Labwc 0.20, a new release of the Lab Wayland Compositor project, has been published. The project aims to develop a composite server for Wayland with capabilities similar to a window manager like Openbox. Labwc is written in C language and distributed under the GPLv2 license. The significant increase in version number, from 0.9 to 0.20, is due to synchronization with the version numbering of the wlroots library.
Labwc is utilized in the graphical environment of the Raspberry Pi OS distribution and is supported in the Xfce and LXQt desktop environments. The project focuses on minimalism, compact implementation, high customization, and high performance. Animated effects, gradients, and icons are not supported, except for buttons for windows. The project is based on the wlroots library, developed by the creators of the Sway user environment, providing essential functions for a composite manager on Wayland.
Add-ons can be connected to implement features such as creating screenshots, displaying wallpaper, adding a panel, and menu. X11 applications can run in a Wayland environment with the support of XWayland. Configuration for themes, menus, and hotkeys are done through xml format configuration files. HiDPI screen support is built-in.
Third-party application menus like bemenu, fuzzel, and wofi can be connected, along with tools like Waybar, sfwbar, Yambar, or LavaLauncher. Managing monitors and their parameters can be done using wlr-randr or kanshi. The screen can be locked with swaylock.
In the latest version, Labwc has transitioned to the release of wlroots 0.20 library.