Packs — optional software bundles
W installs in two layers. The base is everything a working desktop needs and is always there. Packs are the second layer: optional bundles you add when you want them.
A pack is named after a direction rather than a tool — containers, not
podman; dev, not a list of editors. You choose the capability; which
software delivers it is W's problem. Each pack brings its own packages, its own
configuration, its own colours for the active theme, and a setup step that wires
it into the desktop — so a pack arrives configured, not merely downloaded.
What is on offer
- containers — rootless Podman with the Docker command line and a terminal UI for it.
- dev — a development environment: the Zed editor, git tooling, a toolchain version manager.
- flatpak — sandboxed third-party applications: Flatpak with Flathub, the Bazaar store and Flatseal for managing app permissions. This is the answer to "how do I install an application that is not packaged for Arch".
- office — the office direction: LibreOffice for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, pdfarranger and xournalpp for PDF page surgery and annotation, and the Obsidian markdown knowledge base for notes.
- bitwarden — the Bitwarden desktop app wired into W's slots: SSH agent, biometric unlock, tray autostart.
- telegram — Telegram Desktop with W's colours: the pack renders the active theme into Telegram's own theme file, flat chat wallpaper included, and a Telegram that has never been started on your account opens in those colours from its very first launch (with a plain window frame — no title bar of its own). If Telegram had already run before the pack was set up, its data is left alone and you pick the file once in the app (Settings → Chat settings → Chat background → Choose from file). Either way, from then on every theme switch recolours a running Telegram live.
- localsend — LocalSend, an open-source AirDrop-like way to send files to
your phone, tablet or another computer: official apps on Linux, Windows,
macOS, Android and iOS all talk the same open protocol over the local
network — no account, no cloud. The pack seeds W's accent colour into it,
opens the firewall for it on trusted (home) networks only, and adds a
right-click "Send with LocalSend" action to Nemo. It does not start
automatically — open it when you need it, or turn on
systemctl --user enable --now localsend.servicefor it to sit in the tray, always ready to receive. - graphics — 2D creative work: GIMP for raster editing and photo retouching (with the G'MIC filter suite), Inkscape for vector drawing and design, Krita for digital painting. All three follow the W theme (Krita through its "W" theme, selected for you unless you had picked another). The pack also wires the AI assistant into both editors: it can draw, edit and export vector documents through an Inkscape server, and run edits inside a running GIMP and look at the result — with whatever model your profile uses, local or cloud. Generative painting in Krita is planned for a companion pack.
- 3d — Blender for 3D modelling, sculpting, animation and rendering. Blender opens in W's colours and follows theme switches while running; pick another theme in Blender's preferences and it stays yours. The AI assistant can build and change scenes in a running Blender — add and edit objects, apply materials, look at the viewport, export to GLB/FBX. Its code runs in a safe mode: Blender's own tools only — no shell commands, no network, no add-on installs. Cycles renders on AMD and Intel Arc graphics out of the box.
- audio — music production: the Ardour DAW (recording, editing, mixing, MIDI), qpwgraph to wire apps and devices together, Audacity for quick edits, and a starter set of plugins (the Surge XT synth, LSP mixing and mastering tools, Dragonfly reverb). The pack switches the system to PipeWire's JACK support and gives your account realtime audio priority (from your next login). Ardour, Audacity and qpwgraph open in your W colours. The AI assistant can work inside an open Ardour session — tracks, plugins, mixer, MIDI notes — once you turn on MCP HTTP Server (Experimental) in Ardour's Preferences → Control Surfaces; it is off by default because it listens without a password, so switch it off again when you are done.
- gaming — Steam, Lutris and Heroic side by side on one shared
Proton/Wine/MangoHud/gamemode foundation: Steam covers most of a typical
library, Lutris is the catch-all for everything else (GOG, Amazon, native
installers, emulation), Heroic talks to Epic/GOG's own APIs directly. The
pack enables the
multilibrepository, matches the 32-bit graphics stack to your GPU, keeps your game library out of@homesnapshots (it can run to hundreds of gigabytes and is fully recoverable from the storefronts themselves), and dresses the MangoHud FPS overlay (Shift_F12) and the Heroic window itself in your active W colours — Heroic opens in them from its very first launch, and follows every later theme change the next time you start it. Installing games on a second drive stays each launcher's own setting: Steam's Settings → Storage, Heroic's Default Installation Path together with Set Folder for new Wine Prefixes (otherwise the prefixes stay in~/Games), Lutris's Default installation folder. Use a Linux filesystem for that drive — games on NTFS or exFAT break under Proton. - virt — desktop virtualization: libvirt and QEMU/KVM underneath, with virt-manager for full control and GNOME Boxes for creating a VM in one click from an ISO. A default network is ready to go the moment the pack is set up, and your account gets passwordless access to it — no extra steps before your first VM. A hardware TPM for guests that need one (Windows 11, an encrypted disk) is not included; add it yourself if you need it.
- ai-extra — the advanced stack for the AI assistant: local models, semantic memory, better web search.
- comfyui — local image and video generation with ComfyUI, a node-based
editor and backend running as a system service on localhost.
The engine is matched to your GPU at install; models are shared machine-wide
in
/var/lib/w/ai-models. Open ComfyUI from the app menu, orsystemctl start comfyui, and visithttp://127.0.0.1:8188/. - invokeai — local image generation with InvokeAI: a canvas, gallery and
web interface on
http://127.0.0.1:9090/, run as a system service. Uses the same shared model store as comfyui, registering its files in place; the two bundles are independent of each other.
Hub → Packs lists them with their state and does the whole life cycle —
installing, setting up and removing. Anything long or privileged opens a terminal
so you can watch it happen. From a shell the same list is w-pack list.
Packs are also offered during installation, so a new machine can arrive with the ones you want already set up. A couple of them only make sense from a running system and are deliberately absent from that checklist.
Installing, and setting up for your account
A pack has two halves, and the panel names them:
- The machine half — packages and system configuration. It is installed once
for the whole machine and needs an administrator:
sudo w-pack install <name>, or the Install button. - Your half — the parts that live in your home directory. It is set up per account, needs no password, and is not done for everybody automatically: spending someone else's disk on a choice they never made would be rude.
That is why a pack can show On this machine, but not set up for you with a
Set up button next to it. Nothing is broken — it is an honest "not yet", and
one click (or w-pack setup <name>) finishes it. On a single-account machine
you will rarely see this state, because installing does both halves for you.
Installing is snapshotted like any other package change, so it is reversible the same way — see the update guide.
Removing a pack
In Hub → Packs, every pack that is on the machine has a Remove button. It asks first, and the confirmation offers the same two answers the commands do — take the pack off the machine (needs an administrator), or undo only your own account's layer. From a shell:
sudo w-pack remove <pack>This undoes what W did, which is not the same as uninstalling the software. Removing a pack takes away its wiring: the pack stops being listed as installed, its colours stop being rendered, its session variables and shell hooks go, its configuration files that W owned are deleted (a backup is made first), and whatever it set up — a service, a command name, a system-wide setting — is put back the way it was.
Your packages stay by default. They are pacman's business, not W's, so the
exact command to remove them is printed for you to run — or add --packages and
the removal does it in the same pass. The panel never adds that flag on your
behalf: taking the packages is the one irreversible part, and it is not a choice to
make before you have seen the list. That is also why the terminal a removal opens
waits for you before it closes — the report at the end is the point of it. Anything another pack you still have also
needs is left out of that list automatically.
Your data is never deleted. Downloaded models, container images, toolchains, installed Flatpak applications — those are yours, and W only tells you where they are and how much room they take. The same goes for configuration files you own rather than W: since the software usually stays installed, deleting your settings for it would be damage rather than an undo, so they are listed and left alone.
If you removed a pack's packages by hand and it keeps coming back after an
update, this is why: without w-pack remove, W still thinks the pack is yours
and re-applies it. Run the command above and it stays gone.
w-pack unsetup <pack>The same thing for your account only, with no administrator rights: the pack
stays on the machine for everyone else, and it simply stops being set up for you.
w-pack setup <pack> brings it back whenever you want.
To put a pack's configuration back to the W default without removing it, use
w-reset <pack> — it restores from the pack's own files, backing up your current
copies first, and needs no administrator rights for your own home. The pre-install
snapshot is also still in the boot menu if you would rather rewind everything.
Keeping packs current
When a W update changes a pack you already have, it is re-applied for you — the
configuration, theming and setup step, without touching packages. There is
nothing to do by hand. If a pack's configuration ever looks stale, sudo w-pack refresh does that pass on demand; it works offline and takes seconds.
Some packs install their main program from its own project rather than as a system package — the AI engines comfyui and invokeai are the two. A system update never touches them, on purpose: an engine update downloads gigabytes and can change how a working setup behaves, so it happens only when you ask for it.
w-pack outdated # which engines have a newer release
sudo w-pack upgrade comfyui # show the plan, ask, then upgradeupgrade waits for nothing to be generating, stops the engine, keeps a way back,
installs the new release and checks that it starts and answers. If it does not,
the previous version is put back by itself. The engine ends up running or
stopped, just as it was. Your models, images and settings are not touched.
To stay on one release — or to go back to an older one — name it, then upgrade:
sudo w-conf set comfyui VERSION 0.37.2
sudo w-pack upgrade comfyuiVERSION=latest (the default) follows the newest stable release again. Custom
nodes in ComfyUI are updated from its own web interface (Manager → Update
All), not by w-pack upgrade.
You do not have to remember to look. W checks for a new engine release every few
hours and tells you without mixing it into the system update count: Hub →
Packs shows the version change on the pack's row with an Update button
(it opens the same sudo w-pack upgrade in a terminal), w-update status lists
it, and w-update mentions it at the end of a system upgrade. The assistant can
run the upgrade too — it shows you the plan and waits for your yes first.