My first few days with Niri

stocc

Sebastian Hello Sebastian, no I haven't. I usually just use the touchpad gestures to move between windows and very occasionally I switch to the Overview and select a window from there. There is a PR for it though, which looks as though the functionality may be added soon: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1704

Sebastian

stocc There is a PR for it though, which looks as though the functionality may be added soon: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1704

I hope that this will get merged soon. I might compile niriswitcher in the meantime.

Niri with quickshell is pretty cool.

I was also following your steps for brightnesscontrol. While that works, I noticed there is also a brightness slider in the quickshell settings (when clicking on volume symbol) and changing brightness via brightnessctl would neither bring up a OSD nor change the slider position in the settings.
So I ran a search for XF86Mon in the quickshell config folder and found
README.md:bindl = , XF86MonBrightnessUp, exec, dms ipc call brightness increment 5 "" README.md:bindl = , XF86MonBrightnessDown, exec, dms ipc call brightness decrement 5 ""
in the README.md.
So I then replaced in niri config.kdl
XF86MonBrightnessUp allow-when-locked=true { spawn "brightnessctl" "set" "+10%"; } XF86MonBrightnessDown allow-when-locked=true { spawn "brightnessctl" "set" "10%-"; }
that I had set earlier with
XF86MonBrightnessUp allow-when-locked=true { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "brightness" "increment" "10" ""; } XF86MonBrightnessDown allow-when-locked=true { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "brightness" "decrement" "10" ""; }
Now using brightness keys also brings up the OSD and changes slider position.
What I liked about brightnessctl though was that it would completely turn off/darken screen, while now that isn't the case.

While volume and mute keys were working, I had to add the following to config.kdl to make play/pause and previous/next work.
XF86AudioPlay allow-when-locked=true { spawn "playerctl" "play-pause"; } XF86AudioNext allow-when-locked=true { spawn "playerctl" "next"; } XF86AudioPrev allow-when-locked=true { spawn "playerctl" "previous"; }

And install gammastep (in repo) to make night light in quickshell menu work.

Also, I had to configure a polkit agent to make for instance authentication work for encfs/pass or installing software via Solus Software Center.
sudo eopkg it mate-polkit and add
spawn-at-startup "/usr/lib64/mate-polkit/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1"
to config.kdl

Remaining issues for me are: clipboard history in quickshell menu not working. Well, I don't use clipboard history anyways, but still, something nor working bothers me. Maybe I just remove clipboard history from panel.

Also, bluetooth settings aren't working.

Edit:
Also remaining issue: lockscreen
When evoking lockscreen with Super+Alt+L, primitive lockscreen (swaylock I believe) locks screen, and can be unlocked.
However, evoking quickshell lockscreen via the quickshell menu locks the screen, with media controls on lockscreen etc. However inserting my password does not unlock the screen and I have to logout and re-login.

Sebastian

stocc I was following your steps. It seems that sudo cp ~/.config/cargo/bin/matugen /usr/local/bin/ must be sudo cp ~/.cargo/bin/matugen /usr/local/bin/

When running quickshell I get
sebi@solus ~ $ quickshell Could not find "default" config directory or shell.qml in any valid config path.

Did you run into this?

stocc

Sebastian I think you need to run quickshell with the -c parameter, pointing to the directory where the shell.qml file is (in my case that was ~/.config/quickshell/dms). If you've installed dms then you should also be able to use 'dms run'.
Thanks for pointing out my error with the matugen copy. I'll correct my notes! 😀

Sebastian

stocc I think you need to run quickshell with the -c parameter, pointing to the directory where the shell.qml file is (in my case that was ~/.config/quickshell/dms)

That did the trick indeed. Thank you.

Sebastian

I also discovered that if you enable dock with autohide in Quickshell/DMS settings, you get a nice "app switcher" on demand, if you move cursor to bottom of screen. Really useful for now and the best it gets without niri app switcher I believe.

Sebastian

In order to make DankMaterialShell's build in lockscreen work, I had to copy
login system-auth system-local-login and system-login from /usr/share/defaults/etc/pam.d/ to /etc/pam.d/

sudo cp /usr/share/defaults/etc/pam.d/login /etc/pam.d/ && sudo cp /usr/share/defaults/etc/pam.d/system-auth /etc/pam.d/ && sudo cp /usr/share/defaults/etc/pam.d/system-local-login /etc/pam.d/ && sudo cp /usr/share/defaults/etc/pam.d/system-login /etc/pam.d/

Sebastian

Also, apparently quickshell needs to be rebuild after last fridays QT update to 6.9.3:

Harvey

Yeah when building your own packages you need to be careful about stuff like that. Some breakages will not be so nice and very rarely explain why like that.

Sebastian

Harvey Is there a way "to know" when something needs to be rebuild? I only saw the message by accident when I started quickshell in terminal while I was refining my niri config.kdl.

Harvey

There isn't really an easy way for the average user to know.

The way I know when building packages in the repo is looking for soname changes like this:

libproc2.so.0 -> libproc2.so.1

https://github.com/getsolus/packages/commit/232987de89647bddaa1a094cc8f589cb583b6de8

That means anything that has that package as a build dependency must be rebuilt.

For Qt6 rebuilds specifically, we have split out some headers to qt6-base-private-devel if those are needed the package is always rebuilt when Qt6 is updated. So I can search a local clone of package recipe repo.

rg "qt6-base-private-devel" -g "package.yml" -l

The above command at time of writing will return 171 packages that I had to rebuild at minimum but as you can see I had to build more than that. https://github.com/getsolus/packages/pull/6391

So you'd have to know exactly what build dependencies are used for every package you build and if you see those packages updated do a safety rebuild. Unless you wanna manually investigate the changes we made.

Sebastian

In order to make DankMaterialShell's build in clipboard history work you need wl-clipboard (in repo) and cliphist (not in repo).
sudo eopkg it wl-clipboard
For cliphist:
Go to https://github.com/sentriz/cliphist/releases/tag/v0.7.0
download v0.7.0-linux-amd64. Rename file to cliphist. Make it executable and move it to /usr/local/bin/

Then, add folowing to niri's config.kdl in spawn-at-startup section after command to launch dms itself:
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "wl-paste --watch cliphist store &"

stocc

Sebastian You're doing an excellent job in getting all the functionality working!

Sebastian

stocc Thank you. I thought we could just share here our setups to make progress together.

Sebastian

stocc You're doing an excellent job in getting all the functionality working!

Also, to be fair, many things I found in DankMaterialShell's readme:
~/.config/quickshell/dms/README.md
And there are still some things to discover for me in this file.

For launching apps, I first used fuzzel:
Mod+D hotkey-overlay-title="Run an Application: fuzzel" { spawn "fuzzel"; }
But now I use DankMaterialShell's launcher:
Mod+D hotkey-overlay-title="Run an Application: fuzzel" { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "spotlight" "toggle"; }

I have set Super+N to show notifications:
Mod+N hotkey-overlay-title="Notification Center" { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "notifications" "toggle"; }

And Super+X to show power-off dialog:
Mod+X hotkey-overlay-title="Power Menu" { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "powermenu" "toggle"; }

I have set Super+A to show overview (in addition to Super+O), just because Super+A is easier to reach:
Mod+A repeat=false { toggle-overview; }

And there even is a very basic text editor intergrated that can slide-out from the side like Budgie's raven:
Mod+M hotkey-overlay-title="Notepad" { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "notepad" "toggle"; }

Edit:
And of course I have set Super+Alt+L to use DankMaterialShell's own lockscreen instead of swaylock:
// Super+Alt+L hotkey-overlay-title="Lock the Screen: swaylock" { spawn "swaylock"; } Super+Alt+L hotkey-overlay-title="Lock Screen" { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "lock" "lock"; }

Sebastian

In order to make niriswitcher work you need:

sudo eopkg it python-gobject gtk4-layer-shell libadwaita
Then install latest niriswitcher release (version 0.7.1 as of this writing this) with:
pipx install --system-site-packages git+https://github.com/isaksamsten/niriswitcher.git@0.7.1

Then make config dir:
mkdir ~/.config/niriswitcher

and create ~/.config/niriswitcher/config.toml
copy there content of example config.toml from https://github.com/isaksamsten/niriswitcher

I changed
separate_workspaces = true to separate_workspaces = false
and
[appearance] icon_size = 128 max_width = 800 min_width = 600 system_theme = "dark" # auto or light
to
[appearance] icon_size = 48 max_width = 1400 min_width = 300 system_theme = "auto" # auto or light

and last but not least
[keys] modifier = "Alt_L"
to
[keys] modifier = "Super"
because I like switching between apps with super+Tab, as I have set it to also in GNOME.

Now, you need to edit niri's config.kdl:
in spawn-at-startup section you need:
spawn-at-startup "~/.local/bin/niriswitcher"

and in shortcut section:
Mod+Tab repeat=false { spawn "~/.local/bin/niriswitcherctl" "show" "--window"; }

re-login and enjoy switching apps with Super+Tab

Sebastian

As I had mentioned earlier, bluetooth was't working as expected. I could not turn it on via clicking on the symbol in menu:

Turns out this is because bluetooth is in soft block mode:
sebi@solus ~ $ rfkill list 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
To change this, you have to run:
rfkill unblock bluetooth

I have added this to config.kdl
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 2; rfkill unblock bluetooth"

I nevertheless like my bluetooth being turned off on startup, so I added:
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 3; bluetoothctl power off"

Like this, bluetooth is turned off at startup, but can be turned on via dms menu.

stocc

Sebastian Mine worked out of the box. I didn't need to make any changes, but I'm glad you were able to work out what your issue was.

Sebastian

Then yesterday I noticed that in niri, there was no notification for Solus updates.
Notifications in genral work, though. I had read that it might be necessary to install notofication daemons like mako or swaylock. But notifications had worked all along, never investigated why. (well, I do have swaylock installed)
I should mention that my base is Solus GNOME and I start niri(session) via GNOME's login manager GDM.

Anyway, to get notification for Solus updates (if notifications work in general), you need to run
solus-update-checker on startup.
I added it to niri's config.kdl:
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 5; solus-update-checker"

My spawn-at-startup section in total now looks like this:

spawn-at-startup "dms" "run"
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "wl-paste --watch cliphist store &"
spawn-at-startup "/usr/lib64/mate-polkit/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1"
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 2; rfkill unblock bluetooth"
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 3; bluetoothctl power off"
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 3; playerctld daemon"
spawn-at-startup "~/.local/bin/niriswitcher"
spawn-at-startup "sh" "-c" "sleep 5; solus-update-checker"

Sebastian

Why this "available-symbo" happens for some notifications is a problem for another day.

Sebastian

stocc Interesting, though I guess there are differences in what works out of the box and what needs some configuration depending on the base system and thus already installed dependencies/configurations.
Is your base system Budgie, Plasma or Xfce?

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