Just please get us proper color management. Creators need accuracy & HDR is still a mess.
I love how people are complaining about Wayland not being ready or being unstable (whatever that even means, because it’s a protocol), while it’s the default on both GNOME and Plasma now, which combined probably run on more than 50% of Linux desktops these days.
And not only that, but Cinnamon, Xfce and others want to follow, so very clearly people who know a fair bit about desktops seem to disagree with Wayland being “not ready”.
When people say its not ready, it’s normally some specific use case that worked in X11. So, they’re not wrong, but not right either.
The devs have been working hard to hammer out those troublesome edge cases. There’s a lot less of them than there was a year or two ago.
Wayland was subject to “first mover disadvantage” for a long time. Why be the first to switch and have to solve all the problems? Instead be last and everyone else will do the hard work for you.
But without big players moving to it those issues never get fixed. And users rightly should not be forced to migrate to a broken system that isn’t ready. People just want a system that works right?
Eventually someone had to decide it was ‘good enough’ and try an industry wide push to move away from a hybrid approach that wastes developer time and confuses users.
They could start by making the Steam client be able to run in native Wayland
SteamLink not allowing me to stream just my desktop (rather than a specific game) on Wayland is really the only thing keeping me on X11 at the moment. I use that feature almost nightly to keep watching something from my PC while I cook dinner
I love wayland. I’m 100% on it since the KDE 6.0 Beta end of 2023. Back then i wanted to try the HDR of my new monitor. I can’t remember the last time I had a problem of any kind or thought “That worked under X”.
Multi-Monitor setup with different resolutions and refresh-rates. wayland does not care. it just works. And this is to a big part a gaming machine btw.
I made a gradual switch from windows to Arch starting in may. At first I had some issues but since nvidia 555.x drivers launched everything just works. Gsync/VRR? No issues. HDR? No issues. Three monitors, some rotated, with different refresh rates one of them ultra wide? No issues at all. It’s amazing.
Made the full switch about 1,5 months back and deleted all windows partitions two weeks ago. Works for gaming, work and casual browsing without flaw and I’m glad I made the switch.
My very first experience with Linux last year was switching from X to Wayland to get my touchpad to work properly. The only thing I’ve noticed that doesn’t work on Wayland is that mouse following cat.
I haven’t switched to Wayland yet cuz I’m stuck with a GT 710, which only supports the 470 series driver, which… Doesn’t really run Wayland. Hopefully some day, I’ll get my hands on a Radeon GPU and then fully migrate to Wayland, cuz my laptop already rocks it with Sway and, no complains at all
(I know about it having EGLStreams support which only GNOME uses, but it has no GBM support, which… well, all other compositors uses)
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mtp as in media transfer protocol? i fail to see what this has to do with the display server. and what do you mean with web transparency? never heard that term and google does not give any infos. If you mean something like network transparency, wayland can do that with e.g. waypipe (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe). but not tested myself tbh.
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mtp has nothing to do with the display server. X11 has no mtp function either. its completely independent from that.
and i can only talk about KDE, but it has a own solution integrated which then mounts android folder in its file explorer (dolphin) while unfortunately blocking mtp over CLI at the same time. you get an “likely in use by GVFS or KDE MTP device handling already” error then.
It is possible of course that this is a thing that happens only under KDE wayland, but not because it is wayland itself but because the wayland version of KDE is maybe newer or was configured differntly by the devs.
that said, if it does not work as expected, report it as bug. usually things are fixed very quickly.
OK, I use GNOME on Wayland on EndeavourOS and have no problems regularly running a script in my phone’s internal storage root directory. Go file a bug report to your distro, or at least provide some details.
Or try using any form of desktop automation… which is a show-stopper and it doesn’t look like Wayland plans to do anything about it any time soon.
I don’t see how this is a Wayland problem. X11 has no desktop automation integrated either. You had to use third party tools for that like Autokey. And admittedly, there is still no comparable replacement for Wayland as far i know (maybe KDE scripts? https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/kwin/api/ or https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool ?). But that is because nobody has fully build one yet, not because some inherent absence of necessary wayland functions.
It actually is because of Wayland design. In their quest for “security” they’ve made it impossible for automation and accesibility tools to do their job.
It’s a glaring omission in Wayland going forward, for zero gain. Most of the touted Wayland security advantages are hogwash.
I mean if it’s goal was to prevent scripts from using the graphics env maliciously then it seems to have made some progress if you can’t even automate it with good intentions
Yup, or even a simple
notify-send. Trying to work out which environment variables are needed to get the damn thing to focus on the window in question which may or may not be an X11 window within Wayland. The magic formula I’ve learned so far:DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=/run/user/$(id -i)/bus" \ XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u) \ XAUTH=$(ps aux | grep "/usr/bin/Xwayland :0 -auth" \ | grep -v grep | sed -r 's|.*-auth ([^ ]*).*$|\1|') \ DISPLAY=:0 \ XAUTHORITY=$XAUTH <finally your command here>(oh and sometimes you might need to preface that all with a
sudo, oh and there’s no guarantee that the Display is at:0, even if no other display is in use). Eaaazyyy peaaaazyyyI will say that
wtypeis the one wayland automation tool that does not need any preamble. It just works out of the box, genuinely good engineering by the developers on that project.
Yo, try it on nvidia…or try some older programs, try playing games. Wayland is already good, but if it keeps being developed at this speed, then its 10 or more years left for this things to work yet.
I play games all the time. Actually that is what i do the most lately. Either via Lutris or Steam. Sometime with Gamescope (for HDR) or just normal. I had not even one single problem. Including older programs, emulators, etc.
And yeah, this is a full AMD system, so quite possible that this makes the difference. But as far i read, nVidia gets better constantly too.
IIRC Nvidia needs explicit sync support to work reliably. It’s fairly new and might not have landed in some distros, especially the stable releases.
Not on Nvidia, but I use Wayland and play games with it every day
Its just because xwayland is doing its job, but many games and programs don’t work even on it, you just need to switch to X11 manually, this is annoying me. I don’t know why people downvote, maybe because they don’t have nvidia and don’t know how it works there. I have nvidia and use linux 2 years already, I can confidently say from my experience, X11 is more laggy but more stable, you need special kernel for wayland to work just better on nvidia, and still it is not as good as just using x11.
Yeah and xwayland is working just fine for me right now. It’ll be nice when it’s no longer needed, but in the meantime, it has caused no noticable performance issues for me.
but many games and programs don’t work even on it, you just need to switch to X11 manually, this is annoying me.
This has never once happened to me. I have never had to switch my session to x11 for any reason whatsoever, especially not for compatibility issues.
Dunno what distro or hardware you’re running, but I suspect Wayland is not the issue.
I want to work at Valve
I do love how they just kind of like picked up Linux and dragged it into mainstream gaming lol. Hopefully they’re doing the same thing to Wayland now.
Accelerating wayland développement would mean forking it. As it is right now there’s a lot of yapping in their git for every decision, small or big.
Accelerating wayland développement would mean forking it.
You mean feurking
what’s feurking
Feurking deez nuts
what’s feurking
An optional step in the développement process
Ah, like testing.
Testing is actually mandatory, what’s not mandatory though is to do it before deploying.
The authentic French translation of forking.
The thing to keep in mind is that it is a protocol. When something is merged all downstream projects must implement it.
I’d be fine with switching over to Valve’s crazy high-speed frog version of Wayland if it came down to it lol
That’s how you get fragmentation and instability. Then something is changed it needs to be implemented and then tested by all the desktops. If you move to fast you get ahead of development and testing which is very bad
Ok but now I want a life size sentry
I personally think it is a very bad idea to “speed run development” of protocols. This will only lead to broken designs which will then cause each desktop top do things differently.
Wayland protocol development is slow and heavily debated in order to make sure everyone is happy implementing them. You want all desktop to use the same spec and this could lead to additional desktop specific protocols which would totally break compatibility.
In short, this is a really bad idea and should be rejected by everyone
Wayland 1.0 was released in 2012.
Now, 12 years later, it still is not production ready. I lost hopes long ago and rather stick to a security flawed but stable X11.
I am very glad with the proposal of the Frog protocol, as Wayland was dead before it could even walk.
I’ll just link another user’s response to a similar question, as I don’t think I could ever say it better myself: https://corndog.social/comment/3216441
Can anyone explain why Wayland exists or who cares about it? X has been around forever, it sucks but it works and everything supports it. Alternatives like NeWS came around that were radically better, but were too soon or relied too much on corporate support, so they faded. The GNU project originally intended to write its own thing, but settled for using X. Now there’s Wayland though, which seems like a slight improvement over X, but mostly kind of a lateral move.
If you’re going to replace X, why not do something a lot better? If not actual NeWS, then something that incorporates some of its ideas. I think Squeak was like that but I don’t know much about it.
X has been around forever, it sucks
That right there. X11 was released in the mid-80s and has become an unmaintainable patchwork of additions. Nobody wants to develop or maintain the code because changing one thing breaks five others.
Wayland also takes advantage of 3D acceleration, since each window is a plane rendered in 3D space. There’s no longer a choice between massive input lag with a compositor and massive screen tearing without.
I mean, the extension system means we could easily fix it, just deprecate the old paths, use the legacy xlib to set up extensions and write a lighter stack from there. A new input path too and you’re on your way.
It makes things a bit more complicated, but it’s also exactly how x86 managed to stay relevant all these decades, the old macro instructions are all slow microcode and you only use the safe stuff that’s hyper-optimized.
Meanwhile you get the one thing X has: It works.
Meanwhile you get the one thing X has: It works.
You mean I’ve been doing everything, from work through CGI to gaming (with 120 FPS mind you) on a display that doesn’t work?
Wayland has many issues, sure, but it’s not even close to the point where “it works” can be used to distinguish it from other display protocols. We (and by we I mean anyone willing to dedicate their life to it) could do a lot to bring X11 up to modern expectations, but it’s just not worth the effort. X11 will outlive the cockroaches, but claiming that Wayland is not a functional display protocol is incorrect and uninformed.
I installed a fresh copy of, I believe, Debian. Wayland, for some reason, couldn’t handle 4 monitors, with one above the other three.
Not the issue I expected on a fresh install. Oh, and the biggest issue I had with Windows was copied straight into Linux. I want my (single) taskbar on a monitor that isn’t my primary.
I’m currently back to Windows. It was already going to be a rough transition, and missing the ideas I was looking for while also adding complications just hasn’t made it worth it.
what desktop environment? what you described works perfectly on KDE. i have 3 monitors here and they work flawless in any arbitrary combination or orientation under wayland. side-by-side or on top of each other or even diagonal. with different resolutions and different refresh rates. with taskbars on any number of monitors and any orientation. maybe Debians KDE version is just very outdated. the 6+ versions work fantastic.
Ok but it’s not called Kdeland.
OK but Wayland is not responsible for arranging monitors
My setup is two screens side by side and one above. KDE Plasma 6.1 can handle it without issues, and you can make panels on any screen.
One of the most significant drawbacks of Wayland is feature fragmentation between compositors. Unlike the X11 stack of X.Org server + window manager + compositor, Wayland compositors have to implement all of Wayland in themselves. They have to serve as the display servers, plus manage window positioning, plus render the clients, and all of that within the confines of Wayland-protocols. Building a compositor is a massive task, which is why middleware like wlroots is such a big deal. It also means that WM-agnostic tools like
xrandrandxdotoolare more difficult, sometimes impossible to implement.Consider that Wayland is still heavily under development, and that new protocols have to be implemented by every compositor separately, and that the development of wayland-protocols is an ongoing fucking trainwreck – fragmentation is inevitable, and some compositors will not have the same functionality as others (GNOME being a particularly nasty sandbag). Similarly, things that don’t work as expected in one compositor might work perfectly fine in another.
Right now I would consider KDE Plasma to be the most feature-complete compositor that is also beginner-friendly.
Debian
… is not something you should ever use on a desktop PC. Due to its eternally very outdated nature and not even shipping bugfix updates**** it is not a good fit for anything but servers.
Wayland, for some reason, couldn’t handle 4 monitors, with one above the other three.
“Wayland” doesn’t handle monitors at all. What (because of Debian, wildly outdated) desktop did you use?
Oh, and the biggest issue I had with Windows was copied straight into Linux. I want my (single) taskbar on a monitor that isn’t my primary.
Not a Linux issue, but a problem with the desktop environment you chose. KDE Plasma allows you to configure panels in any way you want.
Its Ubuntu 24.04. When I started it, it took quite awhile and then said “there as a problem, please log out”.
Now that I’ve got it started (where I’m posting from now), it still refuses to arrange my monitors. And I have no idea what this 5th, 13.3" monitor is supposed to be.
It looks like my issues are related to this hardware. I guess that’s understandable. I thought this hardware would be transparent to the OS, and apparently it’s not.
If I hit apply here, it will fail and put them back in a line. I’ll also get around 4 fps and no cursor on the additional monitors.
Wayland works.
I mean, the extension system means we could easily fix it
If that’s the case, then why not do it? Apparently the people who actually worked on X11 had a different idea, and so they decide not to do it themselves - but the code is right there for those who do think that that’s a good approach.
but it works
For some definitions of “works”
“it works for me!”
Likewise, there are plenty of definitions of “better” that make Wayland a lot better. It’s just that it’s a lot of work to make something better, especially for some interpretations of “better”.
But Wayland is waaay better than X in basically everything? Performance and security are simply in another league entirely. And these 2 are the most important factors.
The rest of the “features” will be eventually there. In fact, mostly are there already. I’ve been using Wayland 2 years without issues. The important thing is that now the sofware is solid, the code is clean and the performance is amazing. Growing from there will be so much better than from X11.
From what I can see it mostly does ease of development better; it’s a completely new and rather lean codebase, and it’s seen as an investment in compatibility with graphical applications.
Also, it has lock screens. X cannot do lock screens; it can have an app being full screen and pray to some collection of deities that nothing will come in front of it or that the fake lock screen won’t draw far too small, but it cannot natively do secure lockscreens that are guaranteed to work.
So there, it does something much better: security.I have been using X11 since 1996, and I never felt that it was very good. Sure, at the start it was better the then state-of-the-art desktop (Windows 95), mostly thanks to Linux, but that advantage went away in 2001 when OS/X was released. And even Windows went past it at some point, perhaps around Windows 7 or 8.
Wayland took a long time to get there, but it definitely is there today.
Wayland cuts out the need for a display server. It also has the benefit of being designed for hardware made in this century
