etyDE is the desktop environment: the compositor, a shell made of applets, and what turns the two into a session a person logs into.
From power-on to a desktop
- greetd shows the login screen:
etyde-greeter, which is YAWC with nothing on it but theloginapplet. Logging in runsyawc-sessionas that person; logging out brings the login screen back. yawc-sessionprepares the environment (includingLANGfrom the language chosen in Settings) and the portal configuration, then starts YAWC.- Once YAWC accepts clients it runs its startup command,
etyde-session. etyde-sessionstarts, in order:- a notification daemon, unless something already owns
org.freedesktop.Notifications; - a polkit authentication agent;
- XDG autostart entries from
~/.config/autostartand/etc/xdg/autostart(skip withETYDE_SKIP_AUTOSTART=1); - the shell (dock, clock and launcher), restarted if it exits. After five quick failures in a row it stops trying and says so in the session log.
- a notification daemon, unless something already owns
- Everything else starts when asked for. The launcher is part of the shell and already loaded; PipeWire and the portals are activated by systemd.
The session log is ~/.local/state/yawc/session.log.
Any display manager with a list of Wayland sessions can run yawc-session
too; greetd with etyDE’s own greeter is what the image ships.
The applets that make the desktop
| Applet | What it is |
|---|---|
dock | The shell: the dock, the clock, the launcher, the panels of the status glyphs |
hud | Notifications and indicators in the corner of the screen |
caret | The keyboard-layout indicator and the clipboard history, at the text caret |
desktop | The icons of the Desktop folder, under every window (Files in another role) |
lock, login | The lock screen and the login screen |
askpass, polkit-agent | The password prompts |
snip | Choosing an area for a screenshot |
welcome | The first-run welcome, once per person |
rescue | What comes up when the session froze: what happened, the end of its log, and the choice to start again, open a terminal or leave to the login screen |
And the applications: settings, files (also the file chooser of every
program, through the desktop portal), terminal, editor, viewer (images
and videos), monitor, calculator, calendar, weather, store,
montage, netbird, installer.
How the shell and the compositor meet
The shell is ordinary Wayland clients. YAWC recognises them by app id
(etyde-dock, etyde-desktop, etyde-caret), places them itself, and
serves them window and hotkey information over the
control socket. The applets report where their
glass is; the compositor blurs behind it.
Appearance and language
Settings > Appearance writes light, dark or auto to
~/.config/etyde/appearance. Every running applet watches the file and
switches within a moment; YAWC re-reads it too and draws title bars to match.
The shell is translated into English and Russian. Settings > Language writes
the choice to ~/.config/etyde/locale: applets pick it up at once, and the
next login exports the matching locale as LANG for every other program.
Next
- The shell: what the dock, the launcher and the rest do.
- Applications: what comes with the system.
- Configuration files: where everything is kept.