Add Linux:Switching from X11 to Native Wayland

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 New Posts
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+* link:?p=linux:switching-from-x11-to-native-wayland[Linux:Switching from X11 to Native Wayland]
 * link:?p=librem5-tracker-store-high-cpu[Librem 5:tracker-store High CPU]
 * link:?p=Security:Recent_SSH_Brute_Force_Botnet_Attack[Security:Recent SSH Brute Force Botnet Attack]
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 Purism Librem 5
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 Linux
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+* link:?p=linux:switching-from-x11-to-native-wayland[Linux:Switching from X11 to Native Wayland]
 * link:?p=linux:using-zram[Linux:Using ZRam]
 * link:?p=why-linux-is-hard[Why Linux is Hard]
 * link:?p=linux:manual_restart_with_sysrq-trigger[Linux:Manual Restart with sysrq-trigger]
diff --git a/posts/linux:switching-from-x11-to-native-wayland.md b/posts/linux:switching-from-x11-to-native-wayland.md
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+# Linux:Switching from X11 to Native Wayland
+
+I recently switched from using X11 to Wayland when it became available in my
+Linux distro (Crux). This of course means I had to switch from my currently
+window manager, `i3`, to its Wayland equivelant, `Sway`. But while Sway claims
+to be a drop in replacement for i3, that isn't strictly true. Switching to
+Wayland and Sway took a lot more effort than I originally thought. Here is a
+list of things I had to do to get things back to normal for the most part.
+
+
+## Tooling Replacements
+
+### Setting the Wallpaper
+
+When on X11, I used `feh` to set my wallpaper on login. I had a cleverly named
+script called `random_wallpaper.sh` which took one argument, the path to the
+pictures directory from which to randomly select an image. It them set the
+wallpaper with the command `feh --bg-fill "${picture}"`.
+
+This of course no longer works with Wayland, as `feh` does not have that
+support. Fortunately, the Sway window manager provides a program with this
+functionality: `swaybg`. There is a problem with this however. I don't know how
+Wayland works very well, so there is probably a good explanation for this, but
+`swaybg` doesn't set the wallpaper like `feh` does. Feh sets the wallpaper and
+exits. Swaybg sets the wallpaper and stays running, and if you kill it the
+wallpaper becomes unset again. Regardless, this makes _changing_ the wallpaper
+difficult, as you must track down the existing `swaybg` process, kill it, and
+start a new one with a different image.
+
+To do this, I wrote a wrapper script called `swaybg-singleton.sh`. This script
+will set the wallpaper from the provided directory or image, backgrounding the
+swaybg process. It also writes a pidfile however, so subsequent runs know which
+process to kill when setting the wallpaper again. When changing the wallpaper,
+it starts a second swaybg process, which overrides the first on the display,
+and then kills the first (old) process so there is no blip in the wallpaper
+between setting it from old to new. It can be run as many times as needed
+without creating conflicting processes.
+
+
+### Startup Script and Properly Setting GTK Themes
+
+When my computer boots up, the login screen is a tty. I don't use any of those
+fancy login managers like gdm or even lightdm. That said, to start up the GUI,
+I would log in and type `startx` previously. That obviously doesn't work
+anymore (well, if I want to use Wayland at least).
+
+So, I wrote up a wrapper script to handle a few of the init processes, very
+similar to my old `.xinitrc` file. Right now this is called `runsway.sh`, but I
+think it might get renamed to something like `startwl` at some point.
+
+This script contains the following:
+
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=$(mktemp -d /tmp/xdg.XXXXXXX)
+export GTK_BACKEND=wayland
+
+gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Pop-dark'
+gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'Papirus'
+gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Iosevka Aile 12'
+# If you want to set this for the cursor
+#gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme 'Pop'
+
+dbus-run-session sway
+```
+
+
+### Clipboard management
+
+With X11, I used the `xclip` program. With Wayland, there exists an unofficial
+replacement called [wl-clipboard](https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clipboard),
+which provides the commands `wl-copy` and `wl-paste`. They work fairly
+similarly to xclip.
+
+This isn't particularly needed for many folks probably. I used xclip as a means
+to programatically place things in the clipboard, such as text (usernames and
+passwords most often) and images (screenshots).
+
+
+### Watching Videos
+
+With i3, I typically used [mplayer](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/) to watch videos
+on my system or listen to some audio (I typically use `mpd`, `mpc`, and `ncmpc`
+for consistently listening to music). Unfortunately, mplayer does not yet
+support wayland. Also on my system however, I had `ffplay`, which is the video
+player utility that comes with `ffmpeg`. This worked on Wayland, but lacked the
+ability to play multiple videos in sequence without a wrapper script. I did
+some research, and came up with [mpv](https://mpv.io/). This tool works great,
+and even better, it works somewhat like mplayer (because long, long ago it was
+[forked from
+mplayer](https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/FAQ#How_is_mpv_related_to_MPlayer)).
+
+
+### Keyboard Automation
+
+Under X11, I often used `xdotool` to type things automatically. Specifically, I
+used xdotool to type usernames and passwords. However, due to lack of support
+for unicode typing (many of my passwords contain characters across the unicode
+range), I also used `xclip` to copy, and xdotool to paste my passwords
+automatically to sidestep the issue.
+
+The consistently recommended replacement for these two tools are
+[wl-clipboard](https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clipboard) for clipboard
+management and [wtype](https://github.com/atx/wtype) for sending keyboard key
+strokes.
+
+I have had a large amount of trouble trying to get `wtype` to press control+v
+for me and it actually pasting the contents of the clipboard which I set with a
+script with `wl-clipboard`. For some reason it doesnt work across windows (in
+other words, I can't copy in my terminal and paste in my browser). That problem
+aside, I also haven't had any issues with `wtype` typing unicode characters
+yet, so I am just using that for now without using copy/paste between the two
+programs.
+
+
+### Lightweight Terminal
+
+On i3 I used [xterm](https://invisible-island.net/xterm/) for my terminal
+emulator. It's old, but still very well maintained, and very lightweight.
+However, it does not work on Wayland unfortunately. After some research, I
+quickly found `wterm`, which is now an unmaintained project. My distro kindly
+provides the [foot](https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot) terminal, which is also
+very lightweight and works great on wayland. It even copies on highlight much
+like xterm does (one of my favorite features).
+
+### Screenshots
+
+With X11 and i3, I used imagemagick to take screenshots, specifically the
+`import` tool. This of course does not yet work on Wayland, so an alternative
+had to be found.
+
+After some research I found I needed two tools to do what I wanted.
+Imagemagick's `import` tool allowed you to select what part of the screen you
+wanted to screenshot, rather than just always capturing the whole screen. The
+common advice for Wayland is two tools for this.
+
+First we need [slurp](https://github.com/emersion/slurp). This tool doesn't do
+much other than grey out the screen a bit and allow you to select a rectangle
+of it. The output of this operation (to STDOUT) is the screen geometry of the
+selection (eg: `149,117 668x335`). This output is fed into the next tool,
+[grim](https://github.com/emersion/grim). Grim takes the actual screenshot, but
+if geometry is specified, it only does so of that geometry. So, to tie this
+together, my new screenshot command (which is now in my
+[screenshot.sh](/src/nullspoon/bin.git/tree/screenshot.sh) script) looks like
+this:
+
+```
+grim -g "$(slurp -w 4)" "${savepath}/screen.${date}.jpg"
+```
+
+### Viewing Photos
+
+To be clear on this one, this is referring to things like jpgs, pngs, etc. This
+is not referring to photo editing or raw image processing (eg: gimp or
+darktable, respectively, both of which I use though gimp doesn't support
+Wayland until version 2.99.2 or later).
+
+As mentioned in the wallpapers section, I prevously used `feh` to set my
+wallpaper. `Feh` also happens to be a very lightweight image viewer, which I
+used often. Some research quickly brought up a good Wayland replacement:
+[imv](https://github.com/eXeC64/imv).
+
+
+### Viewing PDFs
+
+On X11 and i3, I used [mupdf](https://mupdf.com/) to view and work on PDFs.
+But, as with most of the other tools in this post, mupdf also does not yet work
+on Wayland. After some research, I found
+[zathura](https://pwmt.org/projects/zathura/), which actually uses mupdf to
+render pdfs on Wayland. Zathura works very well and can display much more than
+PDFs even.
+
+
+### Web Browsing
+
+Fortunately here, I didn't need to change the applications I use. For a while
+now I have used two browsers, [Gnome Web
+(Epiphany)](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web) and
+[Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new). Gnome Web supported
+Wayland out of the box and I had to do nothing to start it up on Wayland.
+Firefox was _almost_ that easy. By default, Firefox tries to work on X11, and
+obviously fails on Wayland with this. The common recommendation on the internet
+is to set the environment variable `export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1` which will
+make Firefox try the Wayland protocol (with which it should work fine). After a
+lot more research though, I found a more universal way to set this (not that
+this solution is bad at all). It turns out that Firefox also reads a more
+generic environment variable, `export GTK_BACKEND=wayland`. Setting either of
+those should make Firefox work on Wayland.
+
+
+## Summary
+
+Switching to Wayland was not an easy task for sure. It took me over a week to
+find all of those replacements. But that said, Wayland is definitely lighter
+weight and seems to run much faster on older hardware. I especially appreciate
+that I don't need to run a special compositor in addition to my display manager
+just to get some transparency on windows. So far I like Wayland, but this early
+on I am still unsure if I will stick with it for the longer term. If I run
+into any other gaps in my processes, I'll post how I solved them here.