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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?

#11

Post by edent »

I've been running Wayland on a Framework laptop and it just works. Droves my 4K external monitor, quickly switches to single screen, does fractional scaling well, runs all my apps without complaint.

I had an old Chromebook which had Lubuntu on it - screen tearing was driving me crazy so I switched to Wayland and it is buttery smooth. No mean feat given the decrepit hardware.

I'm sure someone will be along to tell me that I'm wrong - but I've yet to experience any downsides, other than people telling me I'm wrong.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#12

Post by everdrive »

I'm not very familiar with Wayland, and the fact that XWayland exists means that I don't really have much sense for whether a given app is using Wayland or not. I also don't do anything very fancy. I have a single, sub-4k monitor and don't use HDR or other things. Am I using Wayland? Sometimes? Most of the time? I'm really not 100% sure.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#14

Post by samiv »

I've been trying to switch to Wayland and KDE plasma for some time but it's just so glitchy. Graphics bugs such as the tasks switcher showing black or flickery preview thumbnails or Firefox bringing down the whole system when opening a single 4k PNG indicate that it's still unfortunately very much an alpha.

Maybe in another decade or so.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#15

Post by tormeh »

ryandrake wrote: post #7

I still don't know why I would want to use it. The benefits don't seem to outweigh the costs yet, and xorg is tried and true. So many Linux articles and forum posts about fixing problems with your desktop graphics start with "If you're using Wayland, go back to xorg, it'll probably fix the problem you're seeing." You don't always have to replace something that works with something that doesn't but is "modern." My gue…

I've had to dive into xorg.conf more than once. Switched to Wayland as soon as it became an (experimental) option in Ubuntu and never looked back. Probably helps that I've always had AMD cards when running Linux, but it has been smooth sailing nonetheless. I can vaguely remember something not working under Wayland in the early days.. Maybe something with Wine or Steam? Anyway, that has to be 10 years ago now.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#16

Post by suddenlybananas »

samiv wrote: post #14

I've been trying to switch to Wayland and KDE plasma for some time but it's just so glitchy. Graphics bugs such as the tasks switcher showing black or flickery preview thumbnails or Firefox bringing down the whole system when opening a single 4k PNG indicate that it's still unfortunately very much an alpha. Maybe in another decade or so.

Hmm, I use KDE Plasma with Wayland and have had zero issues. What GPU are you using?

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#17

Post by haukesomm »

ryandrake wrote: post #7

I still don't know why I would want to use it. The benefits don't seem to outweigh the costs yet, and xorg is tried and true. So many Linux articles and forum posts about fixing problems with your desktop graphics start with "If you're using Wayland, go back to xorg, it'll probably fix the problem you're seeing." You don't always have to replace something that works with something that doesn't but is "modern." My gue…

That leads to technical debt in the long term. Yes, it might be working well for now but the more outdated it becomes, the harder it will be to maintain later.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#19

Post by fabian2k »

I just recently switched to Linux since I had some weird Windows issues I couldn't fix. I've tried to switch a few times before, but the main problem at some point was that I didn't have proper fractional scaling on Linux. And that alone pretty much made Linux unusable for me on my specific hardware.

Wayland fixes that, so that part is a huge improvement to me. Unfortunately this also limited my choice of Distros as not all of them use Wayland. I landed on Ubuntu again, despite some issues I have with it. The most annoying initially was that the Snap version of Firefox didn't use hardware acceleration, which is just barely usable.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#20

Post by renewiltord »

This reminds me of when pulseaudio came on the scene. Bizarrely there was a short period when PA was superior to everything else. I could set per source and per sink volumes. It was bonkers. The perfect mixer. Then something else happened.

Don’t know what the deal is with Linux desktop experience. I have encountered various forms of perfection and had them taken away.

Once on my XPS M1330 I clicked to lift a window and then three finger swiped to switch workspace and the workspace switched and I dropped the window. It was beautiful. I didn’t even notice until after I’d done it what an intuitive thing it felt like.

Then a few years later I tried with that fond memory and it didn’t work. Where did the magic go?

Probably some accidental confluence of features broken in some change.

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