Light weight version of Gnome with wayland support

Desktop
1

I’ve found there is a lack of light weight wayland desktop environments which run well in VirtualBox. As Gnome on wayland functions well on VirtualBox, I’d like to experiment with building Gnome wayland from base Linux with the minimal set of components if such a Gnome variant does not exist. Are there publicly available scripts or documentation on how to build Gnome such as package install sequence and configuration?

My path to this point started with MS abandoning support for my notebook – no upgrade path after Windows 10 EOL in about 16 months. I started with a Debian/XORG/IceWM install and discovered XORG shares keypresses with all apps but wayland does not. This led me to labwc and sway on wayland but they have problems in VirtualBox. Debian Gnome classic wayland however works just fine. My workflow depends upon the use of VMs so I like to decrease OS resources as much as possible. This led me to consider building up Gnome or stripping away non-critical components.

2

I’ve been hacking away at GNOME apps and services to get an HTOP RES value under 400MB at boot time. I would NOT run any of these scripts on any system with data. This is only for testing on a CLONED VM with NO data as I’ve destroyed about 50 VMs while working on this. I have a version from about a week ago here:

https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=159417

I have at least one more update to this. I’m seeing boot time HTOP RES values as low as the 320’s. It is odd as one reboot will be in the 320’s while another REBOOT will be in the 360’S. Unclear as to why this happens but even 360MB is significantly less than the normal HTOP RES.

I’ve done similar work with KDE and found I can get into the mid 500MB range so THUMBS UP GNOME!!!

It would really be great to see a light weight version of GNOME with wayland support.

3

Hi,

Gentoo provides a “gnome-light” package, as alternative to the standard full “gnome”.

Maybe have a look, the ebuild file containing the dependencies is here, then check the dependencies how they are build, usually many features are made optional.

4

Thanks GWillems :grinning:

I saw an x11-wm/mutter-45.2 reference but nothing about wayland which I require. Gentoo looks interesting.

5

x11-wm/mutter-45.2 supports Wayland, of course! :slight_smile:

It’s under the x11-wm category for historical reasons, but is not limited to X11.

6

Hi gwillems :grinning:

Thanks for explaining that. In other wayland distros I’ve seen separate x11 and wayland tasks so assumed it was X11 only.

Thanks :grinning: