LabWC
LabWC is a stacking Wayland compositor. LabWC can serve as a drop-in replacement for the Openbox window manager.
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.
- Setting up Wayland-base enables elogind as seat manager, enables community repository and enables eudev.
Installation
Install labwc:
# apk add labwc labwc-doc # apk add \ # Install optional dependencies: xwayland \ # recommended for compatibility reasons foot \ # default terminal emulator rofi \ # default application launcher (dmenu could be used instead) swaylock \ # lockscreen tool swaybg \ # wallpaper daemon swayidle \ # idle management (DPMS) daemon dbus-x11 \ font-dejavu
Running LabWC
To run labwc from console:
$ dbus-launch labwc
dbus-launch labwc is used because pipewire needs it, it is included in dbus-x11 and you may omit it.
(if you run labwc with seatd-launch, you will need to use $ dbus-launch seatd-launch labwc)
You can also create a simple alias in your shell rc file (e.g. .zshrc), like:
alias labwcinit="dbus-launch seatd-launch labwc"
swaylock needs to be able to read your /etc/shadow file to be able to validate your password
Configuration
LabWC aims to implement the openbox 3.4 specification, so many things working in OpenBox should be compatible.
Moreover, the project provides examples for all the configuration files and some themes, explaining where it must be located each one of them.
For additional information, labwc manpages and wiki can be consulted.