Re:The Qtile Window Manager: A Python-Powered Tiling Experience
by tych0 on Friday November 21, 2025 @10:55AM
(#46005652)
[disclaimer, maintainer here]
> Doesn't this require the environment to be owned by root? Doesn't it make more sense to leave things that are in /opt as root-owned anyway? (Or at least, change them back after running the installation as an unprivileged user.)
No, it doesn't require that, it just means your user-owned binary will be exec'd by root. But if you want the root -> user owned indirection, you can set `Exec=/etc/X11/xinit/Xsession`, which will exec your ~/.xsession as your user, and then you can keep a local install.
> Will any random greeter program just naturally pick up the contents of /usr/share/xsessions, then?
Ones that support x11 do, yes.
> So does it just ignore all your other dotfiles? Can I safely just try this out regardless of my usual WM/DE choices?
We try to read XDG_* things where relevant, e.g. themes and icons. But generally yes, once you point your xsession at qtile, we only use our config file.
> Doesn't this require the environment to be owned by root? Doesn't it make more sense to leave things that are in /opt as root-owned anyway? (Or at least, change them back after running the installation as an unprivileged user.)
No, it doesn't require that, it just means your user-owned binary will be exec'd by root. But if you want the root -> user owned indirection, you can set `Exec=/etc/X11/xinit/Xsession`, which will exec your ~/.xsession as your user, and then you can keep a local install.
> Will any random greeter program just naturally pick up the contents of /usr/share/xsessions, then?
Ones that support x11 do, yes.
> So does it just ignore all your other dotfiles? Can I safely just try this out regardless of my usual WM/DE choices?
We try to read XDG_* things where relevant, e.g. themes and icons. But generally yes, once you point your xsession at qtile, we only use our config file.