Mark Rabideau – eirenicon llc https://eirenicon.org Working together for success! Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:22:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://i0.wp.com/eirenicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-eirenicon-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Mark Rabideau – eirenicon llc https://eirenicon.org 32 32 61586100 Xorg – Wayland Transition Thoughts… https://eirenicon.org/2023/12/13/xorg-wayland-transition-thoughts/ Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:41:28 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?page_id=3692 Revisions:
Initial Draft: 13 Dec 2023
Revised Draft: 14 Dec 2023

This document is yet another one of those I plan to update periodically. We’ll see how that goes.

Merchants Hotel ~1925 Wayland Iowa
Merchants Hotel ~1925 Wayland Iowa

As has become evident from other recent posts I have made here, I am attempting to ‘tough my way through’ a transition from Xorg to Wayland (not the town in Southeastern Iowa). What I can say, unequivocally, is that there is no single, simple, straightforward transition. This is especially true for those of us who like to run multiple desktop configurations. For those happy to work in a more homogeneous setup such as running gnome, kde, or xfce, the challenges will not be as great as they are for folks who run using dwm (to dwl), openbox (to labwc or waybox), and i3wm (to swaywm) on Debian.

In the future, the following issues will need to be addressed ‘permanently’, in one manner or another. For now however, here are some of Wayland’s problem ‘children’ along with some simple, reasonably safe ‘fixes’ for major problems.

By way of full disclosure, I am working primarily on Debian. There are a host of mainline distros I do NOT work on. Therefore, my observations are incomplete and may miss important information that you, on your environment, need. Please, remember to to search the web for further information…

Luckily, I have found a pretty decent solution for those x11 applications requiring root privileges to perform (read these applications normally need polkit to run). The following applications seem to work well and safely when invoked via terminal using “sudo -E”. The “sudo -E “applications I have currently identified (and use regularly) include:

  • synaptic
  • thunar (as root)
  • nemo (as root)
  • pcmanfm (as root)
  • gparted

Here are a few additional items that my research indicates are currently “less” solvable, perhaps even insoluble absent drastic change.

There is no single Wayland-wide method for addressing the identification of active running applications and their respective Desktop/ Workspace. What that means is that just because you can accomplish this on SwayWM does not mean you can solve the same problem, the same way with labwc or River or hyprland or…. (that’s the bad news). The better news is that there are numerous tools that are able to provide partial solutions, such as the following incomplete list:

  • swaymsg (Sway specific)
  • Waybar (best on Sway)
  • swfbar (best on Sway and hyprland)
  • yatbfw (labwc and others?)

A corollary to the above is that waybar, swfbar, yatbfw do not run offering the same features and in the same manner on different Compositors (Desktops). Some run quite well on one or more compositors others may be all but Compositor specific. The same applies for other tools like swaymsg. It is frustratingly variable. Be advised.

Here are tools/ approaches you can use to identify and then address those on your installation(s). For those without solutions, simply be advised the difficulties ‘may be there’ and could cause trouble.

Obviously, I will never identify all the Wayland/ x.org compatibility difficulties/ problems.

How to determine whether an application is running using Wayland (native) or via ‘compatibility mode’ using xwayland, etc.

Background information (some recent articles comparing x11 and Wayland)

The links below are not overly ‘shrill’. Be careful because some information on this topic can become reminiscent of systemd vitriol.

Window Decorations (Borders)

Many (most?) compositors attempt to tell windows not to draw their own decorations and this works for many (most?) applications, but the protocols for doing so are not yet standard or universally supported. As you would expect some windows still draw their own. For now, there’s probably nothing you can do about this ‘problem’, but (for you optimists out there) this is likely to improve in the future, or maybe not.

Lastly, it is worth noting that not all Wayland Compositors (Desktop Systems) operate equally well on all distros. If you are an intrepid Wayland adventurer, the best distros (those offering the broadest number of Wayland Compositors- Desktops) seem to be Arch and Void. Debian/ Ubuntu offer among the fewest.

Compositor (Desktop) Dev-teams

The stability, consistency, and robustness of Compositor development/ support teams is hugely ‘variable’. Be advised that many ‘other’ teams either have evaporated into the ‘ether’ or are operating on a shoe-string. Still other teams are robust (even ‘huge’) and appear to be relatively ‘resource rich’.

Going forward into the future, be prepared for the Wayland world’s many shifts, successes, and failures .

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!

Image Credits:

Xorg: User:Sven, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
Wayland: Kristian Høgsberg, Intel Corporation, Benjamin Franzke, Collabora, Ltd., Red Hat, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

]]> 3692 labwc- A journal, a tutorial? https://eirenicon.org/2023/12/08/labwc-a-tutorial/ Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:58:07 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3640 8 Dec 2023- Original Rough DRAFT
9 Dec 2023- Revision 1 of the Draft
11 Dec 2023 – Revision 2 of the Draft

This is a work-in-progress (updates will occur, as I remember to write them). Be AWARE, labwc is fragile. It breaks quite seriously and without much warning and few error detection assists (that I can find or understand) are provided. Use it at your own Risk.

None of this is to say that you should avoid trying to make labwc function, please do; such is the opensource community. Without us, no one will know what ‘needs doing’. By all means jump in and help find the problem areas. Now… on with the show.

There are two pretty ‘straight forward’ method for installing labwc on Debian (sid). I am only testing on sid; thus, you may need to run the meson install method if you are on Debian Stable or some other distro altogether.. Here is a link to the labwc Github page for Build & Install instructions/ guidance. If you are using Debian Sid, here’s a link to the Debian labwc package page. I personally use the following from my terminal (foot) on my SwayWM desktop.

sudo apt install labwc

Next you should make certain that you have the appropriate labwc config files. These seem to mirror those from Openbox. Instructions on how-to get these setup are available from Github. Further clarification and explanation is available on the “Getting Started” page. Reading the aforementioned page provides invaluable insight(s).

Either of the Debian based options work quite smoothly. After you have the Config setup (in basic form) I recommend you reboot. Once your reboot is complete and you login, you even get something akin to a Desktop. Pretty skinny, granted. But it is a good point to build from.

Next, you can begin playing with your favorite Openbox config and try deploying them on labwc. I do this in a step-wise fashion. Below is a current screenshot.

Themes especially for stacking window manager style Desktops are nice to have. Here is a recommended collection. To review and learn about all labwc theme options, see labwc-theme(5) or the themerc example file. Caveat: I have NOT tried using all these themes.

Now for a treasure trove of pre-built themes:

No matter the theme(s) you choose, place them in ~/.local/share/themes/

On Github, johanmalm provides a listing of suggested apps for use with labwc. I have annotated his list with the tools I use (my choice of tool(s) appears in parens.):

Additional tools I use include:

  • file manager: thunar (for root functions I use sudo -E thunar )
  • email: (Thunderbird)
  • software: ( I use synaptic called from terminal via sudo -E synaptic or nala/ apt used normally)
  • browser(s): (Firefox, Microsoft-Edge-Beta)
  • terminal: ( foot )
  • wallpaper changer: ( setwall )
  • I have changed from wofi to a rofi-wayland fork (which runs on both x11 and Wayland), “almost” accurately. Where it has difficulty is in showing all active Wayland/ Xwayland running applications under to command rofi -show window. It is better than nothing (since wofi doesn’t work at this task either), but not by much.

Sad (troublesome) items

Here are some features that are not yet ready and these omissions may make your move from Openbox disappointing. They make mine difficult.

  • Debugging Problems. I find it very difficult to debug errors. When errors occur they are often catastrophic and debug tools are not obvious, to me.
  • Workspaces. They simply are not handled in the same manner as they are on Sway nor do they function like they did using ewmh on Openbox. Here’s the thread highlighting the issue. More posts are available on the web, should you need them. I have found what might eventually be a useful tool, sfwbar. Perhaps, you can make it work better than I am able.
  • Keybinding tools sxhkd/swhkd. Neither seems to be described anywhere I have looked. Thus defining keybindings is a unique and time consuming event, manually needing to built and codified in rc.xml.
  • It is probably worth noting that keybindings are, also, different from Openbox, albeit only slightly.

A word of Caution (because I have now been caught twice unprepared): Be extremely cautious of any updates you might make. Be absolutely certain you are able to roll back to a previous state. Even little (tiny) mistakes can be a cause for a complete rebuild.

More to come as I progress and gather my notes…

Contact me directly with ideas, questions, comments.

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!
]]> 3640 Wayland, an update https://eirenicon.org/2023/12/08/wayland-an-update/ Fri, 08 Dec 2023 14:07:31 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3630 For years now, Wayland has been a slow(?), erratic work. Even today, it continues to be a work in progress.

Given, I have been planning, researching and attempting to implement a viable running version of Wayland (mostly SwayWM). Through my work I have begun testing using this session environment regularly on Debian Sid (Unstable). After all that, I think it is about time I bring my findings and thoughts to this Knowledge-base.

I will attempt to keep this document updated, and revise it as I find notable new insights.

Based on my recent research, I have encountered the following articles. These articles each posit interesting thoughts.

There are, of course, many articles deriding Wayland, as well. Below is a notable rant. I personally find this type of post unhelpful as it is obviously inaccurate, shrill, and sounds too much like political propaganda. Nonetheless, it is worth a peak if only to see the amount of emotion focused on stamping out change. Yes, even in the tech-world we still have Luddites.

As part of my evaluation efforts, I have posted a number of progress report related articles and forum updates. Here are several:

In addition to my work and progress with SwayWM (see the above SwayWM tutorial link for details), I have begun an attempt to install labwc on my Debian Sid install. I will provide a complete tutorial on that work, too; just not now. In the meantime, here’s a brief note and image of my labwc progress.

I have been trying to get labwc 0.6.6 (most current release) to build a version of labwc (Openbox style Desktop). Below is a screenshot, proof-of-life image. The bottom line seems to be that it looks like it ‘can be done’. There are some (many?) work-arounds needed to make it easier to use and appropriately Wayland; but, with an appropriate amount of hard work it seems viable. (If you stare too closely at the desktop screenshot, you’ll see what I mean.)

As mentioned above, there will be more to come, including a collection of what I view to be quality Wayland links.

If you have insights on your Wayland journey(s) to share with me, please use the contact page on this site to let me know.

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!
]]> 3630 Memory Use (RAM)- A Brief (Biased?) Comparison https://eirenicon.org/2023/07/23/memory-use-ram-a-brief-biased-comparison/ Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:23:01 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3517 I have recently changed my primary laptop’s OS to run Debian Trixie/Sid (BearDog Distro) with Liquorix 6.4. I, also, have added some new Window Managers (WMs) to my single-user space including one non-x11 based Wayland WM- SwayWM.

Given the amount a of change to my environment plus requests from my readers, I have decided to run a memory test to get a rough idea of memory consumption (use).

Be aware this is not a scientific or thorough, rigorous test. It merely provides me with an indication of my various environments.

Other items of interest, perhaps. Aside from Openbox which I have modified to run as a simple manual tiler, all of my WMs are native tilers. Each WM runs the exact same suite of applications on x11; SwayWM runs analogous functions (not applications) on Wayland. Not all my application and application functions are capable of being run on Wayland.

NB.: Dropbox is shown because it runs at login and is a large contaminant in terms of memory utilization on each window manager (setup).  If you do NOT use Dropbox you should expect your idle memory use to be lower than my total by some 600MB.

Given the above robust list of caveats, here are the results of my simple test:

Window          RAM        DropBox
Manager         (MB)         (MB)

BSPWM           1597           587             x11
DKWM             1596           594            x11
DWM               1650           593            x11
HLWM             1629          591             x11
i3WM               1639           586            x11
Openbox         1731            625            x11
SwayWM         1656           568            Wayland

Here are the particulars of my laptop (under test), the following command (inxi -Fxz in terminal) was run on my i3WM.:

System:
Kernel: 6.4.4-1-liquorix-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.3.0
Desktop: i3 v: 4.22 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 16 5620 v: N/A
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0R665T v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
v: 1.7.0 date: 08/15/2022
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 55.8 Wh (100.0%) condition: 55.8/54.0 Wh (103.2%)
volts: 17.0 min: 15.0 model: ATL DELL CFD7224 status: full
CPU:
Info: 10-core (2-mt/8-st) model: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U bits: 64
type: MST AMCP arch: Alder Lake rev: 4 cache: L1: 928 KiB L2: 6.5 MiB
L3: 12 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2287 high: 2500 min/max: 400/2500 cores: 1: 1210 2: 2500
3: 1240 4: 2500 5: 2500 6: 2500 7: 2500 8: 2500 9: 2500 10: 2500 11: 2500
12: 2500 bogomips: 59904
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] vendor: Dell
driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-12.2 bus-ID: 0000:00:02.0
Device-2: Microdia Integrated_Webcam_FHD driver: uvcvideo type: USB
bus-ID: 3-6:4
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9 driver: X:
loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915
resolution: 1920×1200~60Hz
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.1.3-1 renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL GT2)
direct-render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio vendor: Dell
driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3
API: ALSA v: k6.4.4-1-liquorix-amd64 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.74 status: active
Network:
Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel
bus-ID: 0000:00:14.3
IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB bus-ID: 3-10:5
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter>
RAID:
Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
v: 0.6 bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 702.7 GiB (75.4%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Kingston model: SNVS1000G size: 931.51 GiB
temp: 38.9 C
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 915.53 GiB used: 702.7 GiB (76.8%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 428 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
Src: /sys System Temperatures: cpu: 39.0 C mobo: 40.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Power: 12v: N/A 5v: 5 3.3v: N/A vbat: N/A
Info:
Processes: 268 Uptime: 45m Memory: total: N/A available: 23.17 GiB
used: 2.67 GiB (11.5%) Init: systemd target: graphical (5) Compilers:
gcc: 13.1.0 Packages: 2285 Shell: Zsh v: 5.9 inxi: 3.3.28

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!

]]> 3517 Radio Telescope Project https://eirenicon.org/2023/06/06/radio-telescope-project/ Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:34:31 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3440 Because I am prone to forgetting and losing things, I thought I’d build a small journal of materials on the creation of a home radio telescope.

It is my hope to embark on this project with my oldest grandson (10) and perhaps his younger brother (6), as well.  It would be wonderful (an opa’s wish) if a project like this assists in encouraging the boys’ enthusiasm and inquisitiveness.

Here are a couple of ‘borrowed’ images to help describe the project (visually).

“More” like this: … less like this:

You just never know, when or if, you will get to hear’ from non-earth bound aliens. And, you’ll never hear if you don’t try.

To begin, here are some online materials I have come across. I will update these lists as I learn/ discover more.

Informational Material/ Background:

Instructions:

Materials List:

More later…

]]> 3440 A brief journey of discovery: Results. https://eirenicon.org/2023/04/16/a-brief-journey-of-discovery-results/ Sun, 16 Apr 2023 14:41:54 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3355 I have been on a brief journey hunting for ideas; Exactly what I was seeking is hard to say.

A classroom with children sitting at long tables and a teacher standing with a book in her hand. Lithograph by J.B. Sonde. Work ID: euzzpp77.

However in the process of my wanderings, I stumbled across a few new (to me) items. Perhaps they will be of interest to you, as well.

  • Hugo: It claims to be: “The world’s fastest framework for building websites”
  • Bear Blog: (an interesting low-format, bare bones blogging platform)
  • TinyLetter: (owned by Mailchimp) Their claim to fame? “TinyLetter offers a clean and straightforward writing experience for people who aren’t looking for advanced reporting or features for businesses. Use our editor or send directly from your own email client. And all for free.”
  • WriteFreely: (Minimalist, federated, self-hosted blogging platform made by Write.as)

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!

]]> 3355 Get respect from your QT apps…. https://eirenicon.org/2022/12/17/get-respect-from-your-qt-apps/ Sat, 17 Dec 2022 14:08:39 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3278 If, like me, you have been irritated by QT apps rarely respecting dark themes (or any GTK themes), here is a link that will allow you better alignment of your QT apps (like the MX Tools suite, calibre, Virtualbox) with your dark GTK theme. I know the article says it’s for VirtualBox (and it is) but it also fixes all your other QT apps at the same time. :number1:

I just wish it were perfect, but remember: “better is never to be confused with good….” :eek:

Here’s the link…

]]> 3278 08 May Ukraine War News https://eirenicon.org/2022/05/08/08-may-ukraine-war-news/ Sun, 08 May 2022 11:17:26 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3181

New articles will appear here until 1600 MDT. After that time articles will appear on “tomorrow’s” post.

]]> 3181 07 May Ukraine War News https://eirenicon.org/2022/05/07/07-may-news/ Sat, 07 May 2022 11:10:57 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3170

New articles will appear here until 1600 MDT. After that time articles will appear on “tomorrow’s” post.

]]> 3170 06 May Ukraine War News https://eirenicon.org/2022/05/06/06-may-news/ Fri, 06 May 2022 11:32:42 +0000 https://eirenicon.org/?p=3164

New articles will appear here until 1600 MDT. After that time articles will appear on the “next day’s” page.

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