This project is an attempt to provide an easy to use desktop based on Sway.
The new version of Ubuntu 23.04 has been available for a few days and with it the releases of the different official and unofficial flavors of the distribution have begun to arrive.
And in this case we are going to talk about an unofficial flavor which has already been updated to the new version, the flavor that we will talk about is Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04, which provides a pre-configured, ready-to-use desktop based on Sway's tiled composite manager.
Main new features of Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04
In this noNew version of Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04, in addition to including the features and news of Ubuntu 23.04, we can find in this release that Sway updated to version 1.8 with support for the bindgesture command to attach actions to touchpad gestures, support for Wayland extensions xdg-activation-v1 and ext-session-lock-v, support for the "disable while trace" setting in the libinput library to control when the trackpad is disabled during the time a strain gauge joystick is in use (for example, TrackPoint on ThinkPad laptops).
Another of the changes that was made in the new version is that added a start-sway script to detect automatically when the environment is running on virtual machines or on systems with an NVIDIA proprietary driver by applying the necessary environment variables and startup parameters.
For example, when a driver is detected Nvidia and NVIDIA DRM Modeset is enabled, the script will automatically export the necessary environment variables and start Sway with the parameter "--unsupported-gpu", redirecting the startup log to the systemd.
In addition to this, it is noted that added a Swayr background process to improve window management. With its help, the ability to switch between active windows with the Alt + Tab combination, switch between desktops with the Alt + Win combination, and also display a list of all windows on all desktops and monitors with the Win + P combination is implemented. .
We can also find in this new version of Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04, the implemented support for changing monitor color temperature (Night color) using the utility wlsunset. Color temperature automatically changes based on location (settings can be changed in the Waybar panel configuration file or directly in the startup script).
On the other hand, it is mentioned that configuration files have been refactored, Autorun settings have been simplified, problems that arose when using the dark layout of applications in GTK have been resolved, window control buttons have been disabled for applications with a HeaderBar title.
Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:
- Fixed applications in the AppImage format that are not compatible with Wayland (autostart using XWayland is provided).
- Reduced image size. Systemd-oomd (superseded by EarlyOOM), GIMP, and Flatpak are excluded from the base distribution.
- Two basic touchpad gestures have been added: a three-finger swipe from left to right to switch between desktops, and a three-finger swipe down to float a window in focus and back.
- The Scratchpad module has been added to the Waybar panel, for quick access to windows moved to the scratchpad (temporary storage of inactive windows).
- Added the Swappy utility to interactively edit screenshots before saving them to disk or copying them to the clipboard.
- The Sway Input Configurator utility has been updated to provide an updated interface for setting the language and keyboard layout, fix some bugs, and ensure compatibility with the latest versions of Sway.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
Download and get Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.04
The distro is an unofficial edition of Ubuntu 23.04, built with both experienced GNU/Linux users and newbies in mind who want to try out the tiled window manager environment without the need for lengthy configuration.
Builds for amd64 and arm64 (Raspberry Pi) architectures have been prepared for download.