Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@probonopd

probonopd/Wayland.md

Last active July 19, 2025 17:57
Show Gist options
  • Save probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Download ZIP
Think twice about Wayland. It breaks everything!
Raw
Wayland.md

Think twice before abandoning X11. Wayland breaks everything!

image

Source: https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1940441670098809093

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.

Update 06/2025: X11 is alive and well, despite what Red Hat wants you to believe. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver revitalizes the Xorg X11 server as a community project under new leadership.

And Red Hat wanted to silence it.

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.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 auto-type in password managers

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 might allow the compositor (not: the application) to set window positions, but that means that as an application author, I can't do anything but wait for KDE to implement https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329 - and even then, it will only work under KDE, not Gnome or elsewhere. Big step backward compared to X11!

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

Wayland breaks multi desktop docks

  • "Unfortunately Wayland is not designed to support multi desktop dock projects. This is why each DE using Wayland is building their own custom docks. Plus there is a lot of complexity to support Wayland based apps and also merge that data with apps running in Xwayland. A dock isn't useful unless it knows about every window and app running on the system." zquestz/plank-reloaded#70 ❌ broken since 2025-06-10

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.

Summary what is wrong with Wayland, by one of its contributors

image

Source: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/179#note_2965661

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

What now?

Following the professional application KiCad's advice:

Recommendations for Users

For Professional Use

If you use KiCad professionally or require a reliable, full-featured experience, we strongly recommend:

Use X11-based desktop environments such as:

XFCE with X11 KDE Plasma with X11 MATE

Traditional desktop environments that maintain X11 support

Install X11-compatible display managers like LightDM or KDM instead of GDM if your distribution defaults to Wayland-only

Choose distributions that maintain X11 support - some distributions are moving to Wayland-only configurations that may not meet your needs

Source: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/#

Similarly, for Krite: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1030/debian-12-kde-plasma-2024-install-guide#d-krita-as-appimage

References

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

probonopd commented Apr 28, 2025 •
edited
Loading

desktops no longer matter in general

Why are almost all office workers then sitting in front of one all day long?

Ask Microsoft how their experiment to "de-desktop" and "mobile-ify" Windows 8 went.

@danielg4
Copy link

danielg4 commented Apr 28, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Why are almost all office workers then sitting in front of one all day long?

Because their demise has been a gradual one that is still in process. Over the past 10 years, personal computers have been gradually migrating from being the go-to tool used for everything by every functioning member of society during the preceding 20 years back to being the relatively specialized tool they were previous to that. People who aren't office workers often no longer use one for anything at all, and within another 10 years, most office workers won't either.

Ask Microsoft how their experiment to "de-desktop" and "mobile-ify" Windows 8 went.

They were out of their element and conceded this by exiting that market entirely and working together with Google and Apple on their platforms instead, while continuing to milk whatever is left of their desktop market while they still can. Arguments can be made that Windows is already no longer one of their flagship products at all.

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

probonopd commented Apr 28, 2025 •
edited
Loading

So you say, no one needs desktops anymore, no one needs Windows (or macOS, for that matter) anymore. I don't know where you live and what you do for work, but this certainly doesn't reflect my experience. In contrast, I have stopped using tablets a long time ago because they are not suitable for getting anything done. And don't get me started on those "ski helmets with displays in them"...

@danielg4
Copy link

So you say, no one needs desktops anymore, no one needs Windows (or macOS, for that matter) anymore. I don't know where you live and what you do for work, but this certainly doesn't reflect my experience. In contrast, I have stopped using tablets a long time ago because they are not suitable for getting anything done. And don't get me started on those "ski helmets with displays in them"...

Since you've chosen to misread what I said intentionally, I'm done with responding to you at all. Real-life conditions do not directly translate into a binary representation, and it's pointless to discuss anything with people who insist otherwise, because they cannot grasp the concept of "shades of gray."

@frosk1
Copy link

frosk1 commented May 1, 2025

Accessibility is one major thing that has been broken compared to X11. Mouse, keyboard and so on...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/ZRjpY8Yykk

Important projects could even consider drop Linux support because of that:
https://github.com/splondike/wayland-accessibility-notes/blob/main/talon-requirements.md

@JRRandall
Copy link

… if Linux wants to matter on the desktop, …

Go take your time machine back to when saying this meant anything, because we are now in 2025, when desktops no longer matter in general. The world has moved on.

What delusional take is this? Literally all office workers disagree with you, as well as anyone serious about making their computer work for them. Wayland is broken. That’s why it’s been 15 years and corporate Linux is just starting to jam it down our throats.

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

I think the main problem with Wayland is that the people who originally made it were not focused on the desktop, and the people who are nowadays working on the desktop are too heavily influenced by the Gnome mindset of doing things.

This is why today's Wayland works for Gnome but is unable to offer feature equality with Windows and macOS.
And why Red Hat/Gnome concepts like "D-Bus" and "Portals" are increasingly taken for granted by Wayland (unlike X11, which was agnostic about such things).

Essentially Wayland's desktop features are designed for the Gnome way of doing things, which is not what all users want.

@alerikaisattera
Copy link

but is unable to offer feature equality with Windows and macOS

Xorg is also unable to offer feature equality with Windows and macOS

"D-Bus" and "Portals"

What's your problem with them?

@aki-k
Copy link

aki-k commented May 3, 2025

Here's a thread on Xorg, Wayland and accessibility:

https://tech.lgbt/@xogium/110507457689374019

(click on the eye icon in the top right corner to expand all comments)

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

What's your problem with them?

I don't want to use them.
They are Gnome-centric (as can be seen by the fact that they are based on glib).

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

Xorg is also unable to offer feature equality with Windows and macOS

At least when using Qt, I never had anything I could do on Windows and macOS that I couldn't do on Xorg. On Wayland, not even move() on a QMainWindow works, unlike with the other two OSes.

@alerikaisattera
Copy link

At least when using Qt, I never had anything I could do on Windows and macOS that I couldn't do on Xorg

You can't take screenshots of context menus under Xorg, with few exceptions. Qt-based programs, with the exception of Filelight, don't allow it

@alerikaisattera
Copy link

I don't want to use them.

Why? What's your problem with them?

They are Gnome-centric (as can be seen by the fact that they are based on glib).

Paralogia

@italian-brainrot
Copy link

well well, ladies and gentleman, if it isn't the OP being caught red handed banning my comments and silencing my opinions

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

The OP is removing off-topic discussion, including advertising links to subscriber-only YouTube videos.

@UltraBlackLinux
Copy link

UltraBlackLinux commented May 11, 2025 •
edited
Loading

what's with the screen sharing stuff? Literally everything works. I'm on Hyprland

the broken screensavers are also basically addressed. Swayidle/Hypridle exist.

I really do wonder why nobody is using the good wayland WMs where everything just works

I also have to wonder why this gist even exists. Where's the need in complaining about something like this? Xorg was undoubtably flawed and messy. Wayland is the future. It may not yet fully be where Xorg was before it was deprecated, but at least work is being done. You cannot tell me that wayland is unusable, because that's factually wrong.

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

probonopd commented May 11, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Wayland is not feature complete with Windows and the Mac, and it is not on par with Xorg.

Wayland is unusable if you want simple things to work, like applications being able to restore their windows in the pixel coordinate locations of their choosing.

Wayland is unusable if you don't buy into the whole Portals, etc. stuff (which existing software didn't need).

@UltraBlackLinux
Copy link

UltraBlackLinux commented May 11, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Do we need to be on-par with Mac, Windows and Xorg? I've never ran into any dealbreaker issues with wayland.
Opening windows at specific coordinates also works - I don't see any issues there either.
Everything is subject to change - that doesn't make portals a bad thing. You should be glad that xwayland exists to handle all the applications that can't or don't want to deal with wayland.

I also don't see any reasons why you would complain about what's basically the only maintained alternative to Xorg. Xorg is dead, as such wayland is the future. No bit of complaining about wayland will remedy this problem. If people cared about Xorg it would still be properly maintained.

@frosk1
Copy link

frosk1 commented May 11, 2025

Again:

Accessibility is one major thing that has been broken compared to X11. Mouse, keyboard and so on...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/ZRjpY8Yykk

Important projects could even consider drop Linux support because of that:
https://github.com/splondike/wayland-accessibility-notes/blob/main/talon-requirements.md

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

probonopd commented May 11, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Do we need to be on-par with Mac, Windows and Xorg?

Yes, at least with the "least common denominator" between all of them. Otherwise our applications wouldn't run on open source desktops 1:1 like they do everywhere else, and even when using cross-platform toolkits like Qt for applications there would be unwanted differences between the platforms. Read: "Wayland is broken, it works everywhere else".

I also don't see any reasons why you would complain about what's basically the only maintained alternative to Xorg

Because it is destroying the desktop experience on open source Unix-like systems to the point that I am typing this from Windows.

@Hueristic
Copy link

This has been a really great source of information, I have changed my mind and I am switching back to X11. Applause Actually just kidding, I'm just turning the notifications for this post off. If you're not contributing code to wayland and you still hate it and just want to make hate threads all day that's up to you! If you really are being FORCED to use it, I'm sorry that someone has that much control over you or how you do your job that they require you to do something you don't wanna do. I recommend peace talks between X11 and Wayland users, or just don't worry so much about it? TTYL

Haha ??? If I could contribute code, why contribute to wayland? Wayland developers already thinks X11 apps should just work in Xwayland, and we should fix our x11 apps which don't need fixing. Many apps don't work, Wayland still being default, already try force you to use it. If they remove Xorg, you are forced permanently, that is possible. Wayland started 16 years ago ! If X11 developers think Wayland has good potential, X11 apps would have been moved over long ago, and there would be accelerated development, with huge contributions. You will not need to wait 16 years with apps not working. X11 apps development being reluctant to move to Wayland, already shows X11 is still better.

I'm sorry, please point out these x11 Devs you speak of?

Actually, how about you point out 1.

@probonopd
Copy link
Author

X11 can already do what I need since 1-2 decades.

@howdev
Copy link

howdev commented May 11, 2025

This has been a really great source of information, I have changed my mind and I am switching back to X11. Applause Actually just kidding, I'm just turning the notifications for this post off. If you're not contributing code to wayland and you still hate it and just want to make hate threads all day that's up to you! If you really are being FORCED to use it, I'm sorry that someone has that much control over you or how you do your job that they require you to do something you don't wanna do. I recommend peace talks between X11 and Wayland users, or just don't worry so much about it? TTYL

Haha ??? If I could contribute code, why contribute to wayland? Wayland developers already thinks X11 apps should just work in Xwayland, and we should fix our x11 apps which don't need fixing. Many apps don't work, Wayland still being default, already try force you to use it. If they remove Xorg, you are forced permanently, that is possible. Wayland started 16 years ago ! If X11 developers think Wayland has good potential, X11 apps would have been moved over long ago, and there would be accelerated development, with huge contributions. You will not need to wait 16 years with apps not working. X11 apps development being reluctant to move to Wayland, already shows X11 is still better.

I'm sorry, please point out these x11 Devs you speak of?

Actually, how about you point out 1.

Don't need to be sorry. How about you point out which software after 16 years is not in a proper working state

@howdev
Copy link

howdev commented May 11, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Do we need to be on-par with Mac, Windows and Xorg? I've never ran into any dealbreaker issues with wayland. Opening windows at specific coordinates also works - I don't see any issues there either. Everything is subject to change - that doesn't make portals a bad thing. You should be glad that xwayland exists to handle all the applications that can't or don't want to deal with wayland.

I also don't see any reasons why you would complain about what's basically the only maintained alternative to Xorg. Xorg is dead, as such wayland is the future. No bit of complaining about wayland will remedy this problem. If people cared about Xorg it would still be properly maintained.

You need to face the reality, stop defending Wayland when there is nothing to good to defend.
This thread is not about complaining ! We are pointing out Wayland is as good as Alpha quality, but used in production, as default display server.

Wayland fractional scaling lose the native monitor resolution, you don't know this ??? what happens then, you need to use gamescope restore the native resolution, is another wayland app to start Xwayland server to serve the game. This is a mess already
And gamescope is designed for steamdeck, most distributions don't work because dependencies.

Xwayland is broken in itself. and you think it handles applications? why should be care about Xwayland? If it doesn't exist, we just use Xorg. we are not using wayland anyway. Xwayland is for you people that still thinks Wayland is good. But many of the X11 apps are not ported. And when ported, it does not work and still uses X11 backend.

@howdev
Copy link

howdev commented May 11, 2025

what's with the screen sharing stuff? Literally everything works. I'm on Hyprland

the broken screensavers are also basically addressed. Swayidle/Hypridle exist.

I really do wonder why nobody is using the good wayland WMs where everything just works

I also have to wonder why this gist even exists. Where's the need in complaining about something like this? Xorg was undoubtably flawed and messy. Wayland is the future. It may not yet fully be where Xorg was before it was deprecated, but at least work is being done. You cannot tell me that wayland is unusable, because that's factually wrong.

Here is something, When you do not write programs you do not understand the mechanics of apps or Window managers. Wayland window managers depend on Wayland. Wayland is a protocol in a library. Window managers is as good as Wayland library itself. You cannot have a window manger with everything works, because Wayland does not work in many important functions such as, I assume you don't use Kdeconnect. Wayland cannot mouse and keyboard remote input from kdeconnect. Blurry Xwayland apps from fractional scaling, memory leaks, Asian input methods

@Consolatis
Copy link

Consolatis commented May 12, 2025 •
edited
Loading

This thread is not about complaining

And streets are not about cars.

Blurry Xwayland apps from fractional scaling,

Yep, that sucks. Funnily enough, most of it has to do with X11 not being able to have different scaling per output and X11 applications can't be notified about a appropriate scaling factor depending on the output(s) they are on. Otherwise Xwayland and in turn its X11 clients could simply react to the fractional scaling protocol like any other wayland native application. I assume the wayland backend for Wine will help with the effects of this until someone bothers to fix X11 in this regard (e.g. different DPI / scales per output). Running Xwayland rootful might be another option, using the newish -hidpi flag.

memory leaks,

My wayland compositor of choice, running for 246 days straight with daily use begs to differ. It is currently at 70 MiB RSS and 74 MiB SHR (obviously changes with the amount of windows open, 19 currently). And yes, it uses libwayland under the hood.

Asian input methods

We do have users using input-methods so not sure what that statement is about. It is certainly not about "Wayland" in general, maybe it is about a specific compositor?

@howdev
Copy link

howdev commented May 12, 2025

Streets isn't about cars. You think people don't walk on streets? bicycles, dogs, cats

Check the thread title. You should get this clear. This thread is advice not to switch to Wayland because it isn't production quality. Many have point out the issue running different applications.

Don't blame X11 apps blurry because your Xwayland isn't giving the compatibility it is supposed to.

You, people always says it works without giving what works. We always give the situation when it does not work, check above. Audacity is ported to wayland but has memory leaks, and it has to use X11 backend. Don't blame applications, because it is functioning in X11. Wayland is no ordinary application, it function as display server, serving applications, whether wayland applications or X11 applications. When X11 applications don't work properly through Xwayland what is the meaning for people to use wayland? just to try a few wayland apps? There are still way more X11 applications than wayland applications.

"we do have users using input methods" again you are not showing who is using and what input methods. I showed you sogou, fcitx input both does not work with wayland browsers such as Brave.

The most important basic thing is the resolution. Wayland was supposed to solve the fractional scaling in Xorg which has poor performance. But the Wayland fractional scaling will lose the monitor native resolution. That is a big problem in the design. 4k scaling to 1.5 will give you 1440p desktop and you can't change that. Any fullscreen app will only detect 1440p. Xorg with Nvidia hardware already surpass wayland in this area

@alerikaisattera
Copy link

what's with the screen sharing stuff? Literally everything works. I'm on Hyprland

Does it work on all >20 Wayland compositors?

Xorg was undoubtably flawed and messy.

So is Wayland

Wayland is the future.

It isn't

Wayland is not feature complete with Windows and the Mac, and it is not on par with Xorg.

Xorg is not feature complete with Windows and the Mac macOS

Wayland is unusable if you want simple things to work, like applications being able to restore their windows in the pixel coordinate locations of their choosing.

That's the job of the window manager (which, in Wayland, is unified with the display server and the compositor, which creates other problems, but that doesn't matter here). Programs, be the applications or not, should have no right to decide the location of their windows

Xorg is dead, as such wayland is the future.

Xorg is indeed dead, but Wayland is not a suitable replacement and never will be

@howdev
Copy link

howdev commented May 12, 2025 •
edited
Loading

"wayland is the future" come on, that is some kind of delusion. Wayland started 16 years ago and was an initial release ! It was even a release. yeah, today is not the future after 16 years !
If Linux kernel is in same state as Wayland now, you won't be using Linux, let alone using wayland.
Linux kernel was functioning in 1991 and slackware distribution in 1993, just 3 years you have working Linux system. The kernel is way more complicated than any display server.

@aki-k
Copy link

aki-k commented May 12, 2025

Xorg is indeed dead

It's supported in RHEL 9 until 2032

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