Netsnek RPM repository

My Asahi desktop only works because a handful of packages are built differently than in Fedora. So that I do not have to maintain these builds by hand and Fedora updates do not overwrite them, I run my own RPM repository under rpm.netsnek.com. All packages target Fedora 43 on aarch64 and are tailored to my Asahi setup. I have not tested them on other architectures or distributions.

Setting it up with dnf

There used to be a copy-paste block for /etc/yum.repos.d/netsnek.repo here. I took it out again, for a reason that matters more to me than convenience: a repository brings software onto other people's machines with root privileges. Something like that belongs signed, and I do not want to hand anyone instructions that switch off signature checking for it. Which is exactly what would have stood here.

The signing key is therefore the next step for this repository. As soon as the packages are signed, the setup instructions with gpgcheck=1 and the public key will go in this spot. I generate the metadata with createrepo anyway, and dnf then treats the repository like any other. Until then: whoever needs one of the packages gets in touch through the contact channels listed on netsnek.com, and we look together at what makes sense for the machine in question.

Priority over Fedora

The packages carry their original upstream names, so for example swappy rather than swappy-netsnek. To give my version priority over the Fedora package, I use a higher release, an Epoch: 1 or an Obsoletes: on old package names, depending on the package. Updates from Fedora therefore do not accidentally overwrite the patched packages.

What is in it and why

The Wayland core

wlroots is the actual reason this repository exists. My XFCE panel only saw a single workspace, because wlroots 0.19 does not implement the ext-workspace-v1 protocol yet. The rescue was a backport of the 0.20 implementation from the community around dkondor, which I packaged for Fedora on 0.19.2. The patch only adds new files and two build lines, existing code stays untouched. As soon as wlroots 0.20 lands in Fedora, I will throw the package out again.

wayfire carries my patch stack. A crash fix for layer-shell windows that get shown again after being hidden, which I needed for kitty's dropdown terminal. The wlr-workspaces plugin from the same community work by dkondor, which exposes the Wayfire workspaces over ext-workspace-v1 so that the XFCE pager sees them and clicks in the pager switch the workspace. Real 10-bit color depth, depth = 10 in the [output] block of the wayfire.ini actually works with it and reduces gradient banding. And two cube extensions: activating the desktop cube via modifier plus four-finger swipe, as well as a render interface for inner-cube plugins.

wayfire-plugins-extra brings two plugins of my own. cube-gears draws gears inside the desktop cube as a nod to glxgears. dither uses ordered dithering to reduce visible gradient banding on the internal display.

The XFCE and desktop building blocks

xfce4-panel I build with gtk-layer-shell enabled. With that the panel is recognized as a shell surface under Wayland, gets no compositor title bar and reserves its screen space correctly.

xfdesktop gets the Wayland build plus a patch of my own for the monitor names. Without it the settings dialog writes wallpaper settings to monitor0, while the desktop looks for them under the connector name such as monitoreDP-1. So my wallpaper was configurable, but never visible. The patch resolves the name via libxfce4windowing so that both sides use the same key.

swappy, my screenshot editor, upstream uses a GtkHeaderBar as a client-side decoration and therefore stepped out of line with my server-side decoration row. The patch moves the header bar into the normal window content, so that Wayfire can draw a uniform title bar around the window.

swaylock-effects I build from the jirutka fork, because it supports the ext-session-lock-v1 protocol and delivers effects like blur, clock and fade-in for the lockscreen.

kitty gets two fixes: an upstream patch for Python 3.14 and one of my own for an out-of-bounds read in the dbus notification code, which made kitty crash on me on desktop notifications. The subpackages kitty-kitten, kitty-terminfo and kitty-shell-integration are included as well.

mugshot is unmodified upstream from bluesabre/mugshot, which is simply not packaged in Fedora. It provides the profile picture dialog that the profile button in XFCE's Whisker menu needs.

Apps that otherwise do not exist for aarch64

telegram-desktop I build natively for aarch64 on the basis of the Nicegram fork, including the WebRTC stack. There are no official binary packages for this architecture.

signal-desktop is a native aarch64 build from the official source code, which otherwise does not exist as a Fedora package. The desktop entry starts with --no-sandbox --ozone-platform=wayland, because the sandbox does not work on ARM64 Fedora and the app would otherwise run over XWayland.

youtube-music is my aarch64 build of the Pear Desktop fork of YouTube Music (upstream pear-devs/pear-desktop). Compared to upstream only the presentation is adjusted, the Google consent page renders in dark mode.

A one-person project

The repository is a one-person project for one specific setup. There is no guarantee of stability or of timely rebuilds after Fedora updates. I still welcome feedback through the contact channels listed on netsnek.com.