RedHat released its RHEL10-Beta release a while ago. I suspect that I'm not alone in wanting to try it, but not wanting a full blown desktop like Gnome or KDE. So this is for people who prefer smaller window managers.
The original version of this article took a bunch of SRPMS from rpmfind.net and build workable rpms from them. However, as time has passed, the easiest way to build labwc, a window manager for Wayland that resembles openbox is to go to labwc's github site and follow the instructions there.
Swaybg is already in EPEL, and there is hope that labwc will get there itself in time.
I also like to use the alacritty terminal. Once again, the easiest way to install it seems to be go to its github site and follow the instructions for installation there. Although it suggests, with RH and offshoots, installing the 'Developer Tools' group, I haven't found that necessary. However, I do install the development version of packages, e.g., if it asks for pango, I install pango-devel.
For those who prefer tiling window managers, dwl, a Wayland version of dwm, is also building without problems in RHEL10. Use version 0.7, rather than the git version.
Note for FreeBSD users using bhyve
RHEL10 as well as Alma and Rocky 10 betas, may not install if you're running a system using AMD. (There is no problem on Intel systems). This is due to a bug in glibc. Usually, during an attempted installation, before it gets to the Choose Language screen, there will be a message that the pane is dead. Alma Kitten and CentOS Stream don't have this problem.
Although RHEL10 doesn't have firefox, it is in EPEL and can be installed that way. It is also missing libreoffice, which can be installed from libreoffice's site.
RHEL10, as most people already know, doesn't have X11, only Wayland. If you use Gnome or KDE, there will be little difference.
As of March, 2025, you can't find EPEL with with dnf, you'll have to download the EPEL rpm from dl.fedoraproject.org. The link is correct at time of writing, if it doesn't work for you, go to dl.fedoraprject.org/pub/epel and find it there. After installation, it will recommend you enable the crb repo, with instuctions on how to do so. (See below for more detailed information on crb).
At time of writing, there is no rpmfusion set up for RHEL10, so you can only get ffmpeg-free from EPEL. Therefore, some media won't play. However, you can build a per user ffmpeg by following the instructions at ffmpeg's trac site and then you should be able to play any media files you run into.
The reader should take a look at my building rpms page as often one can rebuild an srpm to get a package that they want, often found at rpmfind. To make the search easier choose Fedora for the system and x86_64 for the Arch, which will cut down the number of results for (using wlroots as an example from 36 to 8.) In most cases, rpmfind gave me a link to the srpm. When it didn't, I was usually able to find it, though in some cases, such as wmenu, I didn't look, I just tried installing the rpm for Fedora 40, which installed in RHEL10 without me having to do anything but run rpm -ivh. You can also look with CentOS as the system, you might get lucky and find an el10 srpm file. At time of writing I did find el10 srpms for libdrm and xdg-desktop-portal.
To enable the crb repo, as I used an official RH Beta, I found the name by running
sudo subscription-manager repos --list|grep codeready |
and then, once I found the name, running
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-beta-for-rhel-10-x86_64-rpms |
I have submitted various feature requests for labwc to bugzilla. As a lot of this depends on wlroots, here is the one for wlroots.
A newer rpm has been built. At present it's only up at bhodi and can be downloaded here. With this installed I was then able to grab the rpm for labwc at rpmfind, and install version 0.8.2-1, once I'd installed (also gotten from rpmfind) libsfdo-0.1.3-1. So, hopefully, it will get into EPEL before too much longer.
So, the hope is that EPEL gets labwc in their repo soon. I don't know if the reader can still build it with what's available.
As mentioned, dwl can be built, using the 0.7 release. For those who like a background, as mentioned, swaybg is in EPEL. The dwlb bar, which can be used as the equivalent of dwm's builtin bar, isn't available, and so far, I've been unable to build it in RHEL10. There is a request for waybar in EPEL, though that is more useful for labwc.
If you do use dwl, note that the default terminal for termcmd is foot. This can be changed to your desired terminal by editing config.h. It is assumed that if you're choosing dwl, you are familiar with editing that file. There's more information on editing it in my dwm article.