riverwm/river
Some data may be outdated — see provenance labels.
[mirror] A non-monolithic Wayland compositor observed · 2026-09-27
Health v2 · maintenance only
66/100
- Activity 96
- Release rhythm 8
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_license
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-10-21. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 2405
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 27
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
4290 stars · 169 forks observed · 2026-09-27
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
River is a non-monolithic Wayland compositor written in Zig that separates the compositor from the window manager, letting users pick or write any window manager implementing the river-window-management-v1 protocol. It provides rendering, input handling, Xwayland support, and stable protocol extensions while deferring all window management policy to a swappable external process.
Use cases
- run a Wayland compositor with a custom or third-party window manager
- write a Wayland window manager in a high-level language without touching compositor internals
- hot-swap window managers without restarting running Wayland applications
- build a minimal tiling desktop environment on Linux or FreeBSD
- experiment with new window management designs on a stable compositor base
When to choose
- you want to develop or customize a Wayland window manager with a low barrier to entry
- you need a performant, stable compositor with Xwayland and protocol extension support
- you want to switch window managers without killing your session
When to avoid
- you want a batteries-included desktop environment with a built-in window manager and shell
- you need a compositor for a distribution that only ships monolithic solutions
- you require a project with a traditional single OSS license file (licensing is REUSE/CC-BY-SA for docs)
Facets
application · maturity active
graphics gui developer-tools operating-systems desktop-applications developer-tools bsd cpp rust wayland-compositor window-manager wlroots zig tiling xwayland linux
6 sources
- readme: https://github.com/riverwm/river · fetched 2026-09-27 · ed9fee3804c2
- homepage: https://codeberg.org/river/river · fetched 2026-08-29 · f07b157f861d
- site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg · fetched 2026-08-29 · fe3047f34c81
- site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/faq · fetched 2026-08-29 · 7ffd1ab1d66b
- site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org · fetched 2026-08-29 · 3c642f9d47c9
- site_page: https://codeberg.org/river/river/releases · fetched 2026-08-29 · 866491561681
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| riverwm/river | main | 66 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem