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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?

#291

Post by hyperbolablabla »

jasoneckert wrote: post #40

In short, this reads like a mix of valid historical pain points and outdated assumptions. The post frames Wayland security as “you can’t do anything,” but that’s a misunderstanding. Even under X11, any app can log keystrokes, read window contents, and inject input into other apps. Wayland flips this to isolation-by-default: explicit portals/APIs for screen capture, input, etc. Moreover, the performance argument is we…

In my experience I have found the xdg-desktop-portal for whatever reason to be completely non functional on Arch/Hyprland. It must be an issue with my config but on x11 I never had to think about this

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

#292

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #196
MBCook wrote: post #6

The major comitters and maintainers of X decided it was a lost cause and unfixable. Were they just supposed to keep working on the massive pile of hacks they felt needed abandoning? They did what they thought was best. You hate it. Fine. Do you think things would be better if they kept working on the unfixable mess? I trust them to know what was going on better than random commenters.

I'm just lurking in the comments with popcorn, but if what you said is true and the maintainers of X decided it was a lost cause and unfixable, well that is the most informed opinion of them all. Nobody knows better then the maintainers. Sure, the replacement might have feature gaps initially but that is a transient issue.

> Sure, the replacement might have feature gaps initially but that is a transient issue.

It has been 17 years.

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

#293

Post by nnm »

I suspect some of the problems are not due to Wayland, but due to Ubuntu.

I recently revived a decade-old PC with a dual-boot setup: Windows 10 and Ubuntu 24.04. While Windows ran fine, Ubuntu was a nightmare—constant freezes, random logouts, and daily crashes.

After hitting my limit, I wiped Ubuntu and installed Debian. What a difference! It’s been months without a single crash. If you're struggling with stability on older hardware, Debian might be the "boring" (in a good way) solution you need.

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

#294

Post by yehat »

geophile wrote: post #48

I have been using Pop_OS for many years, and I’m still on 22.04, which uses X11. I don’t understand the pros and cons of X11 vs. Wayland, I just want a working desktop. 24.04 uses Wayland, and while some people have had no problems migrating, many people are having serious problems. From what I can tell, it’s not a good choice for me yet. This article tells me that it may not be a good choice ever. I am a huge fan of…

I'm absolutely in exactly the same position (Pop_OS 22.04) and unwilling to upgrade to 24.04. Which I tried for many months on two spare machines - a laptop and a desktop. The difference is quite stark, there are positive things, but it doesn't feel "my" desktop for many reasons. On top the stability is not there yet. At the end of 22.04 road I hope to find something of similar quality, but really don't like to be forced to rely only on Wayland as dependency. One of my critical pieces of software (barrier/deskflow/input leap KVMs) is not working well with Wayland.

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

#295

Post by xeyownt »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #140
dehrmann wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually think it's nice to have both Options that are equivalent enough for most end users just cause confusion. There are also too many distros, and the Gnome vs. KDE competition set desktop Linux back another 10 years. That's three dimensions of big, important choices with not much downside if you pick the happy path and a whole lot of downside if you don't.

I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others. The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop. Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them. But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow o…

Yeah, uniformity of opinions is way better. Or not.

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

#296

Post by bvrmn »

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.

Recent versions of gnome session are compiled only with wayland support in archlinux. To change DE or distribution or use custom package is quite a stretch to call it's not forced.

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

#297

Post by simonask »

hakfoo wrote: post #125
simonask wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this “massive fragmentation” you speak of? Anecdotally, I’m using Plasma, and every Gnome or Gtk app I’ve tried appears to be working perfectly, and vice versa when I occasionally try out Gnome. Much less so for DIY/BYOB desktops like Hyprland, but I feel like that’s what you sign up for there.

That's one of the things that freak me out about Wayland. The DIY/BYOB experience is perfectly viable in the X11 world. I don't think I've ever had a piece of software balk at me because I used FVWM instead of kwin. I don't want to be railroaded into a desktop environment with strong opinions and mediocre tools when there's a sprawling flea maret worth of software to explore.

And surely that isn't happening either, though? Hyprland, Sway, Niri... I hear people are loving them. Enjoy!

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

#298

Post by pjmlp »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #272
pjmlp wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam Deck is a product thanks to Windows developers, that feed Proton with content.

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

Trying to be funny, I see.

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

#299

Post by simonask »

darthoctopus wrote: post #255
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. I can no longer use GNOME on X11, and the decision to remove support was a deliberate one. Users are definitely being forced.

And who is forcing you to use GNOME?

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

#300

Post by pjmlp »

naikrovek wrote: post #98
MBCook wrote: post #6

The major comitters and maintainers of X decided it was a lost cause and unfixable. Were they just supposed to keep working on the massive pile of hacks they felt needed abandoning? They did what they thought was best. You hate it. Fine. Do you think things would be better if they kept working on the unfixable mess? I trust them to know what was going on better than random commenters.

The people behind Plan 9 did a much better job than was done with X11 and that was completely ignored as a path forward from what I can tell. It’s tiny, secure, graphics subsystem independent (it’ll work on just about anything with or without a GPU, I would expect, given the API is so damn simple) and already designed. Maybe it wouldn’t work, but I bet it would have.

Everything is a file doesn't play well with how GPUs work, especially modern ones.

Plan 9 and later Inferno, just had plain 2D rendering.

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