Is Wayland Ever Going To Be "Ready"?

Wayland nowadays is in a pretty good state but it's certainly not a perfect one and there's still a lot of work to be done but even so it is most of the way there for most people.
Full Episode: • #221 The Best Linux Ti...
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#Wayland #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS
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[@generic694]

Looks like the main developers of Wayland suffer a lot from "Now we have another chance to do it right. And we must do it perfectly right. Your proposal doesn't seem perfectly right, so let's put it aside until we find the perfect solution maybe 5 years later (no matter how your users need it now)".

[@gljames24]

I mean, there is nothing more permanent than a "temporary" solution, so I can understand where they are coming from.

[@u9vata]

Actually my problem with wayland is more like "second system effect" where instead of thinking "what would be good architecture" they more often think "what was bad in previous system so we avoid it at all costs" - and not paying attention to what they really do! For example for my use cases wayland just suck - by their decisions. They made it so that window managers HAVE TO BE HUGE... They cannot be thin

[@leucome]

​@@u9vata If I remember correctly Wayland have independent frame buffer for every window. This mean there is nothing else than a compositor. You cant turn it off because it is not an add on. It is the main system. The first computer to use the concept of compositing multiple frame buffer was probably the commodore Amiga in the 80. Compositing is not really taking that much resources when it is the done with adequate hardware acceleration. Amiga was using pixel blit. Nowadays we use the GPU pixel shaders and 3D surface. I am not sure what is causing performance issue on your computer. But if your computer was made in the last 22 year then the compositor is probably not the culprit. The effects can be the culprit thought, these indeed use more resources than just compositing the buffer into one. In that case turn the effect off. Disabling compositor was a thing that could save resource on X because X was a single buffer system by default. The use of multiple buffer was patched on top of that with a hack. It is the weird patching over that was wasting resources.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

Planning the design is a great thing. What isn't great is the 5 year silences in discussions.

[@u9vata]

Actually my problem with wayland is more like "second system effect" where instead of thinking "what would be good architecture" they more often think "what was bad in previous system so we avoid it at all costs" - and not paying attention to what they really do! For example for my use cases wayland just suck - by their decisions. They made it so that window managers HAVE TO BE HUGE... They cannot be thin

[@Marisa_Magician]

The inconsistent dragging and dropping is definitely a Kwin issue. I've had it happen on X11 as well.

[@happygofishing]

nvidia 555 will resolve my only issue, that being flickering, the rest is up to developers (cough cough discord) to implement.

[@trustytrojan]

i dont blame discord for not doing anything, really not their problem. blame electron instead

[@jjl2952]

Basicly this for me. I just switched to linux on my gaming rig and the flickers are baaad. Although downgarding to 535 has reduced the amount of flicker I considering running windows until its fixed.

[@happygofishing]

@@jjl2952 I switched to linux with kde in 2021, for three years I have watched nvidia wayland progress. Two years ago obs capture didn't work, nor nvenc. Now I am almost at the point where I only need to dual boot into windows to play rainbow six siege (which could work on linux, but ubisoft).

[@SussyBaka-nx4ge]

​@@trustytrojanelectron supports it, but Discord uses it's own proprietary version of webrtc which doesn't.

[@watermelon0guy]

​@@trustytrojanother electron discord clients like Vencord successfully missing features. Why shouldn't I blame a huge company for not being able to do it themselves?

[@ayaya-ayaya]

The problem with Wayland is that it was being developed for many years within a bubble. Some group of users were making their toy protocol and nobody else cared. Now that the protocol is no longer treated as a toy, the base assumptions that were made by that developer bubble turned out to be wrong, and now it takes years to unwind those mistakes.

[@feschber]

okay which assumptions would you say were wrong?

[@ayaya-ayaya]

​@@feschber Zero tearing allowed is one base assumption that immediately comes to my mind right now.

[@Mankepanke]

Yeah, and no way to listen on keyboard and complicated ways to make screenshots and videos. Oh, and no protocol for windows to set their icons, or suggest a position when it opens.

[@kuhluhOG]

4:15 There are A LOT of people at my local university using ssh -X to university computers often, most of the staff (of the technical part in total, that includes non-Informatics related staff) even does it daily. PS: In case you ask, I would guess that's around 100 people full time staff and a lot more part time.

[@vilian9185]

but it's a security nightmare, also there's waypipe, it's the same thing but more secure

[@kuhluhOG]

@@vilian9185 sure, but that's not my mess Also, most people I know don't care about security. They just want their system to work and that includes not needing to change their stuff.

[@vilian9185]

@@kuhluhOG fair, but things changes, x11 is 40 years old, someday it's going to change, also it's the same command, just say to peopre to chatge ssh -x to ssh -w, it isn't that big of a change

[@kuhluhOG]

@@vilian9185 "ssh -w" (big and small) has a different meaning It's "waypipe ssh ..."

[@ukyoize]

​@@vilian9185There is security extensions for X11.

[@liorean]

Drag and drop has always worked for me in wayland Firefox on Plasma.

[@FlorianZier]

Drag and Drop under KDE from Dolphin into Firefox (e.g. to upload into GoogleDrive) doesn't work if I have to Alt+Tab before. I can't start the drag, Alt+Tab to Firefox with a GoogleDrive tab and release the file there, even after some wiggling with the mouse to make sure the mouse events can trigger. It only works if I resize Dolphin to be able to see the browser window behind it, start the drag and move the mouse across the window borders in my Firefox tab and release the file there after the browser gained focus and received the event. Currently it doesn't work in Chrome at all for me, probably because I haven't installed the Plasma Extensions there (they are installed in Firefox).

[@GoatzombieBubba]

Fedora 40 with KDE Wayland only and no issues.All AMD system.

[@AnnCatsanndra]

2:00 oh dang I thought that was just me!

[@SaHaRaSquad]

I run current Fedora and some things - especially multi-screen support - are still so broken I'm definitely going back to X11 for like 3-5 more years. And I don't care what or who is at fault, in the end Wayland is the kind of component that the average user shouldn't need to even know about to use it.

[@rtsa4633]

I'm having the opposite experience lol. I'm using Fedora with multiple screens right now and is completely fine.

[@icyblue878]

Updated to Rawhide to test the 555 driver, and let me tell you it feels great to finally be on Wayland with minimal issues.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

Do you use GNOME? Do you think it's ready for switching to Wayland with driver 555?

[@sweetbabyalaska]

Wayland has worked for over a year on my M2 Mac with Asahi Linux, my 1080ti laptop and my 3060ti desktop and thats with gaming.

[@flarebear5346]

I envy you. Wayland, until recently, had terrible input lag doe to the forced syncing

[@trustytrojan]

- wayland works better on newer hardware

[@rc2276]

Im happily stuck on i3. Everything just works. Eventually i will change..but not yet.

[@patryn36]

I wonder if this explains the entire desktop crashing out just running star citizen where it took other programs running along with star citizen before the switch to wayland. Yes i have a two monitor setup but i currently do not know on what properties they differ yet.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

Stat Citizen leaks memory and VRAM like crazy, which can crash your computer if your RAM fills up. I ran it on X11 with the required vm.max_map_count=1048576 tweak and it was fine since I have 64 GB RAM.

[@patryn36]

I only have 32 gb ram with 20 gb as swap in addition and it never used all of it before the switch to wayland. I tried to load a session up yesterday and i could not get my character out of bed in hurston before the entire desktop blacked out and brought me back to a login. I had no other programs loaded either since i know star citizen is not optimized at all yet. It seems that the wayland deployment was way too early if this star citizen experience is anything to go by.

[@poonisher319]

on gnome x11 i use xrandr scripts to switch displays on and off how would i do that on gnome Wayland? it's keeping me from switching

[@ukyoize]

Wayland can't even support changing titlebar icon.

[@watermelon0guy]

What do you mean by "title bar icon"

[@Mankepanke]

​@@watermelon0guywindows overriding their icon. You can only have a static app icon from the Desktop file, but I want to build an app that changes the icon at runtime, that is not possible with Wayland. (Because of muh security)

[@HeroicMushroom]

I always had problems with Wayland especially when gaming. X11 and never have any problems.

[@vilian9185]

let me guess nvidia?

[@HeroicMushroom]

@@vilian9185 Yep

[@OraOraOra]

Luckily, thats going to change! The new 555 beta drivers looks promising with Wayland.

[@yorimirus]

​@@OraOraOraI find it funny that I see this being said about every single new major release of the nvidia drivers, yet every single time nothing changes.

[@flarebear5346]

The nvidia issues have become way better recently. There are still a lot of apps that don't support wayland properly but that's not really nvidia's fault

[@orthodoxNPC]

so cute how one year is "quite a long time"

[@uuu12343]

Honestly, Wayland also need to fix their main issue of the "I refuse to fix/implement because you dumb" mentality

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

i've been using wayland for a good 3 to 4 years now.. I'm still on it and also watching this video on wayland in kde on arch

[@MyAmazingUsername]

If you don't need screen sharing, global shortcuts, flicker free apps (on NVIDIA) and a lot more, then it's been usable for years.

[@SenorWhyME]

Nope because it has no Way to Land

[@kaustix852]

Yeah the problem is wayland was made for embedded devices really. It has been used in set top boxes and stuff for quite a while and works well. But desktop Linux is kind of a niche thing and there's not much money in it.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

It wasn't made for set top boxes. It was originally called X12. It is the successor to X11.

[@lsdowdle]

Nothing is ever "100% ready". Just start using it... and the more users there are... and the more bug reporting... the faster any remaining issues will be fixed. I've been using Wayland for about 2 years now. Currently mostly KDE Plasma... but other desktops as well.

[@froedge]

Is it the year of the Linux desktop? Nope. Will Wayland ever be ready? Nope. Will Manjaro ever renew their TLS certs on time? Nope. These are just the facts of Linux :D

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

nope seems to be the common thing eh

[@robnobert]

​@@CRYPTiCEXiLEhope?

[@spudtaters8419]

It's dumb that people hate on systemd when in fact wayland is a joke of a 2nd-system-effect failure, and has set linux back by years.

[@GoatzombieBubba]

Wayland has been ready for several years, Nvidia is the only thing holding it back.

[@CompuB1t]

I don't understand one thing. Why developrs would like to abandon one big project like Xorg were most applications works good to implement a new software architecture completely different from base. All of this to proclaim Wayland is more "secure", why they do not improve Xorg?

[@erder00rv]

bc no one wants to work on it, there is so much unneeded bloat and legacy code that it's very hard to work on it

[@CompuB1t]

@@erder00rv xorg is from 2004 and Wayland from 2008, Wayland is not new.

[@tommyluco]

@@CompuB1t but its based on the X11 window system which is almost 40 years old and a lot of the old code and technical limitations cause it to be really difficult to work with.

[@VallThyo]

>were most applications works good In your perspective, all these developers clearly think otherwise.

[@leucome]

It is the thing they did not completly abandon X. Xwayland is there and it is one of the most functional part of Wayland. A lot of stuff still run in X mode. Why getting away of the old one then. It is not only that it is old but also that it was built as a display server for remote terminal. None of the app have direct access to the hardware and everything have to do a round trip in the server. Even if it can look relatively good on surface this cause all kind of issues with the compositor. People who say X run fine never tried to run the compositor while playing a game and running an other 3D app at same time. It is not doing fine at all. It is an absolute atrocity. At best frames get dropped and it stutter like crazy and at worse the display directly crash. Doing that on Wayland run flawlessly. This scenario is not that rare nowadays. Basically anybody that would like be a Vtuber or would like to develop a game is going to need multiple 3D render pipeline running at once when the desktop compositor is running.

[@VallThyo]

Nope. If Wayland as it is right now is not being considered "ready" for those people it will never be ready, it's not a matter of features, or lack of - they hate it because it's not X11, and sometimes they also hate it because some old program did a hack in order to work in a certain way, and since Wayland doesn't allow these hacks and bandaid fixes some of these programs just won't work anymore unless rewritten properly/ So if Wayland isn't ready for someone right now, it will never be. Aside from extremely niche cases(that I expect someone to point out as a reply for me) there's NOTHING X11 does much better than Wayland to justify staying on it.

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Well, it is kinda easy to point out Wayland's deficiencies and very few of them are niche as you say. Like screen recording and screen casting which kinda works on Wayland on a per application basis and usually requires the user to jump through some hoops. Good luck trying to work with Slack or Webex on Wayland! Or the inability to use applications that emulate keyboard so that you can automate tasks using macros such as Autokey, xmacro, xdotool, etc. I'd rather give up having colors on my screen than to work without Autokey!! Or to use Synergy, Barrier or Input Leap to drive two or more computers using a single mouse and keyboard. Or to calibrate accurately the screen using ICC profiles so that the artwork you draw on Krita doesn't look completely alien with odd colors on other screens or when printed (although sounds like KDE is finally addressing this one with kwin on Wayland). Or, you know, run Windows games with top notch performance. All of these things are not only doable, they frequently 'Just Work™' on Xorg but are usually a chore on Wayland when they work at all. Let's not even get into the ability to remote X with game changer things such NoMachine or xpra that embrace the X11 protocol and extends it to something very modern and usable to avoid embarrassment. Maybe when waypipe gets there we can revisit this topic... Unlike most people that are happy to use a web browser and see no problems, I actually use Linux on a professional working environment and some of these use cases above not working are a huge deal breaker for me. There's a reason that people like me prefer to hold on to X11 as long as possible: it is because it works, it works well everywhere and Wayland not only does not solve any problem I have but actually introduces quite a bit of its own problems. But please don't let me stop you from disparaging people voicing valid concerns with Wayland...

[@DanielMircea]

Screen sharing still doest work for me in skype, global hot keys don't work in guake, missing window decorations for some programs in gnome, apps launch in random locations and sometimes not even my active display.

[@No-mq5lw]

​@@DanielMircea GNOME doesn't have CSD, meaning no window decorations for some programs. Can't rule out that some of these problems aren't broken because GNOME (sometimes your distro) doesn't want to work on them.

[@kuhluhOG]

no there are still some pain points for example: global hotkeys while technically the portal specification exists at this point, nobody has it implemented yet (be it client or server) and there are quite a few other things like that so, if you are a users which doesn't need a lot (e.g. just a browser, a word processor, games without big group chats in a different application (after a certain amount of users, push-to-talk is a must) etc.), Wayland is ready, otherwise, not necessarily

[@OraOraOra]

@@DanielMircea Which Distro?