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Xfwl4 - The roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor (alexxcons.github.io)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/xfce@lemmy.world
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We, the Xfce team are excited to share some great news!

After careful consideration, we’ve decided on a meaningful way to use the generous donations from our community: funding longtime Xfce core developer Brian Tarricone to create xfwl4, a brand-new Wayland compositor for Xfce.

This initiative will utilize a significant portion of the project’s donated funds, but we believe it’s an important investment in Xfce’s future.

The goal is, that xfwl4 will offer the same functionality and behavior as xfwm4 does, or as much as possible considering the differences between X11 and Wayland. Using xfwl4 should feel just like using xfwm4 on X11. We even plan to reuse the existing xfwm4 configuration dialogs and xfconf settings to ensure a seamless transition.

Xfwl4 will not be based on the existing xfwm4 code. Instead, it will be written from scratch in rust, using smithay building blocks.

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[–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Additional news articles on the topic:

#Xfce #Wayland

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    [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Very cool news, the bit about the work being funded made me realise I've never actually donated before, rectified that.

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    [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Awesome. Omw to donate, I want xfce to live

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    9 comments in c/linux@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Glad to see Xfce is finally taking the plunge on Wayland. Their message on their Wayland roadmap made it seem like this was still years out before beginning on the compositor, so this was a pleasant surprise.

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    [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    I'm looking forward to trying it. Labwc with xfce panel isn't bad, but I hate that cut & paste and minimize to tray don't work right.

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    [+] 2 points 9 months ago* (3 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    Wayfire is mainly C++, and Labwc is written in C, neither of which seemed to be a desirable language for the dev willing to take on this task. It seems like they really wanted to work with Rust, which left Smithay. It may be more work, but perhaps the dev was willing to take on the extra work if overall it was more enjoyable for them to use make the project in their preferred language.

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  • [+] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    they could have considered cosmic wm. it is mroe heavy than xfce needs, but they would have probably had an easier time.

    Xfce's lightness is sort've a major reason for it to exist, without that it would kinda just become a duplication of effort of the Cinnamon DE, IMHO.

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    • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Does Wayland use more resources than X?

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    [–] -2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Kudos to them for giving wayland a chance, maybe one day it will be possible to implement a decent desktop environment on wayland, but for the time being, small steps.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Interesting... I've had incredibly good luck with hyprland, though I don't know if it qualifies as an entire environment. Even changed my gaming PC to use it since it also supports HDR.

    Did it require a little research? Yeah sure, but I would say it is more than decent.

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