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.
+== Prerequisites ==
 {{:Include:Desktop prerequisites}}
-The <Code>setup-wayland-base</Code> script installs and enables [[elogind]] as [[Seat manager|seat manager]], enables [[Repositories#Community|community repository]] and enables [[eudev]] automatically as these are required for Wayland to work.
+* 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 ==
@@ Line 17: / Line 19: @@
 {{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]].
 == Running River ==
@@ Line 56: / Line 44: @@
 == See also ==
 [https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-intro/ An introduction to River]