i'd like to see some rebuttals to the points made :-)
as far as i can tell, a good number of things not supported are intentional because of a different (better?) security model, and at least a few, like not supporting "window always on top" are simply false.
It is unfortunate how complicated drawing pixels on a screen is. Linux: You were (are) the one with potential to be free from corporate problems. A fast, simple OS that schedules, provides high compatibility, and has a clean, user-focused user experience, and universal ABI. Instead, we have a landscape of complexity and compatibility barriers.
I don't know about "Wayland breaks everything", bit sensationalistic maybe...
I've been on Arch + Gnome for 6-7 years by now, started on Xorg and today using Wayland 24/7. I tried moving to Wayland maybe once a year or something like that from when it was available, until last year when I had less troubles than I had benefits when I tried it. But before that, the issues were plenty.
Probably the biggest change is how much smoother everything is. The performance certainly feels way better with Wayland than Xorg today, both input responsiveness, drawing and everything else. It does use more RAM and VRAM though, but the difference is marginal at best.
Probably it matters a lot what distribution + desktop environment you use, but with Arch+Gnome3 I haven't noticed (today) "Screen Recording / Capture" not being supported (it works just fine?) or "Clipboard Access" being broken, just different.
In fact, the only issue I can think of currently, is trying to move dockable windows in Unreal Engine from separate windows into tabs in the main window, which seems broken/not possible probably because of some Gnome stuff showing a notification when you start to drag the dockable window, as far as I can tell.
Otherwise all the software I use day-to-day just kept working the same way. Many applications got a sharper look with Wayland, and overall it's just smoother.
HN and r/linux have had this same argument countless times. Wayland was developed by the people behind Xorg because X11 was designed to send output from a minicomputer to a terminal. It is way too complex and fragile for modern use cases.
Many of the issues this post has with Wayland are by design, applications shouldn't have full access to what everything else is doing to the compositor and instead request permission via a protocol. It's like complaining kernels are dumb because you need to make system calls.
Discussions about the corporatization of Linux largely move on emotion. Imagine getting flagged multiple times for asserting that writing code that assumes little endianness is bad programming practice, just because someone had a talk where he suggested 32 bit should die and perhaps even all things big endian.
The speaker didn't give any reasons, mind you, why big endian should die other than handwaving about how it means "more maintenance", and the responses to "can you give any examples of how it means "more maintenance" other than saying it?" were largely, "can you give proof it's not "more maintenance"?"
I feel the same happens with Wayland. People who don't understand its position have strong feelings in both directions, yet very little discussion is about the underlying rationale for it in the first place, about who benefits by marginalizing people with non-mainstream hardware and who benefits from forcing the software ecosystem down narrower paths.
X11 and Wayland really should coexist, at least for as long as it takes for Wayland to lose a majority of its major issues, yet Wayland designers didn't seem to think that'd be worthwhile. Some of the projects that're working on making them work together need more attention than they're getting.
The author is not wrong in the sense that many things X11 did for a long time and people were used to are not possible in wayland.
My personal anecdotal experience is that wayland is a lot better than X11 performance wise. It feels snappier, and it has been rockstable.
Please note I'm using a KDE based distro(neon) and on both nvidia and intel gpu it has been great.
If you are looking for raw performance based on simple frameworks, I do believe X11 will probably better, but for most people wayland will bring improvements. Yes I could get insane terms performance in an urxvt with FB under X11. Do I need it? Not really when my the system still behaves.
As a devil's advocate argument, it is true that wayland has come from being a lot worse O(years) ago.
some complaints from OP:
* "A crash in the window manager takes down all running applications" - this was true, but it has started to change, see https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qt-Wayland-Compositor-Restart#...
* "You cannot do a lot of things that you can do in Xorg by design" - I do not see this as an issue, other than having emotional attachement to Xorg.
* "It offloads a lot of work to each and every window manager. As a result, the same basic features get implemented differently in different window managers, with different behaviors and bugs - so what works on desktop environment A does not necessarily work in desktop environment B (e.g., often you hear that something "works in Wayland", even though it only really works on Gnome and KDE, not in all Wayland implementations)." - this is true, but again, it means that instead of complaining to a monolithic project you complain to a specific implementation. And I disagree this would be wasteful as there are clear design decisions done differently by different wayland implementation.
* "Wayland breaks screen recording applications" - Google Meet, Zoom, OBS Studio all work fine here. I guess if you mean X11 recording, then yeah it's broken.
* "Wayland breaks automation software" - yeah, again, changed of display protocol will break existing automation. That's called change, and is not inherent to wayland
* "Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD" - that one's valid.
* "Wayland requires JWM, TWM, XDM, IceWM,... to reimplement Xorg-like functionality" - Well duh, it's not X11, it does require a lot of new implementation. X11 was made as a kitchensync that can do everything. That's not necessarily a good thing in the modern world.
I think there is a pattern there, the OP is mostly complaining that things are changing and some new things don't yet work. But he forgets that wayland appeared out of very good reason:
- inefficient indirect rendering
- security flaws(too easy to actually do a keylogger)
- kitchensync approach(where it did everything) making it large and monolithic.
16 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 38.3 ms ] threadas far as i can tell, a good number of things not supported are intentional because of a different (better?) security model, and at least a few, like not supporting "window always on top" are simply false.
discuss away!
Otherwise works everything out of the box just fine for me
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/X11_Known_Significant_Issue...
I've been on Arch + Gnome for 6-7 years by now, started on Xorg and today using Wayland 24/7. I tried moving to Wayland maybe once a year or something like that from when it was available, until last year when I had less troubles than I had benefits when I tried it. But before that, the issues were plenty.
Probably the biggest change is how much smoother everything is. The performance certainly feels way better with Wayland than Xorg today, both input responsiveness, drawing and everything else. It does use more RAM and VRAM though, but the difference is marginal at best.
Probably it matters a lot what distribution + desktop environment you use, but with Arch+Gnome3 I haven't noticed (today) "Screen Recording / Capture" not being supported (it works just fine?) or "Clipboard Access" being broken, just different.
In fact, the only issue I can think of currently, is trying to move dockable windows in Unreal Engine from separate windows into tabs in the main window, which seems broken/not possible probably because of some Gnome stuff showing a notification when you start to drag the dockable window, as far as I can tell.
Otherwise all the software I use day-to-day just kept working the same way. Many applications got a sharper look with Wayland, and overall it's just smoother.
Many of the issues this post has with Wayland are by design, applications shouldn't have full access to what everything else is doing to the compositor and instead request permission via a protocol. It's like complaining kernels are dumb because you need to make system calls.
Plus I use X-forwarding quite a bit.
The speaker didn't give any reasons, mind you, why big endian should die other than handwaving about how it means "more maintenance", and the responses to "can you give any examples of how it means "more maintenance" other than saying it?" were largely, "can you give proof it's not "more maintenance"?"
I feel the same happens with Wayland. People who don't understand its position have strong feelings in both directions, yet very little discussion is about the underlying rationale for it in the first place, about who benefits by marginalizing people with non-mainstream hardware and who benefits from forcing the software ecosystem down narrower paths.
X11 and Wayland really should coexist, at least for as long as it takes for Wayland to lose a majority of its major issues, yet Wayland designers didn't seem to think that'd be worthwhile. Some of the projects that're working on making them work together need more attention than they're getting.
My personal anecdotal experience is that wayland is a lot better than X11 performance wise. It feels snappier, and it has been rockstable. Please note I'm using a KDE based distro(neon) and on both nvidia and intel gpu it has been great.
If you are looking for raw performance based on simple frameworks, I do believe X11 will probably better, but for most people wayland will bring improvements. Yes I could get insane terms performance in an urxvt with FB under X11. Do I need it? Not really when my the system still behaves.
As a devil's advocate argument, it is true that wayland has come from being a lot worse O(years) ago.
some complaints from OP: * "A crash in the window manager takes down all running applications" - this was true, but it has started to change, see https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qt-Wayland-Compositor-Restart#... * "You cannot do a lot of things that you can do in Xorg by design" - I do not see this as an issue, other than having emotional attachement to Xorg. * "It offloads a lot of work to each and every window manager. As a result, the same basic features get implemented differently in different window managers, with different behaviors and bugs - so what works on desktop environment A does not necessarily work in desktop environment B (e.g., often you hear that something "works in Wayland", even though it only really works on Gnome and KDE, not in all Wayland implementations)." - this is true, but again, it means that instead of complaining to a monolithic project you complain to a specific implementation. And I disagree this would be wasteful as there are clear design decisions done differently by different wayland implementation. * "Wayland breaks screen recording applications" - Google Meet, Zoom, OBS Studio all work fine here. I guess if you mean X11 recording, then yeah it's broken. * "Wayland breaks automation software" - yeah, again, changed of display protocol will break existing automation. That's called change, and is not inherent to wayland * "Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD" - that one's valid. * "Wayland requires JWM, TWM, XDM, IceWM,... to reimplement Xorg-like functionality" - Well duh, it's not X11, it does require a lot of new implementation. X11 was made as a kitchensync that can do everything. That's not necessarily a good thing in the modern world.
I think there is a pattern there, the OP is mostly complaining that things are changing and some new things don't yet work. But he forgets that wayland appeared out of very good reason: - inefficient indirect rendering - security flaws(too easy to actually do a keylogger) - kitchensync approach(where it did everything) making it large and monolithic.