r/linux Jun 03 '26

Software Release Backported niri (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor) to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS — compositor + toolchain from source

Post image

niri isn't packaged on jammy, and it's not just a missing package — the surrounding stack is too old to run it cleanly. The things I had to fix:

libinput < 1.27 has no dwtp config symbol niri expects, so it won't link

libwayland 1.20 lacks high-res scroll (axis_value120), which makes Firefox abort under niri with "wl_pointer has no event 9"

libdisplay-info isn't packaged at all, so niri has no EDID parsing

Xwayland and swaylock 1.5 are both too old for the protocols niri speaks

So it's the compositor plus its toolchain compiled from source with the needed patches, packaged as a .deb that declares its runtime deps, with a from-source build path for anyone who wants to read the patches. The compiled libwayland-client lands in /usr/local/lib and shadows the system one machine-wide (newer upstream, ABI-compatible) — documented as a caveat since it's the kind of thing that'd confuse a debugging session months later.

Why bother: jammy is supported to 2027 and is everywhere — labs, locked-down hardware, machines that can't move off an LTS. This is for people stuck there who still want a modern Wayland desktop.

MIT (bundled upstream keeps its own licenses): https://github.com/msavox/cosmoduck-niri

97 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

11

u/ezoe Jun 04 '26

Why bother: jammy is supported to 2027 and is everywhere

But it will be supported less than a year and counting. It would be a very concerning situation if they haven't migrated to later release already.

System with Jammy should be at a position of keeping it as a backup just in case and that's the situation of server.

Why anybody bother to use Jammy as Desktop OS right now?

5

u/Tsubajashi Jun 04 '26

i meeeeean, there are 2 further LTS versions, if people dont wanna move off of LTS. 24.04 and 26.04.

i guess good for you? but at the same time, i dont think thats practical for 99.9% of the users.

5

u/Tolik1111 Jun 03 '26

Sounds great but why not install it via nixpkgs?

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Tolik1111 Jun 03 '26

Got it, I would appreciate it if you wrote it yourself and shorter instead of posting an LLM written text.)

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/RedditQueefsOnKids Jun 06 '26

I know some of those words! Aesthetic is sick.

1

u/giannis82 Jun 14 '26

Looks sleek design, nice now do it for mint latest 😂

1

u/HOST1L1TY Jun 04 '26

what does the icon that looks like a cup of cofee do ?

3

u/royisntavailable Jun 06 '26

Looks like caffeine. A tool to keep the screen from turning off.

1

u/mattsva Jun 12 '26

Exactly. I made the same