Support for RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 without requiring Wayland? about kinto HOT 6 OPEN

@RedBearAK Thanks for the response!

I must say that I am a bit confused with the distros that kinto is supposed to work with and the gnome, kde, etc. It has been years since I have been deeply involved with linux distros...

As far as I know, the Kinto installer script doesn't work at all on any RHEL. It only has some conditions for installing on Fedora, and RHEL has some significant differences from Fedora.

I kind of gathered that but am confused by redhat logo on https://kinto.sh/.

Anyway, I guess I will try toshy as well... The issue is that I am working inside fed govt, and there are insane restrictions on what can be installed. I have to run rhel8 in vmware. And even then I don't have full root access - only sudo for some things.

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Kinto has no support for wayland? That's disappointing. This tool looks perfect for my needs- use the alt (cmd) key instead of the control key. Any chance for a port?

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I admit I found this thread and hoped for some help though I am not using Redhat or Gnome. I have been running Arch for 6 months on the desktop with wayland and KDE. Prior to that I was running macos for a decade. I have supported unix and linux servers so I am not uncomfortable with the command line. But the UI and desktop experience has changed a lot. The fight with shortcut keys is crazy. Thank you for your help! I will check out Toshy!

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@jeff9finger-usda

Please help, as I need to find a solution.

I'm not the Kinto dev, but I used it for years, contributed some things to the config file, and then based a separate but closely related project (Toshy) on the Kinto config file.

As far as I know, the Kinto installer script doesn't work at all on any RHEL. It only has some conditions for installing on Fedora, and RHEL has some significant differences from Fedora.

Kinto also has no support at all for Wayland sessions, on any distro.

My project (Toshy) does have the ability to install on CentOS 7, CentOS Stream 8/9, and RHEL 8/9 as well as the RHEL clones and "compatibles".

Toshy has Wayland support for several desktop environments and window managers that have Wayland sessions, but in RHEL 8 if you are using the GNOME desktop it won't work, because Waylnd+GNOME needs a shell extension and there's no version of the shell extension that supports the older GNOME shell.

However, if you stick to the X11/Xorg session on RHEL 8, Toshy should work just fine, whether you're using GNOME or KDE or something else. KDE's Wayland session should work fine on RHEL 8, I think, if you happen to be using KDE Plasma.

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy

If you try Toshy and have some kind of issue, make sure you post that issue on Toshy's repo, not here on Kinto's repo.

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy/issues

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@raprutsman

Any chance for a port?

Hey, I used to use Kinto for years, and contributed some things, mainly to the config file (the "Finder Mods" in particular). Then I switched to using a different keymapper utility, and eventually I started trying to modify that alternate keymapper to incorporate some support for Wayland environments. Then I wrote a completely different installer, tray icon app and preferences GUI app. What came out of that is something I called Toshy.

Adding Wayland support has not been easy, but I have a few different Wayland environments working.

• Cinnamon 6.0 and later (their Wayland session is still experimental/buggy)
• GNOME 3.38 or later (needs a shell extension)
• Hyprland
• Plasma 5 and 6 (KDE)
• Sway

This tool looks perfect for my needs- use the alt (cmd) key instead of the control key.

Kinto and Toshy actually do way more than just moving the modifier keys around. The config sets up a bunch of remaps for terminals, many common web browsers, file managers, code editors, and some other miscellaneous Linux apps, to really make things work like macOS in a lot of different places. Kinto's config is still quite good, Toshy's config has a number of improvements.

They will fix the behavior of Apple keyboards on Linux, but also make PC keyboards act just like an Apple keyboard.

Unfortunately if you're using GNOME on RHEL 8 or its clones and you want to use the Wayland session, the GNOME shell extensions that can enable the Wayland support for app-specific remaps is not compatible with the old version of GNOME on RHEL 8 and equivalents. But the X11/Xorg session works fine. Versions of GNOME from 3.38 to current (GNOME 46 right now) all work with Toshy in a Wayland session.

If you want to check out Toshy, it's here:

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy (shorter URL https://toshy.app)

This project is unrelated to Kinto, so if you have an issue submit it on that repo:

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy/issues

There's an extensive FAQ in the Toshy Wiki that can help with common issues, and other Wiki pages dedicated to specific things that need more examples or explanation:

https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy/wiki

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@raprutsman

I just got off years of GNOME and finally moved to Plasma 6.1, both on Fedora. With a "Ventura" dark global theme for Plasma 6 applied, the Kora icon theme, and Toshy installed with the --fancy-pants option to fix KDE's task switching, it is the most usable Mac-alike setup I've ever managed to put together on any Linux desktop. GNOME was OK but I got tired of the constantly breaking extensions.

If you use the --fancy-pants option don't forget to try out the "FantasqueSansMNoLig Nerd Font" it installs, in terminals and/or code editors. It's the closest I've found to the commercial font "Comic Code" that I use in VSCode.

Hope Toshy works out for you.

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