(repo) Windows Manager confusion + questions

brent

OK,
In Budgie a few months ago I installed BSPWM and it was nice and lite. Got the option to boot up in it. Too much work for me: installation of various parts and writing config (or stealing online) for all the various parts seemed counter-intuitive: all that time making it look like a traditional desktop...when you could just get a traditional desktop.

But I'd like to re-visit a Windows or Tiling manager. Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot. I was looking for Sesame Street and BWSPM was War and Peace...

Question 1: anything in the repo that is less work? Hyprland? i3? I know openbox would already be half-desktop..

Question 2: all this stuff is Wayland. And Budgie installs it in an X11 architecture? And slick greeter gives me the option to boot into it? So Wayland running on top of X11? Or is an installed Budgie package Wayland windows manager actually separate from the Budgie in a different way?

thanks for any info.
can't get this simultaneous X11/Wayland dichotomy to make sense yet

Harvey

Q1. Not really, most WM's require a lot of configuring to be remotely useful which is why I do not use them.

Q2. X11 isn't an architecture, it is a display server. The greeter (login manager) will allow you to choose what DE/WM you run and potentially if its Wayland or X11 if that DE/WM supports both. For Budgie at this stage it will be X11 there is no option to run Wayland.

If the greeter is using X11 or Wayland is an entirely different question and I have no idea but if I had to guess, X11. Its job is just to log you in and pass you to a DE/WM, it doesn't matter.

We use SDDM for Plasma and that login manager is using Wayland, but you can choose to start Plasma using X11 or Wayland.

brent

Harvey Q1. Not really, most WM's require a lot of configuring to be remotely useful which is why I do not use them.

I really like their light-ness maybe another day.

Harvey will allow you to choose what DE/WM you run and potentially if its Wayland or X11 if that DE/WM supports both. For Budgie at this stage it will be X11 there is no option to run Wayland.

greeter kicks you to your desired choice, IF that WM/DE supports both meaning it was all X11 in my case. Thank you.

When Josh pivots it all to Wayland we will cross that bridge. Thanks for the clarification Harvey--

EbonJaeger

LightDM (and by extension, slick-greeter) do indeed run on X11. As Harvey said, it doesn't matter beyond that, because what you log in to is determined by the session file, and whatever that launches. The greeter "just" launches what the session file says to launch, and goes away.

Harvey

Some further clarification:
SDDM has a sddm-wayland-experimental package which I probably switched my system to. So SDDM probably isn't using Wayland by default on Solus yet. As for the DE/WM it passes you to, it will prefer a Wayland session if available making it the default. You could then change it to X11 and it would remember that.