Wayland

Wayland is a display server protocol for Linux that is slowly becoming the default on many desktop distributions. It is intended to replace the old X11 Window System that has been used for decades. Wayland is not currently compatible with Plover.

Linux distributions that use GNOME or KDE Plasma 6 use Wayland by default. This includes many of the most popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora. Luckily, workarounds and other approaches for using steno on Wayland systems are available.

Switch to X11

This is the easiest workaround to run Plover. This usually involves logging out and selecting the correct session type at the login screen. Unfortunately, it is impossible to provide detailed instructions on this procedure for every single Linux distribution. However, using your favourite search engine, you can finding instructions for your specific setup (try "switching to X11 on <Linux distro>").

Here are two tutorials for the two most popular Linux distributions:

Plover plugins

There are several plugins with varying degrees of success that have enabled Plover to work on Wayland systems. Some of these include:

plover-uinput is recommended as it is the most straightforward to set up. It has also been confirmed to work on GNOME.

See the wiki page for set up instructions: plover-uinput.

Xwayland

Many applications do not work natively on Wayland, and require Xwayland to run. Plover will sometimes refuse to open on Xwayland systems.

If this occurs, run the following command before opening Plover:

xhost +si:localuser:$USER

To run this command automatically when opening Plover, see: AppImage integration

Javelin

Javelin is a keyboard firmware that features an embedded steno engine ("plug and play stenography"). It bypasses the need to install Plover (or any app) on the host machine. It is compatible with several commercially available steno writers. See the wiki page on Javelin for more details.