Bug 456868

Summary:	Use A Different Window Manager With Wayland
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	blake <blake>
Component:	wayland-generic	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	kde
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	5.24.5
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian unstable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description blake@volian.org 2022-07-18 16:42:34 UTC

SUMMARY
I apologize if this is the wrong place for this. I was unaware of where to put it but Kwin seems like a decent place.

I have used KDE with i3 as the WM for quite some time. I have been testing some Wayland Compositor/WM and it seems like I'm not able to replace KWin in the same way. From what I understand this is likely due to the differences between how X11 functions and Wayland.

I've done a fair bit of research through the source, and it seems to me this might be because under X11 Plasma starts Kwin, but due to the way Wayland operations, Kwin starts plasma?

I'm not super privy to the inner workings of KDE, Wayland, and Kwin. I think this feature would be cool to have as I'd like to try to get Hyprland working with it. Also My apologies if there is already a way, I was just unable to find how to do it if it exists.

I'm somewhat comfortable with C++ so I would be willing to help contribute to this feature if it doesn't already exist. I would just need someone to point me in the right direction as I don't have much knowledge on the Source code.

I would also be okay with just a way to script start this configuration. For example make a `start-kde.sh` that will first start the Wayland Compositor and then load the needed components of KDE. I had attempted this but am unable to get this to work smoothly. I'm thinking this method would need layershell, maybe, I am unsure.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Debian Sid

KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.94.0
Qt Version: 5.15.4

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I specifically would like to make Hyprland work with KDE, but considering that it is in such early development Sway may be a better test subject to consider the feature complete.

Comment 1 David Edmundson 2022-07-18 16:45:46 UTC

You can right now  the same way one can replace kwin_x11.

A lot will be broken there are more critical components that are desktop specific on wayland than on X11 as they are not considered part of the core protocol. Things like listing running applications in the taskmanager to name just one aspect of many.  This is not set to change.

Comment 2 blake@volian.org 2022-07-18 17:07:20 UTC

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #1)
> You can right now  the same way one can replace kwin_x11.
> 
> A lot will be broken there are more critical components that are desktop
> specific on wayland than on X11 as they are not considered part of the core
> protocol. Things like listing running applications in the taskmanager to
> name just one aspect of many.  This is not set to change.

Thanks for the quick response. Just to be clear I tried with KDEWM environment variable and it just loads Kwin as normal, but in X11 will load whatever I'd like.

Should I be using the Systemd method on something like the arch wiki? If that's the case I am guessing I'll have to wait for KDE to update in Debian Sid to 5.25 correct?