River: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 10:45, 17 March 2025

River is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor.

Prerequisites

Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
A non-root user account.
The community repository must be enabled.
Set up eudev.
Install and configure D-Bus. without D-Bus icons and keyboard shortcuts may be missing.
Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers, errors are likely to occur.
Wayland compositors need raw access to input and output devices, typically mediated by a seat manager. Either seatd or elogind work fine, but installing both leads to conflicts.
Installing wayland-base enables elogind as seat manager, enables community repository and enables eudev.

Installation

Install River and the documentation:

# apk add river river-doc

river-doc is required if you want use the example config.

Install your choice of additional packages:

This list includes icons, fonts, and a terminal emulator named foot which is the default in River's sample init file that we will use later.

# apk add adwaita-icon-theme foot font-dejavu

Running River

Before running River for the first time, copy the sample init file to ~/.config:

install -Dm0755 /usr/share/doc/river/examples/init -t ~/.config/river

Set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and then start River:

river

Troubleshooting

Following are a few notes that are most certainly not related to River whatsoever but rather discovered while running River so I'm tacking them onto the end of this wiki.

Firefox 89.0.1 complains on launch "glxtest: libpci missing", resolved by:

apk add pciutils-libs

Firefox 89.0.1 complains continuously "Unable to load hand2 from the cursor theme", resolved by:

mkdir -p ~/.icons/default ln -s /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursors ~/.icons/default/cursors

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[https://github.com/riverwm/river River] is a dynamic tiling [[Wayland]] compositor. An introduction to River can be found in [https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-intro/ this blog post] by the developer for the 0.1.0 release.
+[https://github.com/riverwm/river River] is a dynamic tiling [[Wayland]] compositor.
-This wiki was written starting from a fresh install using the Alpine 3.14.2 x86_64 extended .iso. The steps begin from the first reboot after running setup-alpine and performing a sys install to disk.
+== Prerequisites ==
+{{:Include:Desktop prerequisites}}
-Many steps below were taken from the [[Sway|wiki entry for installing Sway]].
+* Wayland compositors need raw access to input and output devices, typically mediated by a [[seat manager]]. Either [[seatd]] or [[elogind]] work fine, but installing both leads to conflicts.
+* Installing [[Alpine_setup_scripts#setup-wayland-base|wayland-base]] enables [[elogind]] as [[Seat manager|seat manager]], enables [[Repositories#Community|community repository]] and enables [[eudev]].
 == Installation ==
-Login as root.
+Install River and the documentation:
-Edit the repositories file and uncomment the community and testing repos. For 3.14.2, we need edge/community to get the correct software versions to support River:
-{{Cat|/etc/apk/repositories|
-#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.17/main
-#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.17/community
-http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
-http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community
-http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
-}}
-Install & configure {{Pkg|eudev}}:
-{{Cmd|&#35; apk update
-&#35; setup-devd udev}}
-Then install the mesa gallium drivers:
-{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|mesa-dri-gallium}}}}
+{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|river}} {{Pkg|river-doc}}}}
-The following links contain guides for setting up the video stack.
-* [[Intel Video]]
-* [[Radeon Video]]
-Install River and the documentation:
-{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|river}}}}
+<code>river-doc</code> is required if you want use the example config.
 Install your choice of additional packages:
@@ Line 40: / Line 18: @@
 This list includes icons, fonts, and a terminal emulator named foot which is the default in River's sample init file that we will use later.
-{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|adwaita-icon-theme}} {{Pkg|foot}} {{Pkg|ttf-dejavu}}}}
+{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|adwaita-icon-theme}} {{Pkg|foot}} {{Pkg|font-dejavu}}}}
-Set seatd to start automatically at next boot and also manually start it for this session:
-{{Cmd|# rc-update add {{Pkg|seatd}}
-<nowiki>#</nowiki> rc-service {{Pkg|seatd}} start}}
-Create a new user and update group membership:
-{{Cmd|<nowiki># adduser $USER input
-# adduser $USER seat
-# adduser $USER input
-# adduser $USER video
-</nowiki>}}
-Logout and log back in as the new user.
 == Running River ==
@@ Line 66: / Line 30: @@
 {{Cmd|1=river}}
-[[Category:Desktop]]
+== Troubleshooting ==
-== Notes ==
 Following are a few notes that are most certainly not related to River whatsoever but rather discovered while running River so I'm tacking them onto the end of this wiki.
@@ Line 79: / Line 41: @@
 {{Cmd|mkdir -p ~/.icons/default
-ln -s /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursors .icons/default/cursors}}
+ln -s /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursors ~/.icons/default/cursors}}
+== See also ==
+[https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-intro/ An introduction to River]
+[[Category:Compositor]]
+[[Category:Desktop]]
+[[Category:Wayland]]