river

River is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor, built in Zig. It is inspired by dwm and bspwm, featuring a default Master&Stack layout, gap support, and XWayland compatibility. It shares a window management style with traditional dynamic tiling X11 window managers like dwm and xmonad.

Unlike other compositors, River uses a distinct Wayland protocol and a separate "layout generator" process for tiled layout logic. It comes with a basic layout generator, rivertile, and also supports community or user-created generators.

Instead of workspaces, River uses tags for window organization. A window can have multiple tags, and several tags can be displayed on a monitor at once. Configuration is managed at runtime with the riverctl tool, which sets keybindings, configures input devices, and more. On startup, River runs a user-defined init script, usually containing riverctl commands for configuration.