this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Hey Community,

Since I just read a post about the X11 vs. Wayland situation I'm questioning if I should stay on X11, or switch to Wayland. Regarding this decision, I'm asking you for your opinions plus please answer me a few questions. I will put further information about my systems at the bottom.

  • What are the advantages of Wayland? What are the disadvantages?
  • I do mostly music production, programming, browsing, etc, but occasionally I'm back into gaming (on the desktop). How's performance there? Anything that might break?
  • what would be the best way to migrate?
  • why have/haven't you made the switch?

Desktop: Ryzen 3100, 16 Gig Ram, Rx 570 Arch Linux with KDE 144 hz Freesync Monitor and 60hz shitty monitor

laptop: Thinkpad L540 (iirc), i3 4100, 8 GB Ram intel uhd630 gfx (iirc) Arch Linux with heavily customized i3-gaps

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[–] GustavoM 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can`t give you any technical details, but real-world ones -- it (drastically) decreased my cpu temps and cpu usage, while providing a slightly better performance overall.

t. Tested this on a rpi 4 while running Doom 3 (the closest of a "Crysis for rpi 4") a couple years ago. Pretty sure its even better right now.

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

I wouldn't be in too big of a rush, especially if you don't have a lot of time to experiment. I gradually switched over when I realized that Sway was meant to be a wayland replacement for i3wm. There were some rough edges at first, but starting about a year ago I switched to Sway on most of my machines. I didn't have any trouble installing sway alongside i3wm and xfce4, and I would highly recommend keeping an x11 option as a fallback when or if something doesn't work.

Initially, I tried out Sway because I heard that most x11 developers were shifting their focus to Wayland and I figured that I should start experimenting with it. I like getting out in front of change. Eventually, Sway shifted from interesting to good enough for daily use. I figure that I'll have less time to play around with my computers in the future, so I might as well try new stuff out now before it gets forced on me.

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

On my surface go 3, I used pop os at first and the screen tearing was so bad that I stopped using it. I then changed for arch with gnome on wayland and everything works much better.

Though, for my main computer, I recently switched my main OS from Windows and went for Hyprland on Arch. I love it. Most applications run fine. Though I have a 3080. This means that most electron apps are very slow, almost unusable. Also, some applications just refuse to open, notably Plex. For jellyfin, half the time the screen is black and I need to restart the app. I also have a KVM switch that I use for my work computer. When I switched to it and came back, I got a red screen of death for which I had to exit Hyprland and get back to SDDM to log back in. I was able to start and play games though. Global shortcuts didn't work easily (feature, not a bug), so I want to use a support app for Path of Exile. Impossible on Wayland. And finally, I tend to use a screenshoting tool. Flameshot isn't available on wayland so I used snappy, but it doesn't freeze the frame, rendering it useless.

Now I switched over qtile in X11. Everything works fine, electron apps are much more snappy. Most importantly, the WM doesn't crash when I use my KVM, so my sound device works perfectly. The only issue I'm facing is the audio, there seem to have a very small delay (I'm using pipewire).

The only thing that I miss now is a way for me to assign an audio output to an application so that if I close the application it even restart my computer, that assignment is still remembered. Currently I have a tool that does that that I autostart with my WM, but it doesn't redirect the audio, it just adds the other assignment without removing the default audio output.

There you go, wayland is not recommended if you have a nvidia GPU, even though it still works.

[–] demesisx 1 points 1 year ago

I use xmonad and won't switch until there's a viable alternative (probably never).

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

I could not turn off mouse acceleration, which was a deal-breaker for me.

Actually not Wayland's fault if I remember correctly, something about libinput changing it's format, and my window manager wasn't compatible with it yet. After trying for several hours I found a bug report (can't find it right now). The Devs thought it was a minor issue, but for me it was huge so I decided I'll wait another year.

I must say, Wayland was smoooooth, didn't even experience X as slow until I tried Wayland.

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

I am no fan of wayland, but if it works the software you use and your workflow, then it would probably be advisable to do so. It is not for me and my day to day workflow.

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

If your video card is Radeon, then yes. Otherwise you should wait for opensource Nvidia drivers.

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

I just distro hopped to a distro that ships wayland by default and I've got from a near flawless linux experience to an awful experience. I am gonna have to be careful what distro I recommend to people because I dont want anyone's first linux experience to be with wayland. So many issues and every single time its wayland related with no fix. I ended up going back to x11. -NVIDIA graphics card user with KDE plasma.

[–] rbar -1 points 1 year ago

There is still way too much instability and too many paper cuts on KDE Wayland. IMO if you have waited this long just wait for their Qt6 release. X11 will remain the best supported experience for KDE 5.

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