Sway

Whether you like it or not, Wayland is the future, and instantOS is getting a Wayland session. I aim to preserve what I can which makes instantOS special, and use some of the nice things Wayland can do to introduce features which were not possible before.

The Wayland session uses Sway, and has some notable differences from instantWM.

Settings

ins settings is completely compatible with Sway, providing easy access to sorts of basics which allow new users to use Sway without having to learn the dotfile structure first.

You can also use ins settings apply after startup if you want to restore non-persistent settings without running the full autostart helper.

instantASSIST

super+a opens up the newly rewritten instantASSIST. instantASSIST on sway uses sway modes instead of instantmenu and as such is a lot lighter and faster here, at the expense of mouse support. Given that instantASSIST is entirely keyboard driven, this is not a big loss.

Other uses of instantMENU have been replaced by WM/Compositor and even display server agnostic terminal scratchpads.

Fuzzel

Fuzzel is a really nice application launcher and it notable for having a basic form of frecency and being quite a bit faster to start than rofi.

instantMENU

instantMENU runs natively on Wayland through layer-shell as well as on X11. Its modal Wayland path captures keyboard focus before loading its appearance file and fonts, so typing during startup is retained. Fuzzel remains the default launcher, but instantMENU no longer requires XWayland. See the instantMENU documentation for configuration and features.

Status bar

Most wayland status bars are quite a bit heavier than the instantWM status bar, and none offer the same mouse support and interactivity.

Integration with the compositor is also incredibly poor. There is no standardized way to do basically anything. I cannot focus, move, minimize or close windows from the status bar.

This, along with the mouse support are probably the two biggest missing features.

I do not want my status bar to be a web view, I have windows for that.

Right now the default sway bar is being used, with a simple status bar script.