this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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A compositor is normally a component in a DE, not a DE on its own. For it to be a DE in my book the "standalone" installation needs to, at minimum, provide: a launcher to execute apps, a toolbar/statusbar, and maybe a terminal emulator (or at least call some generic wrapper to automatically hook into one, something like xdg-terminal-exec).
I mean.. openbox is used in X11 desktop environments like LXDE.. I don't see why labwc (essentially wayland's openbox) should be treated like it cannot be a component of one.
And river has almost as a mission statement to become more of a framework than a DE on its own.. they even have the goal in the long term to remove things from it and instead expose more to the commands/API to make it more modular.. it's definitely not something intended to work standalone and they expect people to develop third party layout generator programs.
Maybe sway is the one in that list that might be the most "standalone", since it does have swaybar built-in.. but the default configuration still expects you to provide at least something like dmenu to use as launcher, as well as making sure you have your terminal, etc, since it does not list them as specific dependencies of the sway package, so officially they aren't really part of sway as if it were a DE suite.