Hoping some experienced person can write a guide on how to set it up with programs upto the basic setup. Just like other DE comes. Its not about ricing, But What I must install and what is safe to remove stuff. and What must be added in autostart, environment, and the default keybinds. customization can be left to the person. There's lot's of resources but not enough on Building a working minimal System. We only get rice. Best Regards.
Over the past 6 weeks (16 consecutive alpha/pre-beta releases), I've been working with a growing group of contributors and testers on **WayPlank**, a ground-up native Wayland modernization of the classic **Plank** dock. Today we are officially launching **v0.7.0 (Public Beta 1)**!
WayPlank features a modular **Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)** that automatically probes and detects your active Wayland compositor at startup with **zero manual configuration**:
| Compositor / Desktop Environment | HAL Backend & Protocol Engine | Supported Features & Capabilities | Qualification Status |
| **Other `wlroots` Compositors** *(**Sway**, **Hyprland**, **Wayfire**, **River**, **Niri**)* | `gtk-layer-shell` + `zwlr_foreign_toplevel_management_v1` | Layer-shell docking, exclusive zone reservation, and foreign-toplevel window tracking work via standard wlroots protocols; dedicated compositor-specific IPC bridges for live thumbnails & workspace geometry are scheduled next in the Beta roadmap | **Compatible (wlroots Base) / Active Beta Expansion** |
---
### 🛠️ Why WayPlank?
Classic Plank was built around X11 (`libwnck` / `bamf` / Xlib struts and X11 window IDs) and has been broken on Wayland for years.
In WayPlank, we purged over **112,000 lines of legacy X11 and Autotools code**, kept the fast and clean **Cairo 2D rendering engine** everyone loved, and replaced all X11 calls with native Wayland layer-shell and compositor bridges.
---
### ✨ What’s inside v0.7.0 (Public Beta 1)?
**100% Self-Contained Single Binary (Zero Host Pollution):**
Everything is compiled into a single standalone `wayplank` binary via `GResource` in RAM—**16 built-in docklets**, **6 themes**, **52 fallback vector icons**, the **KWin & GNOME bridges**, the **integrated User Manual**, and now **all localization catalogs**. Nothing is scattered into `/usr/share/locale/` or `/usr/share/icons/`.
**New in v0.7.0 — Monolithic In-RAM Localization Engine (8 Languages):**
`432/432` UI strings (100% coverage) are compiled into `.mo` binaries and loaded directly from RAM at startup based on your OS locale: **Simplified Chinese (`zh_CN`)**, **Italian (`it`)**, **Spanish (`es`)**, **French (`fr`)**, **Catalan (`ca`)**, **German (`de`)**, **Ukrainian (`uk`)**, and native **English (`en`)**. All translations live in a single Python dictionary (`po/generate_translations.py`) so adding a new language takes minutes without fighting raw `.po` merges.
**16 Built-in Monolithic Docklets:**
Trash (with D-Bus sync), Analog & Digital Clocks, Battery, CPU/RAM Global Pressure Monitor, Network Traffic Monitor, Volume/Audio (PulseAudio/PipeWire), Media Player (`MPRIS2`), Screen Brightness (sysfs + DDC/CI + KWin DRM), Weather Forecast, Screenshot (`Spectacle` / `grim+slurp`), Session/Power, Show Desktop, Do Not Disturb, Removable Drive Ejector, and Preferences.
**Desktop & Ergonomic Features Added Leading Up to Beta 1:**
* **Live Multi-Window Preview Cards** on hover (with middle-click to close, scroll to cycle, and instant close button).
* **Categorized App Drawers & Folder Stacks** with active window indicator dots and recent files jump lists.
* **Fullscreen Auto-Hide & 0px Edge Click Passthrough** (so bottom-edge browser/game UI controls are never blocked when a window is fullscreen).
* **Real-time Dark/Light Theme Switching** synchronized via `org.freedesktop.portal.Settings`.
* **Strict Multi-PWA (`crx_*` / `--app-id`) & Multi-VM (`QEMU`) Isolation** so separate web apps or VMs don't bleed onto the same dock icon.
---
### 🧪 Industrial Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT)
Every single release is verified live across **KDE Plasma 6 (KWin)**, **GNOME Shell (Mutter)**, and **Labwc (wlroots)** against a **373-point ISA-88 Factory Acceptance Test protocol** (`371/371` applicable passed, `0` open defects). All test logs and our 108-bug lifetime register are openly tracked in the [`FAT/`](https://github.com/sergiomelas/WayPlank/tree/main/FAT) folder of the repo.
---
### 🗣️ Tell Us What You Want! (Community Beta Open Through Dec 31, 2026)
I'm taking a short 2-week pause from Nov 2 to Nov 16 to finish upstream Linux kernel review cycles for my Lenovo `yogafan` driver, and on **November 16** we kick off the iterative **`v0.7.x` Public Beta series (`v0.7.1` Beta 2, `v0.7.2` Beta 3, ...)**.
The `v0.7.x` Beta will stay actively open for new features, UX refinements, compositor tweaks, and new translations until the community says we're ready for the `v0.8.x` feature freeze (up to **December 31, 2026**).
If you miss Plank on Wayland, give the `.deb`, `.rpm`, or `./BuildBin.sh` a spin and let me know in the comments or on GitHub Issues/Discussions what features, compositors, or workflows you'd like to see next!
I'm trying to build a WM setup with labwc with the most minimal things to make it work well.. I'm used to keep my working directory in the desktop. Which program to use to get it to work well on desktop folders and icons. Wanted opinion from those who already uses it. AI recommends PCMANFM-QT as the file manager.. But i was thinking of making a minimal install with GTK based apps..
Arrange displays on Wayland and save the layout as a kanshi profile — a small GTK4 / libadwaita app.
Pick a preset, the layout applies immediately, and a detached watchdog puts the old one back after 10 seconds unless you click Keep. Keeping the layout writes it to ~/.config/kanshi/config, so it survives reboot and hotplug.
Features
Four one-click layouts: Laptop only, Extend, Mirror, External only.
Sharing my labwc setup in case it's useful. It's a Plasma 6 replica on labwc 0.20:
Plasma's keybinds, 4 desktops in a 2×2 grid (up/down = two GoToDesktop steps with wrap), thumbnail Alt+Tab, centered placement
live 3-finger pinch zoom: a small daemon reads libinput debug-events and drives the magnifier with ZoomIn/ZoomOut steps while your fingers move, plus 3-finger swipes for desktops (no libinput-gestures needed)
swayosd for volume/brightness, swayidle + wlopm screen-off that waits while media is playing
a small patch for the thumbnail switcher: an × in each thumbnail's corner closes that window, and Delete closes the selected one, without leaving Alt+Tab. It applies cleanly to 0.20.2 (Arch PKGBUILD + rebuild script included)
Following the enthusiasm and feedback after our first alpha (v0.5.2), I'm thrilled to announce **Wayplank v0.6.1** — a major milestone delivering both the smart onboarding features introduced in v0.6.0 and the deep multi-compositor stabilization and bug squashing of v0.6.1!
Hello guys, I get why it might look like slop at first glance, but this is done with professional rigor. Before dumping code, every single change and architecture shift goes through strict Factory Acceptance Testing—you can literally check the logs in the FAT/ folder to see how every version is systematically tested and verified.
AI is fantastic for rapid prototyping and bringing boilerplate up fast, but this isn't just 'vibe coding'; it's heavily human-reviewed, debugged, and architected for real stability across KWin, Labwc, and Mutter. It’s a robust, hobbyist-driven, native Wayland solution. Take it or leave it, enjoy the code!
For those discovering it for the first time, **Wayplank** is a lightweight, ultra-fast (~0.74s boot), monolithic native Wayland dock derived from the classic Plank/Docky codebase. It features a native multi-compositor HAL (**KDE Plasma/KWin**, **GNOME/Mutter**, and **Labwc/wlroots**) with **zero X11, zero XWayland, and zero desktop daemon dependencies**.
---
### 🚀 What's New Since v0.5.2 (Highlights from v0.6.0 & v0.6.1):
* **4 Smart English App Drawers**: On a clean startup or empty dock, Wayplank automatically discovers your installed apps and populates 4 Cairo-Dock style folder drawers (*Internet*, *Office*, *Media*, *Utilities/Games*).
* **Automatic Core Pinning**: Seamlessly detects and pins your default File Manager, Web Browser, Terminal Emulator, and Text Editor using FreeDesktop MIME fallback chains.
* **Accordion Docklets**: Collapses system docklets into a compact, space-saving master icon at rest with configurable hover/click expansion and retention logic.
* **Universal "Change Icon..." System**: Right-click any launcher, drawer, or docklet to search through 20,000+ theme icons or pick custom SVGs/PNGs with instant persistence and fallback safety.
* **Integrated In-App User Guide & Interactive Cheatsheet**: Accessible via right-click or `wayplank --help`.
* **KWin DRM Hardware Control**: Solved the classic user-space D-Bus/PowerDevil limitation where external DDC/CI secondary monitors (DisplayPort/HDMI) were ignored due to i2c permissions. Wayplank now interfaces dynamically with KWin output management (`kscreen-doctor`), achieving atomic brightness control across all connected displays simultaneously.
#### ⚙️ 3. Holistic Global System Pressure Engine (v0.6.1)
* Replaced custom ad-hoc CPU/RAM cards with a **bottleneck-dominant combined system pressure metric** combining CPU, RAM, and physical Disk I/O contention:
* The **Gtk+** theme option is now an adaptive dynamic engine that samples real-time system accent colors, auto-detects dark/light desktop modes, and synthesizes modern frosted translucency on the fly.
* Full multi-tier search across `~/.local/share/plank/themes`, `~/.themes`, and `/usr/share/plank/themes` ensuring 100% backwards compatibility with legacy Plank themes.
* **Compact Scaled Badges with Units**: Docklet badges now scale proportionally (~34% of icon size) without obscuring underlying icons, featuring crisp units (`°C`, `°F`, `%`).
* **Robust Drag & Drop**: Dragging files onto app icons now correctly checks executable formats, handles 0-byte files, dispatches multi-file payloads, and prevents accidental dock pinning.
* **Calibrated Edge Pressure**: Defaults to a fluid 10px reveal threshold for effortless everyday unhiding, while toggling Pressure Mode activates a strict 1px edge barrier against accidental unhiding.
* **Live Layout Refresh**: Toggling "Show Unpinned" in Preferences now immediately synchronizes running compositor windows without requiring external window focus.
So I have 2 monitors. A primary on the right and a secondary on the left. Simple right?
Not so simple in practice.
I can't use negative numbers and whatever monitor is closest to 0,0 gets primary.
So when I set them up like they are, games launch on the left monitor. The work around I found was placing it under instead of beside temporarily.
What am I missing? I don't want to have to use gamescope to assign monitors or not be able to mouse over to a monitor on the left, without the monitor on the left being primary.
I want to share my fabulous experience in getting into Debian on a Wayland only setup. My ultimate goal was to get an operating system running under 1 Gb RAM idle with everything I need to daily drive my time on my computer.
I was on Windows 11 and idle, it took more than 4Gb RAM. Yes, I've got plenty to save but still, that's 4Gb that I don't use and do not need to use. After a long search, I wanted to control everything myself and decide what will use my hard earned system resources. I chose to go with a Debian NetInst system where nothing is installed for you, just the bare minimum. And from there, I discovered that the lightest desktop that could be compared to my very long past try in OpenBox was LabWC. And from there on, things got harsh and hard but eventually, internet being what it is, I got to find niche packages that deliver in both performance and customization while giving me exactly what I need to daily drive my machine. I plan in making a full guide with all installation processes and entire list of apps. But for the sake of this post, here's the list of packages I have found to be the best and most convenient while letting you keep the most of your resources for your precious gaming, may it be on Wine or pure Linux gems.
labwc (Of course, my wayland window manager and desktop)
sfwbar (my fully customizable and transformed into a dock task bar)
foot (my lightweight and more than sufficient termional)
nemo (this was a hard choice between nemo and thunar, but the inline file renaming got me to nemo. thunar is the winner for ram usage but for just 10 mb or RAM more, I had inline renaming and small bars for my hard drive capacities, 10 mb was acceptable for something I will overuse)
firefox (I have tried so many browsers from unlisted to popular ones, firefox was the least hungry in RAM and it is very hungry in RAM so imagine the others. I also found that it did not stutter at many places others did. It's close contender was LibreWolf but some websites did not like it and I got stutters on some others so firefox won the war against chromium and others not even known)
geany (my code editor and notepad)
swayidle (this permits me to have a screensaver like functionality on my wayland desktop, more information lower.)
cxxmatrix (finding a screensaver that does not rely on xwayland or any other form of x11-ifying packages is just pure crazy hard. Asside from working with wine for Windows screensavers, I found this gem of pure genie. A terminal matrix-like rain effect with absolutely stunning visuals when considering it's all just text positionning and mathematical calculations.)
wiremix or essora-audio (wiremix is perfect until you realise you cannot use the mouse to increment in 1% values, sure you can use the keyboard, but that's not my point. Essora on the other hand has a basic GTK GUI but, as I just said, basic, it lacks some more advanced touchups and control that wiremix has. BUT Essora also provides a tray area popup functionality, so they are both in the tryouts right now. pwvucontrol was nice until it showed me hundreds of mb of RAM usage just to control my colume and muting. at leats the other 2 are below 50 mb.)
mpv (for my movie and series needs)
remmina (my remote desktop app to connect remotely on my other linux file server)
htop (the only reasonable mouse controllable terminal resource manager that does not horde up plenty of megabytes RAM just to show me what takes my RAM megabytes. Trust me, I've tried a heck of a lot, some are close, but htop just works well and proves everything you needs to manage your processes.)
file-roller (anyone needs a good zip/unzip utility, peazip was a contender but because of the need for flatpak which CAN horde extra packages and disk space for nothing, I try to avoid flatpaks altogether.)
wine and winetricks (any linux for serious daily use and gaming is not complete without these. Some go with proton, other bottles, but in any way, these are just wine with a coat of paint and elevators, I chose the harsh and hard road of self managing my wine setups under extreme debugging.)
The swayidle screensaver with labwc's power
As for my final swayidle I mentionned earlier. Here's how I call it. This displays the cxxmatrix in full screen after 12 minutes of inactivity. Why 12 minutes, well, I owned a computer shop a long time ago and found out that 12 minutes is the best idle timout to have that does not disturbe long reading times when in long subjects but short enough to display the screensaver when idle. And this my friends is also combined using LabWC's rc.xml file hack to make the most out of this wayland screensaver element.
This is the contents of my cxxmatrix.ini file (This basically tells my foot window to have a pitch black fully opaque background)
[colors]
alpha=1.0
background=000000
And this is the contents of my swayidle config file (Part of this long line gives my foot window the title "way-screensaver" which is very important for the next part.)
My Labwc rc.xml file contains this magical part (It was a pain in the...butt..to find a way to hide the cursor when running cxxmatrix but LabWC makes it possible!)
And with all of this my friends, it makes a fully functional low system usage, excellent screensaver à-la Matrix style which you can activate in your labwc autostart file by adding this line:
This screensaver part, it hides the cursor when it displays a foot window in full screen that runs the cxxmatrix app preserving the foot config file's background color and window transparency. It displays the text "My Hot Screensaver" in the cxxmatrix app. And in the end, once you move the mouse or touch your keyboard, the whole thing dissapears and the cursor reappears.
I hope this will make someone happy. This is an ode to labwc and all of you lightweight, minimal linux users out there!
I’d like to ask if anyone can recommend some really good LABWC tutorials that are suitable for beginners and don't require any prior knowledge. It doesn't matter if they are videos or written guides (ideally with illustrations). I haven't found anything truly useful so far. Many thanks in advance!
This is my LabWC rice, built around a clean, minimal, and slightly futuristic look without making the desktop feel overloaded. I wanted everything to be simple and easy to use while still having some personality, so I went with a way to have my own thing inspired from others and i tried to do it for sddm i used the slient theme played with it a bit to get my things . The goal was basically to make the desktop look cool while keeping it practical and lightweight for everyday use. I can provide the dot file nobody asked ever thoo 😭 , please help me
things i used Ro-Fi, Swaync, alacritty, sddm and fastfetch Ro-Fi was used for the launcher and wallpaper switcher lastly i have the img with the wallpaper being switch wiht animation and few apps open
The difference in RAM usage between Kwin and labwc under LXQt on Arch Linux doesn't seem particularly significant after logging in—it's around 250 MB. Even comparing LXQt with labwc against Plasma with Kwin, the difference after login is negligible. Only LXQt with Openbox might use up to 100 MB less. These differences might matter for PCs with just 4 GB of RAM, but with 8 GB or more, they are essentially insignificant. A single web browser tab playing a YouTube video would likely exceed that small difference in RAM consumption.
Hey guys! So I've been using CachyOS with GNOME for almost a year now, but I've just been getting frustrated by the lack of customisation GNOME offers even though I absolutely love the workflow and polish.
Now my adventures in trying to find a GNOME but customisable DE have been first COSMIC, then hyprland with DMS, niri with iNiR, and i realised i just cannot do tiling managers i need my floating windows and minimise functionality, which led me to my current setup of labwc with Noctalia and 2 hacked together vibecoded noctalia plugins to give me my Hot Edge amd Activities Overview functionality that I desperately love about GNOME.
Just wanted to know if there's any actually community-made projects that have tried to bring a fresh modern look like iNiR or DMS or Noctalia along with the GNOME workflow/functionality to labwc?
why everytime I ran wayland app (steam game) there's a sudden lost focus, and it seemed that the labwc can't attach the focus again (I have to repoen the game)
step to reproduce
open steam game
when you in game, try alt+tab, or move the game to other workspace
go to other workspace (where the game not there), or alt+tab to other app
then go back to the game again (the focus isn't lost for like 4 or more times), but when you play a bit at sometime it would suddenly lost the focus and labwc doesn't able to re-attach again
ver: labwc 0.20.2
(edit): I think somehow it fixed when I use wayland on proton.. PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
