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The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

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Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#121

Post by didntcheck »

moody__ wrote: post #60

Wayland is the poster child for a rewrite that tries to be 'simple' and in doing so over-complicates things by under specification. Other commenters have mentioned that usability extension issues but I wanted to discuss my experience as someone who maintains their own wayland client (for drawterm: https://github.com/9front/drawterm ). There are plenty of technical differences between how KDE, Gnome, and Wlroots that…

And what's frustrating is this isn't just down to poor execution, it's fundamental to the design, and it was repeatedly pointed out from the start. I'm glad there's finally been some acknowledgement of issues predicted around a decade ago, but only because the issues have indeed manifested, making it a rather pyrrhic victory

A "simple" solution to a necessary complex problem is just kicking the can down the road, and essentially asking everyone to invent their own incompatible wheels to fill in the missing bits. On X, there's enough flexibility for me to pick a DE and window manager separately, due to the standard modularization, whereas on Wayland, I have to check the compatibility of a screenshot tool with my desktop environment [1], and whether my DE even works with my graphics card! Everything becomes tightly coupled due to the lack of standards

[1] unlike some I actually do support the move to not let any app read the screen or global KB input, but the interface for those that do should have been part of the Wayland project, not just "not our department!"

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#122

Post by Maken »

goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

Until we have proper app sandboxing in Linux desktop, in the sense that third party proprietary programs use it, that's a minor concern.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#123

Post by tristor »

I’m a very technical person that cares deeply about the details most of the time. I also spend most of my time in a terminal. But when I’m not in a terminal I mostly want things to just work, because I don’t “do” graphics.

I have never cared about whether Wayland or X11 is better, I only ever cared that Wayland consistently broke my browser’s interactions with the rest of the system. I still don’t care what is underneath, I just care that my browser works as expected and I can tile a few terminals stacked on a screen with my browser full length on the side so I can view docs while I work.

I consider my workflow to be /very/ simple with low requirements and it still breaks with Wayland (or at least did the last time I bothered to try it).

These days I feel well served by a Macbook, but am giving Linux another go as soon as my Framework 13 AMD shows up. So I guess I will give Wayland another shot soon enough.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#124

Post by enriquto »

goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

> X allows every application to take screenshots of the whole screen.

I have bad news for you: linux allows every application that you run to wipe out your entire home directory.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#125

Post by enriquto »

Maken wrote: post #122
goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

Until we have proper app sandboxing in Linux desktop, in the sense that third party proprietary programs use it, that's a minor concern.

> proper app sandboxing in Linux desktop, in the sense that third party proprietary programs use it

Proper sandboxing is not something that third-party programs should get to decide to use or not. It should be the users of these programs that decide if they want to sandbox them or not, even if the application is unwilling.

Sandboxing is an operating-system issue, not a packaging issue.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#126

Post by ndriscoll »

kouteiheika wrote: post #40

This might be a hot take, but you'll have to take X from my cold, dead hands. Or at least until things start breaking, or maybe until Wayland has e.g. stellar HDR support and I'll get a nice OLED monitor. Otherwise, no dice. I know that X is a crusty old spawn of Cthulhu; but honestly, I don't really care? It just works! I set up my system 10 years ago with how the UI works (including my window manager), and it stabl…

Yeah the blog OP is replying to is just silly.

> Unless your workflow (and hardware) comes from 20+ years ago, you have almost no reason to stick with Xorg, especially as it continues to get worse and worse when the user experience relies on newer and newer features.

My workflow is probably 20+ years old because not much has changed with software in the last 20 years. My computer is getting close to 10 years old. It works fine. X doesn't get worse and worse; it continues to just work. Sort of like apple fanatics claim, except it's actually true.

I'm not worried about running a keylogger or something that's going to surreptitiously capture my screen. It's not a major issue. It's not an issue at all. Never comes up.

Maybe I'd care more if I were running multiple monitors each with different scaling factors and refresh rates, but that sounds pretty niche. I still don't see a reason to want Wayland as a user.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#128

Post by rlkf »

djha-skin wrote: post #58
rlkf wrote: post #47

Currently using XFCE on a remote desktop. This configuration has in the last ten years been met with "theoretically, someone could maybe maybe write something one day that makes this work on Wayland". Well, until it is, then I frankly hope that Wayland fails and is abandoned, because as it is now it sucks up all the mindshare of desktop Linux into what it consider a dead end: having each and everyone doing their own…

I can see the frustration that causes, but as a Wayland user my experience is simply better. Screen tearing goes away, and the graphics look cleaner and crisper. I get it's a huge pain for implementers, but I don't see it failing with this improved user experience for most folks. I do miss XFCE, or I thought I would, but KDE is actually gotten a lot faster than it used to be and I haven't been displeased with its per…

Screen tearing is completely irrelevant when one doesn't have a desktop. But the Wayland people doesn't care about that.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#129

Post by Filligree »

_lvbh wrote: post #98
Filligree wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it also breaks Electron apps.

Since when? I switched from MacOS to Linux with Wayland directly with no experience with X11. I’ve never had any issues with electron

If you have an Nvidia GPU, you'll find Electron breaks on Wayland. Not otherwise.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#130

Post by vondur »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #42
ntietz wrote: post #16

I’m in one of the “other smaller groups not included here”: people who rely on accessibility tooling that isn’t supported by Wayland. My options are: - keep using X and stay healthy - switch to Wayland and get strong nerve pain again - switch to Windows or Mac If Wayland were my only option, I would have to leave Linux for my health. So the technical merits of Wayland truly don’t matter. Accessibility is an oft forgo…

Would you please talk more about this? * What is your condition exactly? * What were you using on X that made you healthy? * How is it broken on Wayland?

If you can believe people on Reddit, multi monitor support on Nvidia GPUs is broken. I only run AMD so I don’t have that issue. A game mod I use for ET Legacy only runs under X.
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