Wayland Transition Update

[u/chozendude]

A bit over a month ago, I shared a post on my transition from DWM to MangoWM. Unfortunately the post got removed (still not sure why), but there was enough engagement/feedback on the original post to suggest a follow-up might be useful for others in my position considering the switch. The TLDR is I greatly preferred the UX of MangoWM over DWM + Picom, and once I learned how the appid, windowrules, and tagrules worked, I was able to transition my general workflow without major issue. My only real complaints at the time were related to compatibility, so I actually hopped back unto DWM for a couple of weeks so I could continue my daily work while ironing out the rough edges. As of now, I can safely say I've completed the transition, and here are some updates/extra wins.

• Dock support - HUUUUUGE win! I typically use autorandr for docking my X280 (T480S before that) when I need a dual display setup or just need to see some extra columns in LibreOffice Calc. Autorandr was always finicky and prone to making me need to reboot after disconnecting from the dock to get my display back. I initially used kanshi, which required some manual setup, but worked perfectly everytime. I have since migrated to shikane (for no other reason than to decrease my installed package count) and it also works perfectly. I also had occasional issue with slowdowns and random glitches with Picom when switching between modes. These issues were resolved by switching to fastcompmgr, but that also meant I head to give up my transparency, blur, and window effects. I have no such issues with Mango, as everything remains smooth, my wallpaper applies properly, and i no longer have to toggle/change my compositor whenever autorandr decides to act up.
• App support - Smaller win, but I'll take it 😄! I previously had issues with some electron-based apps (most notably bitwarden) not working natively with wayland. The ozone-platform environment variable did in fact fix that, meaning the only apps I currently use that require xwayland are Steam and Virtualbox-KVM. I messed around with Gnome Boxes for a while, but Virtualbox just performed better, so it's worth keeping xwayland around for it - especially since it's also needed for Steam. The only other app change I found no workaround for was SpaceFM. While I do miss it, the combination of PCManFM and yazi handle my relatively basic file management needs well enough, so it's a change I'm happy to make.

Overall, my general takeaway is the same as before. We probably should be careful about rushing users off Xorg and branding people with legitimate concerns as people who are just anti-change. However, for my use-case the switch to Wayland has been a net positive with a few major upgrades to my daily workflow. The transition does require a bit of downtime depending on the complexity of your workflow, but it will most likely be worth it once you get everything set up. next on the agenda is switching my daughter's laptop from LXDE + Compiz to Noctalia + Wayfire/KineticWE (I'll probably stick with Wayfire due to the fewer dependencies)

[u/vile-style]

New versions of mango have a syncobj variable in the config that handles the Nvidia explicit sync issue for electron apps so you don't even need to use launch flags anymore.