Sway and client side decorations January 27, 2018 on Drew DeVault's blog

You may have recently seen an article from GNOME on the subject of client side decorations (CSD) titled Introducing the CSD Initiative. It states some invalid assumptions which I want to clarify, and I want to tell you Sway’s stance on the subject. I also speak for the rest of the projects involved in wlroots on this matter, including Way Cooler, waymonad, and bspwc.

The subject of which party is responsible for window decorations on Wayland (the client or the server) has been a subject of much debate. I want to clarify that though GNOME may imply that a consensus has been reached, this is not the case. CSD have real problems that have long been waved away by its supporters:

We are willing to cooperate on a compromise, but GNOME does not want to entertain the discussion and would rather push disingenuous propaganda for their cause. The topic of the #wayland channel on Freenode includes the statement “Please do not argue about server-side vs. client-side decorations. It’s settled and won’t change.” I have been banned from this channel for over a year because I persistently called for compromise.

GNOME’s statement that “[server-side decorations] do not (and will never) work on Wayland” is false. KDE and Sway have long agreed on the importance of these problems and have worked together on a solution. We have developed and implemented a Wayland protocol extension which allows the compositor and client to negotiate what kind of decorations each wishes to use. KDE, Sway, Way Cooler, waymonad, and bspwc are all committed to supporting server-side decorations on our compositors.


See also: Martin Flöser of KDE responds to GNOME’s article

Articles from blogs I read Generated by openring

The Future of Forums is Lies, I Guess

In my free time, I help run a small Mastodon server for roughly six hundred queer leatherfolk. When a new member signs up, we require them to write a short application—just a sentence or two. There’s a small text box in the signup form which says: Please t…

via Aphyr: Posts July 7, 2025

Raised Catholic

My introduction to CatholicismIn my young life, I was quite involved in Catholicism. I was raised this way by my mother, who wholeheartedly believes in it. In contrast, my father is not religious, and only goes to church for special occasions like the Chr…

via Cadence's Weblog July 6, 2025

Hare 0.25.2 released

I am pleased to announce the release of Hare 0.25.2 today. 🎉 It has been almost one year since the previous release, Hare 0.24.2, and the new release is packed with the numerous language features, standard libarary features, and countless bugfixes and small…

via Blogs on The Hare programming language June 21, 2025