River: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:38, 9 January 2025

River is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor.

Installation

Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers, errors are likely to occur when starting your desktop.
A non-root user account.
The community repository must be enabled.
Set up eudev.
Install and enable D-Bus. Without D-Bus, icons and keyboard shortcuts may be missing.

Install River and the documentation:

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

Set up eudev

Setting up eudev as device manager on desktop systems is recommended in Alpine Linux. Without a fully functional device manager, users will not be able to connect to input devices. The alpine-conf package provides setup-devd script to easily install and setup device managers.

To set up eudev, issue the command:

# setup-devd udev

Install Graphics Drivers

Install graphics driver for your video hardware. Without proper driver, River will fail to start.

Setup up a seat manager

Wayland compositors need raw access to input and output devices. This is mediated by a seat manager.

Configure either seatd or elogind as both are supported. However using both may lead to conflicts. Install and configure seatd to start automatically.

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.
-Many steps below were taken from the [[Sway|wiki entry for installing Sway]].
 == Installation ==
-Login as root.
+{{:Include:Desktop prerequisites}}
-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
-}}
-{{:Include:Setup_Device_Manager}}
-Then install the mesa gallium drivers:
-{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|mesa-dri-gallium}}}}
-The following links contain guides for setting up the video stack.
-* [[Intel Video]]
-* [[Radeon Video]]
 Install River and the documentation:
@@ Line 41: / Line 17: @@
 {{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|adwaita-icon-theme}} {{Pkg|foot}} {{Pkg|font-dejavu}}}}
+=== Set up eudev ===
+{{:Include:Setup_Device_Manager}}
+=== Install Graphics Drivers ===
+Install [[graphics driver]] for your video hardware. Without proper driver, River will fail to start.
+=== Setup up a seat manager ===
+Wayland compositors need raw access to input and output devices. This is mediated by a [[seat manager]].
+Configure either [[seatd]] or [[elogind]] as both are supported. However using both may lead to conflicts.
 [[Seatd|Install and configure seatd to start automatically]].
-Logout and log back in as the new user.
 == Running River ==
@@ Line 55: / Line 41: @@
 {{Cmd|1=river}}
-== Notes ==
+== 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.
@@ Line 67: / Line 53: @@
 {{Cmd|mkdir -p ~/.icons/default
 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]]