this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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A set of merge requests were opened that would effectively drop X.Org (X11) session support for the GNOME desktop and once that code is removed making it a Wayland-only desktop environment.

Going along with Fedora 40 looking to disable the GNOME X11 session support (and also making KDE Plasma 6 Wayland-only for Fedora), upstream GNOME is evaluating the prospect of disabling and then removing their X11 session support.

Some concerns were raised already how this could impact downstream desktops like Budgie and Pantheon that haven't yet fully transitioned over to Wayland. In any event we'll see where the discussions lead but it's sure looking like 2024 will be the year that GNOME goes Wayland-only.

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[–] merthyr1831 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

honestly feels like Wayland won't get many of the fixes it needs until everyone is forced onto it and sends in bug reports. That's gonna suck for lots of people including me but maybe it's now or never

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I'm kinda on the fence about it. On the one hand that is how it is supposed to work. That the new thing gets better, faster when everyone uses it. However, I liked to watch this dude named Brodie Robertson on youtube and a lot of the major features took years to land in wayland.

Not because it was hard, no one wanted to do it, or any of the normal reasons you traditionally see in foss. The reason why it took so long usually seems to be the result of having to argue that it should be done. It is honestly mind boggling that things like disabling vsync, global shortcuts, and many other features that many of us take for granted were all initially dismissed as essentially "not even deserving to exist".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

These are arguments that should happen, they ensure that things in the protocol are done the right way, else there will be a massive duplication of effort as the protocol changes to something better.

[–] merthyr1831 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah the political side of FOSS is the most frustrating part for everyone involved. I will say however that at least if Brodie's videos are to be believed, Wayland is now actually being pushed to make decisions instead of fence-sitting for years (which is easy when your project isn't hitting crunch time yet)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The politics of FOSS are 100% why I have next to no interest in getting involved beyond small fixes if I come across them.

I'm not going to argue with a bunch of neurodivergent people about good design.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Dude, reading up on the explanation for including a fucking Trash in the freedesktop specification was really eye opening to me.

It's like these 🧩 honestly need an explanation for why a Trash feature is necessary.

Here it is: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/trash-spec/trashspec-latest.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

but maybe it’s now or never

That's a real damn shame, because X is causing no issues for me.

It's weird. As soon as (or even before) something is stable, people are already moving on to the next thing.

That's a good way to have a broken system in perpetuity.