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Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

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Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#121

Post by porridgeraisin »

pseudalopex wrote: post #114
porridgeraisin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, if you're on google meet, and you want to make one of many videos PiP. How can you ever do that in the window manager? It has to be done in the application! You right click or click on the menu on that particular video, and click Picture in picture. How the heck can the window manager do it?

The application could tell the window manager it wanted an always on top window. The window manager could ask the user if it should allow or reject and remember for this application or not.

That's exactly what I said... and also not how wayland works.

I cannot comprehend the way wayland folks think... quote from the xdg-pip discussion:

> To not make PiP windows effectively "always on top" and "on every workspace" dialogs - a terrible and sadly by applications used concept on X11 - PiP windows must be input-only, i.e. not receive keyboard, pointer and touch input

Like what the heck even? That is how pip windows are expected to work? And of course you want inputs on them? e.g to mute/unmute on a video call? Like these are use cases used daily by people. And its "terrible".

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#122

Post by d3Xt3r »

httpsterio wrote: post #111
ahartmetz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I noticed lower latency, more consistent frame pacing (recent-ish improvement in KWin) and a more "solid" feel because everything in a frame is synchronized. On X11, you can have things like border and contents of a window not matching exactly while resizing. An early principle of Wayland was "Every frame is perfect", which is clearly reflected in how e.g. window resizing works.

my experience us sadly the opposite. when I'm recording gameplay with OBS with x11 and xfce I have roughly a 7-9ms frame render time and with Wayland and any desktop env it creeps up above 16ms, which means I can't get a solid 60fps. in all other cases other than gaming and recording, Wayland has been a delight.

If your aim is to only record gameplay (and not stream), then there are far better Wayland-native tools like wl-screenrec[1] for wlroots-based compositors and gpu-screen-recorder[2] for others. The latter even supports live streaming, so could be used as a lightweight alternative to OBS.

[1] https://github.com/russelltg/wl-screenrec

[2] https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about/

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#123

Post by bigstrat2003 »

brooke2k wrote: post #83

in my mind unfortunately this basically destroys KDE's viability as a gaming platform. SO many older games just do not work properly unless run under X11 (hell, some newer ones too). XWayland is good for everyday applications but for games in my experience it too often falls flat.

I can't say I've run into issues running games under XWayland, but I have only been using the Wayland session for a couple of weeks now. The blocker for me was Discord (you wouldn't get messages on your phone if you were afk because the idle detection didn't work in Wayland), but the devs there seem to have finally fixed it.

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#124

Post by craftkiller »

fhars wrote: post #106
bityard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I upgraded from Debian 12 to 13 on my personal laptop running KDE, I knew that the switch from X11 to Wayland would happen and was braced for all kinds of issues, like every other time I tried to switch to Wayland in previous years. Instead, I could tell literally no difference. Multiple desktops works fine, scaling works fine, screen capture works fine, old apps work fine, literally everything works just fine.…

On the other hand, I recently installed a system with debian 13, and it was really easy to distinguish between X11 and wayland sessions: if the session displays a plasma desktop, it's X11, if it crashes on login, it is wayland. YMMV if you try to switch to wayland.

What did you learn when you checked the logs to see what was wrong?

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#125

Post by aidenn0 »

Anyone on the most recent LTS Kernel (6.18) with an older nvidia GPU will not have a good experience on Wayland. I have two machines with Pascal GPUs and:

- The nvidia binary driver is shit with Wayland

- The nvidia OSS driver does not support Pascal GPUs.

- Nouveau got a bunch of stability improvments in Linux 6.19, without which Wayland crashes roughly weekly.

You can get a stable system either by using the latest kernel+nouveau or:

  MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=kms_swrast
but performance is rather abysmal.

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#126

Post by LtWorf »

aidenn0 wrote: post #125

Anyone on the most recent LTS Kernel (6.18) with an older nvidia GPU will not have a good experience on Wayland. I have two machines with Pascal GPUs and: - The nvidia binary driver is shit with Wayland - The nvidia OSS driver does not support Pascal GPUs. - Nouveau got a bunch of stability improvments in Linux 6.19, without which Wayland crashes roughly weekly. You can get a stable system either by using the latest…

My touchpad still works like shit on libinput (which is the only input method available on wayland).

I guess in a few years I'll need to patch it and carry my patches forever. Yay progress!

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#128

Post by LtWorf »

ndiddy wrote: post #2

I think the KDE developers in particular have done a great job of pushing Wayland forward and getting features that people want and need added as new protocols. KDE feels a lot smoother and more responsive when using Wayland than when using X11, and by this point most stuff has been updated to work properly on Wayland so I don't notice any breakage or missing features in day-to-day usage. > Moving forward with a sing…

> I don't notice any breakage or missing features in day-to-day usage.

I use it on a touchscreen and the on-screen-keyboard crashes several times a day.

I would not say it's fully ready.

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#129

Post by LtWorf »

igor47 wrote: post #11
ndiddy wrote: post #2

I think the KDE developers in particular have done a great job of pushing Wayland forward and getting features that people want and need added as new protocols. KDE feels a lot smoother and more responsive when using Wayland than when using X11, and by this point most stuff has been updated to work properly on Wayland so I don't notice any breakage or missing features in day-to-day usage. > Moving forward with a sing…

Yeah agreed. I switched to kde from gnome a few months back, and it's amazing how much better it's been in a thousand little ways.

I mean… gnome has always been worse quality than KDE. I'd say even when the awful KDE4 came out was still better than Gnome3

Re: Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

#130

Post by HiPhish »

I really miss the ability to swap out KWin for a tiling window manager. I'm currently using Krohnkite and it's OK, much better than nothing, but after having used a real tiling window manager the difference is just too jarring. I physically need a desktop which is usable as much as possible both with the mouse and with the keyboard so I have to switch as rarely between the two as possible. Plasma on X11 with a tiling window manger was the perfect combo.

The solution would be either for Plasma to do something like River did [1] and separate compositing from window management, or for Plasma to make it possible to use Plasma widgets in other compositors. As it stands now I either have to make do with Krohnkite or go down the ricing rabbit hole with with River and Quickshell.

[1] https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-window-management/

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