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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?

#181

Post by tschumacher »

simonra wrote: post #90

My question is how long will it take for core necessities like push to talk in discord running in a background tab in my browser while I game with my 50+ closest friends to work under wayland. I hope I don’t develop a need for accessibility tooling the next couple of decades given the current progress.

I looked into this lately - Discord needs to use the Global Shortcuts Portal to do it properly but how is unclear. Discord is based on Electron which is based on Chromium. Chromium has support and Electron kind of has support since https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/45171 but this seems to be rather unknown and unused. Although somewhere in this API chain keyup events are lost, meaning that only "normal" shortcuts would work but no push-to-talk. There are multiple options for Discord to implement this: implement Global Shortcuts Portal directly, go via Electron global shortcuts API, hook into Chromium shortcuts API, maybe others - with the caveat that some of those don't support keyup events. Vesktop devs are currently stuck in same dilemma: https://github.com/Vencord/Vesktop/issues/18

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#182

Post by josefx »

mariusor wrote: post #133
charcircuit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It may not just be NVIDIA. From what I understand any open source solution is stuck with second rate graphics support on Linux, simply because the groups behind HDMI and other graphics related standards have overly restrictive licensing agreements. Valve ran directly into that while working on its newest console, the AMD drivers for its GPU cannot legally provide full support HDMI 2.1 .

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#183

Post by pshirshov »

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…

> Btw, everybody who I know, and I too, changes the font size, and leaving the DPI scaling on 100%, or maybe 200% on X11.

Doesn't work if your screens are too different (e.g. 4k laptop screen and 32" desktop monitor).

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#184

Post by jcelerier »

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.

> Windows and Mac Os, for all their faults, are unquestionably ready to use in 2026.

LOL

I installed a new windows 11 yesterday on a fairly powerful machine, everything lags so much on a brand new install it's unreal. Explorer takes ~2-3 seconds to be useable. Any app that opens in the blink of an eye under Linux on the same machine takes seconds to start. Start menu lags. It's just surrealistic. People who say these things work just have never used something that is actually fast.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#185

Post by pshirshov »

michaelmrose wrote: post #149
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.

There is no particular reason for this theory to be true. X supports high DPI screens well and has for ages.

Maybe it supports it sure, the problem is that it doesn't work at all.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#187

Post by lpcvoid »

jlarocco wrote: post #160
lpcvoid wrote: post #29

I've been using Wayland (wlroots/swaywm) for a few years now and it's been flawless, even with an eGPU. But I'm also running all AMD hardware, that may be a factor. Life is too short for nvidia bullshit on Linux.

> Life is too short for nvidia bullshit on Linux. So much NVidia hate, but in 23 years the only problems I've had with NVidia on Linux were when they dropped support for old GPUs. Even on proprietary hardware like iMacs and MacBooks. But to each their own.

Even when it worked, it was more clunky than AMD at all times. It came in form of a huge driver bundle you had to install manually (or rely on a distro to do it for you), while AMD GPUs just worked due to `amdgpu` being part of the kernel since forever. Then is the EGLStreams debacle where nvidia lost a lot of goodwill in my opinion, including mine. And finally, nvidia has managed to opensource their driver on Linux - except that it's less performant then the closed source one, and thus a second class citizen, still. Correct me if I am wrong, please.

The better path on Linux was always AMD, and still is, to this day, since it simply works without me needing to care about driver versions, or open vs closed source, at all.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#188

Post by tasuki »

imtringued wrote: post #85
gsliepen wrote: post #2

A rather big problem is that Wayland is just a protocol, not an implementation. There are many competing implementations, like Gnome, KDE and wlroots. The problems you have with one of them might not appear in another. The reference compositor, Weston, is not really usable as a daily driver. So while with Xorg you have a solid base, and desktops are implemented on top of that, with Wayland the each desktop is reinven…

The real problem with post X compositors is that the Wayland developers assumed that the compositor developers will develop additional working groups (an input protocol, a window management protocol, etc) on top of the working group that exclusively focuses on display aka Wayland. Wayland was supposed to be one protocol out of many, with the idea being that if Wayland ever turns out to be a problem it is small in sco…

A very insightful comment. I was a victim to exactly the misunderstanding you explained (as are many other commenters here). Thank you!

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#189

Post by ablob »

edent wrote: post #11

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…

Do downsides not exist if you are lucky enough to not experience them?

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#190

Post by nirvdrum »

sylware wrote: post #84
kallistisoft wrote: post #33

At this point the primary thing that's keeping me from switching to Wayland (KDE) is lack of support for remote desktop software, especially with multiple monitors... Hopefully AnyDesk and Remmina will address this issue before KDE ends it's mainline X11 support next year.

:) This is a feature of a wayland compositor: I don't want it able to do remote.

It doesn’t have to be like X11. Presumably, it’d be something you could disable if you’d like.

It’d be very handy if we had a performant remote desktop option for Linux. I could resume desktop sessions on my workstation from my laptop and I could pair program with remote colleagues more effectively.

In the past I’d boot into Windows and then boot my Linux system as a raw disk VM just so I could use Windows’s Remote Desktop. Combined with VMware Workstation’s support for multiple monitors, I had a surprisingly smooth remote session. But, it was a lot of ceremony.

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