Wayland Will Never Be Ready For Every X11 User : linux

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (7 children)

These “Wayland will never come” articles completely ignore the fact that Wayland is here and has already won.

There are lots of issues with Wayland. They will be fixed, but if this was simply a list of things still needing to be improved, it would be useful.

But most Linux desktop users use Wayland already. It will be 90% in 2-3 years. With the exception of Mint, the big Linux distros already install to Linux by default. So almost every new Linux user starts on Wayland. Few will ever try X11. And if they did, the list of broken and impaired experiences on X11 will bring most back to Wayland.

It really does not matter if every x11 user switches to Wayland. The ecosystem does not need them.

But very few of even the hard core adherents will use an X server 5 years from now. Most normal users will not even use Xwayland. And the simple reason is applications.

Everyday there are more and more apps that are Wayland only. Before 2030, that list will include all GNOME and most GTK apps. Are people really going to give up all these applications because of some obscure advantage they perceive in X11?

Most the the faults the article cites are exaggerated or historical. But it is not worth arguing over the details. Wayland is the future. But it is already the present. It is sad really that the people writing these articles do not realize that they are already in the minority and have already been left behind.

This is a “Linux will never be ready for all UNIX users” article written in 1998. It is both true and irrelevant.

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Here is an argument that some of the grumpy old men clinging to Xorg may understand.

It is 2003 and all the cool kids are moving to this new web browser called Firefox. But every time you try your favourite websites in it, you find stuff that breaks. So back to trusty old Internet Explorer 6 you go. Call me when it works you say.

Wayland is like HTML. Wayland compositors are web browsers. And yes, all these “modern” web standards are all implemented a little differently or maybe not at all in some browsers. And, annoyingly, a lot of real world websites still work better in Internet Explorer 6 than in any of these supposedly “modern” browsers.

But, as with the web, it will not be long until all websites (Linux desktop applications) will be written to use the modern standards and will work well, and pretty much the same, in all browsers (Wayland compositors).

And, while there will still be websites (Linux desktop apps) that work better in IE6 (Xorg), most people will consider those sites broken and will probably not use them. Alternatively, you can run your browser (compositor) in compatibility mode (Xwayland) for those sites.

You can keep using Internet Explorer if you want. Many people held on for a long time. Just know what your advocacy sounds like to people that have moved on to Firefox and Chrome. Pointing at your corporate website that looks wrong in Firefox will not impress them. And understand that you will not be able to hang on forever. Well, unless you want to be stuck in a tiny corner of the web that still works on your browser. Most websites will stop working on Internet Explorer at some point.

[–] homura1650@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My big complaint with Wayland is that the ecosystem has not really developed an effective standardization process.

With web browsers, you would get browsers doing their own thing; then copying each other's thing, then writing down a standard for that thing, then all switch to the standard.

With Wayland, you get: https://wayland.app/protocols/ For as old as Wayland is, there are 5 standard protocol extensions (plus some updates to the core protocol). A bunch sitting in the standardization pipeline. Then a whole bunch of redundant protocols because each compositor is just doing their own thing without even attempting to standardize.

It doesn't help that one of the major compositor (Gnome/Mutter) has essentially abandoned Wayland for everything beyond the core capabilities in favor of offering additional functionality over a separate DBus interface.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Let me be clear, I am not here to defend the Wayland standards process. The GNOME guys in particular are a nightmare and heavily resist everything they do not themselves need. If what you want to complain about are some of the people “in Wayland”, I am on your side.

That said, xdg-desktop-portal and DBUS are part of the Wayland world as they are part of then freedesktop.org standard. Red Hat has a vision for the Linux platform. This is it.

But this is like saying the web is not just HTML anymore because it also requires JavaScript. Everybody is on board with dbus. It is how you do IPC to sandboxed Flatpak apps too..

[–] Zink@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not super informed on Wayland, and this analogy really helped, thanks!

I am a Mint fan, so one of the minority still running X11. As long as I can do what I need to on my PC, though, I am content to wait until the distro maintainers do the upgrade.

I guess using Mint in the first place means I don't prioritize running all the cutting edge versions of everything, lol.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Mint is awesome. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using Mint on Xorg today. I converted somebody to Linux recently and I put them on Mint (X11). There are not that many Wayland only apps yet. And if you don’t use them yet, you won’t miss them.

Please just don’t post “Wayland is not ready” articles because Cinnamon is not ready (does not fully support Wayland yet).

Cinnamon will go Wayland though. When they are ready, they will switch you over. At some point, they will drop support for Xorg.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 69 points 4 days ago (22 children)

And X11 will never be ready for most modern users. They have different goals. But that's the thing with open source. As long as someone somewhere needs it. Even if 90% of us don't need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 4 points 3 days ago

Even if 90% of us don't need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.

I most agree with you. The Xlibre project may become popular and do something to make X11 popular again. Who knows?

And I just argued on a forum yesterday that Xorg will keep working for 20 years at least. But a lot of smart people claimed I was wrong about it being able to support new hardware. But I think Xorg is likely to build and run for decades yet.

But the X server implementation that is likely to last the longest is Xwayland. And with Wayback, the “stand-alone” X server that many distros will bundle will be Xwayland running on Wayback (Wayland) and not Xorg.

As I have said elsewhere though, few people will be daily driving an X server (Xorg, Xlibre, or Wayback) simply because many desirable applications will require Wayland.

And what will be the x11 only applications that will make people run an X server to use them? Xeyes? Xfig?

I think even running Xwayland will be pretty niche. X11 is going to be a software preservation project. You can boot up OpenLook, CDE, Trinity, or i3 for the memories (and then go back to Wayland for the apps you need).

I could be wrong. Time will tell. Within a couple of years after the release of GTK5 at the latest, we will know. By 2030 maybe.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I spent 4 years with and external monitor on my desk that I couldn't use because it was absolutely painful to find a consistent way to make the 2 different DPIs of the screens work in a way that made sense. Only now with proper Wayland can I enjoy and use it. Yeah there's hacks, but I'd rather let it be dead in a corner than try to work around it. It was a bunch of black screen, inconsitencies between the order I'd plug the external screen, when i did it (before or after logging in), etc... I can't even imagine all the other pain points about hdr, variable or high refresh rates, etc.

Wayland is great.

Had to wait a bunch of time and tried many times before and it wasn't ready for my needs, but now it is and I'm happy. God knows how many rants I've done on fedi about it not working for a lot of time on plasma and weird bugs everwhere.

[–] abir_v@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

As a user of 3 monitors with different resolutions, different refresh rates, some HDR, different UI scaling, who games and wants to use VRR - Wayland is literally why I was able to effectively switch to Linux as my daily driver.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

a consistent way to make the 2 different DPIs of the screens work in a way that made sense

What do you mean? I used multidisplay setups for 15 years, I never checked what's the DPI of my monitors is and never had issues. I just plug in any external monitors I have around and it works. I did it on desktop machines and many different laptops. I'm always baffled when people say their monitors don't work because of sync rates or DPI. What are they trying to do and what's not working?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 2 days ago

It's been a problem with 4k monitors. For them the interface has to be scaled to about 200%. When you have got a 1080p monitor next to that you have a choice of:

Having a ridiculously large interface on the 1080p one
Having a ridiculously small interface on the 4k one
Running the 4k one at half resolution

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 4 points 3 days ago

e.g. one monitor is 96dpi, and the other is 192dpi, moving a window from one monitor to the other shouldn't result in the window becoming a different physical size, and it should render at a natural resolution on both (i.e. scaling it to half size for display on the 96dpi monitor doesn't count)

[–] crankyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Currently, X11 is not really being developed, just maintained, which is the real issue. In this piece they are questioning whether Wayland was a good choice or not. I am using Wayland, have for some time, and I do acknowledge it is still a work in progress, validating the articles list of 'issues' yet to be addressed, but unless you are running a really old system, I am guessing the complications affect a very minimal group of users. There are also workarounds, for example on KDE, the gtk apps don't adhere to those using the global menu. However, there is a fix to get around it.

In reference to using a completely different solution, isn't it a little late in the game (16 years in development?) I think we are stuck with Wayland, no?

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 25 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

X11 would have needed almost a complete rewrite. Wayland made sense. Eject the technical debt and focus on your use case. We aren't time sharing on a large central mini computer/mainframe anymore. And even then they generally are full single user systems run in parallel under a hypervisor these days. As wasteful as that might be.

But there's still occasions when you need to run a legacy application on old AIX, Irix, etc, or vax Hardware. And need a workstation. Which right now Wayland simply can't do without x.

[–] fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

X11 isn't gonna disappear, it will always be there as a compatibility layer for old programs. That's okay.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 2 points 3 days ago

Oh absolutely. I said as much an earlier post they will coexist even if Wayland will be the default for most distros.

[–] grillgamesh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I need it to run like 3 things via its original use case of "log in to remote computer, run it on linux, see it on your local machine". still works like a charm.

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They have different goals

I am not sure about that. They have different designs for sure. Mostly because one was designed 25 years later. I guess you mean they have different goals because Xorg did not incorporate some goals in its design (like security). But is it a goal of Xorg to be insecure? That feels like a stretch.

There are design goals in X11 that are not included in Wayland. Take asking the display server to draw primitive shapes for you as an example. But modern X11 apps do not do that either. That is not how things like Qt and GTK work. So, more of a “25 years later” thing than a true difference in goals. The “compositor” approach. The DDX layer. These are more of a reflection of “how things work today” on both systems than they are differences in goals.

Perhaps you mean things like “network transparency” as I hear that one a lot. Wayland’s design is to have a simple core that can be extended. But the same capabilities exist for Wayland. For example:

https://www.mankier.com/1/waypipe

or even better:

https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

What goal does Xorg have that Wayland does not? Again, other than poor security (not a goal).

The lack of security in Xorg makes many things easier. Wayland apps run in a sandbox which makes some things harder. Many complaints I see ultimately boil down to this difference. Flatpaks are also sandboxed and a lot of the solutions on Wayland are similar (eg. XDG desktop portal). But again, am not sure crap security was really a “goal” of Xorg. It is simply convenient.

Because of security, things have to be explicitly supported on Wayland while X11 apps can just do them. There is no official way to capture a screenshot on X11 even after 40 years. But any X11 app can do it pretty easily as all apps have access to the entire display (even contents of other windows). On Wayland, there is a protocol for screen capture. There has to be, or it would not be possible. The same is true for many other features. And, I fully admit, some protocols for Wayland to do things done by some x11 apps do not exist yet (or are not yet widely supported by compositors or apps).

But again, I do not really see “poor security” as an x11 design goal. It was simply born in an era where that did not matter as much. Projects that want to modernize X11, like Xlibre, will have to break things on X too. Time will tell what that looks like.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

X11 is a display server. Wayland is a presentation layer. Different goals. I have run graphical multi-seat systems using x11. Something like that will never be possible in the same way for Wayland because it is out of the design scope

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

X11 and Wayland are both protocols.

Xorg is a display server. In Wayland, your compositor is the display server.

“I have run graphical multi-seat systems using x11. Something like that will never be possible in the same way for Wayland”

I have to give you this one. Wayland is not designed to be multi-seat. I do not know about “never” but you are right that multi-seat is a design difference.

My mind goes to this project again: https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

But wprs only runs one compositor so it does not inherently address multi-seat. Support for that would need to be added.

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[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 40 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Relevant xkcd

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 18 points 4 days ago

That alt text is just TOO real

[–] BB_C@programming.dev 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

With all the surface false analogies and general lack of solid knowledge in the comments here, I truly hope that at least half of them are LLM generated.

[–] DapperPenguin@programming.dev 1 points 13 hours ago

Guess this is what happens when a post in the lemmy verse gets about 100 comments.

[–] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 25 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

I feel like this is just like systemd, those that want to stick to the old ways are very vocal but are a very small minority.

Edit - Sometimes I want to erase spell checks 1's and 0's.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean, at least systemd is one(-ish) program with one API that everyone can target like xorg. There's so many different Wayland implementations that it gets rather mind-boggling.

Of course, I don't hate Wayland - I just currently use XFCE. If XFCE ever switches, I'll go along with it. If applications end xorg support before XFCe switches(or if XFCE becomes unmaintained), I'll consider jumping ship to something that uses Wayland.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes. When will people realize that there should only be one HTML implementation. There are so many web browsers that it gets rather mind-boggling.

Same argument exactly.

You can use XFCE today by switching out xfwm for labwc (Wayland compositor). It works ok but, if you are an XFCE user, the Xorg version is still a bit more polished. That has nothing to do with Wayland really. Even XFCE will be be Wayland first in a release or two. But all the XFCE apps, the panel, the launcher, etc all work great on Wayland already. You are just waiting for them to finish their own compositor.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 2 days ago

True! I guess I don’t mean that many implementations are inherently bad.

I guess the web browser analogy brings up the point that even though there’s many major behavioral differences between Wayland implementations right now that can make life a bit miserable, there’s hope that standardization could improve and make it easier to make sure applications work anywhere. I’m just a little sad a lot of important thinks weren’t standardized from the beginning/

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

100% a system D like issue. And I get it. People tend to hate change. The old init scripts work okay back in the day. And if you're familiar with them I can see why you wouldn't want it to change. But system D really has brought something to the game. It's so much easier to enable disable services. No having to dig through init scripts trying to find the one you're looking for which might be called through a script of a script of a script.

And while I hate to see fragmentation between the Linux and BSD space. Part of that is on the BSD space. Reluctance to do anything different than the way it was always done can and will hold you back. Not that BSD has ever been fragment free on its own.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

BSD just has 4 (or more?) main distributions (or operating systems, whatever). It is nothing like Linux.

Also I think BSD systems are much more integrated on how they work, because on any Linux distro there are hundreds of different packages that were built by hundreds of different people, and on *BSD all pieces fit together nicely, unless you install 3rd party packages that are entirely optional. (Although you won't get any desktop environment if you do that, aside from default one on OpenBSD, which is modified X server+Fvwm AFAIK).

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 2 points 2 days ago

More for sure if you include Darwin. Linux and BSD were largely similar for a long time. The divergence only really started the last 15-20 years.

It's interesting to imagine where BSD would be today without all the litigation on the 90s. Would BSD be where Linux is today? Or would it still be in a similar situation due to it's reluctance to break with system V traditions.

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[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It doesn't need to be. The goal is not to recreate and be compatible with X11, otherwise it would defeat the idea to create something new. Wayland is here, because it needs to do things differently. It's the same as Linux operating systems will never be ready for every Microsoft user. And that's okay.

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure, but I don't think that's an excuse for things like global hotkeys not working.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

I guess that is why global shortcuts were added as an xdg-desktop-portal extension.

Do you use Debian? I find a lot of the biggest Wayland opponents are running software from 3 years ago and have no idea how Wayland works today.

[–] BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 14 points 4 days ago (14 children)

The biggest issue for last ~8 years was that wayland was promoted as "superior" while lacking even most basic functions.

V-Sync control? Nope. Hidpi scaling? Nope. Only in 2024 it got to the point where it's actually usable and these features were implemented.

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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I think X11 is ideal at the state it is currently. Only getting real fixes, that don't break anything. If you are a kind of user who needs X11, you probably don't need any features Wayland offers anyway.