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Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

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Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#331

Post by theodric »

palata wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I don't have any skin in this game, I was fine with X11 and I am fine with Wayland, and I actually think it's nice to have both (and more, like Xlibre I think?). I understand complaints about systemd, I don't understand the complaints about Wayland. This whole article sounds like a big rant and doesn't seem to bring much information. > I also don't care for the "security" argument when parts of the core r…

> Who is forced to use it?

Anyone who wants to continue using a modern, actively-developed desktop environment. GNOME has dropped X11; KDE has announced the transition. I would consider being told "use Wayland, or find a different desktop environment" being forced, even though nobody has actually put a gun to my head.

I have managed to make Wayland work for me, but only by patching away the hardcoded gestures. I also developed a means to start and stop XScreenSaver, although that is thankfully now obsolete thanks to some work by JWZ. Just yesterday I still had issues with an entire window of text gibbering up and down in VSCode at a certain scaling level (used to have that in Firefox, as well, but it was evidently fixed).

To put a positive conspiratorial spin on the recent Wayland push: maybe they think that taking away the option to fall back to X11 will finally get enough eyes on Wayland to fix its remaining issues.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#332

Post by palata »

queenkjuul wrote: post #163
palata wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I don't have any skin in this game, I was fine with X11 and I am fine with Wayland, and I actually think it's nice to have both (and more, like Xlibre I think?). I understand complaints about systemd, I don't understand the complaints about Wayland. This whole article sounds like a big rant and doesn't seem to bring much information. > I also don't care for the "security" argument when parts of the core r…

I won't accept that "nobody was forced." Major mainstream desktops either already have or are very shortly dropping X11 entirely. Microsoft is correctly being called out for forcing people onto Windows 11, even though it's entirely possible for users to remain on 10 with workarounds. Gnome is forcing people onto Wayland, that you can stop using Gnome or choose to use an outdated OS doesn't really change that for me.…

I am "forced" to use Windows or macOS for work. I do not have a choice, I am not allowed to install something else. Thus I "am forced". I am not forced to by Nike shoes, I can buy any other brand. Even if I have been buying Nike all my life and now they switch to a material I don't like, I am not forced to wear the new Nike shoes; I can switch to a different brand. I have the choice to switch.

I believe that a project decides what they do. If Gnome decides to move to Wayland, someone could fork and start XGnome. That's how FOSS works, and I accept it for what it is.

I feel like too many people believe that FOSS means "people around me should build my dream system just for me, and for free". If Gnome gets more traction than XGnome, it sounds like the Gnome users are generally fine with its choices. And those who are not can switch to an alternative.

I don't use Gnome, I don't use systemd, I don't use ext4, I don't use NetworkManager. The beauty of Linux is that I can choose. And yes, most of the time I am in the minority.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#333

Post by palata »

gentleman11 wrote: post #259
palata wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I don't have any skin in this game, I was fine with X11 and I am fine with Wayland, and I actually think it's nice to have both (and more, like Xlibre I think?). I understand complaints about systemd, I don't understand the complaints about Wayland. This whole article sounds like a big rant and doesn't seem to bring much information. > I also don't care for the "security" argument when parts of the core r…

I've used linux desktop environments using Wayland and others using x11. No real problems with either. Let's instead get excited by all the new linux users coming in thanks to SteamOS and Valve. If the trend continues, we might start seeing larger software companies releasing native linux versions of their software -- and then, the year of the linux desktop will start becoming an actual possibility! (I heard affinity…

> we might start seeing larger software companies releasing native linux versions of their software

I like the idea of course, but I don't believe it for one second. Unless software is open source, it never properly supports Linux. A company making a proprietary executable for Linux will generally just make an Ubuntu executable.

My biggest fear with something like "the year of the Linux Desktop" is that it may end up making Linux be like Android: open source on the paper, but there is practically really just one way to do things, and that's the one controlled by Google.

What I like with Linux is this big mess of alternatives that manage to somehow compete with each other. Sure, it's not as polished as Android or Windows or macOS. But it's free (as in freedom).

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#334

Post by lnx01 »

tmtvl wrote: post #26
martinald wrote: post #7

FWIW I recently switched full time to Linux and have had absolutely 0 problems with GNOME, Wayland and Fedora, though I am using an AMD GPU. wl-copy works fine, askpass works, copy and paste works, screen sharing with Google Meet works, drag and drop works. Using an iphone as a webcam works as does recording my screen. Most importantly using multiple monitors with fractional scaling works perfectly. AFIAK this is not…

Separate scaling fractions on separate monitors doesn't work under X. Well, I lie: it does work under zaphod mode, but no applications other than Emacs support that.

Running X11 on Ubuntu 22.04 - I have a 2650x1600 main at 150% scale and a 1920x1980 secondary at 100% scale. Essentially they're the same virtual size side-by-side. This _only_ works on my nVidia GPU...

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#335

Post by ghighi7878 »

BowBun wrote: post #46
palata wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I don't have any skin in this game, I was fine with X11 and I am fine with Wayland, and I actually think it's nice to have both (and more, like Xlibre I think?). I understand complaints about systemd, I don't understand the complaints about Wayland. This whole article sounds like a big rant and doesn't seem to bring much information. > I also don't care for the "security" argument when parts of the core r…

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already. This is my understanding of his actual concern - Linux corps are pushing Wayland as a replacement for X11 when it is full of issues. Anecdotally my experience was the same. I'm a dev so I'm fine in a terminal, but trying to switch to KDE actually sent me BACK to Windows. Basic windowing stuff just does not work, and like the OP says, to…

Wayland is so much better than x11. Sure there might be bugs in wayland which are not in x11, but in geberal wayland is better.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#336

Post by ghighi7878 »

c0balt wrote: post #117
palata wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my experience with Wayland has been a lot better than with X11. I have been on Wayland for years, I can't remember the last time I had an issue (running Sway).

Same here, there are some pain points with swaywm (notably screen sharing is only per display, DisplayLink support and screen mirroring is a pain). Most of these points however are IME a worthwhile tradeoff. Sway has also been astoundingly stable (compared to gnome or KDE)

Kde has been stable too So much more than x11 kde

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#337

Post by ruicraveiro »

I felt a lot of cognitive dissonance while reading this article, specifically where it focuses on the things that do no work on Wayland, yet are completely working on my vanilla Debian distro with KDE on Wayland. And, as we all know, Debian (not SID) slants more towards stability rather than being bleeding edge up to date. It's been a very long time, and releases, since I last had issues with copy-paste and screen recording, so I don't know what the author is talking about or maybe, when he's talking about.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#338

Post by roryirvine »

wmf wrote: post #158
000ooo000 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>now every WM have to repeat that work wlroots?

wlroots came pretty late so there was a lot of code duplication between Weston/GNOME/KDE before that.

I think that's actually the biggest real criticism that can reasonably be made about Wayland: they ought to have produced something like wlroots from the start.

Weston was only ever intended to be an example, and its monolithic nature meant that it wasn't particularly useful as a platform on which others could build (and this was even more true early on, before libweston).

As a result, GNOME and KDE both did their own implementations - and from that seed grew a host of complaints about things not working in one or the other, when on xorg they had worked more or less the same. The lack of a common entry point for "plumbing" also hurt, and can probably take much of the blame for the initial pain that many faced when first moving to a wayland-based DE.

But, of course, that's only obvious in retrospect. I don't think it was at all clear at the time those decisions were being made originally - in other words, it was a mistake rather than malice.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#339

Post by coldtea »

kibwen wrote: post #192
Ferret7446 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect part of that is the Xorg maintainers (who are also behind Wayland efforts) are actively trying to kill it and make it as unbearable as possible

It's all open-source. If you think the maintainers are trying to sabotage the codebase, you have the freedom to fork it.

"If you don't like the direction of a multi-decade-long, hundreds of manyears, deeply esoteric project, you have the freedom to go in, fork it, and maintain it"

is the most technically true, practically meaningless argument in FOSS

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#340

Post by scheeseman486 »

pjmlp wrote: post #298
scheeseman486 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, didn't know that all the Windows developers at Microsoft made all the Windows games. Super cool.

Trying to be funny, I see.

Better than trying to make a point and failing to make it. And if I didn't, at least I tried to be funny as that counts for something, your comment is just noise.
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