this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023

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Wayland may soon overtake X11 in Linux GUIs (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] simple 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I've been hearing that for like 7 years now

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If it wasn't for nvidia, wayland would be the standard by now.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If Wayland is to replace X it needs to provide feature parity and fix what's wrong with X on top.

There's more to being a standard than a reduced feature set that just happens to scratch an itch here and there for some users.

Pretending that 80% of desktop users don't exist is not helping either.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Of course, but wayland is a solid design that's on the path towards being that. Development would probably go a lot faster if major distros shipped wayland by default. But because of nvidia, they can't.

[+] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's a bit of a jump from "feature complete and still issuing maintenance releases" to "abandonware".

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm just annoyed by the apparent assumption from people promoting messages like this that Wayland is ready for desktop use when it's not. It seems to give the impression that there aren't things that have to be fixed. Like how DPI in Firefox is broken, or how MS Teams and other screen sharing apps don't work.

I've wanted to adopt Wayland for years but still can't. Claims like the OP makes it sound as if devs are out of touch with the reality of their users and that's frustrating. If they abandon X and don't fix the problems with Wayland then I'm screwed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Besides app support what is missing in wayland(I do not game so I don't care if the screen is allowed to tear or not)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

biggest ones I see:

No stuff like autokey, xmodmap, xinput etc. basically no mouse and keyboard customization and no plans to fix it.
Issues with non-window overlayed widgets (context menus, modal windows-in-windows etc.)
Completely ignores compatibility with the vast majority of desktop environments except a couple, with anything non-Linux, with proprietary drivers etc.

There's a general feeling that Wayland is doing you a favor and that anything it breaks is someone else's problem, that we're supposed to ignore everything that's missing or malfunctioning or incomplete and just rejoice at the fact it works in very particular circumstances.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Look, I'm fully familiar with the "scratch an itch" approach to software development in FOSS... I'm not demanding anything from Wayland, I'm just saying it needs to work with the larger software ecosystem. You can't use a graphical server by itself.

If it's not working with desktop environments, not working with Nvidia, not working with keyboard/mouse configuration, not working with the clipboard, having issues with common software like browsers etc... what am I supposed to do about it?

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I have to ask, you do understand that people aren't likely to ditch their entire DE setup and go buy another graphics card, which both work perfectly well with everything except Wayland... just for the privilege of using Wayland?

It would have to offer some outstanding feature to compel people to do this. But it offers nothing and is proud of it. I don't get it.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm a FOSS contributor myself and I know what it means to volunteer time and resources for the community. But the software needs to meet users in the middle.

The FOSS and Linux software scene is a meritocracy. Software rises to the top if it's truly useful and "Don't use it" in my experience is code-speak for "this software is a solution looking for a problem".

The Nvidia hurdle in particular is insurmountable. They haven't wavered in their stance on closed drivers in the last 20 years, they have no incentive to care about the Linux desktop, and yet they have 80% of this niche according to Steam. If Wayland intends to die on this hill it can order a headstone right now and save time.

[–] Reliant1087 1 points 2 years ago

As someone who has made the switch for an year or so:

Legacy apps with xwayland do not scale properly and appear blurry and pixelated on my multi-monitor setup. This sucks because there are a lot of old apps that aren't ported.
No great onscreen keyboard that works well.
Problems with Java apps like webstorm and pycharm where they won't scale properly and are unusuable.
Even my IDE (code) and other electron based apps glitch sometimes.

I like Wayland so far but these have been really bothersome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

But its finally hapenning now

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Ok write the article when it does.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If it worked with no problems on Nvidia, i would use it asap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

wait it hasn't already? I thought most of the popular distributions adopted it as standard already making the majority of desktop users Wayland users