WAYLAND: what is it, and is it ready for daily use?

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Probably everyone that is interested in the Linux desktop has heard about Wayland. It's the next big thing, the replacement for X.org, a solution to a lot of woes in terms of performance and graphics on Linux. And still, it has failed to materialize, over and over, and is still not the default on many big distributions, like Ubuntu, or Linux Mint. Let's see what Wayland is, and how ready it is, right after this!
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Wayland is, in itself, just a protocol. It's not a program, or a replacement for the old X.org display server. This protocol has to be implemented by a compositor, which will display the application's content on the user's screen.
Currently, a lot of distributions use X.org, the very old display server that has served us pretty well for ages. The goal of wayland is to put this old beast to pasture, but for what benefits ?
First, let's take a look at how X.org works. This old thing, dating back to 1987, the blessed year of my birth, by the way, is a multi-layered process:
First, you have your display server, or the X server. It's the central platform to communicate with the clients, like the applications you're using, and the compositor, which displays the windows for these apps themselves. This server is interacting with clients, which are basically your applications, but also with a compositor, which is your window manager, like Kwin on KDE, or Mutter on GNOME.
It's a sturdy process, but it introduces a lot of delay, with some back and forth betwen the server, the compositor, and the application itself.
Wayland has a simpler model, because in Wayland, the compositor IS the server as well.
This means that, in our example, the application opens, tells the compositor that it wants a window, and the compositor gets all the details from the app in one go, decides what to do with the window, and tells the app to draw itself. Yep, on Wayland, the applications also have to do their own rendering on the screen: they manage their own titlebars, their own drop shadows, everything.
This is why you can't just switch GNOME or KDE from X.org to Wayland: the pieces that compose the desktop environment don't play the exact same role on both solutions. On Wayland, the compositor doesn't draw the windows, the app themselves do, so you have to update the window managers to become compositors that don't do any drawing, and you have to update the toolkits, GTK and Qt, to let them draw stuff themselves.
Then there's the issue of the graphics drivers: the Nvidia drivers, the open source AMD or Intel drivers, these were written to send information back and forth with X.org, not with a wayland compositor.
So they also have to be updated to work with that new model. This is already the case, as the open source Mesa drivers, which cover AMD and Intel, already support wayland using a solution called GBM. Nvidia, on the other hand, decided that they had a more efficient solution called EGL, which has to be supported separately by the wayland compositors.
Since Nvidia doesn't seem to be willing to update their driver to use GBM, for nvidia drivers to work with wayland, desktop environments have to also support EGL, which is an extra burden, and also explains why Nvidia drivers are hit or miss when using Wayland.
So, where is Wayland? Well, it's already very well supported:
- GNOME supports Wayland, with Mutter, its window manager and compositor
- KDE supports Wayland as well, with Kwin
- Both GTK 3.20 and QT 5 support wayland out of the box
In terms of distros, Fedora already uses Wayland as the default, if the drivers permit it, and has been since 2016. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 also uses Wayland as the default, and Debian does so as well, for their GNOME sessions. Manjaro also defaults to wayland for the GNOME sessions, if the drivers allow it.
Some programs that were made specifically to work with X.org don't work on wayland-based systems, especially games.
For that use case, Wayland developers have a solution: as wine or proton expects to run in an X Server, Wayland provides the ability to run such a server inside of Wayland, as a client, this is called Xwayland.
The performance of Xwayland, however, seems on par with just running a game on X.org, as demonstrated by Phoronix early this year:
www.phoronix.c...

[@luizotavio2116]

The more I hear about Nvidia, the more I like AMD.

[@johnbamber7374]

Same here.

[@anonymoususer5402]

But according to me the best are Intel because though their chips are not great now but they have supported and Linux and open source for very very long

[@sreejith5966]

@@anonymoususer5402 Yes amd's Laptop chip support is really a hit or miss Intel is always stable

[@darxustech2883]

I made that decision in 2010. @@anonymoususer5402 AMD's drivers have been open source since 2007.

[@darxustech2883]

@@johnbiscuit8272 they have OpenCL. An open standard instead of nvidia's proprietary CUDA.

[@duncanmurphy8085]

Great job explaining in human terms what the change means!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks :)

[@n1ghtglare]

@@nirgunawish You don't need flux. GNOME, Plasma, etc have Night Light as a built-in feature.

[@MithicSpirit]

@@n1ghtglare wm-only time

[@n1ghtglare]

@@MithicSpirit This exists: gitlab.com/chinstrap/gammastep . The worst thing about KZbin is that the misinformation now spreads in video format lol.

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

@@nirgunawish like redshift? redshift works in wayland

[@Newbyte]

Alan Pope stated that the main reason Ubuntu still is on X11 is because when GNOME Shell crashes in Wayland it takes all applications down with it, unlike in X11 where GNOME Shell can restart without interrupting the running applications. This is solvable but it hasn't been implemented yet.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s a good reason !

[@AndersJackson]

@@TheLinuxEXP as I have said. Wayland has some major faults in their design. Not being a proper client/server model is one. Your environment will/can also hang if your client hangs, which is not something that X11 does, as there are nothing that make clients and server depend on each other.

[@DavidStarkers]

Also no "actual user" stuff like zoom or discord work for video capture in Wayland... Forget games also.. for years.. Wayland has been a non-starter (for normal people), I wish it wasn't true

[@jarisipilainen3875]

so why linux on desktop. no crashing desktop if on console lol. no need xorg lol

[@gordonsills]

@@AndersJackson It seems like you have never programmed for X11 and you have no idea how it works. Reading Wikipedia article describing how X server worked in 80s/90s is not enough to understand all the issues it has nowadays. As for Wayland - I use it every day on Fedora in Gnome for almost a year now. It's rock solid.

[@darxustech2883]

The terminal clients were the X servers. The thing they were serving was the display. X clients are the applications running on the main server. Common confusion.

[@LinuxJediMaster]

I was about to pint that out, but searched the comments first, as someone else must have done it...

[@fredfoo8346]

Yeah, he did the complete explanation with the basics upside down :)) One must wonder ... So wayland is X with the remote protocol stripped out. So its just like crappy Windows. No more running the IDE in a container on Google Cloud and have the display on your notebook. I thought that is actually a pro, not a con.

[@darxustech2883]

@@fredfoo8346 nothing is ever going to stop you from using all the features of X, you'll always have it through XWayland. It's just the modern fast efficient low latency stuff (Wayland) is separated out from the networking protocol stuff (X) so it's easier to maintain and develop. Does this Google Cloud IDE stuff you use actually use the X protocol? That seems unlikely, but I haven't touched it.

[@bobdinitto]

The X-Server model turned the client/server model on its head and we're still struggling with this.

[@GeraldOSteen]

@@bobdinitto Not really; the entire filesystem tree was designed to run across multiple systems, so it was quite consistent. The root filesystem(/) was run locally, containing only what was necessary to get the local machine up & running and then the /usr tree was mounted remotely(because it often resided on a larger server mounted via NFS; hence the name 'Unix System Resource', which for some reason is disputed). When X was launched, it set the DISPLAY environment variable according to your IP(and screen) so that when you ran 'xterm' or some other X client it automatically connected to the correct display. The X server running on your local machine provided the X services(hence it being the 'server') and you were running client applications which just happened to be mounted on a remote filesystem. X didn't turn it around on its head, it's just not the way we tend to run our systems these days so it's a pretty foreign concept now. Set up a few Raspberry Pis as dumb terminals mounting /usr from a central server and it suddenly makes a lot more sense again.

[@danield.7359]

If I imagine X was developed in the mid 80s, then I have to say these guys were geniuses. We're more than 30 years later and the X-server is still powering the majority of Unix desktops. Having said that I already had the pleasure to experience Wayland and its noticeable faster in most areas.

[@jeschinstad]

But the problem is just that; X have received lots and lots of fixes over the years and lots and lots of workarounds, making everything complicated. Nearly everything that must be supported in order to call it an X11 system, is irrelevant today.

[@Kylo_Renifer]

I worked with two women at Sun that did work on X, and yes, they were in fact, geniuses. Two of the smartest and nicest people I ever knew.

[@tejing2001]

The explanation on the difference between Wayland and X got a little muddled there. Historically, there were a lot of huge differences, but in terms of how things work in a modern environment, programs talk directly to the graphics card to render their content into a buffer, that buffer is handed off to the compositor, which further tells the graphics card how to put all those together into the final appearance of the screen, which then gets displayed. This is true for both X and Wayland. The difference is that in the X case, X is uselessly in the middle of almost every step of that process. Since compositors became the norm, the actual value provided by the X server has become quite small. It's just a middleman now, and it's time to cut it out... in theory. The current state of Wayland seems to me to be pretty much summed up by the old joke: "it's 95% done, now we just have to do the other half!" When replacing something that deeply embedded, there are always more complications than you could possibly predict. We'll get there. It'll just take time... not that NVidia is helping any with their "the whole world should do everything our way" attitude.

[@AQDuck]

Linux do servers so well even the desktop is a server...

[@fiddley]

Wayland is Linux's Duke Nukem Forever

[@Alperic27]

The main difference is that X was designed as a REMOTE protocol … it was really useful to be able to run apps on very powerful servers in racks while displaying their output on my local screen. Many trading infrastructures in banks ran that way for a long time

[@ramansarda5988]

This guys always creates good videos and this one was much needed. ❤️ Great job man!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks a lot :)

[@danielbuenrostro]

Loving your Mr Spock's outfit

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahah yeah it wasn’t on purpose, but that blue definitely strikes a Star Trek vibe

[@shawnsg]

Was looking for this comment lol.

[@fliteshare]

He is secretly a Vulkan afficionado.

[@vakulasan4613]

@@setukas It seems Elementary OS wallpaper

[@Nymunariya]

could we get an update on this video/wayland status, especially since Ubuntu went to wayland standard for 22.04 LTS

[@Toblehrone]

There's another use case that has been improved for things like GNOME...but only on Wayland - multiple screens, but different refresh rates; i.e. you upgrade your main monitor to a 120hz monitor, and instead of throwing your old monitor into the landfill, it becomes a secondary display for other content. Performance is weird on XOrg, but Wayland handles the separate monitors just fine - i.e. GNOME 3.38 improved how it deals with different screen refresh rates...but only on Wayland sessions.

[@guss77]

Yea - multi screen support is one of the major advantages of Wayland over X11: you can even do different HiDPI scaling on different monitors. If you ever tried to run an external HiDPI screen with a laptop HD screen, and you dragged a window from one screen to the other, you know my pain. Currently my X11 solution is to just run the UHD screen in a smaller non-native resolution...

[@KaptainUflg]

>Performance is weird on XOrg, but Wayland handles the separate monitors just fine The problem is GNOME. X.org has way better performance and better display support.

[@Toblehrone]

@@KaptainUflg In what way? Even when I was on KDE, multiple monitors felt more like a hodge podge solution more than anything else on X.org...

[@KaptainUflg]

@@Toblehrone >Even when I was on KDE, multiple monitors felt Feeling is subjective. That could be a psychological trick. I never faced problems with multiple display support in Xorg (except nvidia cards with blob driver - this is another and long story).

[@Toblehrone]

@@KaptainUflg Mostly weird shit like the display settings not saving, stuttering, etc. Plus you still have the problem of different refresh rates not working (if you have a 120hz monitor and a 60hz monitor, Xorg can only do the lowest one) To be fair, I also have an nVidia card (unfortunately).

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

2:39 Wrong way round. The X terminals were the servers, the clients were the GUI apps on the central “big, powerful” machine. X terminals took a reasonable degree of grunt to run, too.

[@rjhornsby]

I think you’re right. The local windows/Mac app that lets you run xeyes or whatever that you’d normally run on a Linux desktop is called an X server application. The client in this case is what we would normally think of as the server (the big noisy metal box that’s somewhere else running Linux + X). Can’t remember why it’s that way, only that the “backwards” client server model has confused me every time for 20+ yrs.

[@BrightBlueJim]

@@rjhornsby In a client/server relationship, the client runs the show. The client wants something to be done, and makes requests to the server. In the case of X Windows, the service is graphics display and user input gathering. The X Terminal doesn't care - it can sit there all day without being connected to a client, and not have a problem with it, just as a mass storage server doesn't need to be connected to anything. It's the application that needs things that the X Terminal provides. The application is always the client.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@BrightBlueJim That’s right. If you look at the details of the functionality, and which end is providing what service to whom, you will see that the X11 terminology is the right way round.

[@beowolfgang]

Absolutely right, the x-server only drives the graphics hardware, the clients runs on a powerful machine where the real computing an logic is being done.

[@AndersJackson]

@@rjhornsby it isn't backward. X11 server provides graphical, and keyboard and pointer services to the clients. The clients being web browsers, editors etc running on same or different machines. The server program is the one writing on the screen for the clients. Handling keyboard and pointer devices for the clients. So yes, the server - client model in X11 is properly so. The problem is that servers in other portocols are those big machines, like printer and file servers. And then the clients are the small machins in your office. So yes, a server can also be another servers clients. :-)

[@calvinteh3297]

Wait till they combine with Yutani to become Wayland-Yutani Corporation. Then they'll be sending humans to space to deal with aliens.

[@5133937]

And making buggy synthetics…

[@crashman4759]

Im so glad that somebody made this comment 😂

[@Wilhuf1]

Building Better Worlds.

[@AlekseySamoilov]

Not EGL, but EGLStreams. Mesa drivers also uses EGL for creating rendering context.

[@s9209122222]

I was so confused when I heard the EGL stuff, because MPV player uses EGL for hardware decoding, and I'm using a AMD GPU, now it makes sense, thanks.

[@t3m8ch]

Приветствую!

[@cameronbosch1213]

And now they both use GBM; Nvidia seems to have finally dropped the ridiculous demand of EGLStreams.

[@bernds352]

@@cameronbosch1213 still, my next graphics card will be ati/amd

[@alexandrebouvier7731]

When I discovered how X11 on Linux worked and how it was designed, I was fascinated by this and I recycled some old computers (Pentium II) as graphical terminals, using LTSP connected to my P4 (it was in the early 2000s). Unfortunately, network transparency is mostly dead with X11 because a lot of modern apps use the GPU..

[@Nixdigo]

Thank God I'll never have one of those

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

It comes to mind, the famous quote from Linus Torvalds concerning how well Nvidia works together with GNU/Linux developers... And let's just say im saving up for a 6800xt, not a 3080. Im never buying another Nvidia product again, unless they get their shit together.

[@miika35476]

Yep it sucks that I have gtx 1070, I would buy some equivalent card or better from amd now. but that damn chip shortage makes it hard to find card for decent price. I can only enjoy benefits of wayland on my laptop, it's so awesome no tearing at all etc.

[@junker15]

After over 20 years of being nvidia shop (just because it was the driver that Just Worked), I decided to use RX580 video card from a failed project. After seeing radeon driver Just Work without me having to install the proprietary AMD driver, I'm convinced that I'm done with nvidia for good. Too bad for the nouveau driver which never worked right for me, but even that still points to nvidia as a corporate entity as the source of the problems.

[@reoencarcelado5904]

@Hedge-Earthridge: I remember [the days of] when it was *nVidia* that didn't-have problems with Linux but Amd/Ati *did* . My how the tables have turned...

[@juxuanu]

One thing that you did not mention: X11 cannot implement HDR while Wayland compositors can.

[@mariozenarju6461]

Wrong www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X11-DeepColor-Visual-RFC

[@priit7777]

@@mariozenarju6461 so does HDR work in x.org or not? As far as I know, not. Does it work in Wayland? I have no idea.

[@mariozenarju6461]

@@priit7777 It does, on Nvidia. And for Intel and AMD I don't care since I'm not using them

[@KaptainUflg]

>X11 cannot implement HDR while Wayland compositors can. Very incompetent statement. X11 initially has HDR support from very beginning.

[@KaptainUflg]

@@priit7777 >so does HDR work in x.org or not? First of all you have to learn what the HDR is.

[@189Blake]

6:30 Why Nvidia has to always ruin everything?

[@johncate9541]

Wouldn't be a problem if people would quit buying their products until they start respecting open standards. I haven't bought anything from them in 19 years...

[@anonymoususer5402]

@@johncate9541 I am unable to get a decent amd graphics laptop and nvidia graphics laptop are like everywhere

[@elephant_888]

Nvidia chips and drivers are superior to their AMD counterparts by a mile!

[@sholmes_ttyy]

@@elephant_888 nope

[@elephant_888]

@@sholmes_ttyy www.tomshardware.com/features/amd-vs-nvidia-gpus everybody has an opinion, and you’re welcome to yours.

[@leisureloaflightfoot1655]

Nice explanation Nick. PS - looks like your dressed for a Star Trek convention!,

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks ! Hahaha yeah it’s just a blue sweater, but it does look very star trek-y

[@blackstar_1069]

Dats the first thing that came 2 my mind 🤣

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahaha I’m not a big Star Trek fan, so I’ll admit it wasn’t really on my mind, but now I can’t unsee it

[@BichaelStevens]

I want Wayland explained in a way that is perceptible to human ears. I do not know what an XORG is, maybe it is a logical gate, maybe it is a sandwich flavor, I do not know. As far as I understand now, Wayland is your magic dream, your girlfriend, your hopes, unicorns, fairies, unobtainium, and a currency. So everyone describeth to me like that.

[@aprilnya]

Nvidia now supports GBM :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That's awesome, yeah! Can't wait to see that as the default :)

[@aprilnya]

@@TheLinuxEXP Already is in KDE and GNOME 42, and 41.2 (which is coming out in a few hours) will also have it

[@cameronbosch1213]

I know! I'm so excited (even if my main laptop has an AMD CPU + GPU).

[@hedayaty]

Few fun facts: X was implemented as client-server because at the time shared libraries did not exists. Also Waylands huge advantage (+ small performance) is due to fact that apps do not receive clicks and key presses from other apps. In X (also Windows last time I used) every event is sent to every application(client). Each application will filter event it is interested by itself. Effectively, each app can be a key-logger.

[@electric_lizzzard]

AAAHHH!!! THATS why OBS can't receive my shortcuts on Wayland. that is very sad bcs a use OBS as Shadowplay/Adrenalin alternative and it works fine on X11 but literally ignores my shortcuts on Wayland

[@noernewaccount]

@@electric_lizzzard same! ulauncher too, In dolphin SPACE is the selection which is useless, so I can't use CTRL+SPACE in Dolphin which is a bit sad and I'm trying to find something to fix it.

[@100c0c]

​@@electric_lizzzardHave you found a solution to that?

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@100c0c KDE Plasma has a global keyboard shortcuts for XWayland applications since 5.27.

[@daveofyorkshire301]

Wayland is defaulted in Fedora and has been for a few releases. The reason Xorg and X11 haven't had major work done on them is they don't need it, they are stable, reliable and platform independent. They are just resource intensive according to modern protocol and standards. The old adage _if it ain't broke don't fix it_ comes to mind. For a resource hungary system resource it still beats Windows and iOS is based on it too, or was I haven't kept track.

[@TheBigBazzy]

Wayland works great on my Lenovo yoga 900. The gestures are butter smooth just as you said Nick. Thanks!

[@yasmintorvalds4307]

"Failed to materialise" The secret sauce of Linux.

[@DJgregBrown]

Fedora is fine on it as long as you hardware isn't Nvidia, Although you can switch back to Xorg. Wayland works well if supported by hardware Wayland Gnome run better on my 2200G apu. Ubuntu always have render iusse's on my 2200G. However Nvidia all fool them is they stay stuck in the passed but they have always love windows over Linux. AMD for the win and they put in a lot more into the linux community.

[@flemtone]

Many users seem to avoid Nvidia until they get their act together and play well with the open-source community.

[@wloonie]

Exactly. Who needs a closed-source driver with development which depends on the corporation?

[@halcyonacoustic7366]

Wish I had known this a few months ago when I chose my graphics card 😅

[@cameronbosch1213]

Linus Torvalds seems to know. (Of course I'm talking about the now famous Nvidia middle finger.)

[@ToniCorvera]

Definitely the lack of feature parity is what holds it back. I'm kinda surprised after all these years of selling Wayland as the next best thing it still lags so much behind Xorg... IMO one of the problems for Wayland's attractiveness is that the much maligned delay involved in the X11 design isn't really noticeable. Wayland has other benefits, but that one in particular is hardly a selling point (just as X11's complexity), yet it's usually the first one to be brought up. Also, the fact that something is a zillion years old doesn't automatically make it or its code any worse or harder to maintain. Linux itself is 30 years old, for example. I'd appreciate if the community would stop using "this thing is old" as an argument. The problem is how it has evolved, not its age.

[@Pantymonium]

If something works pretty for decades, it may means that it is just robust. Of course, it does not mean that new think cannot be better. But sometimes good enought is just ok. Another aspect: Wayland does not offer network transparency by itself, and many apps works very bad throught the network. For gamers it may be not so important, but for companies, engineers and scientist it is crucial.

[@mdavid1955]

This kind of brings us back to needing a "common Linux club" it appears.

[@darxustech2883]

What?

[@DivergentDroid]

I agree. Going to a club getting drunk and having to deal with Windows users is such a chore. LOL

[@SabiazothPsyche]

My Being notices that Ubuntu 22.04 uses Wayland as a default, and IT tried it for a while, and realized that many extensions and plugins don't work in Wayland (e.g., plank, docky, etc.) Xorg is still my default for daily use.

[@markovermeer1394]

When you design a protocol (X11) which survives so many generations of new hardware, then it is an excellent design. Really excellent. It is a pity that your drawing does not put X on the right spot (should be between application and display always), the window manager communicates via X client to the screen as well. The X-Server is directly next to the rendering hardware: knows about chipsets, screen resolution etc. It offers data exchange protocols from extremely simple and old, up to OpenGL. The client negotiates the optimal protocol. So: any X client (even 30 years old) can address any X screen (even bought yesterday) and vice versa!!! No upgrade problems ever! From any internet connected system to any internet connected screen!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Probably a very efficient design to solve a problem 99% of people using computers today don’t have, and don’t care about :) The main use case is one screen for one device, and that screen directly linked to that device. X can solve many problems, but no one has these problems anymore, apart from some niche use cases.

[@markovermeer1394]

@@TheLinuxEXP When the screen hardware is on the same server as the client software, then X uses shared memory to communicate. Remote display is a feature which does not hinder anyone. Via X, you can also very efficiently address the hardware. All new implementations are faster than the older code as long as they are incomplete. However, it's quite hard to beat with a full implementation which has seen >30yrs of fine-tuning. We'll see,

[@comod]

the more you know the more you know you don't know

[@marcosolave3190]

Well, looks like Ubuntu 21.04 will ship with Wayland by default =D.

[@travcollier]

Wayland... Um... That's not a good name for anything tech related. Not quite "metaverse" bad, but bad BTW: I remember using a x terminal. It was cool, but was sluggish compared to my vt220. Damn, I'm getting old

[@wereoctopus]

Thank you for a fair, unbiased overview of X11 and Wayland, and the reasons why some people & distros advocate one over the other.

[@sc0or]

I think creators of XWin in 1984 supposed that in 5 years robots drive cars )) Or just learned some smalltalk ) PS Yesterday I installed Arch arm64 with Gnome and Wayland on my Raspberry Pi (I hope Arch will provide a hardware acceleration very soon). So, something is changing for sure.

[@gtsiam]

Been using it on gnome since forever... Only real pain point is screen sharing. But the huge plus is no screen tearing (which I get on x11 + high-dpi monitor).

[@MichaelSharpTechniSmart]

So glad I have Mesa. On Gnome 42, Wayland had a few small screen glitches and some compability with some of the extensions. But 42.3.1 solved it all for me. Now Wayland runs like a dream, smooth and fast. If you can stay away from nVidia, then that is safest. Sorry for the nVidia users.

[@bennypr0fane]

Very nice explanations, never quite understood what the hangup is with Wayland already, until this video. Would so much appreciate more of these very nice explanatory graphics + animations like what you start at 2:45 (btw what is KMS and evdev, you left those out) and 3:08.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks :) These were not pertinent to the explanation, so I didn’t went into detail :)

[@NikhilSuresh]

In wayland screen sharing doesn't work correctly. Maybe this is the reason why Ubuntu didn't switch. For not so tech savvy person it will be difficult to understand the issue.

[@johannvaniperen7249]

one thing that I saw is that wayland would fix problems with running two monitors with different refresh rates, and I can't wait for that as i'm constantly changing my refresh rates

[@Dowlphin]

6:46 Looks like an attempt to take over by competing and pushing the open standard aside though performance appeal. (Or maybe just seeing maximalism as crucial for their business survival?)

[@drbulbul]

Finally someone explains this. Thank you.

[@Zefrem23]

NVIDIA only supports Elegant Gothic Lolita?!

[@boink800]

I learnt a lot from this video and I do hope Wayland will continue to improve.

[@rudraveermandal3474]

My first linux distro except termux was Fedora and Wayland is the default on Fedora. I actually didn't know this and encountered stuff that Wayland users do not X11 users and then realised it was Wayland. I switched to X11 and have used like 20-30 distros by now and never even looked at Wayland but the new kde plasma updates are doing a lot to Wayland so mad me curious

[@deechvogt1589]

Thanks for the update on this topic. Much appreciated. Stay well!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks, you too!

[@Insightfill]

The change in security model messed me up with Wayland; Synaptic refused to launch when I tried it earlier this year on Wayland. :(

[@AndersJackson]

That is not the only problem with Wayland. I had problems with locking desktop because of one program locked itself.

[@Insightfill]

@@AndersJackson Agreed. Synaptic was my first right after a new install - like the first five minutes. I'm willing to learn new stuff, but if installing software from a tool that old - and in the default install - was broken, I didn't want to spend any more time. I'll come back later if it matures, or Synaptic does.

[@OcteractSG]

After reading the discussion on how X actually works, I see the benefit to remaking the system. We have self-supporting desktops that connect to headless servers, so there is no need to separate the various parts of drawing windows. Everything graphical is being done on the same machine, usually for just one user.

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

Another thing to mention is that Xorg cant properly work with HDR displays.

[@nerdnotawheep5474]

I was testing it in quite a few machines. Plasma Wayland always breaks, whereas gnome Wayland is pretty stable. Nvidia is a different case, I'd say their drivers breaks a lot on most *nix systems.

[@santiblocks]

It really sucks it is that broken on plasma wayland; i enjoyed the speed boost with wayland, and also that it went from not working at all to working for my gpu, but the rustiness is pretty evident with the artifacting and breaking alpha channels. I hope they fix it cause GNOME feels like a toy DE for me :c

[@cameronbosch1213]

Recent versions of KDE Plasma seem to be much more stable on Wayland, even on Nvidia, because it seems like Nvidia is using GBM FINALLY!

[@spiderpickle3255]

xfce is my DE, so I have a feeling I'm going to be using X for a while longer. X is a bit clunky, but it's still more stable overall since applications or the whole environment can crash and X still keeps chugging on allowing for easy recovery without a reboot.

[@ramansarda5988]

One reason for ubuntu to not implement wayland is screen sharing feature. It depends on pipewire and latest pipewire isn't in ubuntu yet (it's in Fedora 33) Mostly it will make it into next ubuntu release. It's only oneof the blockers so mostly ubuntu won't shift to wayland right after pipewire is ready. But yeah things are in progress.

[@Kawayolnyo]

Wayland "just arrived around 4 years ago" in 2020? Excuse me my French, as they say, but - effing WHAT? Wayland's been out there since 2008, for FOURTEEN years now. Also, the day when Wayland will be fully and seamlessly ported/added to Mint/Zorin, will be the literal day of the death of Micro$hit's Wangblows.

[@pierreabbat6157]

I've been writing a program that uses Qt for the GUI. It works fine on my devel box, which runs Xorg. I ran it on a Fedora box when I was visiting the man who asked me to write it, and it crashed. His box was running Wayland; when I switched to X, the program ran fine.

[@alexandermittermeier9133]

EGL is something completely different. What he meant was EGLstreams, a part of the EGL spec that was not originally meant for Wayland and not used by any standard driver compatible with Wayland. Only Nvidia did go that route and contributed all the code to make that weird thing work on existing desktops themself. Wayland surfaces use EGL to draw, Android for example also uses EGL to draw. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGL_(API) "EGL handles graphics context management, surface/buffer binding, rendering synchronization, and enables "high-performance, accelerated, mixed-mode 2D and 3D rendering using other Khronos APIs."

[@grizeldiSLO]

Ubuntu did switch to Wayland as default for one of their non LTS releases some time ago, but then backtracked.

[@jeschinstad]

@@freedomgoddess: They never killed Mir. It's going as strong as ever. They decided that developing for Mir should be done without reference to internal protocols because developing permanent standards is a very time-consuming thing. So with Mir, they said you should rely on the Mir API and let Mir figure out protocols. Now, Mir is "openly" Wayland. Unity 7 and Unity 8 are entirely different things. Unity 7 deeply depends on X11, which won't make any sense moving to Wayland, so moving it to maintenance mode and turning it over to the community was a smart decision. Neither were killed, unless you consider all Free Software that's not backed by commercial entities dead. Unity 8 was a different matter. Its primary reason for existence was convergence, which depends entirely on the Linux community _wanting_ to exert pressure on Google and Samsung, which was something the Linux community was totally unwilling to do. I still think Linux users made a big mistake when they decided that Samsung phones should not be allowed to run Mainline Linux. Most of them probably didn't understand what they were refusing. I personally own a Pinephone, but it's obviously quite weak compared to the Galaxy S8 or S20 and that's all because of drivers that we're not allowed to have. Canonical and Red Hat are the only ones who could bring it to us, but the infighting prevents it from happening. The only real hope is that IBM decides to go into phones, but I don't see that happening.

[@jeschinstad]

@@freedomgoddess: Mir is actually quite popular for things like info-screens that you may see on buses and things like that and it's actively developed. It is by far the most powerful Wayland display server and there are desktops that wants to use Mir rather than implementing their own Wayland compositor. The Mate desktop is one of them. I think Xfce has talked about it too. Unity 7 is still quite popular and it's more reasonable to consider it stable than dead. But because it is based on Compiz, which is specifically designed to circumvent the problems with X11, it will never be ported to Wayland. In that regard, you can consider it dead. It will probably not be usable 30 years from now. There's never any reasonable way to say Unity 7 / Unity 8. They have nothing in common. It's like saying "I'm tired of the Windows 10 / Mac OS system". It just doesn't make any sense.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@jeschinstad I think the current maintainer of Ubuntu Unity (and Unity itself) is working on a Wayland port. Unlike Linux Mint & the Cinnamon team.

[@qedqubit]

Great Explanation :-D ! Wayland must have started somewhere in he 90ies, as i vaguely recall having an issue of BYTE-magazine that had it on the cover as it's main story !

[@shariarrahman7562]

This has been interesting to watch since the launch of the steam Deck. I believe the gaming mode runs on Wayland so possibly some of the issues with the x server not working with wine and proton have been fixed

[@Odd_Taxi_epi04]

On the other hand, the desktop mode runs on X11, so Valve don't considers Wayland ready for desktop plasma yet.

[@346151295]

Exactly, I started to explore more on linux since i built my all AMD holoiso steam machine!

[@cookiebinary]

I'm watching this video after 3 years and Linux Mint just now added experimental Wyaland support. What the heck, I still like Mint the best.

[@Blueeeeeee]

Just a note about Linux Mint, they now have a Wayland related entry in the startup applications since 20.0, so I definitely think they're actually thinking about it. I dunno if Cinnamon is ready for Wayland, though :)

[@darxustech2883]

"we don’t use Wayland ourselves it’s not something we have on our own roadmap." - cinnamon

[@Blueeeeeee]

@@darxustech2883 Oh. Well, my bad. I think the startup entry still suggests they're willing to take care of the people who would want to use Wayland on Linux Mint though. Or maybe, that's just an upstream thing coming from Ubuntu ? Hmmm, I didn't think about that. It would be a valid possibility.

[@SprunkCovers]

Now so far, only Mint is the only major distro that has not migrated to Wayland, but I think it is because of Cinnamon

[@cameronbosch1213]

@Errikarta And that's enough for me to avoid it or recommending anything with Cinnamon for now... At least XFCE & MATE are getting Wayland support ready.

[@master138]

I came from the future and now NVIDIA supports GBM😁

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, that’s pretty great!

[@pmarreck]

This was an awesome breakdown that I desperately needed as a linux neophyte

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thank you :)

[@AndersJackson]

Sorry to say, it isn't totally correct though. It has a Wayland bias, which isn't that hard to see if you know what X11 is.

[@pmarreck]

@@AndersJackson Isn’t Wayland “the way forward” though?

[@AndersJackson]

@@pmarreck it is at best a side step. They throwing out lots of good stuff that X11 protocal can handle but Wayland can. Like not locking when a Wayland client locks.

[@tuxinal5661]

There is gonna be full wayland support on the nvidia proprietary drivers since 470 which is awesome! Sadly I have to use the 390 drivers because I have an older gpu. It will be pretty intresting when x11 will just become legacy stuff that no-one uses except a few people

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s super cool, yeah!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

4:08 “You don’t have a server ... the compositor is the server”. Yes, you still have a server doing the display, just as with X11. The difference is that it is much simpler: its main job is to put a bunch of pixels on-screen, composited in some way with the pixels already there. X11 is also a graphics library (and also, at one time, a font server -- but thankfully that’s long gone). Nowadays it’s recognized that graphics rendering (including text rendering) is all best done on the client app side, while the display server just concentrates on showing the resulting pixels.

[@AndersJackson]

Which can get the screen to lock if one client locks in Wayland. Not so much in X11, as it is a porper client server implementation.

[@jeschinstad]

To put it simpler: on X11, you need to talk to the server every time you draw. With Wayland, you are assigned a space once and then you draw directly without having to talk to a server first.

[@fen4ri]

It seems to me like the whole Linux scene is being dragged down because of X! One of the biggest hangups for me in moving from Windows => Linux is that there's no solutions for using my nice android tablet(has S Pen +pen pressure/tilt) as a pressure sensitive display. I mean, I can turn my Tab S7 into a virtual display at the tap of a button, but I haven't found any way to use it like a 2nd monitor over on linux. I've heard of people using display dummy plug, but that feels kind of like a stupid solution to me, idk. I find it really odd that the Linux landscape seems to be really lagging behind in terms of Integration with Android tablets/phones. IDK I'M NEW HERE so if anything I'm bitching about sounds wrong feel free to educate me. ANYWAYS I'm just meaning to say I feel like a lot of stuff is problematic about X and I think with screen mirroring & stuff like that which is not a wired connection you start to see the input lag. Technology is moving heavily into touch-screens and styluses I think.... And not that I've ever tried it but, VR has some wack-ass display stuff going on I bet too...... The age is really starting to show in X and it's kind of crazy that distros and devs aren't trying to get the hell away from that old beast by now.

[@DSTechMedia]

I'm a huge fan of your videos sir. They are so poignant and precise. I wasn't at all surprised when I finally found out you are a teacher. As for Wayland I recently ran it without knowing it on Ubuntu Web Remix so for basic things it's obviously fine. I didn't take the time to test things out though. The main thing that I used to worry about missing is X11-Forwarding via SSH, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's working fine now. Personally I think X11 has been pretty impressive for Linux on the desktop. We've had major changes to graphics and gaming with X11 providing a decent experience throughout, but I suppose it could be holding gaming performance back in some ways too without really knowing it.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hi! Thanks for the kind words :) I am not a teacher though :)

[@DSTechMedia]

​@@TheLinuxEXP Oh my mistake. I was thinking of the gentleman from Infinitely Galactic! I'd imagine you work in technology, do you mind my asking?

[@AbdelrahmanRashed]

I hope the day comes where I can just plug my 2 different refresh rate monitors into a linux PC and manage to run each one at it's native refresh rate WITHOUT having to read 50 Articles and guides about xrander and why X server is dead and Wayland is the future. I'm a developer and I couldn't even care less about how windows are drawn on my Linux OS Heck I don't even use linux aside from work because I'm forced to I just want stuff to work and investigate only when I have an edge case not when I have a normal 2 Freaking Monitors that can't run with their Native refresh rate on X11 Like wtf? P.S : Note for future self, buy AMD GPU Next time.

[@JorgetePanete]

its*

[@chorba]

I tried Wayland in my laptop with Fedora and Ubuntu and it was really fast! Great video Nick!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks a lot :)

[@9a3eedi]

Things I don't like about Wayland - no network transparency. VNC is not a replacement. Being able to open remote GUI windows and they get treated like local windows on my local machine is magic, even if the X protocol is terribly inefficient for that. I really hope they find some kind of solution for this because it's one of my favorite things about using Linux. - breaking compatibility with other kernels (like BSD). So if I implement a GUI on linux, my understanding is that I won't be able to port it to BSD or any other POSIX environment easily because those don't support Wayland and never will because Wayland was written specifically for Linux. - Unclear whatll happen to desktop environments like Fluxbox, etc... Since those are purely X11 based if I understand correctly I still think replacing X11 is long overdue though and Wayland seems like the best solution so far. I hope it also makes GUIs on lower end machines run faster

[@dand337]

xorg would be dead long ago if not nvidia..

[@perseusarkouda]

nvidia is cancer

[@guss77]

Not really - Wayland still has a lot of issues and the only reason that GNOME is stable on Wayland is that they move fast and break things (for everybody else - see other comments here about GNOME). KDE developers for a long time just officially did not support Nvidia on Wayland and that didn't help them move any faster. Wayland will eventually replace X11, but 12 years after it was created, that goal is still at least 5 years away.

[@dand337]

@@guss77 things would've been entirely different if nvidia had worked alongside amd and Intel day one. Linux currently is in a hard spot with two compositors being used dependently on gpu. Also don't forget that nvidia has atleast 50% marketshare even on Linux.

[@magneticking4339]

2:14 See? You start by wrongly defining the parts of the X protocol according to wrongly interpreted pieces... How do you expect to come to correct results if you are beginning with incorrect definitions? Before I explain this--however--I will explain another case in which the exact same thing is done and which causes no terminology confusion. You can install an apache/php/mysql server on your local machine and use it from a local or even remote web browser. If you do that the apache (http and php) and mysql servers will be normally and easily called the "web server" and the Firefox web browser from which you access it will be called the X client. If you do this, you are running the client and the server on the same machine, which makes the first step in this "role inversion". If you set your machine up to temporarily allow network connections, you can find yourself involved in the exact same thing. Now, the X Server is the machine that provides the screen, sound, webcam, mouse, and keyboard services to the X Client--which runs on computer that provides computational and and memory services to the X Server. X SERVER: Holds the screen, webcam, sound and keyboard and mouse inputs and virtually no computational capability. X CLIENT: Holds all the computational, networking, memory and permanent storage capabilities, while providing very limited input/output capabilities. It is easy to say that this is an inversion of terminology... But if you think about it even one bit, it makes 100% sense! The X clients run on the "big iron" machine and they use the input/output services provided by the X server, which is located where the user is.

[@antux5183]

Thank you very much for the detailed information! I always wondered what wayland was. Good job!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks for watching :)

[@MrRastler]

It's been two years. Usage of wayland is about 10%. It is still impossible to work together with Nvidia adapters P. S. VSCode default hasn’t enable wayland

[@maynnemillares]

Even after 50 years from now, Wayland will still not be mainstream in Linux.

[@GeoTechLand]

Wayland is great except that OBS doesn’t support it. The workarounds for it are not a good experience on my amd gpu :(

[@thejoewolf8163]

Let's gooo!!!

[@SkyyySi]

You messed up some of the terminology here: A X compositor does NOT draw the window, titlebars, etc. That's a window manager. A X compositor is for things like transparency, drop shadows, fading & animations, blur, etc.

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Nick. Yes, failed over and over and over and over... Whereas Xorg has always done whatever I needed. Just because it's old is no reason to replace it. Still, if Wayland does ever work, that's fine. Good explanation, though.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, I don’t plan on using it until it’s a perfect replacement

[@hexrays6150]

The X developers don't want to continue with X. Things get really complicated when you get into this topic. I myself switched to Wayland about half a year ago. Today I don't want to miss it anymore.

[@s9209122222]

@@hexrays6150 Wayland is still so buggy as hell for lots of apps, I just can't stand it.

[@KaptainUflg]

@@hexrays6150 >The X developers don't want to continue with X. X developers want to continue with X.

[@KaptainUflg]

@Jorg >Xorg is a Red Hat project for decades and every developer of Xorg switched to Wayland. You are liar.

[@shamim-dhulumakhapotherbake]

You got it backwards. The x server is the display station (which you called little x clients) with the display hardware. The x client is the application running remotely on big hardwware (which you called the server) talking to your display station with the fancy video card. X.org I'd the server that runs on the machine that displays. X clients like firefox, etc can run on many different machines, all displaying their content in front of you. Perhaps this is why wayland has not made it to prime time yet. It cannot remotely serve applications to the local workstation from remote clients. X11 invetrs the client server model. Shared/remote application hardware clients running content on a local display server. At time marker 3:01 you said it more correctly. Kbs/mouse/video on the server. Applications call to it. Time marker 3:57. All the items mentioned here are owned by the special application called the window manager. X without the window manager only displays the content. Compositor gives you all the fancy effects but is not required. But under wayland, all the advantages disappear. Remote application running on local displays from headless hardware.

[@kuhluhOG]

fun fact: KDE considers its Wayland session a Tech Preview; Fedora KDE wants to switch to Wayland by default in 34 (I think, it was one of the next ones at least) when the KWin developers heard about that on this year's Akademy, they didn't seem too happy about that (at least that's what I guess from the expression on their faces)

[@guss77]

Yea, as Nick correctly notes - one of the main issues with developing a desktop environment for Wayland - especially if you want to write your own compositor - is that a lot of stuff that we used to get "for free" from the X server, such as a clipboard implementation, you now have to implement yourself. So everyone that complain that there are too many competing X servers (Hi early 2000s 😜), now every desktop environment has to implement its own server. Yay! This is open source, so someone smart decided to make things easier and the wlroots project develops a set of common tools to make it easy to write (at least simple) Wayland compositors without needing to re-invent the wheel, but neither GNOME nor KDE are using these - they both implement everything themselves. GNOME is much farther ahead than KDE on that and is actually the major producers of new Wayland protocols to handle things that are needed and Wayland - on purpose - did not design for: such as screen capture (hi KZbin streamers 👋👋).

[@KaptainUflg]

Wayland has nothing to do with community. This is why real developers don't support it and this is why so much noise about wayland in social media - some companies related to Microsoft (such as RedHat/IBM) want to make own monopoly and environment similar to dead unixes. They are trying to enforce the idea that they are owners of all free/libre software. For example, there are puff pieces where Xorg is mentioned as personal property of RedHat. Of course, with such way of promotion wayland can't be ready for desktop.

[@guss77]

@@KaptainUflg RedHat related to Microsoft? Pbbbbfffftttt...

[@KaptainUflg]

@@guss77 RedHat and Microsoft are big friends. RedHat is the one of the biggest companies promoting microsoft technologies such as .NET. Another evidence of friendship of RedHat and Microsoft: channeldailynews.com/news/microsoftred-hat-broaden-partnership/48750 This is just a tip of the iceberg. If you think when IBM bought RedHat the link between RedHat and Microsoft was cutted I recommend to pay attention to the fact that IBM will be splitted soon into two companies: old IBM with unannounced name and current company entitled as IBM which will do same things which RedHat did before IBM officially acquired it. Of course, the president of modern IBM is Jim Whitehurst - the former head of RedHat. By the way, Linux Foundation is full of people from Microsoft.

[@didackos]

Great explanation! I really enjoyed the video. Thanks 👍🏻

[@jimsinnovations2737]

Nice vid man ty

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks :)

[@cestarianinhabitant5898]

Is it ready for daily use? Yes, unless you happen to be one of those silly gamers with an nvidia graphics card, then no.

[@marcin6386]

imagine that we would have good support of drivers from all vendors on linux.... DREAM!

[@hasindulanka]

Wayland is working fine for me since January in Kubuntu. Very usable and stable. I can even play COD MW, AW on wine perfectly. Only zoom client gave me errors so far. (i5 Radeon)

[@jean-pierremessager4366]

at 2:30 the description of the X11 Client/Server model is 100% wrong. The server is on the "thin client" side, not the other way around, the clients are applications running on diverse "CPU server".

[@daichimax]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge! Thumb Up & Subscribed!

[@KuruGDI]

So Wayland is like grub 2.0 (in terms of "the next big thing" that will be "implemented somewhen in the future")

[@hanro50]

Mint will probably follow Ubuntu...if Ubuntu's choices don't come across as idiotic to the team behind Mint.

[@KsanterX]

Using it in Fedora with no issues. The only problem I had is that there is no screen share.

[@aniketnayi3921]

I use Ubuntu and it's works with Wayland

[@baardkopperud]

Does Wayland allow showing the result/output from a program running on another compuer like X do? Eg. running a Xclient on a very powerful computer at your college, but showing the result on you computer at home (running the Xserver)...

[@jannelahtinen2]

I must say, transitioning to Wayland has been a game-changer. When I upgraded my GPU to the Intel Arc A770 and added a second vertical screen, the screen tearing was unbearable with X11, and I couldn't find a solution. However, since making the switch about six months ago, I haven't encountered any glitches or crashes.

[@noernewaccount]

Intel arc released? I'm using Intel HD Graphics 405 so I can't relate.

[@syscruncher]

Learned a lot here. Makes me wonder if X is the reason that Linux PCs were able to advertise multiple desktops way back in the Windows 9x days and only with Windows 10 did we finally get proper multiple desktop spaces.

[@WidyaWalesa]

At least I don't get `invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1` in wayland

[@michaeldeloatch7461]

Superb explanation for something that has mostly confused me and seemed unnecessarily disruptive since X11 works as is.

[@davidciprys7811]

Gnome also doesn't support Freesync on Wayland. (Sway supports it so it's not a matter of drivers or Wayland itself) So until that I'll be running Xorg.