Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

michael.stapelberg.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 335 posts

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#321

Post by simondotau »

jasomill wrote: post #305
dagmx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Nobody else is talking about managing windows as a user. They’re talking about the system that manages windows for drawing and interaction. 2. You’re provably wrong even if someone followed your description because you can kill the dock or explorer process and still be able to switch between windows and move them around. Killing explorer is a little more heavy handed than killing the dock but it doesn’t take down…

You're not wrong about Explorer, but the parent is also partially right. While you can move, resize, minimize, maximize, and switch between windows without Explorer running, other window management features are limited or nonfunctional without it: 1. Explorer is responsible for the taskbar, and thus the only useful way to view minimized windows. 2. Alt+Tab still switches between windows without Explorer, but the wind…

As a reminder, the topic is Wayland, and the great great great great grandparents post was referring to rendering/compositing systems DWM and Quartz as architectural equivalents to Wayland in the major closed source operating systems.

The parent, misunderstanding the discussion on compositors, diverted to a discussion about user interfaces. It's an understandable point of confusion given that Microsoft chose to name their compositor “Desktop Window Manager”, when the term “window manager” is typically scoped to user interface.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#322

Post by antisol »

altern8 wrote: post #69

Might be a stupid question, but what's wrong with Xorg? I know that it wasn't originally conceived to do what it does today, but I've never had any problem using it, and when I tried Wayland I didn't notice any difference whatsoever. Is it just that it's a pain to write apps for it..?

There are a bunch of legitimate issues with X.

For example there's tons of legacy cruft in there intended for working with hardware that hasn't been in use since circa 1992. Things like monochrome 3D displays with weird resolutions like 1200x240 and non-square pixels. Having that stuff in there makes supporting more modern hardware more difficult than it needs to be (and is also part of the reason behind why e.g eliminating tearing is very difficult), and it adds huge complexity to the codebase for no benefit on modern systems, which makes it much more difficult (but NOT impossible, as some love to claim) to maintain.

There's also the wayland fanboy's go-to criticism: there are also some security shortcomings in the protocol. You can find details on this shortcoming which I have never in 30 years seen exploited in the opening paragraphs of every pro-wayland article on the internet. (it is a legit shortcoming. There have been multiple suggestions on how to address it over the decades without starting over from scratch. xlibre is working on one of these)

But over the years I've slowly become more and more convinced that the biggest issue people have with X is that it's not shiny and new.

I'm expecting them to announce a rewrite in rust any day now ;)

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#323

Post by antisol »

exceptione wrote: post #262
altern8 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't this aspect be improved, vs. switching to something else?

I fear it is an unsalvageable part of the Xorg design. The software is really old, including its assumptions about security. The original developers judged Xorg is really not saveable. Any extra effort on X11 might help to buy more time, but will in the end be for nothing. And in this time of supply-chain attacks, vs-code plugins, npm packages, agents and what-not, X11 is just too dangerous.

> The original developers judged Xorg is really not saveable.

No, the orignal developers judged that they couldn't be bothered saving it. This has no relationship with whether it can be saved.

> Any extra effort on X11 might help to buy more time, but will in the end be for nothing. And in this time of supply-chain attacks, vs-code plugins, npm packages, agents and what-not, X11 is just too dangerous

Wow, this is some impressive vague fearmongering. Please explain what npm packages, vs-code plugins, and "agents" have to do with X11 being "just too dangerous"?

Here, I'll try one:

"Even in 2026 the developer of the i3 window manager says wayland isn't ready for real use. Any effort poured into wayland might delay it's inevitable collapse but in these days of nodejs, rising authoritarianism, and climate change it's clear that it will never actually gain wide acceptance"

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#324

Post by antisol »

exceptione wrote: post #138
altern8 wrote: post #69

Might be a stupid question, but what's wrong with Xorg? I know that it wasn't originally conceived to do what it does today, but I've never had any problem using it, and when I tried Wayland I didn't notice any difference whatsoever. Is it just that it's a pain to write apps for it..?

Good question. It makes sand-boxing security impossible. The moment a process has access to the Xorg socket, it has access to everything. It is weird that this oftentimes misses from the discussion though.

Impossible, huh?

May I suggest Xephyr, which will give you the X11 sandboxing that wayland people like to claim is impossible under X, using tech that's been around for about 20 years.

And you won't even need to replace your entire software stack with incompatible beta-quality software.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xephyr

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#325

Post by tuna74 »

antisol wrote: post #320
tuna74 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are totally free to work on whatever you want to. You don't have to use the software that the Wayland devs (and other developers that like Wayland) produces. You can use and code whatever you want.

Oh good! This is great news! So you've managed to get redhat to commit to continue to package an X server, then? I'm impressed by this achievement and send my thanks for your efforts - they've been trying to drop it for a while now, it's only wayland's continuing status as unusable vapourware that stops them.

You don't have to use Red Hat's products or code if you don't want to. There are plenty of competitors that might suit your needs and desires better.

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#326

Post by antisol »

tuna74 wrote: post #325
antisol wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh good! This is great news! So you've managed to get redhat to commit to continue to package an X server, then? I'm impressed by this achievement and send my thanks for your efforts - they've been trying to drop it for a while now, it's only wayland's continuing status as unusable vapourware that stops them.

You don't have to use Red Hat's products or code if you don't want to. There are plenty of competitors that might suit your needs and desires better.

Oh, I don't? This is news.

So to be clear, you're saying that you've spoken to the management at my company and convinced them to switch away from redhat?

If you could post a link to a copy of the email from the higher-ups, just so I have it in writing, that'd be rad. Thanks! :)

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#328

Post by hakfoo »

dotancohen wrote: post #31
PunchyHamster wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X.org picked the right level of abstraction (even if implementation could use a rewrite). No WM should care about handling raw inputs or forced to be proxy between driver and the app for the output (it could be, if it needed/wanted, but there is no reason to add another layer of abstraction and cycle-wasting for most use cases). And it shows in complexity and even in power use. Wayland basically failed to learn the l…

That's easy to say in hindsight. It is only with the specific failures of Wayland that we see which lessons it could have learned from X11.

Wayland should have been been a research project rather than a full replacement for X11. Build it as a proof of concept implementation with just enough functionality that enthusiasts can get it up and running and add to the conversation early on. Then when you build the real X11 killer you can say "we know people want media keys and screen sharing/capture to Just Work so they're table stakes" and "the hardware-support side of a compositor is a big lift, so maybe we delegate that away from the code that positions windows and draws menus on the screen"

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#329

Post by theragra »

throwaway270925 wrote: post #242
theragra wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how people get all these issues. I installed fresh windows recently, and I don't see noticable any slowdowns. Linux is faster in some places, maybe. But still with many issues like some applications not being drawn properly or just some applications not available (nice GUI for monitor control over ddc)

There is: https://github.com/rockowitz/ddcui

1. Has issues with drawing fo me

2. Could be nicer. All it does shows edit fields and that's it

Since then, I found kde actually supports direct control of monitor brightness from its UI. That's what I call nice!

Re: Can I start using Wayland in 2026?

#330

Post by theragra »

rgreekguy wrote: post #312
theragra wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how people get all these issues. I installed fresh windows recently, and I don't see noticable any slowdowns. Linux is faster in some places, maybe. But still with many issues like some applications not being drawn properly or just some applications not available (nice GUI for monitor control over ddc)

Same for Xorg. And Wayland, really. No idea how people get so many issues. Just change distro, or DE, in the end of the day, it doesn't take long. Small changes make small differences.

Another DE or distro will have other issues. Since my comment I found also that my current distro has a bug that removed support for DisplayLink in USB hubs (monitors connected over to hub without using USB alt-mode).

It was easy to fix, but issues like this prevent common folk of using Linux.

Post reply on HN