newm

Current state

Unfortunately I no longer have time to spend on this project. So, this repo is currently unmaintained. Check out newm-atha!

Idea

newm is a Wayland compositor written with laptops and touchpads in mind. The idea is, instead of placing windows inside the small viewport (that is, the monitor) to arrange them along an arbitrarily large two-dimensional wall (generally without windows overlapping) and focus the compositors job on moving around along this wall efficiently and providing ways to the user to rearrange the wall such that they find the overall layout intuitive.

So, windows are placed on a two-dimensional grid of tiles taking either one by one, one by two, two by one, ... tiles of that grid. The compositor shows a one by one, two by two, ... view of that grid but scales the windows so they are usable on any zoom level (that is, zooming out the compositor actually changes the windows sizes). This makes for example switching between a couple of fullscreen applications very easy - place them in adjacent one by one tiles and have the compositor show a one by one view. And if you need to see them in parallel, zoom out. Then back in, and so on...

The basic commands therefore are navigation (left, right, top, bottom) and zoom-in and -out. These commands can be handled very intuitively on the touchpad (one- and two-finger gestures are reserved for interacting with the apps):

Use three fingers to move around the wall
Use four fingers to zoom out (move them upward) or in (downward)

To be able to arrange the windows in a useful manner, use

Logo (default , unless configured otherwise) + one finger on the touchpad to move windows
Logo (default , unless configured otherwise) + two fingers on the touchpad to change the extent of a window

To get a quick overview of all windows, just hit the Logo (default , unless configured otherwise) key. Additionally with a quick 5-finger swipe a launcher panel can be opened.

These behaviours can (partly) be configured (see below for setup). By default (check default_config.py), the following key bindings (among others) are in place

Logo-hjkl: Move around
Logo-un: Scale
Logo-HJKL: Move windows around
Logo-Ctrl-hjkl: Resize windows
Logo-f: Toggle a fullscreen view of the focused window (possibly resizing it)
...

Roadmap

v0.3 has been merged into master, new features include

Installing

Arch Linux

Install on Arch linux

NixOS

Install via flakes (see also dotfiles-nix):

nix build "github:jbuchermn/newm#newm"
./result/bin/start-newm -d

Note that this probably does not work outside nixOS. To fix OpenGL issues on other linux distros using nix as a (secondary) package manager, see nixGL. Additionally, PAM authentication appears to be broken in this setup.

Installing with pip

pywm is the abstraction layer for and main dependency of newm. If all prerequisites are installed, the command:

pip3 install --user git+https://github.com/jbuchermn/pywm

should suffice.Additionally, unless configured otherwise, newm depends on alacritty for a default terminal emulator.

To install newm:

pip3 install --user git+https://github.com/jbuchermn/newm

Installing newm this way means it cannot be used as a login manager, as it can only be started by your current user (see below)

Starting and tests

Start newm using

start-newm -d

-d is the debug flag and gives more output to $HOME/.cache/newm_log.

Configuration

Setting up the config file and first example

Configuring is handled via Python and read from either $HOME/.config/newm/config.py or (lower precedence) /etc/newm/config.py. Take default_config.py as a basis; details on the possible keys are provided below.

For example, copy (path of default_config.py in the example assumes pip installation)

cd
mkdir -p .config/newm
cp .local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/newm/default_config.py .config/newm/config.py
vim .config/newm/config.py

and adjust, e.g. for a German HiDPI MacBook with a wallpaper placed in the home folder,

import os
from pywm import (
    PYWM_MOD_LOGO,
    PYWM_MOD_ALT
)

def on_startup():
    os.system("waybar &")

def on_reconfigure():
    os.system("notify-send newm \"Reloaded configuration\" &")

bar = {
    'enabled': False,
}

background = {
    'path': os.environ['HOME'] + '/wallpaper.jpg'
}

outputs = [
    { 'name': 'eDP-1', 'scale': 2. }
]

pywm = {
    'xkb_model': "macintosh",
    'xkb_layout': "de,de",
    'xkb_options': "caps:escape",
}

Configuring

The configuration works by evaluating the python config file and extracting the variables which the file exports. So basically you can do whatever you please to provide the configuration values, this is why certain config elements are callbacks. Some elements are hierarchical, to set these use Python dicts - e.g. for x.y:

x = {
    'y': 2.0
}

The configuration can be dynamically updated (apart from a couple of fixed keys) using Layout.update_config (by default bound to Mod+C).

See config for a documentation on all configurable values.

Be aware that functions (as in keybindings, on_startup, ...) are run synchronously in the compositor thread. Blocking there will block the whole system.

Troubleshooting: Touchpad

It is very much encouraged to use evdev, instead of python gestures (see config), however these might not work right from the start. Try:

ls -al /dev/input/event*
evtest

This is a required prerequisite to use the python-side (smoother) gestures. C-side or DBus gestures do not require this.

As a sidenote, this is not necessary for a Wayland compositor in general as the devices can be accessed through systemd-logind or seatd or similar. However the python evdev module does not allow instantiation given a file descriptor (only a path which it then opens itself), so usage of that module would no longer be possible in this case (plus at first sight there is no easy way of getting that file descriptor to the Python side). Also wlroots (libinput in the backend) does not expose touchpads as what they are (touch-down, touch-up, touch-motion for any number of parallel slots), but only as pointers (motion / axis), so gesture detection around libinput-events is not possible as well.

Therefore, we're stuck with the less secure (and a lot easier) way of using the (probably named input) group.

Next steps

Using newm-cmd

newm-cmd provides a way to interact with a running newm instance from command line:

newm-cmd inhibit-idle prevents newm from going into idle states (dimming the screen)
newm-cmd config reloads the configuration
newm-cmd lock locks the screen
newm-cmd open-virtual-output <name> opens a new virtual output (see newm-sidecar)
newm-cmd close-virtual-output <name> close a virtual output
newm-cmd clean removes orphaned states, which can happen, but shouldn't (if you encounter the need for this, please file a bug)
newm-cmd debug prints out some debug info on the current state of views
newm-cmd unlock unlocks the compositor (if explicitly enabled in config) - this is useful in case you have trouble setting up the lock screen.

Using newm for login

This setup depends on greetd. Make sure to install newm as well as pywm and a newm panel in a way in which the greeter-user has access, i.e. either form the AUR, or e.g.:

sudo pip3 install git+https://github.com/jbuchermn/pywm
sudo pip3 install git+https://github.com/jbuchermn/newm

Place configuration in /etc/newm/config.py and check, after logging in as greeter, that start-newm works and shows the login panel (login itself should not work). If it works, set

command = "start-newm"

in /etc/greetd/config.toml.

dumblob / newm