The Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04 release is available, providing a pre-configured and ready-to-use desktop based on the Sway tiled composite manager. The distribution is an unofficial edition of Ubuntu 23.04, created with an eye on both experienced GNU/Linux users and newbies who want to try out the tiled window manager environment without the need for lengthy setup. Builds for amd64 and arm64 architectures (Raspberry Pi) have been prepared for download.
The distribution environment is built on the basis of Sway, a composite manager that uses the Wayland protocol and is fully compatible with the i3 tiled window manager, as well as the Waybar panel, the PCManFM-GTK3 file manager, and utilities from the NWG-Shell project, such as the Azote desktop wallpaper manager, full screen nwg-drawer application menu, nwg-wrapper (used to display hotkey tooltips on the desktop), GTK theme customization manager, nwg-look cursor and fonts, and an Autotiling script that automatically arranges open application windows on the screen. manner of dynamic tiled window managers.
The distribution includes both GUI programs such as Firefox, Qutebrowser, Audacious, Transmission, Libreoffice, Pluma and MATE Calc as well as console applications and utilities such as Musikcube music player, MPV video player, Swayimg image viewer, for viewing PDF documents Zathura, Neovim text editor, Ranger file manager and others.
Another feature of the distribution is the complete rejection of the use of the Snap package manager, all programs are delivered in the form of regular deb packages, including the Firefox web browser, which is installed using the official Mozilla Team PPA repository. The distribution installer is based on the Calamares framework.
Major changes:
- Sway updated to version 1.8 with support for the "bindgesture" command to attach actions to touchpad gestures, support for the Wayland xdg-activation-v1 and ext-session-lock-v1 extensions, support for the "disable while trackpointing" setting in the libinput library to control disabling the trackpad during time of using a strain gauge joystick (for example, TrackPoint on ThinkPad laptops).
- Two basic touchpad gestures have been added: three-finger left-right swipe to switch between desktops, and three-finger swipe down to float a window in focus and back.
- A start-sway script has been added that allows you to automatically detect the launch of the environment in virtual machines or on systems with a proprietary NVIDIA driver, applying the necessary environment variables and startup parameters. For example, when an Nvidia driver is detected and NVIDIA DRM Modeset is enabled, the script automatically exports the necessary environment variables and starts Sway with the "--unsupported-gpu" parameter, redirecting the startup log to the systemd log.
- Added a Swayr background process to enhance window management. With its help, the ability to switch between active windows with the Alt + Tab combination, switch between desktops with the Alt + Win combination, and also display a list of all windows on all desktops and monitors with the Win + P combination is implemented.
- Implemented support for changing the monitor color temperature (Night Color) using the wlsunset utility. The color temperature changes automatically depending on the location (the setting can be changed in the configuration file of the Waybar panel, or directly in the startup script).
- The Scratchpad module has been added to the Waybar panel, for quick access to windows moved to the scratchpad (temporary storage of inactive windows).
- Added Swappy utility to interactively edit screenshots before saving to disk or copying to clipboard.
- The Sway Input Configurator has been updated to offer an updated interface for setting the language and keyboard layout, fix some bugs, and ensure compatibility with the latest releases of Sway.
- Configuration files have been refactored, autorun settings have been simplified, problems that arose when using the dark design of applications on GTK have been resolved, window control buttons have been disabled for applications with a HeaderBar title. Applications in the AppImage format that do not have Wayland support have been adjusted (automatic launch using XWayland is provided). Reduced image size. Systemd-oomd (replaced by EarlyOOM), GIMP and Flatpak are excluded from the base distribution.
Source: opennet.ru