Warning
Hayward is currently a work-in-progress. The move from i3's tree-of-containers model to wmii's list-of-columns is only partly complete, and there are many show stopper bugs.
Hayward is a hybrid floating/tiling Wayland compositor.
It supports arranging manually windows into columns using the keyboard or mouse.
Hayward exists because the primary developer, a long time user of wmii, was too lazy to learn a new interaction model.
Hayward was created with sway as a starting point and continues to depend on wlroots.
Goals:
- Legible - It should be immediately obvious what state hayward is in.
- Predictable - The effect of a mouse or keyboard operation should be obvious based on current state.
- Spatial - Windows always stay where you put them so that you can rely on spatial memory to find them again.
- Fast - Responding to user input should never take more than a frame. Animations must not block interaction.
- Discoverable - All operations can be performed using either mouse or keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts are consistent and documented.
- Pretty - Hayward aims to be a full-featured (heavy weight) window manager and does not compromise on looks.
- Robust - Shouldn't crash. Best in class multi-output support (windows remember positions)
Non-goals:
- Scripting support - Automatic layout conflicts with legibility, predictability and focus on spatial memory. User scripting brings instability and slow downs.
- Configurability - Options that aren't used by developers won't be adequately maintained.
- Touch screen support - Hayward is a real window manager for real computers.
- World domination - Hayward exists to make its primary developer happy.
Check out this wiki page if you want to build the HEAD of hayward and wlroots for testing or development.
Install dependencies:
- meson *
- wlroots
- wayland
- wayland-protocols *
- pcre2
- json-c
- pango
- cairo
- gdk-pixbuf2 (optional: system tray)
- scdoc (optional: man pages) *
- git (optional: version info) *
* Compile-time dep
Run these commands:
meson build/
ninja -C build/
sudo ninja -C build/ install
On systems without logind nor seatd, you need to suid the hayward binary:
sudo chmod a+s /usr/local/bin/hayward
Hayward will drop root permissions shortly after startup.
Run hayward from a TTY. Some display managers may work but are not supported by
hayward (gdm is known to work fairly well).