Are there plans to move to wayland?

General Discussion
1

Another concern I have for Qubes is its total reliance on Xorg. Xorg deprecation is progressing faster than most expected.

Is there work being done on migrating to Wayland?

2

Xorg in dom0 and within qubes are isolated from each other, that’s not really an issue even if Xorg is now considered obsolete.

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3

I recommend you to read this issue on Github:

Then watch Qubes Summit 2023 talk by DemiMarie if you need more information (use a search Engine to find the video).

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4

But if some app is Wayland only (like Waydroid), it won’t ever work on Qubes until it moves to Wayland, which in turn can support X apps just fine thanks to Xwayland.

Is there a guarantee that all new software will be backwards-compatible with X? I don’t think so. Currently almost all DEs still rely on X in some way (probably only GNOME really can run on pure Wayland), but in a few years this will almost definitely change.

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5

It’s possible to run them with some workarounds:

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6

Do you believe it’s possible that new apps will more often then not start supporting exclusively Wayland, and X-only environments won’t be able to run them? Does it spell trouble if Qubes does not migrate soon enough?

7

GTK and QT programs will run on both for a while, no need to worry at the moment.

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8

has anyone tried wayland? People who are new to qubes may find the current environment intimidating.

Theres also hyprland too which looks awesome

9

Wayland is just the way the display is managed, this is unrelated to the desktop environment or window manager chosen.

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10

@apparatus - in answer to your question, there is work being done on
working with wayland, but it’s a way off.

The current desktop environment (by default) is Xfce. If you do not like
this, there is support for other DEs. I use KDE, which is extremely
customisable, and I think better integrates with the Qubes way. You can
install it with sudo qubes-dom0-update kde-settings-qubes

If you dont like KDE you could try another DE - it is easy to switch
between them at log in, so you can revert to Xfce at any time.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team. When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
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11

Is it possible now to have a horizontal panel in KDE and arrange/sort VMs & templates like the new Xfce menu does? Last time I tried I had no luck with either so reverted.

12

There has been a recent PR for Qubes Menu (sometimes referred to as XFCE menu) with specific focus on Wayland and KDE. I believe that change is not even in testing repository (yet). With that fix, it should work in KDE Plasma/Wayland.

This one if you want to read the details:

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13

I’m not clear what you mean by a horizontal panel, or what you might
want to have in it.
It has always been possible to sort and arrange qubes and templates,
and I believe that the KDE menu is more customisable than the Xfce menu.
(In any case, the Qubes menu is available under KDE also.)

If you have issues with these, open a new thread and provide some detail
on what you want,what you have tried, and what is not working for you.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

14

@unman

I use KDE, […] and I think better integrates with the Qubes way

How exactly?

15

I meant vertical, sorry.

16

R-Click on Existing Panel and select “Enter Edit Mode”. Drag the options
bar to the side of screen to have a vertical panel.

If you want a vertical panel *as well as" the horizontal, R-click on the
Desktop, select “Add Panel” and choose one of the options. Then treat
the new panel as above to get a vertical panel as well as existing
horizontal.

5 gives you the option to have multiple panels.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team. When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
17

There’s a long thread I started some time back which covers this. Using
KDE it’s trivial to set up Activities with color coded backgrounds to
hold specific domains. You can force qubes to appear in specific Activities
which minimises the risk of cross domain errors. You can customise the
Activity to group qubes and application launchers for that security
domain.
KDE has many features built in, like fully customisable menus, easy shortcuts,
window controls, etc, where Xfce is playing catch up.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

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18

There’s a long thread I started some time back which covers this.

Could you link to it please?

KDE has many features built in, like fully customisable menus, easy shortcuts,
window controls, etc, where Xfce is playing catch up.

Indeed. But it is less minimal too. So, I wonder if security-wise it is a good idea to install it in dom0. What would you say about that?

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19

You already trust something like ~1000 packages from Fedora in dom0. This would “only” introduce a vulnerability if a package was backdoored and exploitable, in this case it means something specifically crafted for Qubes OS that would be part of KDE Plasma itself (or a dependency) and not found since Fedora 37 (which is used by dom0).

20

You already trust something like ~1000 packages from Fedora in dom0.

Well, it is more complicated than that:

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