Decided to try writing a Wayland compositor for fun. Took me a few days to get things going to a video-able state.

Ivan Molodetskikh

Niri 0.1.6 with interactive window resizing, rounded corners, named workspaces, mouse view scrolling, animation custom shaders, screen transition!

Release v0.1.6 · YaLTeR/niri

A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. Contribute to YaLTeR/niri development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

Didn't realize quite how many release notes there would be this time; even had to use an extra level of headings.

#niri #smithay #rust #wayland

Ivan Molodetskikh

Over the past few weeks I've been working on fractional scaling for niri. A simple implementation took about a day, but to do it *properly* I had to refactor the entire layout code to work in floating-point.

The result is well worth it though. Borders, gaps and windows are always physical-pixel aligned, and not restricted to integer logical pixel positions. There's no blur or position-dependent +-1 px jank. Fractional-scale-aware clients remain crisp at any scale.

#niri #smithay

Ivan Molodetskikh

So it turns out that changing PipeWire screencast stream resolution on the fly is actually not that hard! Which is great news because it's required (or at least very desirable) for implementing window screencasting.

Ivan Molodetskikh

Phew, finished the initial implementation of window screencasting in niri! Complete with stream resolution change on window resizing.

Some details are still iffy regarding frame timing and frame callbacks, especially to obscured windows, but it *should* work decently fine for now.

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

Icons are missing in the portal dialog because apparently Shell keeps track of Wayland app ID to .desktop file mapping internally and returns the .desktop file name to the portal for it to get the icon. Which is a bit too much effort for me to replicate for now.

Ivan Molodetskikh

Fixed transparency support. Turns out the BGRA format should've been in a separate pod, rather than as a choice in the same pod. Should've looked at Mutter code sooner as usual..

Ivan Molodetskikh

niri v0.1.7 is out with fractional scaling, window screencasts and many smaller improvements!

Release v0.1.7 · YaLTeR/niri

A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. Contribute to YaLTeR/niri development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

#niri #smithay #wayland #rust

Ivan Molodetskikh

Apparently there's a cool Pango flag that enables subpixel glyph positioning which makes things scale smoother and improves kerning! Thanks Benjamin (the GTK maintainer) for the suggestion

Ivan Molodetskikh

Oops, looks like niri had outstarred PaperWM on GitHub

PaperWM introduced me to (and made me fall in love with) scrollable tiling. It's a solid implementation on top of GNOME, so you get all the benefits of running a stable and well-supported DE (and Xwayland). PaperWM is also a very direct inspiration for many parts of niri!

GitHub - paperwm/PaperWM: Tiled scrollable window management for Gnome Shell

Tiled scrollable window management for Gnome Shell - paperwm/PaperWM

GitHub (github.com)

Ivan Molodetskikh

Implemented the thing where you can toggle the mouse pointer on the screenshot after the fact (by pressing P). Gonna add a help panel here soon to remind you of this.

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

Much better

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

key repeat + scrollable tiling = fun

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

One of the niri users has contributed a gradient interpolation color space setting! Now you can do pretty gradient borders in srgb-linear, oklab and oklch (in all four hue directions).

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

I made a COPR for git builds of niri: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yalter/niri-git

Apparently this is a thing you can do; relatively easily, even. It's fully automatic, triggers on a webhook from GitHub.

Thanks Michael (my4ng) from our Matrix channel for showing me the relevant docs and doing the initial work!

#niri

Ivan Molodetskikh

niri has reached 3000 stars yesterday!

Ivan Molodetskikh

also in an act of severe procrastination i decided to try drawing a diagram of the redraw state machine: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Redraw-Loop

Ivan Molodetskikh

Spent a better part of today, but I've got dmabuf modifier negotiation fully working in my pipewire screencasting code in niri! This happens to finally fix screencasting on NVIDIA GPUs. Still haven't got any GStreamer pipeline working though, maybe needs a pipewire update.

Apparently, my AMD selects a BGRA format modifier that has two planes. Some out of band info I suppose. And on Intel a preferred BGRA modifier has three entire planes!

#niri #pipewire

Ivan Molodetskikh

My Wayland compositor, niri, turns one today! :ablobcatrave:

Here's v0.1.8 with bind key repeat, screenshot UI pointer toggle, gradient color spaces, wlr screencopy v3 and output management, and lots of other improvements: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.8

#niri #smithay #wayland #rust

Ivan Molodetskikh

omg, my friend drew a birthday nirik :blobcataww:

i recorded a demo video for the focus-follows-mouse section to showcase it lol

Ivan Molodetskikh

Several days and a lot of hair pulling later, I *think* I got resize transactions working?? Maybe? Hopefully?

Resize transactions is when all windows that must resize together, resize together, with no mismatching frames in between. For example, all windows in a column must add up to the full screen height.

This requires correct configure acks on the client (looking at you, Blender) and very careful state update delaying and resize throttling on the compositor side.

#niri