Linux Desktop: Sway, Labwc, GUI Apps

You only need a window manager to do your work.

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Linux Desktop: Sway, Labwc, GUI Apps

Preface

You don’t really need a versatile desktop suite, just a window manager can get your job done, less components, less bugs, more efficient.

If you prefer keyboard navigation, then use Sway, if you prefer using mouse to point and click, then then Labwc.

This guide is distro independent, tested on Arch and Fedora.

Regular User

Install xdg-user-dirs package, it’s for managing well known user directories e.g. Desktop, Documents, Downloads etc.

Create regular user:

(root)# useradd -G wheel user1
(root)# passwd user1

wheel is the superuser group for sudo in Arch and Fedora, for Debian, it’s named sudo.

GUI Fonts

Install Noto fonts related packages:

Arch: fontconfig noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji

Fedora: fontconfig default-fonts

The default lookup order for CJK fonts would pick wrong characters in some cases, such as for chinese words “关于” and “复制”, you will notice the mismatch if there were wrong charaters. To fix this, adjust fallback font order by creating /etc/fonts/local.conf with:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "urn:fontconfig:fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono</family>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono CJK SC</family>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono CJK TC</family>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono CJK HK</family>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono CJK JP</family>
        <family>Noto Sans Mono CJK KR</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Noto Sans</family>
        <family>Noto Sans CJK SC</family>
        <family>Noto Sans CJK TC</family>
        <family>Noto Sans CJK HK</family>
        <family>Noto Sans CJK JP</family>
        <family>Noto Sans CJK KR</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Noto Serif</family>
        <family>Noto Serif CJK SC</family>
        <family>Noto Serif CJK TC</family>
        <family>Noto Serif CJK HK</family>
        <family>Noto Serif CJK JP</family>
        <family>Noto Serif CJK KR</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>

Later you could add custom fonts under user home directory ~/.local/share/fonts/, then create ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf with same format to override default fonts. Use fc-cache(1) fc-cache -f -v to rebuild font cache, use fc-list(1) fc-list : family to check whether custom font families are applied correctly.

Jetbrains Mono is prefered as the default monospace font, it’s good for programming and terminal display.

Ref: Font configuration#Fontconfig configuration , Font configuration#Alias

KMSCON

KMSCON is a modern TTY alternative which support CJK fonts, xkb configs, mouse, GPU rendering, etc.

Arch: seatd kmscon
Fedora: seatd kmscon kmscon-freetype

seatd is required for running GUI application after KMSCON, or you will encounter error “libseat no backend was able to open a seat”.

Enable seatd:

(root)# usermod -aG seat user1
(root)# systemctl enable seatd
(root)# systemctl start seatd

Create config file /etc/kmscon/kmscon.conf:

font-size=16
xkb-layouts=us
xkb-options=ctrl:nocaps

Disable built-in getty and enable kmsconvt:

(root)# systemctl disable [email protected]
(root)# systemctl enable [email protected]

Login sessions launched by KMSCON are treated as remote sessions, which means poweroff and reboot commands for regular user need authentication for administritve user, to solve this problem, add polkit rules to bypass this authentication, /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/20-remote-shutdown.rules:

polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
   if ((action.id == "org.freedesktop.login1.power-off" ||
        action.id == "org.freedesktop.login1.power-off-multiple-sessions" ||
        action.id == "org.freedesktop.login1.reboot" ||
        action.id == "org.freedesktop.login1.reboot-multiple-sessions") &&
       subject.isInGroup("wheel")) {
      return polkit.Result.YES;
   }
});

Ref: Polkit#Configuration

To start a GUI application, a wrapper command is required since KMSCON is already using the GPU:

(user)$ kmscon-launch-gui sway

Ref: KMSCON - ArchWiki

Sway Labwc

Install Sway, Labwc and other essential packages:

sway swaylock swaybg labwc wl-clipboard wmenu fuzzel mako wob kanshi grim wev
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

xdg-desktop-portal:
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk : necessary component for e.g. file chooser.
wl-clipboard : necessary for ctrl-c ctrl-v function.
wmenu : menu for launching apps and running commands.
fuzzel : app launcher (desktop entry)
mako : desktop notification.
wob : indicator bar for volume or brightness.
kanshi: dynamic output configuration.
grim screenshot tool for wayland.
wev : detect key name, for configuring keybindings.
sway-contrib : grim helper for partial screenshot.

We won’t discuss their configurations in detail, you can refer to the official documentations. Instead, I will show you some basic ideas about how I use them.

For Sway, since it is keyboard driven and tiling, I bind Super + 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0, Super + q/w/e/r/t/y/u/i/o/p, Super + z/x/c/v/b/n/m to corresponding workspaces, and Super + Shift + ... to move windows into them. Then I use apps in maximum mode, one window per workspace for most of time. In this way, I need to track which workspaces are in use, so I choose built-in swaybar to do this work.

Unfortunately, swaybar is lacking system tray support. But I think it’s not a big problem, you don’t really need it, if you want some apps running in the background, just throw them into a dedicated workspace in the corner. Some apps may keep running in the background when you click the cross button, such as Steam, make sure exit from the main menu; some apps may offer options to disable background running, such as Telegram.

For Labwc, there isn’t much to say, all the actions can be invoked from the right-click context menu. Since it’s mouse driven and floating, single workspace is enough, you just use Alt + Tab to switch between windows.

That’s all. Just keep it simple and clean.

Terminal

I prefer foot and alacritty, both are simple and fast terminal emulators.

GTK Theme

(user)$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme prefer-dark
(user)$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme default

Ref: GTK#Basic theme configuration , GTK 3 settings on Wayland

Qt Theme

IMHO, if you’re not intended to use KDE desktop environment, then avoid choosing KDE replated components, since they are tightly coupled with the KDE framework, lots of dependencies would be installed.

The original trialuser02/qt6ct is archived, although there is a successor trialuser/qt6ct, I decided not dealing with KDE apps anymore. For other independent Qt apps, they usually work well by default, no need tools like qt5ct/qt6ct get involved.

Icon Theme

Install the fallback icon theme hicolor-icon-theme first.

Custom icons can be put under ~/.local/share/icons/ or ~/.icons, for example, create ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/, put your icons into corresponding size directories such as .../hicolor/128x128/apps/.

Ref: Icon Theme Specification.

Set GTK app icon theme:

(user)$ ls /usr/share/icons
(user)$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme Adwaita

papirus-icon-theme is a good third-party icon theme.

Mouse Cursor Theme

The location for mouse cursor themes is same as icons themes, see above section.

Set cursor theme and size for sway in ~/.config/sway/config:

# seat <name> xcursor_theme <theme> [<size>]
seat seat0 xcursor_theme default 24
seat seat0 xcursor_theme breeze_cursors 32

Ref: sway-input(5)

Set cursor theme and size for labwc in ~/.config/labwc/environment:

XCURSOR_THEME=breeze_cursors
XCURSOR_SIZE=32

Ref: labwc-config(5)

File Manager

Nautilus aka GNOME/Files is a good one.

Packages for Arch and Fedora: nautilus ifuse gvfs gvfs-mtp gvfs-gphoto2 gvfs-afc

GVFS is for auto mounting usb drives, mobile devices and trash functionality.

ifuse gvfs-gphoto2 gvfs-afc are for iOS device support. There’s a glitch after pluging in the iOS device, you can only see the virtual filesystem for iOS apps, not for photos. To fix this, first open that virtual filesystem for apps, the URL in the address bar is like afc://<URL>:3, change :3 to :1 and press Enter, now you switch to the virtual filesystem for photos.

Set nautilus as default file manager:

xdg-mime default org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop inode/directory

When you use “Open With” to open file with some app, it will invoke app’s desktop entry, when the app is a command line app, there’s a key-value Terminal=true in its desktop entry file, for example, you want to open a text file with neovim, Nautilus detected this ‘Terminal=true’ and would try to run it in the “default terminal”, then how does this default terminal being determined? I found it from gsettings:

(user)$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec

It returns xdg-terminal-exec, this is the right executable, but this gsettings key-value is not the one which affect “Open With” behavior. I’ve done some experiments, found it seems hard coded, Nautilus always try to invoke xdg-terminal-exec even when I changing this exec value to another executable. Fortunately, xdg-terminal-exec is maintained as a seperated package, we could choose not to install it and write our own for simplicity, just create a script /usr/local/bin/xdg-terminal-exec with:

#!/bin/bash
foot "${@}"
# alacritty -e "${@}"

There’s another missing feature when using Nautilus out of GNOME, which is “open terminal here”, and it can be implemented via Nautilus’s built-in function Custom Scripts, but there’re some inconvenience in this way, you need to right click on the folder, select the script from context menu, which means you need to take this action in the parent folder, which is counter-intuitive for “open terminal here”. Normally we want to do this by right-clicking on the blank inside the target folder, so “Custom Scripts” is not a good choice here, instead, I recommend using “Open With” to implement this function, here’s how:

Create /usr/local/bin/open-terminal-here.sh with:

#!/bin/bash
abspath=$(realpath "${1}")
if [[ -d "${abspath}" ]]; then
    foot -D "${abspath}"
    # alacritty --working-directory "${abspath}"
else
    foot
    # alacritty
fi

Create ~/.local/share/applications/open-terminal-here.desktop with:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Open Terminal Here
Exec=open-terminal-here.sh %F
Icon=foot
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=System;TerminalEmulator;
Keywords=shell;prompt;command;commandline;
MimeType=inode/directory;

Apply change:

(user)$ update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications

You may also want to disable “Recent Files”:

(user)$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.privacy remember-recent-files false

Zip/Unzip

I recommend PeaZip as GUI archive manager.

Install dependency package qt6pas first. Then download peazip tarball and extract to, say ~/apps/peazip, then use ~/apps/peazip/res/share/batch/freedesktop_integration/peazip.desktop as template to create desktop entries under ~/.local/share/applications/:

peazip-extract-newfolder.desktop:

Name=PeaZip Extract Smart
Exec=bash -c '~/apps/peazip/peazip -ext2folder "$@"' peazip %F
Icon=peazip_extract

peazip-add-archive.desktop:

Name=PeaZip Add Archive
Exec=bash -c '~/apps/peazip/peazip -add2archive "$@"' peazip %F
Icon=peazip_add
MimeType=application/octet-stream;

Exec= needs absolute path if provided, but here we did a little trick to avoid hardcoding user home directory, by using bash(1) to expand ~.

There’re more desktop entry examples under peazip/res/share/batch/freedesktop_integration/additional-desktop-files.

Apply change:

(user)$ update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications

Ref: Desktop entries , Registered Categories

Also recommend installing 7zip package for zip/unzip in command line.

Policykit

Tools like Ventoy need polkit to evaluate privilege.

Packages for Arch and Fedora: polkit mate-polkit

The executable needs to be added into autostart script for Sway and Labwc.

Excutable for Arch: /usr/lib/mate-polkit/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1
Excutable for Fedora: /usr/libexec/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1

Input Method

For input method, I use Fcitx5 and RIME. Here is my RIME configs for Wubi86: rime-wubi86s.

Packages for Arch and Fedora: fcitx5 fcitx5-gtk fcitx5-qt fcitx5-configtool fcitx5-rime

Add environment variables to .bashrc, then relogin user:

export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx

The launching command fcitx5 -d -r needs to be added into autostart script for Sway and Labwc.

Ref: Fcitx5 - ArchWiki

Other Apps

Category	Arch	Fedora
Audio Control	pavucontrol	-
PDF	zathura zathura-pdf-poppler	-
Image Viewer	swayimg	-
Video Player	mpv	-
Ebook Reader	KOReader	-
Audiobook Player	-	-
Web Browser	brave-origin, helium, ungoogled-chromium, waterfox	-
Text to QR Code	qrencode	-
QR Code to Text	zbar	zbar-tools

Set default browser:

(user)$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser brave-origin.desktop

Ungoogled Chromium initialization:

Go to chrome://flags, search for #extension-mime-request-handling flag and set it to Always prompt for install, then download and install extension chromium-web-store, without changing the flag ahead, you will encounter error “Package is invalid: CRX_REQUIRED_PROOF_MISSING”. Pin the extension badge in toolbar and clicking it to update extensions.

Another useful flag is #disable-top-sites, which can disable recently viewed sites for the new tab page.

More Apps

For more apps, refer to: Useful add ons for sway.