Sway

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Resources

Sway (contracted from SirCmpwn's Wayland compositor) is an open-source Wayland compositor that is designed to be compatible with the i3 window manager.

Installation

USE flags

Cannot load package information. Is the atom dev-libs/sway correct?

Emerge

root #emerge --ask dev-libs/sway

Configuration

To view all available configuration options:

user $man 5 sway

Files

Each user running sway can edit the default configuration file in order to run a customized sway session. Gentoo stores this file at its default /etc/sway/config location:

user $

mkdir -p ~/.config/sway/

user $

cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/

Terminal emulator

By default the sway configuration file uses the urxvt terminal emulator (found in the x11-terms/rxvt-unicode package). It is a good idea to emerge this terminal emulator so that a terminal will be available once sway is running:

root #emerge --ask x11-terms/rxvt-unicode

HiDPI

To adjust sway's rendering for HiDPI displays (4K and above), the name of the display to be adjusted must be obtained. After a sway session is running, issue the following:

user $swaymsg -t get_outputs

Note
The swaymsg USE flag must be enabled for the swaymsg command to be available on the system.

The output statement in the sway configuration file will accept a scale parameter to adjust the scaling of the high resolution display.

Executing sway

Invoke sway from TTY to execute sway WM.

If you use sys-auth/consolekit instead of systemd or elogind, run Sway using:

user $exec ck-launch-session sway

If you encounter any issues check Troubleshooting before contacting #sway on IRC.

Usage

All most key combos will be defined in the ~/.config/sway/config configuration file.

The 'logo' key is defined as the $mod value by default. On most keyboards this will be the Windows key.

Movement

Sway has a Vi-like interface. h (left), j (down), k (up), and l (right) can be used for movement.

See man 5 sway-input for more information.

Terminal

The default key-combo to open a terminal emulator is $mod+Enter.