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Wayland vs. X – Overview

wayland.freedesktop.org

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Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#41

Post by vlovich123 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #22
mouse_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X was so insecure that wayland maintainers must now work tirelessly to roughly emulate these insecurities such as taking screenshots and sharing their desktop in their new protocol. Don't get me wrong; I don't like X, but if I had it my way we'd all be using Haiku with a Linux or BSD kernel right now.

If those are insecurities, I want an insecure desktop. I use my computer to get things done, not be a paradigm of security.

Those aren't inherently insecurities, but the way X implemented them was quite insecure. Wayland is now having to do the heavy lifting of defining a secure protocol to implement it and migrating the entire Linux GUI ecosystem to using the new mechanisms. Also, I can take screenshots just fine on Wayland via KWin. I can't pick arbitrary 3p apps just yet but KWin's screenshotter is fine. Not sure about screen recording as I haven't needed that. VNC-style applications don't work but if you do a search you come up with sunshine+moonlight which uses Nvidia's protocol + H264 streaming.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#42

Post by hedora »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #30
temp0826 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try a more modern distro like Fedora. I haven't had any issue with it (intel igpu+nvidia dgpu) in a while.

Op mentioned ubuntu 23.10... which was released two months ago.

I noticed all sorts of horrible breakage in Ubuntu (including LTS updates) over the last 3-5 years (I gave up on it in the 20.* days for anything except VMs / docker containers) Examples included DNS taking 5 seconds to resolve each host, the syslog fiasco, systemd flat out not working, etc, etc.

Maybe that's what they're referring to?

(At this point, I'm looking for anything that's stable and still uses a normal init + x11, FWIW. I wouldn't consider Fedora, since it's owned by IBM, and Red Hat's new business model under them is "systematically violate the GPL and see if we can get away from it".)

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#43

Post by politelemon »

Should it be possible to run games with Steam on Wayland with Nvidia drivers installed? Or is that some ways off while we wait for NVidia drivers to be updated?

I did give it a brief try but getting very low fps, which tells me it's probably running on CPU if I had to guess.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#45

Post by agumonkey »

pestatije wrote: post #16
edent wrote: post #10

I don't know what I'm doing wrong with Wayland. I have a cheap Linux laptop, with built in graphics. And Wayland works perfectly. I can run multiple monitors with one of them rotated. When I tried that with X I got lots of juddery tearing. I can take screenshots and share my screens via video calls. But everyone says it doesn't work due to security. I have fractional scaling and it doesn't seem to burn out my CPU or…

try running VLC

what happens with vlc ?

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#46

Post by account42 »

edent wrote: post #10

I don't know what I'm doing wrong with Wayland. I have a cheap Linux laptop, with built in graphics. And Wayland works perfectly. I can run multiple monitors with one of them rotated. When I tried that with X I got lots of juddery tearing. I can take screenshots and share my screens via video calls. But everyone says it doesn't work due to security. I have fractional scaling and it doesn't seem to burn out my CPU or…

You haven't even mentioned which wayland compositor you are using.

Which is one of the biggest problems with Wayland - there isn't just one Wayland but Gnome Wayland and KDE Wayland and wlroots-based Wayland and Gamescope Wayland. What functionality is available and working and using which API varies between all of these. This includes really basic things like window decorations.

This is different from X where the core functionality is common because everyone usees X.org. If all the Wayland compositors agreed on how thing should work then multiple implementations would be much less of a problem. But they don't or at lest take ages until all but one of the NIH protocol extensions get abandoned. Some of this protocol extension zoo is hidden by applications and toolkits implementing multiple variants but even if you no longer see it as an end user this is still a cost because time spent on dealing with Gnome or KDE bs is time not spent on more useful things.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#47

Post by belval »

acdha wrote: post #32
belval wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Wayland is probably much better than when I tried it in 2019 but all I remember is the 2019 experience. I think a lot of people are in the same boat.

Really? I can’t help but notice that nobody is describing X as if it hasn’t improved since XFree86 in the 90s so perhaps it is possible for technical professionals to update their understanding?

You seem to be seeing a confrontational message where I didn't mean one. Yes I'm sure you could find some old posts complaining about X that would illustrate the same phenomenon. My point is pretty much exactly that. Fast forward the next 5-10 years and we might all be on Wayland but they blew their first impression and that's delaying adoption.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#48

Post by temp0826 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #30
temp0826 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try a more modern distro like Fedora. I haven't had any issue with it (intel igpu+nvidia dgpu) in a while.

Op mentioned ubuntu 23.10... which was released two months ago.

That's not really what I meant by modern

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#49

Post by anton96 »

I feel like the debate between Wayland and X always bring more a general discussion about technology refactoring and modularity.

To me be, the big question is not why freedesktop.org or redhat is doing all of this, they're a company and they have their needs. It is why distro maintainers have chosen to adopt those technologies(systemd,Wayland, others?), not that those options are especially bad but to me,but they really look like a clear bifurcation from the modularity and customization we used to see on the distro world.

I remember the mid 2000 and early 2010, when computing was still cultivating this cool image from the animations of Mac os Leopard and the aero style of Vista and the leader above all in the form compiz crowning Linux from far.

In the talks around Wayland vs X, the maneer Wayland proponent(not only its developer and also any linux user) dismisses critics of missing feature because 15 years later they're still not standardized or lack of composabilty between windowing and compositing is a stark contrast with the way we used to talk about free and open source software at the turn of the millennium.

We used to defend customizability and a certain form of freedom. Sure X11 lack security and should be replaced by something that works better. The Wayland shortcoming are defended in the name of security is some kind PR speak I wouldn't think I'd see in the linux world years ago. It comes as particularly bitter as other closed platform from wich we used to hear a lot corporate speak still allow apps to do more things with their own windows that Wayland does.

The fact that the same organization hosts flatpack but has not vision of how to use the capability model for Wayland really poses questions on the vision.

All in all, I wonder if things would have went more smoothly and in greater general agreement if those 15 years+ were spend make Linux work like plan 9.

Edit: typoes/syntax

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#50

Post by acomjean »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #13
edent wrote: post #10

I don't know what I'm doing wrong with Wayland. I have a cheap Linux laptop, with built in graphics. And Wayland works perfectly. I can run multiple monitors with one of them rotated. When I tried that with X I got lots of juddery tearing. I can take screenshots and share my screens via video calls. But everyone says it doesn't work due to security. I have fractional scaling and it doesn't seem to burn out my CPU or…

On the fractional scaling side, precisely Wayland's advantage is that it works much better there than in Xorg. Regarding the rest, I run an Nvidia laptop under Wayland since early 2022 and it's been working flawlessly. It's true that I'm using one of the cleanest, most forward thinking distros out there: Fedora. On Ubuntu it had way more issues than on Fedora, though.

Ubuntu and Nvidia are difficult. We have a Linux work station and attempt to get an Nvidia card working (drivers anyway) failed. Its was confusing and even those with more skill/experience couldn't make it work. PopOS (which is a fork of Ubuntu) with Nvidia ended up working for us. Though I'm not sure if its X or Wayland.
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