This topic shall focus on my experimentations with Niri, a horizontally-scrolling window manager for Wayland.
Test Hardware
BIOS access: F2
Boot menu: F12
Test Conditions
The laptop is our current home theatre pc. It is currently the only available device to test on with a second becoming available later in the coming weeks.
To prevent modifications of the installed os (Debian Gnome), I shall be testing on a live usb.
First Hurdle
Zorin 18 Core on a live usb uses x11 not wayland. Only after installing the os does usage switch to wayland meaning that I need to modify the live version to use wayland.
Proposed Solution
Solution to change session from x11 to wayland worked.
In terminal:
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
The above command opens the file custom.conf using nano.
Find the following line in custom.conf:
WaylandEnable=false
change value to true
Ctrl O, then Enter to save/update the file.
In terminal:
sudo systemctl restart gdm3
Experimenting with persistence on Ventoy so as not to start from scratch every time I work on this project.
So far the experience is fastidiously slow. I need to research further persistence, however, other alternatives that come to mind are:
- loading to Ram (boot parameter:
toram)then dumping the changes back to the usb - or making a smaller Ventoy/persistence file (currently 4 GB)
- or writing a script and host it on GitHub so that on each start-up it pulls the changes with a single command allowing me to continue where I would have left off.
All these until the newer device is finally in hand.
Further research:
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/fully-booting-a-live-usb-to-ram-enabling-disk-removal
Thanks for the idea with niri. The setup seems a bit complicated under Zorin/Ubuntu, but it sounds really interesting. I'm not sure if it will disturb the desktop. On arch limux or LXQT niri seams to be easier to use.
Because I find the idea of windows running side by side interesting, and the gnome extension tiling shell on my virtual machine doesn't display two windows correctly side by side but always overlaps them (which I find really stupid), I took a look at the gnome extension paperwm, which uses the same principle as niri. I like it a lot, and it could be something for permanent use for the small screen area in my virtual machine. The advantage of paperwm is that it can be used with XOrg.
Here are many instructions how to use it:
In Zorin 17 with gnome 43 there are not all functions offered, but in Zorin 18 and gnome 46 it is really good.
On my Zorin VM running on XOrg I could use it together with gnome extension rounded corners enabled and had no problems.