Migrating from i3wm to Sway

i3 will never support Wayland due to a difference between Xorg and Wayland architecture. Sway is a i3 compatible Wayland server implementation.

Long story short - Wayland is a just protocol, which must be implementend in a compositor/window manager, where Xorg is a X11 display server which can run different window managers top of it.

There is no single common Wayland server like Xorg

Motivation

X11 is being quite old and unsafe protocol, and Xorg is the implementation based on multiple extensions and hacks. Almost nobody wants to support it, and all major desktop environments are slowly switching to Wayland .

I am using i3 top of XFCE , sometimes on Gnome on Xorg , because I like to have some features of modern desktop environments, but I don’t like their window managers. This is not doable with Wayland-based window manager, because there is no commong display server. It may be possible when XFCE will add full support for Wayland (starting from XFCE 4.20), but for now I can’t check this.

For now ,I will try switching to my custom desktop environment based on Sway as a Wayland-based window manager.

Migration

Wayland support is currently pretty limited for Nvidia GPUs

  1. Copy ~/.config/i3/config to ~/.config/sway/config
  2. Run sway, read errors, and remove/comment unsupported config commands (like tiling_drag)
  3. Rename restart command to reload, if you’re using bindsym for restarting i3
  4. Install Wayland-compatible login manager (like GDM ), enable it and run Sway session.

Multiple monitors

  1. List names of supported monitors:
swaymsg -t get_outputs
  1. Configure them in the config file, like this:
output DP-1 scale 1
output DP-2 scale 1

For handling windows movement and screen switching you must tune your config a little bit. There is a little incompatibility in output direction names:

bindsym $mod+Shift+o move container to output right, focus output right
bindsym $mod+Shift+p move workspace to output right
bindsym $mod+o focus output right

Keyboard layout

Add input section to the config file, like this:

input * {
    xkb_layout "pl",
    xkb_variant "pl"
}

Authentication in apps

  1. Install polkit-gnome
  2. Add to the Sway config file:
exec --no-startup-id /usr/lib/polkit-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
  1. Restart Sway.

SSH Agent

  1. Install Gnome/Keyring
  2. Enable GCR SSH Agent
systemctl --user enable gcr-ssh-agent.socket
systemctl --user start gcr-ssh-agent.socket

More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Keyring

ROFI

  1. Install rofi-wayland, a fork of Rofi that works in Wayland
  2. In i3 config add -x11 option to the rofi call - this will preserve a compatibility for i3/Xorg

Alternative method - ROFI through Xwayland

  1. Install Xwayland
  2. Wrap rofi in a script, then tune up your config to use it
#!/bin/bash

monitor="$(swaymsg --raw -t get_outputs | jq '.[] | select(.focused) | .name' -r)"
rofi -monitor "$monitor" $@

This wrapper will open x11-based rofi on a focused monitor.

It is recommended to use rofi-wayland fork, though

Autostart

Add/uncomment the line in the config file:

exec --no-startup-id dex --autostart --environment sway

Note that there is no “sway” desktop environment - you’re creating the one. The value provided for --environment will be used to filter out .desktop entries (OnlyShowIn/NotShowIn). See: Desktop Entries

Review your autostart entries in ~/.config/autostart and add OnlyShowIn or NotShowIn if needed.

More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Autostart

Quake terminal (Guake)

  1. Install Xwayland and Guake
  2. Add these lines to your config file:
for_window [instance="guake"] floating enable, move position 0 0
bindsym Control+Grave exec "guake-toggle"

Making screenshots

  1. Install slurp, grim, wl-clipboard and libnotify
  2. Create an executable bash script sway-screenshot somewhere on your PATH
#!/bin/bash

winname=$(swaymsg --raw -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | (.nodes? // empty)[] | select(.focused) | .name')
output=$(xdg-user-dir PICTURES)/$(date +'screenshot_%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.png')

case $1 in
    "window-clipboard")
        grim -g \
            "$(swaymsg --raw -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | (.nodes? // empty)[] | select(.focused) | .rect | "\(.x),\(.y) \(.width)x\(.height)"')" \
            - | wl-copy \
            && notify-send -t 3000 "Screenshot taken" "Screenshot of the $winname window copied to the clipboard"
        ;;
    "window")
        grim -g \
            "$(swaymsg --raw -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | (.nodes? // empty)[] | select(.focused) | .rect | "\(.x),\(.y) \(.width)x\(.height)"')" \
            -o "$output" \
            && notify-send -t 3000 "Screenshot taken" "Screenshot of the $winname window saved to $output"
        ;;
    "area-clipboard")
        (slurp | grim -g - - | wl-copy) \
        && notify-send -t 3000 "Screenshot taken" "Screenshot of the area copied to the clipboard"
        ;;
    "area")
        (slurp | grim -g - -o "$output") \
        && notify-send -t 3000 "Screenshot taken" "Screenshot of the area saved to $output"
        ;;
    "screen"|*)
        grim -o \
            $(swaymsg --raw -t get_outputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.focused) | .name') \
            "$output" \
            && notify-send -t 3000 "Screenshot taken" "Screenshot of the current screen saved to $output"
esac
  1. Configure shortcuts in the config file.
bindsym Print exec "/bin/sway-screenshot area-clipboard"
bindsym Control+Print exec "~/bin/sway-screenshot window-clipboard"
bindsym Shift+Print exec "~/bin/sway-screenshot"
bindsym Shift+Control+Print exec "~/bin/sway-screenshot window"

Volume control

I highly recommend to switch from PulseAudio to PipeWire , and use WirePlumber to control the volume

bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id wpctl set-volume -l 1.0 @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 10%+ && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id wpctl set-volume -l 1.0 @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 10%- && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ toggle && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec --no-startup-id wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SOURCE@ toggle && $refresh_i3status

Backgrounds

Instead of using feh you can setup backgrounds directly for each output:

output DP-1 scale  1 bg ~/.config/i3/wallpaper1 fill
output DP-2 scale  1 bg ~/.config/i3/wallpaper2 fill

Tray / D-BUS Menu

Swaybar has limited support for tray icons. D-Bus menu patches, like RMB menu of nm-applet, aren’t merged for years due to some stability issues. For example, networkManager’s icon will be shown, but you will not be able to interact with it.

Network Manager applet

Because tray icon support is limited, an alternative approach is needed to manage network connections.

For CLI you can use nmcli and wrap it with Sway shortcuts. Also, there is ncurses-based GUI tool nmtui (together with nmtui-connect and nmtui-edit commands).

For example as a workaround, you can open nmtui-connect in a floating window by hitting a keyboard shortcut (using foot terminal here):

# NetworkManager config

for_window [title="nmtui-connect"] floating enable
bindsym $mod+F4 exec foot -T nmtui-connect -f monospace:size=12 -e nmtui-connect

Final notes

Sway with Xwayland should provide an almost comfortable and safe working environment. Not all apps could be compatible with Xwayland, so in case of troubles leave your original i3 config for handling such exceptions by switching to clean Xorg .

Sway cannot be used as a window manager for XFCE or Gnome , so some apps, tool or services may not work. Sway is not a direct replacement for i3 top of desktop environment.

I will update this post if I make any significant changes to my setup.

More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway