Riverbed is a set of configuration files and programs to turn the river wayland compositor into a bare-bones desktop environment.
See INSTALL.md for instructions on Alpine and NixOs.
Riverbed is configured through the use of a few configuration files as well as
the riverbedctl command. The configuration files are located at config/river
and are named variables, keybinds, autostart, and custom. The purpose of each should be clear by the name. Important to note is thatkeybindsandcustom` are both scripts allowing for greater flexibility.
The following variables can be set, below are their default values:
gaps=5
padding=10
main_ratio=0.60
bar_height=48
border_size=2
background_color=808080
window_color=ffffff
border_color=000000
border_color_inactive=808080
text_color=000000
font="DroidSansM Nerd Font"
monofont="DroidSansM Nerd Font Mono"
cursor_theme='capitaine-cursors-dark'
background=""
layout=runoff
columns=3
dynamic_columns=true
riverbedctl is the command line utility used for updating aspects of the
desktop such as the current layout, gaps, border-colors, etcetera. Unlike
riverctl, riverbedctl will inform the various parts of the desktop
synchronously. Therefore, changing the layout will for instance change the size
and position of the system bar.
These are the various functions of riverbedctl:
- Setting any variable from
config/river/variablesby callingriverbedctl variable=value. These settings must be saved manually to the configuration file and will otherwise me lost upon reset. - Calling any function from
config/river/initnotablycustomswill reload theconfig/river/customsfilereload_keybindswill reload theconfig/river/keybindsfile
- riverbedctl will always re-synchronize the configurations for wob, waybar, fnott, tofi, and luatile
Riverbed uses the following programs:
| program | Purpose |
|---|---|
| river | Compositor |
| river-luatile | Layout Manager |
| waybar | Status bar |
| tofi | Launcher, Polkit-agent * pinentry |
| fnott | Notifications |
| wob | Volume and Brightness OSD |
Riverbed does rely on other programs and libraries to be present on your system,
please check etc/apk/world for a full list.
I personally use the KDE suite of applications, but this can easily be substituted by with GNOME or DE agnostic applications.
Riverbed supports three different window layouts, each with various settings.
Runoff is a simple master-stack layout which always reserves space for the
stack, even if there is only one window in screen. It also reserves space for
the bar which only takes up around 40% of the screen width. The size of the
master and stack can be controlled with the main_ratio variable.
Dual is a variation on the mater stack layout which will make the main window
take up the center and align one stack on either side.
Grid will sort windows into a more-or-less equal grid of windows. This layout
ignores the main_ratio window and does is the only one where the bar takes up
the full screen width. The grid is controlled by two variables: columns is a
hard-coded limit to the number to horizontal stacks riverbed will sort windows
into. While dynamic_columns can be set to dynamically create more columns as
the number of windows increase.
