Wayfire
Wayfire is a Wayland compositor inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots.
Wayfire aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance. It features a lot of graphical effects, such as the desktop cube, wobbly windows, fire animation, fish eye, workspace scale view and window rotations, among many other features.
Installation
USE flags
USE flags for gui-wm/wayfire compiz like 3D wayland compositor
X
|
Add support for X11 |
debug
|
Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces |
gles
|
use libglvnd to do animations more efficiently |
system-wfconfig
|
use the system-wide wf-config, else build it as a submodule. DO NOT DISABLE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. |
system-wlroots
|
use the system wide wlroots, else build it as a submodule. DO NOT DISABLE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. |
Emerge
root #
emerge --ask gui-wm/wayfire
Configuration
The default configuration file is ~/.config/wayfire.ini but Wayfire also supports loading custom configuration files. A graphical interface for configuration is provided by the optional package gui-apps/wcm.
Manual configuration
Copy over the default configuration from /usr/share/wayfire like so:
user $
cp /usr/share/wayfire/wayfire.ini ~/.config/
Plugins
Wayfire plugins can be enabled and disabled via adding and removing entries in the plugins =
in the [core]
section of ~/.config/wayfire.ini.
For example, to remove the wrot
plugin which allows for window rotation, comment it out in ~/.config/wayfire.ini like so:
~/.config/wayfire.ini
[core]
plugins = \
alpha \
animate \
autostart \
command \
cube \
decoration \
expo \
fast-switcher \
fisheye \
foreign-toplevel \
grid \
gtk-shell \
idle \
invert \
move \
oswitch \
place \
resize \
switcher \
vswitch \
window-rules \
wm-actions \
wobbly \
# wrot \
zoom
To install extra plugins, emerge the gui-libs/wayfire-plugins-extra package:
root #
emerge --ask gui-libs/wayfire-plugins-extra
Shortcuts
For binding variables, you must use evdev codes. For more information see the link in 'External resources'
External shortcuts in wayfire are managed by the command
plugin. A custom keybind requires 2 things:
- A
binding
orrepeatable_binding
prefixed variable.repeatable_binding
assumes that the key in question is going to be held down.- Available meta keys include:
<super>
<alt>
<shift>
- A
command
prefixed variable.
The order and name of the variables doesn't matter, as long as the binding and command prefixed variables have the same suffix, e.g. binding_x, command_x.
For example, assume that a custom bind needs to be created for launching firefox, and to launch it the super, shift, and 1 keys need to be pressed.
First, the key binds themselves can be added like so:
~/.config/wayfire.ini
binding_firefox = <super> <shift> KEY_1
Then, the command to be launched when the key combination is pressed can be added like this:
~/.config/wayfire.ini
command_firefox = firefox
Usage
Wayfire is only a Wayland compositor and does not provide the full capabilities expected from a desktop environment. It is best used alongside gui-apps/wf-shell, which adds among other features a GTK3-based status bar and wallpaper support.
Wayfire needs additional applications which implement other parts of the XDG specifications from Freedesktop, such as desktop notifications, application launchers, screenshotting, screen recording and screen locking among other important necessities; refer to the List of software for Wayland article for examples.
Removal
Unmerge
root #
emerge --ask --depclean --verbose gui-wm/wayfire
See also
- Wayland — a simpler and modern replacement for X display server.
- List of software for Wayland — various desktop related packages for Wayland
External resources
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/input/event-codes.txt - kernel documentation on all event input codes
https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/wiki/Configuration - official wayfire documentation