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author | Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> | 2021-03-04 11:30:43 -0700 |
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committer | Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> | 2021-03-04 11:30:43 -0700 |
commit | 1ca5601edc64058be0fcfd7f89878bde291d15c5 (patch) | |
tree | 70ab82757d6b25b3e1ad218997f0eb742f055d54 | |
parent | c0f4fdad14022b7340b4d1b5eb4b19bcf4419454 (diff) | |
download | wiki-master.tar.gz |
-rw-r--r-- | blog/entry/waylandmar21.mdwn | 58 |
1 files changed, 58 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/blog/entry/waylandmar21.mdwn b/blog/entry/waylandmar21.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7bb30ae --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/entry/waylandmar21.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +While struggling with Pfizer second dose side effects yesterday, with little +ability to do anything serious -- so surreal to have a fever yet also +certainty you're not actually ill[1] -- I thought I'd try building the branch +of Emacs with native Wayland support, and try starting up Sway instead of i3. +I recently upgraded my laptop to Debian bullseye, as I usually do at this +stage of our pre-release freeze, and was wondering whether bullseye would be +the release which would enable me to switch to Wayland. + +Why might I want to do this? I don't care about screen tearing and don't have +any fancy monitors with absurd numbers of pixels. Previously, I had been +hoping to cling on to my X11 setup for as long as possible, and switch to +Wayland only once things I want to use started working worse on X11, because +all the developers of those things have stopped using X11. But then after +upgrading to bullseye, I found I had to forward-port an old patch to +xfce4-session to prevent it from resetting SSH_AUTH_SOCK to the wrong value, +and I thought to myself, maybe I could cut out some of the layers here, and +maybe it'll be a bit less annoying. I have a pile of little scripts trying to +glue together xfce4 and i3 to get all the functionality I need, but since +there have been people whose use their computers for similar purposes to me +trying to make Sway useful for quite some time now, maybe there are more +integrated solutions available. + +I have also been getting tired of things which have only ever half-worked +under X, like toggling autolock off when there isn't fullscreen video playing +(when I'm video conferencing on another device, I often want to prevent my +laptop's screen from locking, and it works most of the time, but sometimes +still locks, sigh). I have a "normalise desktop" keybinding which tries to +fix recurrent issues by doing things like restarting ibus, and it would be +nice to drop something so hackish. + +And indeed, a lot of basic things do work way better under Sway. swayidle is +clean and sane, and I was easily able to add a keybinding which inhibits +locking the screen when a certain window is visible. I could bind brightness +up/down keys without having to invoke xfce4-power-manager -- never managed +that before -- and, excitingly, I could have those keys bound such that they +still work when the screen is locked. I still need two old scripts which +interact with the i3/sway IPC, but those two are reasonable ways to extend +functionality, rather than bad hacks. + +The main thing that I could not figure out is IME -- various people claim +online to have got typing their Asian languages working natively under Sway, +not just into Xwayland windows, but I couldn't, and there is no standard way +to do it yet, it would seem. Also, it seems Qt in Debian doesn't support +Wayland natively, so far as I could tell. And there isn't really a drop-in +replacement for dmenu yet, so you have to run that under Xwayland. A lot of +this is probably going to be fixed during 2021, but the thing is, I'll be on +Debian bullseye, so how it works now is probably as good as it is going to get +for the next two years or so. + +So, wanting to get back to doing something more useful today, I reluctantly +booted back into X11. I'm really looking forward to switching to Sway, and +getting rid of some of my hacks, but I think I am probably going to have to +wait for Debian bookworm -- unless I completely run out of patience with the +various X11 annoyances described above, and start furiously backporting +things. + +[1] Okay, I could have caught the disease a few days ago and it became + symptomatic at the same time I was experiencing the side effects. |