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Ask HN: Are You Using Wayland?

13 points by sosodev ↗ HN
I've recently been on a quest to find my ideal Linux desktop setup. I'm running kernel 6.4.3, the latest stable version of KDE plasma, and the latest stable version of mesa. Yet it still seems like Wayland just isn't practical. I regularly run into bugs or incompatibilities that just don't happen with X11.

25 comments

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hollerith
Have been using Wayland for the last 2.5 years on Fedora with Gnome. I like it very much.

I'm using it with Intel integrated graphics.

jauntywundrkind
I wasn't particularly excited to switch off awesomewm, but ~3.5 years ago I gave sway a try on my Intel integrated ultra-portable. It just worked & seemed fine & I stuck with it. It's now on my desktops too (AMD GPU mostly), no issue, no complaint.

I haven't tried Zoom in a while, but everything else runs fine. I love how well OBS and Steam work together in this env, with quite low CPU hit for it.

My main wish would be for a better cross-platform Synergy replacement. Still a hot topic for Wayland protocols. It seems like the hot war between input generalisimo/libei maintainer Peter Hutterer & Sway/wlroots maintainer Simon Sir kind of settled down, but the lull of the multi-party Wayland world figuring out where to go next is still pretty indeterminate & at-hand options aren't being bitten upon yet. (I've used uhidd & others for a bit which also work for a while.)

There's a bunch of small corners to be cleaned up. But overal, life is good here. It's an undersold undertold story. The dissent is large & loud. But life has been pretty good for a pretty long while for a lot of people.

smoldesu
I've been using KDE's Wayland session for ~6 months now. Things have gotten really good with Kwin, and the last major bugs I experienced have been ironed out. It's usable for work, gaming and web browsing without any crashes. At this point I think X11 is quickly becoming the less-stable option.

I'm on NixOS with both Nvidia and Intel hardware. Both run extremely well with modern KDE.

jimmytucson
I just enabled it after upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 last weekend. The 3-finger swipe gestures are nice. I think it crashed Online Accounts though. I put up with the inconvenience and file bug reports to help make the software better.
Blackstrat
I’ve been running Wayland/Gnome on Opensuse with Nvidia graphics for several months. I’ve seen no problems and better performance overall.
snvzz
I try it once every year, usually near the start of the year.

Years ago, things were very broken. I lasted minutes, then hours.

This year I finally lasted days, but went back to Xorg due to degraded performance (latency related)

I typically test Plasma (KDE) and Sway.

Next year might be it.

kevinherron
Yes, with Fedora 37 and now 38, GNOME, on my desktop.

The only issue I have is that I prefer KDE but this just seems to work.

mergy
Yes - Debian 12.1 as my daily driver since June 2023. Going great!
jeppesen-io
Yep, for a few years on Gnome/NixOS. Primarily I use Zoom/Slack/Firefox/Kitty/Steam. As far as I recall, it all runs without issue

What are your issues?

ttctciyf
Happy with Xorg, plan to continue using it as long as possible. Will switch to slackware to avoid Wayland. May switch earlier to dump systemd. And get xv back[1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36716090

d_tr
I can understand switching distros to have a different init system, since doing it manually would be impractical, but you can easily avoid Wayland in any distro... What does Slackware have to do with it?
ttctciyf
It's become increasingly difficult to avoid systemd, making Slackware one of the few remaining reasonable options for that. My comment is (half-seriously) imagining that in the future Wayland will attain a similar dominance, in which case Slackware is likely to be one of the leaders of the resistance!
washadjeffmad
Whenever I upgrade Fedora, I switch to Wayland until something breaks, and then I WaylandEnable=false.

It's because of this that Fedora isn't my daily driver. I keep it largely because updates usually eventually fix what breaks, so it's been consistent over many upgrades.

filereaper
Yes, Wayland with KDE on Fedora 37, daily drive it.

Mostly stable, with minior issues. Responsiveness of Wayland is much better than X11.

Zoom screensaring doesn't work with the native client. I usually join using the web client where screensaring works. Usually I join via both, the native client handles video and virtual backgrounds better. None of this is Wayland/KDEs fault and is on Zoom still not supporting Wayland correctly.

ensocode
Not yet. Was thinking of it several times. But with a special monitor setup and the knowledge of the x cmd tools I am a bit afraid that it would be a waste of time. Maybe dropping systemd would be more important to me. By the way, does displaylink work with wayland properly?
q0uaur
I could not get displaylink to work on my setup, but admittedly my setup is very non-standard and my displaylink display is very old.

What does work perfectly though is displayport through usb-c. I use this for docking stations at work and at home, it works perfectly for me. Hopefully we won't need displaylink much longer. but i do know good docks and good displays are expensive.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos
On my laptop yes because I don't need wine there. It does prevent me from using Barrier to have remote control from my desktop. It is fine but gets little use so I can't say much about it.
q0uaur
Running Sway on Arch Linux, pretty happy with it but it did take a while to set everything up.

My biggest advice: Look into software that supports wayland natively. Xwayland still has plenty of issues, but apps built with Wayland in mind (or at least using frameworks that support it) work flawlessly.

Yes if you've been using your tools for years it might not be worth it (yet). But since I chose to build a completely new system the way I want it, it's been worth putting effort into researching tools that work better - for example terminal emulators, Kitty had some weird issues for me so i switched to Foot and it's great for what i need it to do. Electron apps were still hit or miss last i checked, so I try to find non-Electron alternatives (usually way better for resource usage too) or at least find apps that use up-to-date electron that works on wayland without having to figure out which of 5 flags or config files you need to fiddle with.

Also, at least Sway did not work well on Nvidia last i tried, period. You can get it to work but weird issues will always pop up - i don't use my gaming pc much anymore anway and on a mini-pc with amdgpu (integrated in cpu) it works flawlessly.

bravetraveler
Yep, have been for at least three years with Sway. Maybe one or two before that with GNOME before the keyboard bug bit me

These are the only X things I still use (via XWayland):

    ~ $ xlsclients
    outerheaven  das-keyboard-q
    outerheaven  steam
    ~ $
Most things do Wayland natively, not requiring much hassle.

The exception tends to be Chromium or Electron based things. Depending on what release they based on, they may need arguments to encourage Wayland use.

Usually --ozone-platform-hint=wayland suffices, though I recommend research of your own. ie: the WaylandWindowDecorations feature

Games benefit from gamescope: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope

Screen sharing has been relegated to my browsers because they know how to work with pipewire/xdg-desktop-portal... while the misc. telecom clients lag by a decade

As for why? It feels much more polished once setup.

Mixed refresh rates work properly, for example. I have two 144Hz and one 160Hz display - logs are legible as they fly by at full speed

hulitu
> Ask HN: Are You Using Wayland?

No. Why would i ? I run X clients.

marssaxman
I have no idea whether the distribution I am running uses Wayland. What might one do to find out?
reactor
Yes, on Ubuntu 22.04, pretty stable.
DaanDL
I'm forced to use it, because of my WQHD Thinkpad display which requires fractional scaling.