Changes/Fedora Sway Spin

Fedora Sway Spin

Summary

Create an official Fedora Spin shipping the up-and-coming Sway window manager. Following the footsteps of the recently shipped i3 spin.

Owner

• Name: Aleksei Bavshin, Anthony Rabbito, Jiří (Jirka) Konečný, Fabio Alessandro Locati as well as the rest of the sway-sig
  • Primary contact person: Fabio Alessandro Locati
• Email: fale@fedoraproject.org

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 38
• Last updated: 2023-04-03
• [devel thread https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/UWGGI736YFHCNC2RTN4SZUHHH2TMW46H/]
• Fedora Council ticket: #424
• FESCo issue: #2914
• Tracker bug: #2155081
• Release notes tracker: #939

• RelEng ticket: #11152
• Kickstart: #924
• comps: #781
• ostree: #324
• Fedora design: #7
• Fedora websites: spin pre, spin release, sericea docs
• Fedora Infra: 1344

Detailed Description

Fedora Window Manager spins greatly benefit users who enjoy a minimal desktop. Sway is beginning to become well polished and is continuing to gain traction from the community. Fedora particularly has a first-class Wayland experience making an even more compelling use case for having a Wayland window manager spin.

For those reasons, we propose to create a Sway spin and an ostree one, called Sericea.

The goal of both spins would be to create a turnkey environment to enjoy Fedora and Sway functionally and beautifully. To achieve this, we plan to put in those spins the minimum amount of packages to accomplish the stated goal. Aleksei Bavshin has begun an RFC for the sway source package that would extend it by creating three sub-packages with Fedora's default Sway configuration.

Feedback

Feedback has been low at the moment. We have seen wildly different feedback, from people saying they liked the idea and would use it to others who do not see the value of it and will probably not use it. Some commenters highlighted that this isn't worthwhile for them as they would prefer to have Gnome installed alongside Sway. There have also been comments that some users like having a minimal package set that only includes Sway and don't want a two-step process to get to their environment, which would be the situation if they install a spin that is not Sway and then have to install Sway on top.

Benefit to Fedora

Like the introduction of the i3 Spin, this change benefits end-users who run Fedora on a desktop or laptop, particularly low-end consumer-grade hardware.

A Sway Spin would provide a better initial installation experience for Fedora users installing Sway for the first time. Currently, end-users who wish to use Sway on Fedora must install another Edition or Spin of Fedora, then install the Sway window manager (and related packages) separately. Also, at the moment, the process is not documented in Fedora documentation, forcing the user to use an external guide or tutorial.

Additionally, this "two-step" (first install Fedora, then install Sway on top of it) method adds unnecessary packages to the user's system, particularly if the end-user does not wish to use another desktop environment. One of Fedora's foundations is being "First". We believe that, in this situation, being committed to being "First" means pushing the boundaries of Sway and Wayland by shipping the first Fedora Spin that is based on a Wayland-only Window Manager.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • kickstart composition. Owner TBA
  • workstation-ostree-config. Create a 'tree-file' for Fedora ostree vairents. - Anthony Rabbito
  • Work with RelEng to build. Work with Release Engineering to pick up the Sway Spin in regular composes.
  • Test Day coordination. Work with the Fedora QA team to plan and run a series of Test Days to solicit early feedback.

• • fedora-sway-configs. Aleksei Bavshin

• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Release engineering: Requested

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Trademark approval: Requested

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Since the Fedora Sway Spin is a Spin, it assumes new installations only. There is no upgrade/compatibility impact from the Spin. ostree installations will be able to seamlessly rebase to sericea in the same way they would with any other ostree variant.

How To Test

Proper Fedora Sway Spin:

1. Boot the Fedora Sway Spin ISO image either on bare-metal or in a virtual machine (V.M.).

2. Confirm successful boot into a configured Sway environment with basic packages available.

3. Launch Anaconda installer. The Anaconda installer can be launched either from a terminal (executable by pressing Windows+Enter) or via the application launcher rofi-wayland (executable by pressing Windows+d).

4. Confirm no major issues with windows and display. The installed system uses sddm as the login manager and comes preinstalled with Sway as the default desktop environment and with default applications present for most use cases.

Install sericea on fresh install:

1. Use rpm-ostree to rebase to Fedora Sway or download a ostree variant ISO image either on bare-metal or in a virtual machine (V.M.).

2. Confirm successful boot into a configured Sway environment with basic packages available.

3. TBD

4. Confirm no major issues with windows and display. The installed system uses sddm as the login manager and comes preinstalled with Sway as the default desktop environment and with default applications present for most use cases.

User Experience

Users are able to consume Sway from https://spins.fedoraproject.org instead of installing another desktop and then manually installing Sway after the initial installation. This reduces the number of steps needed to start using Sway.

The Spin should remain as minimal as possible and only include small supplements on top of making the default configuration workable. For example, integrate sway-systemd and a login manager. We should make the user experience as easy and simple as possible without defining too many opinions.

Dependencies

TBD

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: If a blocker bug comes up that breaks composes of the Sway Spin in time for Fedora 38, the Change can be bumped to a future Fedora release (e.g. F39).
• Contingency deadline: Change Checkpoint: Tue 2023-02-21 100% Code Complete Deadline
• Blocks release? No

Documentation

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Sway

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

TBD?