Optional - Running GroundControl inside the LXQt Desktop environment
Good news, if you feel more comfortable in a Desktop environment or just like the option to view PDFs, browse the web, etc, in your shop, there is a light WM named LXQt that can run a nested Wayland compositor with out all the resource requirements of running the KDE Plasma desktop.
sudo apt-get install lxqt-core
After LXQt is installed you should now be able launch the desktop from the shell by typing startxfrom the shell prompt. This should start up the LXQt desktop.
Run a nested Wayland Compositor Window inside X11
Once inside the LXQt desktop launch konsole or another terminal emulator.
export $(dbus-launch)
kwin_wayland --xwayland &
This will start up a nested Wayland compositor with a black screen.
If you wan to run a KDE app with wayland support, you can run something like this from a terminal:
kate --platform wayland &
It should start the application inside the compositor window.
If you want to run an X11 app or GroundControl in the Wayland window, then we need to add a Display variable in front of the executable program, since we are now running two window environments, the Desktop is :0 and the wayland is :1. From the LXQt desktop launch another ‘Konsole’ or a terminal window and type this to start up GroundControl.
cd GroundControl
DISPLAY=:1 python main.py
GroundControl should start up inside the nested wayland window.
Although this is a neat trick, I still plan on running GroundControl when I am cutting from the compositor launched from the shell as detailed in my first post.
Here are a few programs, I have added to my current desktop.
Install Google Chromium with Raspberry Pi modifications
sudo apt-get install rpi-chromium-mods
Install PDF viewer
sudo apt-get install evince
I welcome any feedback, and let me know if you are able to duplicate this or improve upon it.