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Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#131

Post by Zardoz84 »

ruszki wrote: post #91
przmk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would venture to say that there is little overlap between X11 users and people with high-DPI screens.

We are under an article which tells you that you can have problems with Wayland and hiDPI screens. And for example I’m one of those people, who uses X11, because Wayland failed on many levels, like buggy video playing, crashing while changing monitors, or simply waking up my laptop with an external monitor, and I didn’t give more than a few days to fix these (cheers to the author to try this long), so I went back to…

I have a setup with a high DPI monitor mixed with a normal DPI monitor and KDE over Wayland just works fine. The only issue that I found are with Libre Office doing weird over scaling and Chrome/Chromium window resizing his window to the oblivion.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#132

Post by immibis »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #120
secure wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the lesson of “separate display server from window manager” was very clear when Wayland was started. People have been discussing this over the years ever since. (See also “client-side decorations” for another part of this issue that was heavily discussed.)

I seem to remember reading in an old paper (1990s?) that the asynchronous nature of the connection between the X server and the window manager results in essentially unfixable protocol-level races.

Wayland has a philosophy of "every frame is perfect", which means fixing every race condition. However, X11 doesn't have this philosophy. If the window manager is slow and doesn't respond to a notification that a window has been resized, drawing the new window content over the old borders is the correct thing to do. What sense does it make to freeze the whole display just for a window border?

Similarly, tearing gets pixels to the screen faster.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#133

Post by mariusor »

charcircuit wrote: post #119
mariusor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, leaving aside the fact that "proprietary" has a very well defined meaning in this context and using it makes your comment very charged, you're basically telling us that Nvidia was not willing to implement an API for their drivers, but tried to push for one designed by themselves (you're calling it "vendor neutral", but since Mesa is not an actual GPU vendor it's most likely another subtle mistake on your part tha…

>leaving aside the fact that "proprietary" has a very well defined meaning in this context Yes, it does and it is different the the well defined meaning when talking in regards to the software itself. OpenGL is an open API, but the source code for an implementation isn't necessarily open. >Nvidia was not willing to implement an API for their drivers They couldn't because this API is a part of Mesa itself. As I mentio…

> For obvious reasons this was never going to happen.

Well, I guess this is the crux of the problem, and for open-source enthusiasts like me this is not obvious at all. What we can surmise is that Nvidia refused to collaborate, therefore they were the party to blame for the status of their video cards not being supported as well as others' vendors on linux.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#134

Post by tsoukase »

For me a no-go for wayland is no support in LXDE and Xfce, which are very good lightweight out of the box user friendly DEs. There is LXQt and Xfce initiated the migration but until then it doesn't worth. Other hurdles are less important like multiscreen, multi-seat, Nvidia.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#135

Post by ptero »

glimshe wrote: post #89

Note to people on this thread: the impression the discussions give is that Linux isn't ready for prime time desktop use. I thought Wayland was the latest and greatest, but folks here report issues and even refuse to ever use it. Windows and Mac Os, for all their faults, are unquestionably ready to use in 2026. If you are a Linux on desktop advocate, read the comments and see why so many are still hesitating.

I don't know what "ready for prime time desktop use" means. I suspect it means different things for different people.

But with Linux being mostly hobbyist-friendly a number of folks have custom setups and do not want to be forced into the standardized mold for the sake of making it super smooth to transition from Windows.

I have such a setup (using FVWM with customized key bindings and virtual layout that I like, which cannot work under Wayland), so can I donate some money to Microsoft to keep Windows users less grumpy and not bringing yet another eternal September to Linux. I like my xorg, thank you very much :).

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#136

Post by gspr »

thevinchi wrote: post #126
gspr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wayland smells like IPv6 to me. No need to switch, and it hurts when you try. I'm very happy with Wayland, but what a strange comparison to make if you're not. IPv6 is objectively an enormous improvement over IPv4, and the only gripe with it is that it's still not ubiquitous.

I’ll concede that IPv6 has usefulness on the public Internet, where adoption is actually gaining nicely. No issues there really. However, my comparison is end-user focused (ie. the Linux desktop experience). I should have been more clear about the scope perhaps. Both IPv6 and Wayland have increased complexity and surface area for pain (cost) without an obvious benefit for the end-user. Also: wrt IPv6 specifically, I…

> Both IPv6 and Wayland have increased complexity and surface area for pain (cost) without an obvious benefit for the end-user.

I'd argue the opposite: IPv6 has lowered complexity for the end user: SLAAC, endless addresses, no need for CIDR – these are all simplifications for the end user.

> Also: wrt IPv6 specifically, I don’t believe every device on a private network should be publicly addressable/routable. To me that’s a bug, not a feature,

Some would argue it's a feature. But let's say it's not useful. It's still surely not a bug. An address being publicly routeable doesn't mean you have to route traffic to it. Just don't, if you don't want to.

> and again does not serve the consumer, only the producer.

I'd argue that it simplifies some things for the consumer (see above), and also lets the consumer be a producer more easily. I'd argue that that's a good thing, more in the spirit of the internet. But even if the end user doesn't care, it's not a detriment.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#137

Post by yxhuvud »

> Sometimes, keyboard shortcuts seem to be executed twice!

Sounds like someone made a listener that listens on key events, but didn't bother to check the state of the event, meaning it hits releases as well. Should be easy to verify by keeping them pressed long enough to trigger the key repeat events.

> I also noticed that font rendering is different between X11 and Wayland! The difference is visible in Chrome browser tab titles and the URL bar, for example:

Tab title display is not owned by wayland unless you are running with the client side decor extension, which Gnome is not. So looking at the application or GUI framework (GTK in this case) are really the two only choices.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#138

Post by exceptione »

altern8 wrote: post #69

Might be a stupid question, but what's wrong with Xorg? I know that it wasn't originally conceived to do what it does today, but I've never had any problem using it, and when I tried Wayland I didn't notice any difference whatsoever. Is it just that it's a pain to write apps for it..?

Good question.

It makes sand-boxing security impossible. The moment a process has access to the Xorg socket, it has access to everything. It is weird that this oftentimes misses from the discussion though.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#139

Post by silon42 »

immibis wrote: post #132
mananaysiempre wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember reading in an old paper (1990s?) that the asynchronous nature of the connection between the X server and the window manager results in essentially unfixable protocol-level races.

Wayland has a philosophy of "every frame is perfect", which means fixing every race condition. However, X11 doesn't have this philosophy. If the window manager is slow and doesn't respond to a notification that a window has been resized, drawing the new window content over the old borders is the correct thing to do . What sense does it make to freeze the whole display just for a window border? Similarly, tearing gets…

Reacting somehow to user input, even if not perfect, is more important for me... That's why we have HW cursors, and frame interpolation in games, etc...
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