Linux

67700 readers

193 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

nooter692@lemmy.ml

AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml

MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml

cypherpunks@lemmy.ml

cyclohexane@lemmy.ml

d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz

Why isn't there a compositor agnostic Wayland API for window focusing? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by mawkler@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm working on a window switching tool for Wayland that's kinda like Alt-Tab. However, it seems like there's no compositor agnostic way to do things like:

List all currently open windows
Ask which window is currently focused
Focus a specific window

Therefore, if I want my tool to support multiple compositors, I have to re-implement this logic for each compositor.

Is the motivation security through program isolation? That doesn't quite make sense to me since programs still can do the above things, they just have to do it compositor specifically: hyprctl clients on Hyprland, niri msg windows for Niri, etc. Also, you could just have a Wayland API that requires elevated privileges for doing these things, which the user would have to opt-in to for a specific program.

I feel like this design of Wayland causes a lot of fragmentation. There are a lot of tools that are for example Hyprland-only.

Could you please enlighten me on why Wayland has this design?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Chewt@beehaw.org 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Best option right now are to use the following protocol extensions

https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-activation-v1 this extension covers your setting focus needs, but getting a list of other wayland clients is a bit trickier.

https://wayland.app/protocols/ext-foreign-toplevel-list-v1 this extension can list clients in theory, but its missing support for both gnome and kde.

Some of the unstable extensions have wide adoption, so perhaps take a look at each of them to see if they provide the functionality you want. Good luck!

Edit: was curious and did some more digging. KDE has their own protocol extension for this https://wayland.app/protocols/kde-plasma-window-management

As for gnome, I couldn’t find anything that seemed suitable, other than writing a gnome extension specifically to support this. I imagine that doesn’t fit within your vision for your project though.

Anyway, I had fun looking into this. Once again good luck!