Solile

This is a continuation of my on-going development blog on the solile desktop. I would highly recommend checking out my previous post to get some context if you have not already. Now, into the nitty-gritty… Dock I chose the dock as the first development target as it is theoretically easy to implement the basics of app launching and desktop file listings. The basic framework of the dock has been written using iced for the UI and iced_layershell for bindings to wlr-layer-shell-unstable-v1. This allows me to write the dock as if it were a normal iced app and then just stick it to the side of the screen. I’ve been following the development of iced_layershell for quite a while now and it seems to be pretty actively developed and is pretty stable for basic usecases. libcosmic is becoming less enticing as I see what I can implement with raw iced, even though I might end up using bits and pieces of it for underlying stuff like theming or accessibility. Currently, I am still working on the actual layout and icons for the dock, but I expect that by next week I should have a working PoC to post images and publish the code for. ...

solile Development: Week 1.5 You probably don’t know what solile is, so let me explain. solile (yes, without capitalization like a hipster) is a new mobile desktop environment that I am working on. It melds ideas I got from working on Lomiri with a more modern tech stack. Let’s go over some ideas I have had and what I have been working on. Compositor This is the boring piece that nobody cares about until it breaks. The compositor will support wayland with no support for x11/xwayland. This is mostly so I reduce the workload on myself having to implement two different protocols that need to superficially act the same to the user. xwayland-satellite is there if a user really needs xwayland support. I did actually consider orbital and Arcan as alternatives, but from a pragmatic and user-focused stance, going with such young technologies with shifting / differing goals would be unwise. ...