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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.

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.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

@sognokdev
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@bodqhrohro

I stated many times up the thread that I have no problems with X11 which would motivate me to "improve" anything.

Then what do you expect, and from whom? You expect people who write Wayland compositors to stop? Or something else?

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented May 22, 2022 •
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Then what do you expect, and from whom? You expect people who write Wayland compositors to stop? Or something else?

They have already been asked to add the necessary features to the core Wayland implementation which were ignored in favor of their dictatorial beliefs.

It's really funny to read stuff like, "You don't get it, Wayland isn't the worthless sh*t, it just works differently!"

@sognokdev
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@Monsterovich

They have already been asked to add the necessary features to the core Wayland implementation which were ignored in favor of their dictatorial beliefs.

So you don't want Wayland, what you want is a variant of Wayland with different principles. And you don't want to create it, you want it to be created by the people who work on Wayland.

Is that correct?

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ghost commented May 23, 2022

For example gparted, nvidia configuration tool, and many other stock Xfce applications.

GParted never worked for me

X11 had backward compatibility with X10 through a special additional transition library until the applications were completely ported to X11

XWayland

I still have a printer manager installed that requires Qt4. It has not been updated for years and it's unlikely that it will ever be updated because it's a proprietary application

Then use XWayland, or better yet, use a better printer. If it doesn't work with CUPS, it's bad.

XWayland is essentially a condom for Xorg, which seems to have been made out of sheer desperation when they realized that core Wayland implementation wouldn't work. I dunno.

I fail to see the point here. Sounds like meaningless theories grounded in hatred for Wayland. Also, I've never had any problems with XWayland. Screen recording even works, as long as it was implemented properly in X in the first place.

It's strange to hear that because even on Microsoft Windows old applications from 20 years ago still work

...and in the process of trying to maintain backward compatibility, has created the worst, most bug-ridden, and least functional operating system ever.

Nobody forces you to use proprietary applications. Every proprietary application has a superior, open source alternative. That's the glory of FOSS and complaining about garbage proprietary software from 20 years ago doesn't seem to add on to this argument...

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented May 23, 2022 •
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So you don't want Wayland, what you want is a variant of Wayland with different principles.

I don't want any of that. I'm just saying that to be a complete replacement for X on the desktop, Wayland must be modular, pehraps in a unix-way, not monolithic in its design. I also see no severe reason to replace X right now.

And you don't want to create it, you want it to be created by the people who work on Wayland.

I don't expect that from them, the Wayland developers showed themselves to be incompetent a long time ago. But I certainly expect them to break the Linux graphical stack. A lot of people are concerned about this. That is why this thread exists.

@Monsterovich
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GParted never worked for me

It's nobody's fault but yours.

XWayland

You obviously don't understand the difference between different versions of the API and different implementations of the graphical server.

Then use XWayland, or better yet, use a better printer.

This is the most idiotic advice one can give. Very similar to, "don't use NVidia, NVdia is evil!!!" As if it was my fault.

If it doesn't work with CUPS, it's bad.

It's not about CUPS. Each printer has its own controller that triggers printer cleanup, prints a test sheet, shows ink levels, etc. These features are not in CUPS. They are mostly proprietary and handled by proprietary tools.

and in the process of trying to maintain backward compatibility, has created the worst, most bug-ridden, and least functional operating system ever.

Not as buggy as Android, where each phone manufacturer essentially has a different aka Wayland-style graphical stack that can have different behavior in the same applications. Hence, there are no universal screen recording apps for Android. And it has nothing to do with compatibility, because compatibility is also broken.

Nobody forces you to use proprietary applications. Every proprietary application has a superior, open source alternative.

Stallman, is that you?

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ghost commented May 23, 2022

mostly proprietary

Then let's hope that one day we get the official FOSSPrinter sponsored by Stallman himself...

This is the most idiotic advice one can give. Very similar to, "don't use NVidia, NVdia is evil!!!" As if it was my fault.

It's nobody's fault but yours.

Interesting "contradiction"... though if you want an answer, there still is nobody stopping you from using a more FOSS-friendly vendor like AMD or Intel. Nobody's saying it's your fault, rather, I am saying that if the printer's configuration tool didn't work on Xwayland, then again, nobody's really stopping you from getting a better one.

Not as buggy as Android, where each phone manufacturer essentially has a different aka Wayland-style graphical stack that can have different behavior in the same applications. Hence, there are no universal screen recording apps for Android. And it has nothing to do with compatibility, because compatibility is also broken.

Interesting--however I'm gonna have to disagree with the "not as buggy as" part. Used GrapheneOS for a while and have experienced far less bugs than I did in a day of using Windows. Though this makes me wonder why the graphical stack ISN'T standardized across all. In the end they all are exactly identical, save a few quirks.

Stallman, is that you?

No i'm not fat

@sognokdev
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I don't expect that from them, the Wayland developers showed themselves to be incompetent a long time ago. But I certainly expect them to break the Linux graphical stack. A lot of people are concerned about this. That is why this thread exists.

They're not forcing anybody to use their protocol and software. If they are incompetent, then there must be some competent people who can do better. In the end, the users will choose.

@X547
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X547 commented May 26, 2022

Wayland do not support absolute windows positioning and heavily sabotage any attempts to introduce common protocol for that. Literally all desktop GUI systems support absolute window positioning, including toy one man OS projects. ...except Wayland.

So claims like Wayland is protocol, extensions can be made do not apply. Wayland do not respect application developer and user freedom.

For me absolute windows positioning is mandatory feature of Desktop GUI system and I absolutely can't accept Wayland because it have no it. It do not matter how good Wayland supports hiDPI, multi-monitor, tear-free, color management etc. if core feature is missing.

@dm17
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dm17 commented May 26, 2022

Wayland do not support absolute windows positioning and heavily sabotage any attempts to introduce common protocol for that. Literally all desktop GUI systems support absolute window positioning, including toy one man OS projects. ...except Wayland.

So claims like Wayland is protocol, extensions can be made do not apply. Wayland do not respect application developer and user freedom.

For me absolute windows positioning is mandatory feature of Desktop GUI system and I absolutely can't accept Wayland because it have no it. It do not matter how good Wayland supports hiDPI, multi-monitor, tear-free, color management etc. if core feature is missing.

Seems undeniable, but can you provide some good references for the sabotage? I see it too, but it is hard to prove because perhaps they don't do it on purpose and are unconsciously being controlled by something - like naivete, delusion, or monetary incentive.

This thread so far is constructive, despite the gamma comments, nitpicking, and name calling. However, the anti-X11 side should realize that they're talking to people who perhaps see the current world differently from them and should be more accepting and tolerant. We see a world with rapidly consolidating companies and power structures. And we know from experience with full control and root-of-trust could do to a computer. We have a little handle on freedom in the open source community, but it is not that far away from software signing from a CPU that is locked down remotely by Google/Intel/Apple/etc which has "security controls" all of the way up through the OS, like in iOS and Android.

@X547
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X547 commented May 26, 2022 •
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Seems undeniable, but can you provide some good references for the sabotage?

They even propose to make absolute positioning extension especially for Wine with authentication [!] so no programs except Wine can use it.

That way of thinking is similar to secure boot without option to disable or smartphones without root access because "you don't need that".

@bodqhrohro
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@sognokdev

Then what do you expect, and from whom? You expect people who write Wayland compositors to stop? Or something else?

I demand just one thing: to stop promoting Wayland as a "modern" and "better" replacement for X11. If something is going to become a modern substitute for X11, it should be something at least trying to achieve a feature parity with it, not something intentionally limited. Until something like that emerges, X11 should be treated with respect and as a competitor to Wayland, not a predecessor. Wayland is no more of a replacement for it than even more limited SurfaceFlinger is.

@binex-dsk

has created the worst, most bug-ridden, and least functional operating system ever

And the most successful one, because the backward compatibility is what serious people™ really need. Same applies to Android.

Nobody forces you to use proprietary applications

Why do you make such assumptions? How about things like government IDs, digital signatures, COVID trackers and so on? Kids are basically deprived of rights because parents and school staff decide what software should they use, especially for communication stuff or practical tasks for a certain software. To the lesser extent it also applies to jobs (which can be hard to pick and change, depending on skills, abilities and location of a person): employers may require numerous software, like communication software (again), time trackers, IDEs and so. Good luck finding compatible open source alternatives for them. Or even write such alternatives which: 1) wouldn't break after just another server update; 2) wouldn't require lots of reverse-engineering which an open-source lover should invest lots of time and efforts into for free; 3) wouldn't get banned along with user accounts for violating the EULA which doesn't allow the development and use of alternative software (with possible lawsuits for the developer, depending on their jurisdiction).

No i'm not fat

So you wouldn't argue you have a long shaggy beard, right? ;)

@Monsterovich

Hence, there are no universal screen recording apps for Android

scrcpy captures the screen via ADB and works in a pretty portable way. VNC servers which require root permissions are also a thing (but require to be built for a specific version of system libraries though).

@X547

Literally all desktop GUI systems support absolute window positioning

Why do you conclude from the fact something exists that it should be like that?

The whole notion of a desktop has shifted. Connecting several displays to one GPU turned from a fantasy to a usual thing, and with some tinkering, standalone devices can be connected as external displays too (yup, even round smart watches). Laptop screens with rounded corners and webcam notches are already a thing too (and hey, CRTs had rounded corners too, and classic Mac OS respected this!) Good luck to apply a notion of absolute coordinates to this mess (if somethings strives to emulate such a notion, it doesn't mean that's possible in an adequate manner).

Oh, BTW, I should finally resurrect my old idea, possibly by hacking on the Weston test suite and then coming up with some extension draft. The only thing which stops me from that is that, regarding the aforementioned rise of notched laptops, someone would come up with this anyway, so I should instead focus on things only I can do.

That way of thinking is similar to secure boot without option to disable or smartphones without root access because "you don't need that".

The freedom behind the free software has never guaranteed anything but the legal freedom to fork and patch the unwanted things. That's why formally free monsters like Chromium and AOSP have emerged, after all, which barely can be fixed by community efforts because third-party patches are gatekept by Google and the vast majority of users follows the upstream only. And now gnome-shell is turning into one of such monsters, especially given the fact Red Hat puts significant money into its promotion, as noted by someone up the thread.

@X547
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X547 commented May 26, 2022

Good luck to apply a notion of absolute coordinates to this mess (if somethings strives to emulate such a notion, it doesn't mean that's possible in an adequate manner).

For example Windows simply use global coordinates of all screen rectangles combined. So if there are 2 screens and left one is 1024x768 then second screen left-top coordinate will likely be (1024, 0).

@sognokdev
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@bodqhrohro

I demand just one thing: to stop promoting Wayland as a "modern" and "better" replacement for X11. If something is going to become a modern substitute for X11, it should be something at least trying to achieve a feature parity with it, not something intentionally limited.

Losing features is common when modernizing things.

Laptop used to have plenty of ports. For example, the Thinkpad T20, released in 2002, had: Serial, Parallel, VGA, USB, PS/2, Ethernet, RJ11, IBM docking port, CardBus, S-Video Out, Line-In/Line-Out/Microphone). Nowadays, you're lucky if you have 3 ports. But the laptops of today are also immensely more powerful than the Thinkpad T20 (Pentium III 750 MHz, 0.5 GB RAM), while having a much bigger battery life, and being much lighter.

CDs have a much higher longevity than USB flash drives. But USB flash drives are more convenient to use, and their capacity is much bigger.

Your cheap and compact Nokia 3310 phone had a 22 hour talk time. It's 16 hours for the Iphone 11. Yet, the iPhone is definitely more modern, much more.

I'm sure there are a billion examples of this phenomenon. Some features are lost or diminished, but there is a reason for that. It doesn't mean that the new thing is not more modern.

@uncomfyhalomacro
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uncomfyhalomacro commented May 27, 2022 •
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I don't expect that from them, the Wayland developers showed themselves to be incompetent a long time ago. But I certainly expect them to break the Linux graphical stack. A lot of people are concerned about this. That is why this thread exists.

They're not forcing anybody to use their protocol and software. If they are incompetent, then there must be some competent people who can do better. In the end, the users will choose.

everyone is forgetting that Wayland is pushed and developed by the Xorg devs themselves 🤣. keep continuing guys. imma eat my popcorn 🍿

@Shinyzenith
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I would just like to say that us wayland enthusiasts should not waste time on this gist and instead just work on making the sphere better. Trying to change the authors mind is a waste of our time :)

@Monsterovich
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Monsterovich commented May 27, 2022 •
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everyone is forgetting that Wayland is pushed by the Xorg devs themselves rofl. keep continuing guys. imma eat my popcorn popcorn

The problem isn't so much with the developers as it is with the forced imposition of Wayland. The Wayland developers just created a new toy for themselves, and to hell with it. No one would ever care if they didn't try to force it on users. X users are persecuted, and X is humiliated in the eyes of people. On top of that we have Wayland fanboys who yell on forums about the awesomeness and security of Wayland, and about obsolete bloated X, without ever having seen the code or the protocol, and without any idea how it works. It turns out that the future of the GNU/Linux desktop is not decided by the community but by the Redhat managers, who have absolutely no knowledge about this topic.

Remember what happened with PulseAudio, which turned out to be a complete clusterfuck, even though the project was just a good idea with a bad implementation, and Wayland is a bad idea with a bad implementation.

@sognokdev
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@uncomfyhalomacro

everyone is forgetting that Wayland is pushed and developed by the Xorg devs themselves

Wayland was created by Kristian Høgsberg, who was 12 years old when X11 was created. Being good at partly implementing somebody else's protocol doesn't mean that you're necessarily good at creating your own protocol.

Also, "the Xorg devs" are a lot of people, and I doubt they have one unique opinion on Wayland and X11.

I'm sure nobody forgot that Wayland is pushed by some Xorg developers. You should try to understand what you're reading, instead of representing yourself as someone who is superior, watching everybody from above with his popcorn and laughing at them. Which certainly indicates that you have more important issues to take care of than choosing the best display protocol.

@uncomfyhalomacro
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🍿

@uncomfyhalomacro

everyone is forgetting that Wayland is pushed and developed by the Xorg devs themselves

Wayland was created by Kristian Høgsberg, who was 12 years old when X11 was created. Being good at partly implementing somebody else's protocol doesn't mean that you're necessarily good at creating your own protocol.

Also, "the Xorg devs" are a lot of people, and I doubt they have one unique opinion on Wayland and X11.

I'm sure nobody forgot that Wayland is pushed by some Xorg developers. You should try to understand what you're reading, instead of representing yourself as someone who is superior, watching everybody from above with his popcorn and laughing at them. Which certainly indicates that you have more important issues to take care of than choosing the best display protocol.

@sognokdev
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@uncomfyhalomacro Grow up.

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented May 27, 2022 •
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Wayland do not support absolute windows positioning and heavily sabotage any attempts to introduce common protocol for that. Literally all desktop GUI systems support absolute window positioning, including toy one man OS projects. ...except Wayland.

So claims like Wayland is protocol, extensions can be made do not apply. Wayland do not respect application developer and user freedom.

For me absolute windows positioning is mandatory feature of Desktop GUI system and I absolutely can't accept Wayland because it have no it. It do not matter how good Wayland supports hiDPI, multi-monitor, tear-free, color management etc. if core feature is missing.

The argument against this is the following:

  • Desktop GUIs are only a subset of what graphical user interfaces are used for already today. For example, think about automotive implementations where you might have multiple displays of different sizes and shapes in different places of your car. An absolute global 2D Cartesian coordinate system doesn't help at all when your displays are circular or triangular and strewn around a lot of different places.
  • Even for desktop GUIs your underlying assumption seems to be that you can map your desktop to a set of rectangular 2D surfaces, to which you can assign absolute coordinate systems. However, this hasn't been entirely true even in the past (I disagree with @bodqhrohro on a lot of things, here I agree with him) and it's probably not true in the future. In the past, there were workarounds, like masking the round corners of your CRT or the notches of your phone. However, if you think about how long Unix or X11 have been around, and if you then look 30-40 years into the future, it's quite a big assumption that in 2030 or 2050 we will interact with computers exclusively through rectangular surfaces. Introducing global 2D coordinate systems today is likely to introduce serious limitations tomorrow. Imagine interacting with your computer through some kind of AR display where your windows/surfaces appear in different places in a 3D space - suddenly absolute positioning in a global 2D coordinate system becomes counterproductive.

So the idea is to look instead at what absolute coordinates are being used for - e.g. putting panels of a defined size on a defined screen edge and so on - and introduce protocols for those use cases. It's not a perfect approach - there are still issues with things like splash screens - and you can disagree with the idea, but there is a logic here and it's not just about imposing arbitrary limitations on the user.

@Mark-4158
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@X547 When using LWQt QtWayland in combination with LWQt Mutter, QWindow::setPosition() works as expected (under Wayland).

@bodqhrohro
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@X547

all screen rectangles combined

This is what I meant by

if somethings strives to emulate such a notion, it doesn't mean that's possible in an adequate manner

The big rectangle approach has obvious drawbacks like dead areas which don't belong to any display. Mixed DPIs make it even more insane.

Xinerama works the same way, now what?
@sognokdev

Laptop used to have plenty of ports

And that's why people who engage in hardware repairing tend to still use ancient laptops. For example, USB2COM adapters are unreliable, so a real COM port is needed for flashing sometimes.

But the laptops of today are also immensely more powerful

Not much actually, because the Moore's law stopped working for CPUs about two decades ago. The performance and a long battery life are contradicting things, so a major throttling is needed for the latter, and the promised 12 hours and more turn into 3–4 hours on non-typical tasks at best. And the reliability is sacrificed a lot for the sake of high speeds, especially in Intel-based laptops (which I don't use anyway though): for example, USB data lines instead of a southbridge now go directly into CPU, and in case of any short-circuiting burn the CPU itself; short-circuiting also became more probable due to the fragile nature of Type C if compared to Type A.

There is such thing as coproeconomics: it's more profitable to produce shitty stuff that dies early and is unrepairable, unless having to care about the quality due to legal regulations (here comes a stone thrown into the side of free market evangelists). So, as a rule of thumb, older is better, because the art of coproeconomics is mastered with time: surprisingly, it's easier to engineer a reliable device than a device which dies exactly after the warranty term expires.

But USB flash drives are more convenient to use, and their capacity is much bigger

I wouldn't call USB flash drives "convenient" if you need to attach one to a graduation work ;) They're just not flat enough (even those lacking a complete coating), unlike optical disks are. Though memory cards outperform both for this matter.

And also DVD+RWs are still cheaper than flash drives of the similar capacity in some regions.

Your cheap and compact Nokia 3310 phone had a 22 hour talk time. It's 16 hours for the Iphone 11. Yet, the iPhone is definitely more modern, much more.

Nokia G21 is newer and outperforms in talk time both, now what? :P

but there is a reason for that

Such reasons should not be supposed to be accepted by everyone.

It doesn't mean that the new thing is not more modern

I never tried to prove that Wayland is older than X11 lol.

Grow up.

Achtung, ageism in the thread!

@phrxmd

here I agree with him

him

insert some annoyed SJW mumbling here

some kind of AR display where your windows/surfaces appear in different places in a 3D space

That's going to be hell less usable than even capacitive touchscreens. (And still the mass market would swallow it again, at least temporarily, like 3D displays which came into oblivion after a few years of hype).

So the idea is to look instead at what absolute coordinates are being used for

Okay.

2022-05-27-151122_1366x768_scrot

Here are numeric boxes with coordinates, with a live stub over the screen. Tell me how to map this on the anchor model lol. Please no "screen recording should be a part of compositor" bullshit, and no "draw it on a preview".

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ghost commented May 27, 2022

Personally I think we should abandon Xorg and Wayland and create the official Sneed Display Server.

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented May 27, 2022

@phrxmd

here I agree with him

him

insert some annoyed SJW mumbling here

You regularly link to sites where you write under a male name using male forms (Russian makes this clear enough), so that seemed like a reasonably safe assumption, we don't need to turn this into a debate about your masculinity.

some kind of AR display where your windows/surfaces appear in different places in a 3D space

That's going to be hell less usable than even capacitive touchscreens. (And still the mass market would swallow it again, at least temporarily, like 3D displays which came into oblivion after a few years of hype).

Usability preferences are different. Yours are not something I care about. I regularly work in settings where AR is either in use already or is being considered as a serious enhancement. Sure, that's a niche context, but so was using more than one screen - which worked flawlessly on the Mac in the 1980s, and on Unix workstations that had their own ways of making it work with the global desktop model, and it was only 15 years or so until X11R6 caught up (somewhat) thanks to design decisions made in the 1980s.

So the idea is to look instead at what absolute coordinates are being used for

Okay. [...]

Here are numeric boxes with coordinates, with a live stub over the screen. Tell me how to map this on the anchor model lol. Please no "screen recording should be a part of compositor" bullshit, and no "draw it on a preview".

Honestly, who cares? The people who can't live without a live stub over the screen can go continue using X11. When I want to record a portion of the screen, I use OBS, select Screen Recording as the input source, enter the crop coordinates of the bounding box and I'm done.

@bodqhrohro
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Russian makes this clear enough

It's a thing I'm working on, by reviving outdated Proto-Slavic verb forms (aorist and imperfect), and a combination of optative from *byti + infinitive as a replacement for the conditional mood. When it's ready, I'm going to publish it on some linguistic forum for discussion and final polishing.

Since 2019, I tried to use it on that website, but any linguistic experiments count as violations of the Russian grammar there, so later I falled back to plural, then to avoiding the past tense at all. One of the reasons I left that website (hopefully finally this time, as it's totally not the first attempt).

I regularly work in settings where AR is either in use already or is being considered as a serious enhancement

And powered by GNU/Linux?

The people who can't live without a live stub over the screen can go continue using X11

What's the purpose to make a "new" protocol intentionally deficient so some ancient monster would still be needed to compensate its deficiency? Also, Xwayland clients don't have a complete access to Wayland ones, which is a major show-stopper. And hey, if you have a bounding box (moreover, a rectangular one!), it means you actually have some coordinates, right?

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented May 29, 2022

The people who can't live without a live stub over the screen can go continue using X11

What's the purpose to make a "new" protocol intentionally deficient so some ancient monster would still be needed to compensate its deficiency?

No protocol will stop a few diehards from sticking to old systems for whatever reason.

Also, Xwayland clients don't have a complete access to Wayland ones, which is a major show-stopper.

The people who prefer to stick with X11 have no Wayland clients and hence no need for taking screenshots of them.

And hey, if you have a bounding box (moreover, a rectangular one!), it means you actually have some coordinates, right?

No. It means you are recording a canvas with a PipeWire input stream somewhere that you can crop.

@bodqhrohro
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No protocol will stop a few diehards from sticking to old systems for whatever reason.

So it's not even worth trying?

The people who prefer to stick with X11 have no Wayland clients and hence no need for taking screenshots of them.

Wut? Then what Xwayland is for at all, if the worlds are supposed to be completely isolated?

It means you are recording a canvas with a PipeWire input stream somewhere that you can crop

Does PipeWire support non-rectangular displays?

@phrxmd
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phrxmd commented May 30, 2022

No protocol will stop a few diehards from sticking to old systems for whatever reason.

So it's not even worth trying?

It totally is, but no matter what you do, there's always going to be some unhappy diehards out there.

Every change breaks something for someone.

The people who prefer to stick with X11 have no Wayland clients and hence no need for taking screenshots of them.

Wut? Then what Xwayland is for at all, if the worlds are supposed to be completely isolated?

XWayland is for two groups of people:

  1. People who use Wayland and want to use some legacy X11 software (as in: for which there is no alternative and that hasn't been ported to Wayland yet).
  2. People who don't actually use Wayland, but want to complain about it and need something to show off how some X11 tool is proof that Wayland breaks everything.

For most people in group 1 XWayland is good enough. Most of the rest are actually in group 2.

@bodqhrohro
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bodqhrohro commented May 30, 2022 •
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@phrxmd you also ignore the case of running Wayland clients in a X.Org session. For many years, it was the only reliable way to run them actually, as DRI/KMS/fbdev backends in compositors were not ready yet. Now it's purposeless, as virtually all useful Wayland clients are also able to act as native X11 clients, but in the future it may become relevant again, as X11 client support is dropped and apps become Wayland only. And there would be nothing to stop screenshoting them via X11 SHM.

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