For Xfce 4.20, the plan is, to add preliminary support to Wayland to core components without losing X11 support. This doesn't mean that by the next major release an Xfce session on Wayland will offer all existing features, but we hope it will be minimally usable. We also intend to continue refining our applications to work acceptably on Wayland (those that already work or can be made to work with low effort).
Check the table in the component specific status section for details and labelled issues by group:
It is not clear yet which Xfce release will target a complete Xfce Wayland transition (or if such a transition will happen at all). Below is a list of larger tasks which would need to be done in some way for such a transition to occur.
Some of them are mostly agreed on by the Xfce devs.
This table reflects the current status of what's released as 4.19 or git master.
| Component | Wayland Support | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| exo | yes | |
| libxfce4ui | yes | X11 code paths properly protected in libxfce4ui!110 |
| libxfce4util | yes | |
| thunar | yes | |
| xfce4-appfinder | yes | |
| xfce4-panel | yes | See below |
| xfce4-session | yes | See xfce4-session!49 about limitations and how to use it |
| xfce4-settings | yes | See below |
| xfconf | yes | |
| xfdesktop | yes | See below |
| xfwm4 | no | |
| xfce4-power-manager | yes | See below |
| tumbler | yes | |
| garcon | yes | |
| thunar-volman | yes | |
| xfce4-dev-tools | yes |
| Component | Wayland Support | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| xfce4-terminal | yes | drop-down requires layer-shell to work properly xfce4-terminal!72 |
| mousepad | yes | |
| xfce4-notifyd | yes | |
| xfdashboard | no | crash on startup |
| xfce4-taskmanager | yes | no libwnck (appicons, xfce4-taskmanager#75), no “identify window”, no systray icon (xfce4-taskmanager#78) |
| xfce4-mixer | yes | |
| ristretto | yes | |
| catfish | yes | |
| xfburn | yes | |
| parole | yes | no systray icon (parole#126) |
| xfce4-screenshooter | yes | partial, see below |
| xfce4-screensaver | no | Port to Wayland is essentially done xfce4-screensaver!28 But this requires libwlembed, which is still experimental and has no release at this stage (2024-02-04) |
| xfmpc | yes | |
| xfce4-volumed-pulse | no | key bindings fail |
| xfce4-dict | yes | |
| gigolo | yes | |
| xfce4-panel-profiles | yes |
GTK doesn't appear to do anything special if you set a window to be override-redirect or always-on-top.
Wayland does not specify a native interface for the compositor for taking screenshots and it looks like it never will. We decided to use wlroots' screencopy protocol because that's probably what our compositor will support.
At the moment only Entire Screen screenshots are supported (xfce4-screenshooter!52), Rectangle Selection will be implemented next but Active Window is going to be much trickier, perhaps we'll need a custom protocol for our compositor to take care of that.
If we want to support compositors that don't implement the protocol above, we have to add DBus Support for org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot. This however is not planned and it's unlikely we'll ever fully support other compositors.
| Component | Wayland Support | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| thunar-archive-plugin | yes | |
| thunar-media-tags-plugin | yes | |
| thunar-shares-plugin | yes | |
| thunar-vcs-plugin | yes |
See details in the xfce4-panel section about how to run external plugins on Wayland. At first, “yes” below simply means “doesn't crash”, even after some elementary manipulations (eventually). It does not mean that everything works like on X11.
| Component | Wayland Support | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| xfce4-battery-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-calculator-plugin | yes | insensitive text entry |
| xfce4-clipman-plugin | yes | Ported via wlr-data-control TODO: use status notifier instead of status icon |
| xfce4-cpufreq-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-cpugraph-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-diskperf-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-docklike-plugin | yes | Requires libxfce4windowing 4.19.3 |
| xfce4-embed-plugin | no | unmaintained, gtk2 |
| xfce4-eyes-plugin | yes | the pointer is not followed outside the panel |
| xfce4-fsguard-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-generic-slider | yes | |
| xfce4-genmon-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-indicator-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-mailwatch-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-mount-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-mpc-plugin | yes | though probably relying on non working stuff (?) |
| xfce4-netload-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-notes-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-places-plugin | yes | icon issue, critical errors when removing the plugin |
| xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin | yes | with warnings (needs to be rechecked) |
| xfce4-sample-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-sensors-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin | yes | insensitive text entry |
| xfce4-stopwatch-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-systemload-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-time-out-plugin | yes | coredumps on pause and critical errors when removing/re-adding the plugin |
| xfce4-timer-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-verve-plugin | yes | insensitive text entry |
| xfce4-wavelan-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-weather-plugin | yes | |
| xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin | yes | icons issue, menu window floating |
| xfce4-windowck-plugin | no | does not work (Libwnck) |
| xfce4-xkb-plugin | no | crashes (Libwnck) |
Regarding the version to test: master, or latest dev release would be best. If you don't test master, best add info on which version you tested.
If you run a NVidia GPU, you will need to use the “Nouveau” driver for testing, Since the proprietary NVidia driver does not provide Wayland support. (Though some things might work in some cases)
A wlroots compositor is almost a prerequisite for most core components (as well as panel plugins and some apps), at least to ensure that all features ported to Wayland are available. The default compositor is labwc, but wayfire is another wlroots compositor on which tests have generally been carried out.
To start an Xfce session on Wayland, you can run startxfce4 --wayland from a tty, which will launch xfce4-session from labwc. If you want to use wayfire instead, you'll need to run startxfce4 --wayland wayfire and add this configuration first, as wayfire doesn't have a --startup option like labwc (see startxfce4 --help for details):
[autostart] session = xfce4-session
Configuration adaptations may be required for other compositors as well, if they also don't have a --startup option to pass to startxfce4.
A @datadir@/wayland-sessions/xfce-wayland.desktop file has also been added to xfce4-session for display managers, such as lightdm, with which this has been tested. The command line must also be modified in this file to use a compositor other than the default one.