Wayland-ERROR: Rofi on wayland requires support for the layer shell protocol

[fuckthis-stupidity]

Arch, rofi 2.0.0, Gnome 49.1 Doesn't launch. The error message in the subject is returned when trying to run it in a terminal.

[lbonn]

Unfortunately this is hard to solve, see #2214 and lbonn#165

You can try to launch rofi with -x11 but you will probably run in other issues

[LorenzoBettini]

You can try to launch rofi with -x11 but you will probably run in other issues

Indeed: it runs but then it's totally unusable: it does not get any input (not even ESC)

[DaveDavenport]

Please ask gnome to add support for this, so applications like rofi can function.

[simurq]

Good evening,

I'm a bit confused and need come clarification on the issue. And here's why: on the one hand, there is this new bug report, which makes me think that rofi is working with Wayland no matter how buggy it is. On the other hand, we got this older discussion thread, which remains open, claiming GNOME be responsible to provide sufficient support to resolve the existing issue (yet my personal experience shows that it works the opposite way. But anyway...).

So, questions:

• does rofi work with Wayland or not?
• if yes, can you share some tips (or official guide?) on how to make it possible on systems similar to mine below?

My system: Fedora Workstation 43 with Gnome 49.6 and the latest (rofi-2.0.0-1.fc43.src.rpm) rofi package available on the official Fedora repository, i.e., not built from source.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm getting the exact same error message in the title of this discussion thread. Hence my confusion...

Thank you and all the best!

[DaveDavenport]

The linked issue (#2289) has very little todo with the error message of this discussion.

To clarify:

rofi works fine on wayland if the used compositor implements the layer shell protocol.
(sway, hyprland, etc. all implement this)

Rofi does not work on gnome running on wayland as they do not implemented the required protocol.
This lack of support in gnome stops rofi from working correctly using the wayland backend.

Rofi works fine on x11.

[DaveDavenport]

See also the two issues linked by @lbonn

Re-reading your issue, maybe it helps to clarify that wayland is your display server (just like Xorg). On top of you display server you run your window manager (or in wayland terms compositor) that takes care of placing and showing the individual windows.

Gnome is one implementation of this window manager/compositor, but there are many others.
Like https://hypr.land/ or https://swaywm.org/. There are several protocols that a compositor can expose to clients (the application). The one rofi needs to correctly work is not implemented by gnome.

[simurq]

I see now, thank you for the clarification. 🙏🙏 It turns out GNOME devs indeed need some nudging from the user pool, let's see...

There are several protocols that a compositor can expose to clients (the application). The one rofi needs to correctly work is not implemented by gnome.

I'm not hopeless but I really doubt that GNOME will implement it any time soon 🤔 just for rofi. I mean it's easier to move to another desktop environment or even distro. Or maybe even adjust rofi for that particular purpose anyway.

EDIT: It would be helpful (and just, user-friendly, you name it...)—knowing the vast popularity of GNOME in the Linux world and distros insistingly pushing users to Wayland with it (Fedora being one of them)—to declare this issue openly on your home page and install guides as well = that rofi currently is NOT supported by the GNOME + Wayland combo.