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Installation

Complete guide to building TideWM from source (Rust) and applying the Taxi rice on Arch Linux.

1. Build dependencies

TideWM is written in Rust. You need the Rust toolchain and the Wayland/wlroots C libraries:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel rust pkg-config wayland \
    systemd-libs libinput libxkbcommon mesa libdrm seatd

2. Runtime companions (the rice)

sudo pacman -S --needed waybar rofi swaybg swaync lxterminal pcmanfm \
    grim slurp brightnessctl wireplumber libnotify network-manager-applet

3. Build TideWM from source

Clone the repository and build it with Cargo. The screencast feature enables xdg-desktop-portal screen sharing.

git clone https://github.com/Fi3w0/TideWM.git
cd TideWM
cargo build --release --features screencast

To test it in a nested Wayland window before installing:

cargo run --release --features screencast

To install the binary system-wide so SDDM can see it:

sudo cp target/release/tidewm /usr/local/bin/
# You will also need a wayland-sessions .desktop file for your login manager

4. Install the Taxi config

Copy the configuration folders into your home directory:

cp -r configs/tidewm ~/.config/
cp -r configs/waybar6 ~/.config/

Make sure the scripts are executable:

chmod +x ~/.config/tidewm/rofi/powermenu.sh
chmod +x ~/.config/waybar6/scripts/tide-workspaces.sh
chmod +x ~/.config/waybar6/scripts/ws-switch.sh

5. Edit user-specific paths

Open ~/.config/tidewm/config.wave and adjust:

  • spawn = ["swaybg -i .../Taxigirl.jpg"] → point at your wallpaper
  • The rofi theme paths in keybinds.wave if your username differs

6. Workspaces & Waybar

The rice ships with twelve workspaces:

workspace_count = 12

Waybar is isolated in ~/.config/waybar6 to prevent conflicts with your other compositors. The workspace pills are powered by custom bash scripts that read TideWM's IPC, making them fully clickable and independent of Waybar's native ext-workspace module.