680x1050
#transform=90

#[output]
#name=VGA1
# The following sets the mode with a modeline, you can get modelines for your preffered resolutions using the cvt utility
#mode=173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
#transform=flipped

#[output]
#name=X1
#mode=1024x768
#transform=flipped-270

Minimal weston.ini :

~/.config/weston.ini
[core]
modules=xwayland.so

[keyboard]
keymap_layout=gb

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/apps/utilities-terminal.png
path=/usr/bin/weston-terminal

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/firefox.png
path=/usr/bin/firefox


[output]
name=LVDS1
mode=1680x1050
transform=90

XWayland

You can find an official xorg-server-xwayland package in extra.

When you want to run an X application from within Weston, it spins up Xwayland to service the request. The following configuration file is required:

~/.config/weston.ini
[core]
modules=xwayland.so

Screencast recording

Weston has build-in screencast recording which can be started and stopped by pressing the Super + R key combination. Screencasts are saved to the file capture.wcap in the current working directory of Weston.

The WCAP format is a lossless video format specific to Weston, which only records the difference in frames. To be able to play the recorded screencast, the WCAP file will need to be converted to a format which a media player can understand.

To convert the file to webm, execute:

$ wcap-decode capture.wcap --yuv4mpeg2 | vpxenc --target-bitrate=1024 --best -t 4 -o foo.webm -


To convert the file to ogv, execute:

$ wcap-decode capture.wcap --yuv4mpeg2 | theora_encode - -o cap.ogv


High DPI displays

Use

~/.config/weston.ini

[output]
name=...
scale=2

for "retina" or "HiDPI" displays.

GUI libraries

See details on the official website.

GTK+ 3

The gtk3 package from the official repositories now has the Wayland backend enabled.

GTK+ 3 gained support for multiple backends at runtime and can switch between backends in the same way Qt can with lighthouse.

When both Wayland and X backends are enabled, GTK+ will default to the X11 backend, but this can be overridden by modifying an environment variable: GDK_BACKEND=wayland.

Qt 5

You need to install qt5-wayland. To run a Qt 5 app with the Wayland plugin, set the QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland-egl environment variable.

Clutter

The Clutter toolkit has a Wayland backend that allows it to run as a Wayland client. The backend is enabled in the official package in extra.

To run a Clutter app on Wayland, set CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland.

SDL

Experimental wayland support is now in SDL 2.0.2 and enabled by default on Arch Linux.

To run a SDL application on Wayland, set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland.

glfw

Version 3.1 will have wayland support through a compile flag that you have to enable. In the mean time you can install the package from the AUR glfw3-git and add -DGLFW_USE_WAYLAND=ON to the CMake flags.

EFL

EFL has complete Wayland support. To run a EFL application on Wayland, see Wayland project page.

Window managers and desktop shells

GNOME

Warning: Gnome Wayland session will not launch unless you have xorg-server-xwayland installed.

With version 3.14, GNOME supports running the desktop using Wayland. The Gnome compositor can be run without using X, and will act as a Wayland system compositor. It is considered stable for production use, but there are still some features that are not yet supported (refer Gnome documentation). Under this desktop, applications using X will run using XWayland.

To start up a Gnome Wayland session, GDM login manager needs to be used, and the user must select the "Gnome on Wayland" session before logging in.

Hawaii

See Hawaii.

i3

Some developers from i3 are thinking of starting a completely new project for implementing a shell plugin for Weston to implement the same features and style of i3.

KDE

KDE 4.11 added support for KWin under Wayland system compositor. There is currently no support for using KWin as a session compositor.

Loliwm

loliwm is a tiling WM for Wayland.

Velox

velox is a simple window manager based on swc. It is inspired by dwm and xmonad.

Orbital

Orbital is a Wayland compositor and shell, using Qt5 and Weston. The goal of the project is to build a simple yet flexible and good looking Wayland desktop. It is not a full fledged DE but rather the analogue of a WM in the X11 world, such as Awesome or Fluxbox.

Papyros Shell

Papyros Shell is the desktop shell for Papyros, built using QtQuick and QtCompositor as a compositor for Wayland.

Maynard

Maynard is a desktop shell client for Weston based on GTK. It was based on weston-gtk-shell, a project by Tiago Vignatti.

Motorcar

Motorcar is a wayland compositor to explore 3D windowing.

Troubleshooting

LLVM assertion failure

If you get an LLVM assertion failure, you need to rebuild mesa without Gallium LLVM until this problem is fixed.

This may imply disabling some drivers which require LLVM. You may also try exporting the following, if having problems with hardware drivers:

$ export EGL_DRIVER=/usr/lib/egl/egl_gallium.so

Weston fails to launch after update to 1.7

This is possibly caused by the `desktop-shell.so` module being loaded by your weston.ini. This used to be required, but is not anymore.

To remove it simply look for a line similar to this line.

~/.config/weston.ini
[core]
modules=xwayland.so,desktop-shell.so

Remove the `desktop-shell.so` from that line.

~/.config/weston.ini
[core]
modules=xwayland.so

See also