The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

In response to Wayland Breaks Your Bad Software

I say that the technical merits are irrelevant because I don’t believe that they’re a major factor any more in most people moving or not moving to Wayland.

With only a slight amount of generalization, none of these people will be moved by Wayland’s technical merits. The energetic people who could be persuaded by technical merits to go through switching desktop environments or in some cases replacing hardware (or accepting limited features) have mostly moved to Wayland already. The people who remain on X are there either because they don’t want to rebuild their desktop environment, they don’t want to do without features and performance they currently have, or their Linux distribution doesn’t think their desktop should switch to Wayland yet.

ThatHermanoGuy,

I won’t switch to Wayland until the compositor is separated so that when GNOME Shell crashes (as it does a few times a month), I can restart it without losing all my running apps.

BlueDragon28,

The only reason I use Wayland is because I have two monitor with different refresh rate. In X, the monitor with the highest refresh is capped to the lowest one and I never figured out how to fix it. In Wayland it just work. Hoverwise I will still be on X.

apt_install_coffee,

I don’t see the problem, I also don’t see how this is a novel situation.

The technical merits of system level protocols only really affect the user insofar as they make it easier for userspace application writers to make their software. This is why we have the distinction, so that users never have to change the underlying software, and when they choose to it’s because everything just works.

LeFantome,

When both NVIDIA and KDE work well with Wayland, most of the anti-Wayland energy will go away. The advocates will calm down too bar cause they will have won.

ExLisper,

I don’t think the sentiment is ‘anti-wayland’. Most people just don’t care. I’m using Awesome WM and it doesn’t support Wayland. As OP says, why would I rewrite all my plugins and config just to the sake of switching to Wayland? I would have to invest a lot of time and what will I gain? Absolutely nothing. On my work computer I have different distro and I’m using Cinnamon. I think it uses Wayland but I didn’t even bother to check. It works exactly the same as Gnome on X11. Why would I care?

yum13241,

The Cinnamon team didn’t even consider Wayland yet.

WuTang,
@WuTang@lemmy.ninja avatar

I won’t mind moving to Wayland but really , X11/xorg just works to me with all the feat. (hidpi, multi-monitor etc…) I don’t need fractional scaling, my 27" monitor is UHD but with right ppi set, everything looks good BUT I understand the interest.

And I do understand the need to move away from X because of Elon… just kidding. Yes, we need to move to a better architecture but it must 1:1 in term of feat/stability, at least.

deadbeef79000,

No one needed Wayland, what everyone needed was X12.

orangeboats,

Wayland is X12. The people who worked on Wayland were X11 developers too.

StarkillerX42,

X12 on ext5

glitched_lesbian,

Wayland basically is X12. X11 was extremely different from X10 to my knowlesge, they just wemt for a shiny new name and a new technical model. X12 was gonna break things too.

calzone_gigante,

Replacing good legacy will always be a struggle. X11 works pretty well and has been stable for decades. Most of the things that suck about it already have workarounds.

The advantages of Wayland are not directly visible for the end user. The security part will be great once it’s completely integrated on the distributions to give granular permissions to software. The simpler apis and greater performance will help libraries creators, but most developers don’t touch X directly and won’t touch Wayland either.

Being stable for a couple of months is not good enough. People will use it once distros trust it enough to make it default, and this will probably only happen once Wayland or its compatibility tools work with most software and major applications work significantly better on it.

Asymptote,

I have software dating back to 2003 that I need to support. X11 isn’t going anywhere.

WuTang,
@WuTang@lemmy.ninja avatar

it’s likely to be working thru Xwayland.

LeFantome,

Xwayland has already been mentioned but this is an important point that not everybody may be familiar with. Xwayland is an Xserver ( actually a specialized version of Xorg itself ) that runs on top of Wayland instead of talking directly to hardware.

If you are running Xwayland, you can run X clients ( x11 software dating back to 2003 for example ) and they will appear on your desktop.

There can obviously be specific considerations around advanced software but moving to Wayland does not mean losing access to software written to target X. Qt and GTK support Wayland and will run native. Applications using other toolkits may still be running over X. As a normal user, you may not even know which applications are still using X and which are not.

This is for regular applications. Moving to Wayland requires a Desktop Environment or Window Manager that supports Wayland. So, GNOME and KDE users are fine but Cinnamon or WindowMaker users would need to switch.

Asymptote,

Neat. There’s hope in the world yet :-)

ichbinjasokreativ,

Wayland on AMD is amazing

cobra89,

Counterpoint, I have all AMD machines (CPU and GPU) and each time I’ve tried Wayland I’ve immediately run into bugs that make it unusable. Maybe it’s because both my setups have multiple monitors with different resolutions, but I don’t see why that use case is so hard to support. And I’m running the latest versions of Wayland and KDE so it’s not an issue of me running outdated versions that already have bug fixes supplied upstream. If Wayland can’t handle just basic desktop use with multiple resolutions why would I go through the effort to use it? Fix the basics first.

jodanlime,
@jodanlime@midwest.social avatar

My experience has been the opposite. I won’t use x after using Wayland on AMD for years it just feels so much smoother. On arch with gnome Wayland has been fantastic.

dino,

clickbait title

danie10,
@danie10@lemmy.ml avatar

I keep trying it but for me its not ready yet. Finally, in 2023 I can actually boot into it, but I get random freezes for up to a few minutes at a time. So it’s closer, but not stable yet. Hoping that Plasma 6 will be good to go.

gataloca,

I’ve been trying Wayland for quite some time, but Wayland is a chore to work with and most applications still needs to use the xwayland compatibility solution anyway. After a long time of using it I decided to just switch to X11 and save myself the stress. However after seeing this and reading some comments I decided to try it out yesterday (maybe stuff has changed?) and then turned off my PC and went to bed, then today kwin_wayland started crashing for no reason. For a supposedly superior display server, it sure has a lot of issues and low adoption.

Maybe the Wayland developers should consider it a failed project and work on X11 instead?

crab,

In my experience, Wayland has been the one that “just works.” No disabling compositing, higher than 60 refresh rate on my monitors, screen share portals, and a few other things that annoyed me about x11. From what I hear, x11 is ancient and wasn’t designed to be used as it is today. Waiting on a couple features but never had any stability issues, hopefully more app devs realize it’s existence and switch from x11 like all it’s devs did.

Sprout4426,

I’m on nvidia, have 2 screens mixed resolutions and mixed framerates with kde plasma at the moment. I use jetbrains a lot which only really works through xwayland. I’ve tried every nvidia friendly DE there is and nothing ended up working consistently. I had been on wayland for more than a year on my previous Intel gpu machine but I had to go back now to x11 for stability and haven’t really had any issues ever since. Think whatever you wish but nvidia still has a large market share so until wayland works solidly with nvidia then lot of people will have issues with it. I imagine it works great on amd same as it does on Intel. (yes I know it’s debatably nvidia’s fault for this mess)

Ineocla,

I have the exact same setup. NVIDIA card with dual monitors with different refresh rates. I could try wayland but it’ll be a risky bet or i will be stuck with two 90hz instead of one 144hz and one 90hz. Because of this i was actually kinda forced to go back to windows. If anyone has a solution i’ll be happy to hear it because i would like to switch back to linux

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

most applications still needs to use the xwayland compatibility solution

Not true.

then today kwin_wayland started crashing for no reason.

The reason is that Wayland support in Plasma will only be finalized by 6.0, therefore you’re using an experimental feature.

low adoption.

Again factually wrong. Gnome changed defaults years ago. Hardy anyone noticed.

Maybe the Wayland developers should consider it a failed project and work on X11 instead?

Wayland developers are X11 developers. Wayland if the official successor to X11 because its developers agreed that X11 is too broken to be worth it.

gataloca,

The reason is that Wayland support in Plasma will only be finalized by 6.0, therefore you’re using an experimental feature.

Okay so I need to use X11 because you think the Wayland support for KDE Plasma isn’t finalized? Well consider the fact that on Linux no support is ever “finalized”. Even something that should be mature like pipewire still causes issues from time to time. Or even bash itself. Most likely Wayland will still not work consistently past Plasma 6.0. I don’t put much faith into your claim.

I think that you’re factually wrong about me being wrong about Wayland support. Most applications I use still run xwayland. Steam for example cannot be run in Wayland, Discord and some other applications only works through Electron which I admittedly don’t know a lot about but doing so seems like running it through yet another compatibility layer. Therefore I wouldn’t consider an application run through Electron as Wayland compatible either.

Your post paints the picture that Wayland is “just a thing for Gnome”, but I’m not going to change to Gnome to run Wayland. Of course nothing ill meant toward Gnome users but I think Gnome is ugly as sin and hard to work with. Maybe my negative perception of Wayland would change if it had better support for KDE. Or if KDE had better Wayland support as this could also be an issue with the kWin rather than Wayland. I have to admit, I’ve never liked kWin either. I mean as much as I love Plasma, I think the compositor coupled with it is generally dogshit and unstable and it’s a travesty KDE pushes kWin so hard down my our throats.

Wayland developers are X11 developers. Wayland if the official successor to X11 because its developers agreed that X11 is too broken to be worth it.

Of course I know that, but if Wayland has such low support and low adoption and “just a thing for gnome” then maybe Wayland isn’t so successful after all is what I’m saying. Kind of a bad result to work on a display server that only really works well on Gnome and leaving KDE out in the dark.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Okay so I need to use X11 because you think the Wayland support for KDE Plasma isn’t finalized?

You need to understand the difference between the quality of Wayland itself and the specific implementation of a compositor but you don’t. “Plasma’s Wayland port is incomplete, so Wayland developers should consider it a failed project and work on X11 instead” as an attitude just makes zero sense.

I think that you’re factually wrong about me being wrong about Wayland support. Most applications I use still run xwayland.

You initially said that most applications in general are not compatible with Wayland and that’s untrue. If you personally happen to mainly use only outdated Electron applications, that’s your problem but doesn’t reflect of the state of the wider ecosystem. Qt 5&6 and GTK 3&4 applications run on Wayland and most don’t even need a dedicated Wayland port.

Your post paints the picture that Wayland is “just a thing for Gnome”

No, but it is a fact that Gnome is ahead in Wayland support and all major distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL) default to Gnome with Wayland, therefore your claim of low adoption is just wrong.

I think the compositor coupled with it is generally dogshit and unstable and it’s a travesty KDE pushes kWin so hard down my our throats.

KDE doesn’t push anything down your throat, you’re just incapable to replace KWin with an alternative, even though at least one wlroots-based one exists.

gataloca,

You need to understand the difference between the quality of Wayland itself and the specific implementation of a compositor but you don’t. “Plasma’s Wayland port is incomplete, so Wayland developers should consider it a failed project and work on X11 instead” as an attitude just makes zero sense.

Now you’re using a complete strawman here. I never said it’s because the Wayland port is incomplete but because I think it doesn’t work on key software in 2023. Wayland had its first release in 2008, that’s 15 years ago, that’s a long time and if there’s still questions about its maturity then that’s a fatal flaw. Maybe it even says something if downstream developers have to port it instead of being able to just switch out X11, but of course that might just as well be a quirk of X11.

You initially said that most applications in general are not compatible with Wayland and that’s untrue. If you personally happen to mainly use only outdated Electron applications, that’s your problem but doesn’t reflect of the state of the wider ecosystem. Qt 5&6 and GTK 3&4 applications run on Wayland and most don’t even need a dedicated Wayland port.

It doesn’t? Don’t get me wrong it’s great that Wayland works on so many QT and GTK applications, but if it doesn’t work on the key applications users interact with daily, then it’s kind of a moot point, isn’t it?

No, but it is a fact that Gnome is ahead in Wayland support and all major distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL) default to Gnome with Wayland, therefore your claim of low adoption is just wrong.

Yeah you have a point, Gnome is certainly popular but is that because of Wayland or other reasons? I think Wayland support isn’t the reason why Gnome is recommended by default and I think it’s a bad idea to even recommend Gnome by default because it deviates too far from Windows design which most people would be most familiar with. A better choice would be KDE in my opinion but ofc as we have discussed KDE has its own downsides.

KDE doesn’t push anything down your throat, you’re just incapable to replace KWin with an alternative, even though at least one wlroots-based one exists.

KDE used to be able to switch out the compositor in the gui, but they removed that feature. And kwin comes with plasma by default. True I can definitively replace kwin but I don’t currently know how to and I don’t want to break plasma either.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

I never said it’s because the Wayland port is incomplete

Yes, because you don’t understand the difference between an incomplete Plasma port to Wayland and the maturity of Wayland itself. I showed you how dumb your argument is but you did not even manage to understand that.

I think it doesn’t work on key software in 2023.

First it was most software, then it was most software you personally use, and now it’s key software…

that’s a long time and if there’s still questions about its maturity then that’s a fatal flaw.

The fatal flaw is with your knowledge.

Gnome is certainly popular but is that because of Wayland or other reasons?

That has nothing to do with the fact that adoption is high.

I think it’s a bad idea to even recommend Gnome by default because it deviates too far from Windows design

That as well has nothing to do with the widespread adoption of Wayland.

I don’t currently know

Yes, I can see that.

gataloca,

There is no difference between the maturity of wayland and the plasma port. The maturity of wayland hinges on its usage. Thats what this topic is about.

It’s after all the cited reason for the limited support for wayland (outside of gnome apparently).

You claim wayland is widely adopted but you’re lying about that. Most applications still require xwayland as far as my experience is concerned. So why would I accept your arguments?

Your argument is basically that it works on gnome and since gnome is used by the biggest distributions so it works on most things. It sounds like the goal of wayland as you describe it is to work on gnome and nothing else. It’s “a thing for gnome”. Am I understanding you correctly?

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

you’re lying about that.

Someone who doesn’t even know how to change the window manager cannot judge that.

gataloca,

Oh piss off. All evidence I have points to that you’re lying.

Auli,

Run Gnome never had an issue with Wayland for awhile. Wayland is the successor to X11 being worked on by the same people, would it make you feel better if it was called X12?

PoopBuffet69,

I run KDE Plasma and very rarely have issues with wayland either. Maybe I am imagining it but it feels smoother than X11. I love that in wayland I can use adaptive sync with multiple monitors connected. X11 can’t do that. My main issue with it is that anything involving screenshare doesn’t work properly. So steamplay (as host, client is fine), slack screenshare (again, as the sharer) don’t work. I don’t understand all the people having issues, maybe it’s a hardware/driver thing? On my AMD GPU it is practically flawless.

gataloca,

No it would make me feel better if Wayland ran properly.

Holzkohlen,
@Holzkohlen@feddit.de avatar

Only reason I’m not using it is Nvidia. Missing night light in particular.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Only reason I’m not using it is Nvidia.

Don’t buy Nvidia GPUs. NVidia’s broken Linux support is a well-known fact since at least a decade.

Ineocla,

For gaming AMD is as good as NVIDIA or even better. For anything else tho it’s a dumpster fire. Amf still isn’t on par with nvenc, rocm is pure garbage and they are basically useless for any compute task

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

For anything else tho it’s a dumpster fire. Amf still isn’t on par with nvenc, rocm is pure garbage and they are basically useless for any compute task

Those specific compute tasks are not “anything else”. Pretty much every single everyday task by common people works better on GPUs with proper Mesa drivers than GeForce and there is absolutely no reason that you need to output your graphics from the NVidia GPU anyway. Do your compute tasks on dedicated Nvidia hardware if you have to. Even notebooks come with AMD and Intel iGPUs that are perfectly fine for non-gaming graphics output.

gigatexal,
@gigatexal@mastodon.social avatar

@woelkchen @Ineocla rocm really that bad?

Ineocla,

Yep you’re right. Mesa covers almost anything. But streaming and recording, photo and video editing, 3d rendering ai training etc aren’t “specific compute tasks” they represent the vast majority of the market with billions of dollars in revenue. And no the solution isn’t to use another gpu. It’s for AMD to make their software stack actually usable

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

photo and video editing

Which photo editor for Linux even supports special NVidia features? It’s not like Linux has Photoshop or something like that – there aren’t that many photo editors under Linux. It’s one of the areas Windows people complain most loudly about Linux. Seems to me your conflated Windows with Linux when hyping Nvidia above anything.

ai training etc aren’t “specific compute tasks”

AI training isn’t a specific compute task? What is it then? Why do you train your AI on the regular graphics output GPU and not on dedicated hardware like sane people?

WuTang,
@WuTang@lemmy.ninja avatar

it should not. the 1st one should be that it is not opensource and 100% the cause of a X blackscreen on upgrades.

AMD plays the game (no pun intended), so let’s go with it. If you need nvidia for CUDA for ML, standard are on the way to allow to use any GPU.

TechieDamien,

I already do ml on amd, and it works great. There’s usually a few extra steps that need doing as binaries aren’t always available, but that, too, will improve with time.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Every time I try Wayland, something doesn’t work. The time before last, subpixel DPI scaling was badly broken. This last time, there’s some glitch where the screen jumps right a couple pixels (and back) every dozen seconds. I don’t have any interest in spending my time trying to fix Wayland issues when X just works.

EnglishMobster,

Amen.

When something crashes on Wayland, my entire system goes down. When something crashes on X, I can at least kill it with a GUI. I refuse to use Wayland as long as it has the potential to freeze my entire machine.

(This is on KDE Plasma.)

rbar,

I just don’t think KDE will be worth it on plasma until KDE 6 / Qt 6. Basic components like SDDM supporting Wayland still have to be solved before KDR provides a first class experience. Try messing around with environments like sway, Hyprland, and Gnome the stability difference is night and day compared to KDE.

inspector,

Yep I second this. I’ve been using GNOME, hyprland and sway interchangeably since 2021 Oct on my system as my main DEs. I recently wanted to give Plasma Wayland a try. Was met with multiple crashes, and freezes that required me to long press the power button to reboot to get it working again.

While the new rootless wayland on SDDM worked fine for me, there are several things in Plasma that still don’t yet have support for Wayland. I could never get screen sharing to be reliable on Plasma Wayland, despite having the right portals installed.

GNOME, Sway, and Hyprland are miles ahead in having a stable system on Wayland.

kshade, (edited )
@kshade@lemmy.world avatar

The big reason why I’m still on Xorg and will be for a while is XFCE. I’ve tried everything from KDE Neon to Sway but they are either missing features I want or were too buggy to bother. Should try Budgie again when 11 comes out though, that seems to be close to XFCE in terms of scope and is supposed to work well with Wayland by then.

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