Wayland has a bright future ahead: The move from Xorg to Wayland had a rough start, but things have improved, and there is an exciting roadmap for the future.
Wayland has a bright future ahead
agreed, plenty of bug and issues with wayland in the past, but i can now comfortably use it for everything on amd/intel cards.
I might switch to wayland when xfce starts to have decent support for it. I'm not a ride or die Xorg fan, I just want to keep using the DE I'm used to.
Yeah AFAIK the only two DEs that fully support Wayland are the big two - Gnome and KDE. and a few tiling window managers like Sway and Hyprland.
I look forward to a world where all modern DEs are fully supportive of Wayland like Cinnamon and Budgie and I know people love their xfce.
Yeah, i can't explain why I love xfce so much. It's very much like a windows 9x style desktop with some QOL improvements (press alt to click drag a window is such a great feature)
Same currently using xfce with opensuse (prob going back to Cachyos + Cinnamon)
As an average desktop user, I've run into very little pushback on Wayland. Its made huge leaps in a short amount of time.
Yes it's been stable for some time with a couple of caveats - you need a decent graphics driver and not be using apps with edge cases.
Here is a simple example of an edge case and it's not hard to find people blaming Wayland even though with some thought this was a security issue - apps like Zoom, Discord, MS Teams want to do screen sharing which is easy in X11 because it has non existent security - just steal the screen bitmap. That's a problem.
Wayland (the protocol) provides no means for one app to grab the screen, or other apps. This is by design for security. Instead the app must be a good citizen and send a "i want to screen cast" message to the xdg-desktop-portal (a service provider implemented by GNOME, KDE etc.), the desktop asks for user consent and then the app gets a video stream. So it's a lot more secure but it requires the app and the WM do things properly.
Desktops and apps have matured and these issues are thankfully going away. I think the biggest hurdle left is proper graphics drivers, especially the problem of getting NVidia drivers working.
Thankfully I haven't run into any problems with Nvidia drivers. My main rig is running a RTX 3080 with proprietary drivers and my side-project NixOS laptop uses a GTX 970m with nouveau drivers no problem.
It gets me curious about the possibility of specific GPU manufacturers having more of a problem than some. There has to be some discrepancy, because I do see that some users have issues right out the gate, with some being seasoned Linux vets. Whereas I'm mediocre at best and its all been plug and play for me.
I do like the idea of added security, as much as the permission popups annoy the hell out of me. The more Linux becomes popular, the more we'll need extra security down the road. I hope we can simply whitelist packages at some point, though. Then things become less of a Wayland security issue and more of a user choice thing. If a user chooses a bad package to whitelist, then that's on them at that point.
I don't know the details, so it more than likely isn't as easy as that, however.
yeah i think it was a couple of gnomes ago, i never noticed the chageover
Same. I booted up NixOS with Gnome around 5 months ago and it took a second for me to realize it was defaulting to Wayland. I was running it on an ancient Asus gaming laptop with nouveau drivers and the experience was overall smooth. Had it multi screened with my TV, too.
until you start using it and screenrecords dont work, multimonitor setups work once and then fail forever... systemd,wayland, unity, ubuntuOne and all that stupid shit can right f off.
I've never had a problem with multi monitor (knock on wood). I had to get around screen recording in the past, but I thought that was ironed out. I'll check that out today.
The only hiccups I've run into so far is that the KDE color picker (the dedicated widget and the screenshot tool) is off by one shade. I grab #222222 and it gets #212121. I got around that by using Flameshot. And that's more on KDE's end afaik.
The other hiccup is constant alerts asking for input permissions when I use something like an autohotkey or autoclicker.
I'm not saying its perfect yet. I'm saying they've busted ass getting it to where it is in such a short amount of time. Its incredibly usable to me for how young Wayland is.
Screen records do work providing the app asks for a screen cast in the proper way (which BTW is not via Wayland but through a message to a DBus service). The service and the desktop then ask permission from the user if necessary. X11 didn't give a damn about protecting the contents of your screen and any app whether it was beneficial or malicious could do it with impunity. So you should see this as a major security improvement - you can screen record but only if permission is granted.
How can I fix the multi monitor thing?? Whenever I connect my TV screen everything freezes unless I unplug one of my desktop monitors.
Rough start? It’s been over a decade and it’s still rough.
Whats rough?
I’ll bite. It’s getting better, but still a long way to go.
But what do I know, I’ve only deployed and managed desktop linux for a few thousand people. People were screaming about these design flaws back in 2008 when this all started. The criticisms above were known and dismissed as FUD, and here we are. A few architectural changes back then, and we could have done this migration a decade faster. Just imagine, screen sharing during the pandemic!
As an example, see Arcan, a small research project with an impressively large subset of features from both X11 and Wayland (including working screen sharing, network transparency and a functioning security model). I wouldn’t use it in production, but if it was more than one guy in a basement working on it, it would probably be very usable fairly fast, compared to the decade and half that RedHat and friends have poured into Wayland thus far. Using a good architecture from the start would have done wonders. And Wayland isn’t even close to a good architecture. It’s just what we have to work with now.
Hopefully Xorg can die at some point, a decade or so from now. I’m just glad I don’t work with desktops anymore, the swap to Wayland will be painful for a lot of organisations.
I will never understand what is rough. Ive been using fedora kde for what ... 2-3 years now? More?
2 years ago there were some issues with nvidia, but that is fixed now mostly.
I use it for work, there is an ocasional hiccup, that gets fixed next reboot, something like a terminal not resizing just right but ... thats it?
People dont like change man, in the day and age when tech changes at breakneck speed, people dont like change
Not sure if it was a plasma issue or a wayland issue, but I tried it last year and had trouble with cursor locking.
Virtualbox had issues with the input being intermittent, and my mouse would move off the screen while gaming.
It might be fixed now, but I don't plan on trying it again for another few years, because what I'm using works for me.
"rough start" is putting it mildly. 🤭
to the unavoidable "it's been 15 years" comments: 15-year-old x11 was a piece of shit. the difference is that we had no alternative so we had to put up with it
I'm glad Wayland is maturing and taking over. Even most of the X11 devs hated X11 which tells you something.
Yeah it's at the point where i'm wondering if i still even need xorg. I'm still keeping it around just in case for now, but i could very easily purge it from my system anytime since i'm using nixos and all my xorg related settings are in a specific file. The main pet peeve i have with wayland is gaming related, and should hopefully improve when wine and proton go native wayland. I have a dual monitor setup and games always choose the wrong monitor by default, which means i can only use the resolution and refreshrate of the secondary monitor. I have a keybind to set the primary xwayland monitor with xrandr, which solves the problem, but it is a bit hacky. I also need to toggle vrr on and off with a keybind because it causes flickering on my monitor. It's a bit annoying but atleast it works, on xorg you can't even use vrr with multi monitor to begin with.
My biggest issue gaming under Wayland is the fact that certain games can't capture the mouse when run full screen with multiple monitors. I've got a number of games that exhibit the issue, but the easiest way to experience it is to try and run CS2 as wayland native (so not under xwayland - As the performance overheads running xwayland are notable running CS2) - Within 10 mins you'll be looking at the ground with the mouse pointer on your secondary monitor.
Furthermore, running gamescope doesn't fix the problem - And yes, I'm running the correct commands under gamescope.
I mean - This is basic functionality that should be an integral part of any modern OS. Under X11 running the same dual matched monitors everything works perfectly with great FPS.
Have you tried running your games with gamescope?
Edit: nevermind, I think gamescope doesn't work with wayland
I think it does work, but from my understanding when nested inside another wayland session, thing like vrr don't work, which brings me back to the xorg problem, but my current workaround works for me, so now it's just a matter of hoping it will improve and become less tedious.
i deleted the x session files so they don't show up in my greeter. They got annoying by now, for me. I used to shit on wayland, but it's inching closer and closer to being usable. and i use an nvidia gtx 1080, so that's saying something
You know Wayland will be ready when these threads don't get 100 comments
I think Wayland just attracts trolls in the same way as systemd does.
Yeah. Over on Moronix Phoronix, every article about Rust, systemd, Wayland or –to a lesser extent– GNOME is a troll fest.
SystemD is really bloated tho
I'm not saying we should all be using runit, but with systemD making more and more services only work through their init system just creates more vendor lock in
Like, who needs a cronjob alternative that only works if you use SystemD, limiting your software to people using it and locking out everyone needing a less bloated init system like runit? And who needs a systemD calendar?
Wayland is already ready and majority of linux desktop users are using it without issue.
I finally switched when I moved from Arch to Fedora and it's worked fantastically for me. This is where the Linux desktop is heading now for sure.
I dunno why but I can't even log into KDE when I select wayland. The screen just turns black and unresponsive :(
Something similar happens to me on my desktop (debian 13) - it goes black then brings me back to the login screen. But in my case it's probably the nvidia drivers (proprietary). Not certain, though. Still happy on X11 for the meantime.
I have a shitload of bug/weird behavior with Wayland, I hope it gets better but for me it is not there yet.
Like what? (Curious)
Here is some of them (they are all intermitent) :
I forget a lot, but it's a lot of minor issues that piles up and gets frustrating
Need X-kill replacement.
Hm, I think that's what Ctrl + Meta + Esc* does for me on KDE? Unless there's more to x-kill than just killing windows/processes with a mouse click.
Edit: Originally said Ctrl + Esc, shame on my poor memory
There is actually less to ’xkill’. It nukes the X window from orbit in a very violent manner. The owning process(-tree) will usually just instantly curl up and die.
The main benefit is that it doesn’t actually kill the process, it only nukes the window. As such, you can get rid of windows belonging to otherwise unkillable processes (zombies, etc).
Also, it’s fun. Just don’t miss the window and accidentally kill your WM. (Beat that Wayland)
Plasma and Hyprland already have one
god i wish. half of my X11 apps don't work, some that used to keep breaking out of nowhere.
Steam works through the XWayland compatibility layer
unless you use an environment that doesn't support XWayland, like niri. xwayland-satellite used to be the easier route in that case but that seems to be broken now.
edit: wow i always thought people were being obtuse when complaining about "wAyLaNd sHiLLs" in their replies when criticizing Wayland. but now i'm not so sure.
if one goes out of their way to use a system without xwayland, that's on them not Wayland lol
but i do have xwayland. please read my comment again.
What issues do half of your X11 apps? Ive never had an issue with an X11 app running through Xwayland, although I also dont have many X11 apps left.
mostly windows going blank or straight up refusing to show
Issue is already closed though and might have more to do with xwayland itself it seems. Also fwiw, i just tested steam on niri with xwayland-satellite a few weeks ago and it worked just fine.
issue closed != issue resolved though. it worked "a few" weeks ago for me too, and now it doesn't. other people in fedi and one in that issue have the same problem, so it's not like i'm alone with some weird setup here.
also i should note, although i did that in the linked issue, that other xwayland compositors do work. they're just way more janky for running X11 apps seamlessly. so i'm not convinced the issue is elsewhere. i just didn't press the issue out of respect for the maintainer and the only productive thing to do at this point would be to submit a patch if i am indeed right.
I wish Nvidia agreed.
In this current state it's currently only in a few des (kde and gnome and lxqt has it stable) and windows manager(wayfire and Sway and qtile has it stable) but maybe in the future it will be most des
At leasr it just works with tailsOS
Is fractional scaling functional?
It was for a long time.
I use that on Hyprland for a year or 2 now
It has been since like 2022 at least for me. I was on X11 and it looked blurry as hell. Same thing on wayland. One day, out of the blue a KDE update dropped and boom everything was crisp and clear. I thank the lords of wayland everyday 🛐. Since then, it has only gotten better
Sorry but pipewire is shit and it works with Wayland (didn't see anything Wayland uses pulseaudio) and I believe Wayland still not ready for use, It's unstable for me because pipewire crackling like fire
Pipewire works fine on my Intel 5960x, Intel N3700, Intel 9900k, Intel 9700, AMD 4800HS and even my Intel ES Erying system. No pops or crackles from any inputs or outputs.
I've not tried with a dedicated sound card, just the onboard on all these systems.
Running KDE on one system along with Hyprland on another two with the remainder as headless systems.
You sure this issue isn't somehow related to your hardware or something else?
The gnome implementation that I'm forced to use is god damn awful. This whole eventbus implementation is so bad, it misses events and doesn't always register key-up, when I'm switching workspaces. I do it a lot, and the key gets stuck spamming the same letter, because it didn't register key up!! Hell sometimes it doesn't register keydown, super annoying when writing passwords.
Random crashes of gnome happens more often than I would like to admit, and all that you've been working on is gone aswell. What a garbage design, why the fuck should the wm own the processes, I swear the wayland people live on a another planet.
And the whole permissions thing to ensure privacy, mf this is linux, stop making me do workarounds for shit that you won't allow, because you haven't implemented the correct support for it.
I'm running Ubuntu 24.04, thing fucking sucks, I'm forced by work. Dude x11, just worked, like Wayland solved anything at all.
X11 absolutely didn't just work, hence Wayland's entire existence and rapid adoption once it was mature enough to function. Xorg's decades old cobbled together code base of awkward fixes for obscure issues and random contributions that had to be repeatedly fixed in every other patch is infamous as an example of how not to do FOSS software over time, and serves as a fatal warning to all open source projects.
Wayland has issues, and those issues are being fixed. Slow updating distros, as always, suffer the most with new software and paradigms. But whining about it hardly helps. This is foss land, contribute or report, never complain.
hard disagree about the permissions. If I want to run closed source programs like games, discord, zoom or whatever, I like knowing they can't log all my keys, take screenshots or even run their own version of windows recall without my explicit permission
yeah. the thing with the stuck keys and crashes is not normal. I've never experienced it (though I wanted to restart the window manager once), but also I'm using KDE
and you know what? if you still need x11 for some things, log in on a 2nd TTY to another user with an x11 session. you can then switch the active TTY to use the other. Though I admit, I have no idea how the 2 users' sound system work together
hard disagree. if your software is missing baaic functions, you shut up about roles and permissions or even force that crap on others.
I've been using Wayland for years and I have no idea of what you are talking about (regarding the key-up, key-down issue, but I also haven't noticed any crash attributable to Wayland, specifically). Did the same computer you are using work with X11, and stopped working properly after an update? Could it be a hardware or driver issue? Also, has Canonical removed the X session from Ubuntu 24.04, or using Wayland is a company policy?
Using the latest Ubuntu lts is company policy if you want to use Linux. All support for x11 is removed from gnome, you can't even change x11 anymore. I switch workspaces all the time, like web browser in one, dev env and terminal, so constantly switching, 50% of the time it will miss the key up event from your keyboard and it's registering that you are holding the key down.
Gnome randomly crashes, for instance sometimes clicking on a link that someone sent you, just randomly crashes gnomes, happened yesterday. So all the processes you started via gnome is gone, you need to reopen all your tools again, happens at least 6 times a week.
Sometimes gdm doesn't work, so you can't login, you have to open another tty and reset gdm in the other session. It's so bad, never had these issues before in x11, sure there were bugs, but not annoying bugs.
Driver issues or not, it's annoying as fuck. Gnome developers (redhat or whoever sells support for gnome) implementing the display server, gg.
