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Stable DE to use with Wayland? How (without systemd)?

Based on 3 days of reading, there's 3 options: KDM, Gnome and Enlightenment.

Enlightenment is bearable but Gnome looks like it's designed for a tablet or a phone. My body hair stands up and my spine tigles every time I see that on a PC so I really cannot use Gnome just because of how terrible it looks on a PC IMO.

Therefore KDM... Which has way too much stuff that comes along with, I just need a simple to use stable DE that doesn't disgust me to run VirtualBox GUI, base machine won't be running anything else, not even internet except for an occassional update, it's just a host. I know I should use something like Proxmox but a) I want to reduce any possible attack surface, so there won't be any inter-vm communication whatsoever and therefore needing to log in using a browser seems insecure, and b) I am creating and destroying VMs and I run multiple at the same time, it's a lab setup. I don't have space to keep another monitor handy except for the floor nor do I want to have two keyboards and mice on my small desk. So Virtualbox (or QEMU I guess) will have to do it.

Since I am focusing on security, I don't want any X11 integration (as per recommendations on arch wiki). Seeing as I won't be using anything but a VM GUI (probably QEMU or Virtualbox) I think that it's feasable. I'm not sure but the way I understand it, only GDM runs fully on Wayland, but I'm pretty sure that I can use it with other DEs besides Gnome. The unfortunate part is that I cannot remove the Gnome madness but if there's no alternative, there's no alternative, I will just use another DE with GDM and have a bunch of useless packages.

All I need is a configurable virtualization GUI, clock that shows a callendar when you click on it, usable multiple desktops (so I can switch between the VMs easily and comfortably), and good performance without many bugs for such a simple use-case. Oh yes, and system settings would be good to have, I hate using terminal for anything at all. However it's not necessary as I won't be reconfiguring anything after the initial setup.

With that in mind, what do you recommend?

Unnecessary but people tend to attack people who prefer GUI on Linux forums, and I don't know about the attitudes of Artix forums, but if it's anything like many other Linux communities, read this before responding:

Don't attack me for using GUIs (and fix your attitude if you were going to) and don't try to convince me that it's somehow "better," everyone has preferences. I've been using Linux for years relying mainly on GUI for everything unless there's no other option. I like simple, fast, efficient, and having to remember hundreds of commands, especially involving symbols (or worse - having to look them up or read man pages), then having to type them is the opposite of that for my way of interacting with a PC. Maybe you work in tech, maybe you breathe Linux, I don't. My job isn't tech, I just enjoy playing with it and having a secure privacy-friendly system (hence Wayland). I have many other things in life that I actually need to remember and think about. I love Linux and GUIs on Linux, it worked years ago and it improved a lot over those years, so I'm sticking with my GUIs and hoping that GUI implementation on Linux for simplicity and efficiency will keep improving as Windows, Mac, and any need for terminal fades away. If you prefer terminal, that's you.

Re: Stable DE to use with Wayland? How (without systemd)?

Reply #1 –
What is KDM?

Re: Stable DE to use with Wayland? How (without systemd)?

Reply #2 –
Are you sure you're looking for a "desktop environment"? A DE by definition includes a full set of applications. You describe a pretty minimal set of requirements, which I think you should be able to meet with just a wayland compositor and a few ancillary applications. You don't need a DE.

Since you seem to have ruled out GNOME, Enlightenment and KDE, I think the most stable wayland compositor window managers would be sway and qtile, which are mainly tiling wms, but can be used for window stacking too. (Or maybe those are the kinds of learn-a-bunch-of-commands environments you're trying to avoid?) I used one called river for awhile, which was nice, but not quite feature-complete yet. There's a bunch of other ones that look interesting which I've never tried, such as hyprland and wayfire, the latter offering more eye-candy. But there are quite a few others in development. I've never used it, but grefsen sounds like something that might be suitable.

But if you really do mean "Desktop environment" and not just window manager/compositor, as far as I know, there aren't many to choose from apart from the ones you've already rejected. Arguably liri shell would count.  Probably CInnamon and Enlightenment will be wayland-ready soon, but none of those really seem to be what you're looking for.

Re: Stable DE to use with Wayland? How (without systemd)?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Lancia – on
What is KDM?
Sorry, I meant KDE.

Quote from: frabjous – on
Are you sure you're looking for a "desktop environment"? A DE by definition includes a full set of applications. You describe a pretty minimal set of requirements, which I think you should be able to meet with just a wayland compositor and a few ancillary applications. You don't need a DE.

Since you seem to have ruled out GNOME, Enlightenment and KDE, I think the most stable wayland compositor window managers would be sway and qtile, which are mainly tiling wms, but can be used for window stacking too. I used one called river for awhile, which was nice, but not quite feature-complete yet. There's a bunch of other ones that look interesting which I've never tried, such as hyprland and wayfire, the latter offering more eye-candy. But there are quite a few others in development.

But if you really do mean "Desktop environment" and not just window manager/compositor, as far as I know, there aren't many to choose from apart from the ones you've already rejected. Arguably liri shell would count.  Probably CInnamon and Enlightenment will be wayland-ready soon, but none of those really seem to be what you're looking for.
Thank you for an extensive answer!

You're right, a compositor would work fine for me as long as there is some way to still configure basic things, such as power options, opening GUI applications, etc. If in a pinch, I could configure things such as when the screen turns off (etc) in terminal, I only need to get it done once anyway so I can't be too picky. Thanks for correcting me and explaining the difference in a way that's easy to understand.

I have indeed checked the arch page on compositors. I see that there is a lot of tiling compositors which was a new concept for me. It seems that you don't have much control of where you can put the windows which I understand can be useful to improve the efficiency of workloads such as programming or writing but it will severely hinder my need to put VM windows in their native resolution wherever I want by dragging the windows. Such as making notes in one VM on what I'm doing in the other or retyping terminal text while installing Artix from another VM which takes up my whole screen. I need control over my screen which is why I immediately dropped all tiling compositors.

However I have also discarded all the "simple" looking tiling compositors along with those which require extensive coding-based configuration. I will have gparted and a lot of encrypted disks, possibly the most simple text editor to write something down quickly if my work VM happens to be off for some reason, which also means a file manager.

I did manage to get Weston working pretty easily but it has nothing but a terminal, not even a way to launch applications or edit the taskbar or to add virtual desktops. In my current taskbar I have 10 virtual desktops, clock, network config, sound config, PIA (VPN) GUI popup, and a few applications in the quick launch - gparted, file manager, terminal, browser, VM. Menu also but I very rarely use it, I only use it the first day when I installed Linux fresh to go to all the config options and change everything according to my needs.

That said, I want a taskbar that's relatively similar. I use everything in it and it's a lot quicker than terminal nor does the GUI application leave a terminal window behind when it's launched, I hate that. Besides that, I don't need anything else on it. And I rarely use my desktop, I don't even know what my host's desktop background looks like anymore to be honest. It's a lab host that also contains a personal VM that is looks very different. I will be switching to Wayland on it too but there I will be using something like KDE because I don't hate how it looks like and I need more functionality, such as heavily using file manager, note manager, email client, calculator, etc. So I do need a fully-functioning desktop that doesn't make me wanna throw up or punch a hole in my screen on it.

I do like Lyri shell (judging by the few screenshots on their website) but I could not find a guide on how to install it on arch by trying various keyword combinations in duckduckgo, so I had to drop it.

Wayfire seems to have almost as much bulk as let's say Gnome that I will never use but also seems to have less practical functionality that I described above. At least based on a couple youtube videos I watched.

Having said that, it sounds like before Cinnamon and Enlightenment comes into play, my only options are KDE or Gnome? Enlightenment I could still get from arch repos. If there's no big issues with it, I wouldn't mind it.

After reading your post, I've considered just removing the ugly tabletbar on Gnome and sticking with the toolbar up top to do everything I described. And just make sure to never press the start button to avoid having to clean ramen off my screen.

As far as my understanding based on arch wiki goes however, KDE will still use X11 (which means the whole switch to Wayland is pointless as the system isolation and security won't be improved at all), because you need to use SDDM which runs on X11. However Enlightenment and Gnome can be run on GDM which runs on Wayland and has nothing to do with X11 (which means improved security which is why I'm switching from X11). So to install Enlightenment I would also have to have Gnome installed, which means that Gnome would just be simpler assuming the taskbar can have all that functionality.
 

Re: Stable DE to use with Wayland? How (without systemd)?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: questtix – on
... Wayfire seems to have almost as much bulk as let's say Gnome that I will never use but also seems to have less practical functionality that I described above. At least based on a couple youtube videos I watched.

IMO the Wayland-landscape has evolved and matured a lot in the recent years, after a decade of very sloppy development.
I consider especially wlroots based compositors very stable and mature nowadays. They are the way to go if you want a Wayland based environment without the bloat and inflexibility of a full GNOME-Desktop.

I don't see arise any alternatives to Wayland in the near future : Wayland is for sure the stepstone into the future for the Linux-Desktop that all Distros have to pass anyway. And that for a good reason: As an protocol, its very well thought and designed.

Regarding the Displaymanager and X-Sessions :
For god's sake you don't depend on SDDM or GDM on Artix. There are a lot minimal DM's that work on tty, dont start a xsession or a compositor and are able to login to a Wayland-session : I would recommend to try out emptty or ly as a starting point.

Regarding Wayfire:
I consider Wayfire and Sway  the most actively developed Compositors atm. And Wayfire is for sure not just about eye-candy!
It's highly flexible and configureable, in my case absolutely stable, never have had any issue with it. Because of its modular, plugin-based design it is no problem to turn it to a lean, ressource-friendly compositor like to say - Weston for example. If you want more functionality just activate and configure the corresponding plugins.
And finally: It can be configured via a nice GUI.
1+up for Wayland and Wayfire from the Mægpie!