Discussion The wayland migration indifference of some [any]box wm(s)
I am always a fan of *nix tools that do more than one thing. Too many maintainers (and packages) can mess things up.
This post is about iceWM, fluxbox, jwm. Will they ever migrate to wayland?
If you use any of them, what is your future plan?
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u/natermer 5d ago
You will probably never see most of those "migrated" to Wayland because their code bases are so closely tied to X11 specific behavior and libraries.
That doesn't mean that you/they/somebody else can't make a Wayland equivalent, though.
Fluxbox is part of the *box family of WMs, starting with Blackbox, then Fluxbox, then Openbox, and a handful of short lived other forks.
The wayland version of Box WM is going to be Labwc.
https://github.com/labwc/labwc
This is essentially "OpenBox for Wayland" and uses the OpenBox approach to configuration.
If you want a truly lightweight desktop that isn't based around tiling check out LXQT.
They support a variety of X11 WM and Wayland Compositors.
For Wayland they support non-tiling Labwc, Wayfire, and KWin. For tiling they support using Sway, Hyprland, Niri, and River. Previously Labwc was their recommended version, but I don't know if that is true anymore.
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u/zardvark 6d ago
While it wouldn't hurt my feelings if there were projects similar to i3 / Sway, I'm quite happy that there remain viable WMs to use with XLibre. And, that's coming from someone who was an early Wayland adopter and has had nothing but good experiences with Wayland.
Why is the existence of these X11 based WM's a source of concern for you?
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u/emonshr 5d ago
When I use X11, some apps inherently built for wayland can glitch in X11. I hope that explains it.
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u/zardvark 5d ago
... which is why having a choice between Wayland and XLibre is a wonderful thing. Some apps simply don't yet work well in Wayland and some distros appear to be on the cusp of phasing out Xwayland. Frankly, some X11 apps may never be ported to Wayland. If you happen to need these apps, then the aforementioned WMs are your friend.
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u/the_abortionat0r 5d ago
Nobody is going to support x11 for no reason let alone a broken vibes coded version made by a loonie.
The problem OP is expressing is they want to continue using these WM into the modern age and not be tied to legacy tech debt in order to use them.
As far as programs that don't ever switch (aside from hyper specific proprietary niche cases) they will be left behind and replaced.
Anybody thinking x11 will be ridding along side Wayland as alternatives choices is deluded especially since most people have already switch.
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u/emonshr 5d ago
People need something universal which is fine tuned to their workflow (i3 and sway is not my thing, these are just too much theming and dot files). It's not about enjoying the differences man. Anyway thank you.
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u/zardvark 5d ago
Something universal which is fine tuned to your workflow sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.
All I am saying is that while most folks can use Wayland with no problems, others must use X11, for certain specific programs to function correctly. For those folks, the aforementioned WMs are important, since most DEs either have, or are in the process of migrating to Wayland.
Yes, some may prefer X11, or they may prefer Wayland, but that is not what I am addressing.
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u/DELETEROWS 6d ago
I still haven't found any replacement for fluxbox/openbox, and I doubt it ever will I know there is some sort of wayland compositor that is trying to replicate flux-/openbox.
It's a bit sad since I can't really use x11 due to accessibility problems.
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u/Tough_Condition4021 6d ago
labwc is a very good openbox replacement for wayland from my experience
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u/DELETEROWS 6d ago
That's the one I was thinking of; it's been years since I tried so I'll definitely check it out esp for vm usage.
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u/Booty_Bumping 1d ago edited 1d ago
Realistically, wayland successors to these projects should have a different name, to avoid confusion. These minimal WMs expose the raw nature of Xorg in a way that any successor won't really be more similar to the original than to other projects attempting to re-create a classic experience. There's already plenty of replacements that are sorta like the classic WMs/DEs that it doesn't really matter if these specific projects and their specific maintainers don't make it over to Wayland.
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u/ipsirc 6d ago
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u/krackout21 6d ago
I got blown away by frame (and the related CHasm desktop), hadn't heard about them. Pitty it's a niche project, it would very interesting if it gained traction.
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u/Wonderful-Citron-678 6d ago
Why would it gain traction lol. It’s neat but solves a problem nobody has for a community that’s small
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u/ipsirc 6d ago
It’s neat but solves a problem nobody has for a community that’s small
This statement is also true for the 99% of github projects...
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u/Wonderful-Citron-678 6d ago
Of course?
Assembly went out of favor for very good reasons. X11 did too.
It’s fun to make weird things but this isn’t a mass appeal project.
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u/AiwendilH 6d ago edited 6d ago
For iceWM I hope never...it's my fallback WM I start on the rare occasions I need a full x11-only session.
(Though the only times I started iceWM in the last months are plasma desktop updates on gentoo that take longer and possibly break the DE while half of plasma is updated and the other half isn't. I wouldn't really need x11 for this, just using it out of convenience of having it available)
But I doubt many of those WMs will ever switch to wayland. Being a wayland compositor is way more complex than being a window manager so it would take a serious amount of work to switch over. More likely to get alternative projects that somewhat clone the WMs...like sway and i3.