DE - desktop environment ideas and research

[goodboy]

This project is being built for "hard core" linux users (aka non-tech-tinas). It is also being built as production software with zero interest in the web; in fact for us that's a feature.

With that premise here's some axioms:

• we won't ever need to roll our own "global" tiling window manager (and it's general expected users will desire to run one)
• a lot of event notification stuff is can be accomplished using the system (notifications, window switching, sounds)
• container and virtualization tech is in plenty
• security and privacy is our brother

With all that in mind here's a draft list of probably useful projects toward the goal of making piker desktop-env "native".

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Tiling window manager libs:

• i3ipc-python: sync and asyncio support for controlling i3 and sway :heart:
  • they have a nice set of examples
• Qtile is a full twm in python :exploding_head:

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Notifications and desktop systems:

• forum discussion on different notification daemons for i3
• notify-send.py this looks to be about right for a general system
  • seems to include action support which is exactly what we're after
• LNE looks quite nice (built in haskell but failed to build from AUR) but may be overkill for a lot of peeps?
• notify OSD is one I hadn't seen before (tried it, seems meh)
• jeepney for D-bus integration with python
  • now has trio support on `master!
• wmctl from the author or pdbpp which is for controlling X?
  • look unmaintained and likely legacy but figured I'd put it up since I saw it referenced in the pdbpp sources

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Containerizing the entire experience

Compromises for other OSs will come in the form of containerizing the linux apps (any other support will have to come from contributors).

The main project on this front seem to be x11docker which looks quite feature rich and well maintained.