Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3’s features, plus a few extras.
Sway allows you to arrange your application windows logically, rather than spatially. Windows are arranged into a grid by default which maximizes the efficiency of your screen and can be quickly manipulated using only the keyboard.
If you like the r/unixporn group on Reddit, you know that i3-gaps is the favorite ambient to make cool workspaces to post on the Internet. Sway is like i3-gaps, but works as Wayland compositor and gives you a more modern technology to work on.
Like i3, Sway can be extended and manipulated using its Unix domain socket and JSON-based IPC interface from many programming languages. So, with Sway and Linux (openSUSE in this case) you’ll bring back the fun in computing!
Sway on openSUSE. A modern and stable tiling Linux system environment
Sway is available on the OpenBuildService for openSUSE since August 2015 and now the package is updated to the 1.0 release, the first stable release of the compositor.
You can find Sway from openSUSE:Factory project and easily install it on your system.
Sway Version 1.4 is available for direct install, just one-click (here), and open Yast Software Manager.
Sway 1.4 contains 190 changes from 52 contributors. Highlights include:
- Support for VNC via wayvnc. The wlroots RDP backend has been removed.
- Partial support for the MATE panel
- Configurable input latency controls, see
max_render_timeinsway(5)andsway-output(5) - Keyboard grouping (useful for certain niche keyboard designs)
- Support for xdg-shell v6 unstable has been removed
The recommended terminal emulator in the default configuration file is now alacritty.
If you want to install Sway from command line and also some lurking packages:
$ sudo zypper in sway grim mako slurp swayidle swaylock waybar
For more info about the specifically openSUSE Sway packages, please check the jubalh’s blog Sway article.
References and resources
- Sway. A modern tiling Wayland compositor – https://swaywm.org/
- Sway. i3-compatible Wayland compositor GitHub repository – https://github.com/swaywm/sway
- Sway (window manager) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sway_(window_manager)
- Sway on jubalh’s blog – http://blog.iodoru.org/post/2019-04-09-sway/
- Sway on openSUSE on r/swaywm – https://www.reddit.com/r/swaywm/comments/gqfqgc/sway_on_opensuse/
- Sway on openSUSE on r/openSUSE – https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/gtkfw4/sway_on_opensuse/