Getting started

Install Halley

Halley targets native Linux Wayland sessions. This page is showing install notes for v0.2.0.

Requirements

Before installing

Halley expects a real Wayland-capable Linux session with native graphics and input access.

  • DRM/KMS-capable graphics stack with GBM, EGL, and OpenGL support
  • A seat/session backend through libseat, such as seatd or logind
  • libinput and udev access on a real TTY for the native backend
  • Rust and Cargo if building from source

Optional, but commonly useful:

  • xwayland-satellite for X11 app support
  • xdg-desktop-portal-wlr plus xdg-desktop-portal-gtk for portal screenshot and screencast flows
  • fuzzel and a Wayland terminal if using the default launch bindings

Arch Linux

AUR packages

Install the stable package with your preferred AUR helper.

yay
yay -S halley
paru
paru -S halley

For the latest commit, install the development package.

yay dev
yay -S halley-dev
paru dev
paru -S halley-dev

Source

Build with Cargo

Clone the repository and build the release binary locally.

source build
git clone https://github.com/saltnpepper97/halley
cd halley
cargo build --release

The compositor binary will be available at target/release/halley.

Display Manager

Launch as a Wayland session

v0.2.0 ships session assets for display managers such as SDDM. When installed from a package, pick Halley from the Wayland session list. The session entry starts Halley through the native session path.

session entry
halley --session

Running the same command manually is useful for debugging startup outside a display manager. It sets up the compositor session path directly instead of relying on the older wrapper chain.

Desktop Portal

Screenshot and screencast portal setup

Halley exposes the wlr screencopy protocol used by xdg-desktop-portal-wlr. Install the portal backend plus a general portal implementation so apps can request screen capture through the standard desktop portal APIs.

Packages
packages
xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
Session environment
environment
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Halley
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland

When Halley starts its native tty session, it exports the Wayland and desktop environment to D-Bus/systemd and queues a restart of xdg-desktop-portal.service plus a start of xdg-desktop-portal-wlr.service. If portal capture does not appear after login, restart those user services manually.

portal services
systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal.service
systemctl --user start xdg-desktop-portal-wlr.service