8 ms·

So much is written about Wayland not "being ready." I've used it exclusively on my desktop and laptops for... as long as it's been available in Ubuntu. It wor

So much is written about Wayland not "being ready." I've used it exclusively on my desktop and laptops for... as long as it's been available in Ubuntu. It works fine. I don't have any issues with input methods. It puts pixels on my monitors. The screen doesn't tear when I move windows around like X did. It's fine for me.

Y_Y 3y ago
[flagged]
mzs 3y ago
Guess you don't use cyrillic and extended latin.
Spivak 3y ago
Also been using Wayland for years via GNOME, everything works, I have cool new dbus APIs to control my desktop, the "press ctrl+alt+f2" to bypass the lockscreen" thing isn't a thing anymore, libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it.
- bandrami 3y ago
  > libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it Oh Lord no. Clickpads are still basically unusable with libinput. There's a reason it hasn't actually displaced synaptics.
talhah 3y ago
I've also been using wayland for a couple years now. Switched from i3 to sway and never had screen tearing as I did with X server. Just recently moved to Hyprland and similar experience. Barely had any hiccups and switching to a non-english layout such as Arabic works like a charm. Perhaps maybe our systems are just ideal? For the record I'm using a thinkpad which generally has good support but even on my Lenovo G505 it worked perfectly.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  GNOME supports my trackpad better than Windows and, dare I say it, macOS does. As in, it literally supports trackpad gestures and inputs that Apple doesn't, and it's actually really smooth and responsive. You can right-click-drag, and you can middle click. macOS doesn't support either one of these, and Windows only supports assigning a bottom-right quadrant of the trackpad to right-clicking.
  - thewataccount 3y ago
    I wish there was an equivalent to "better touch tool" for linux, that program adds so many trackpad/other peripheral shortcuts and gestures it's crazy and doesn't involve editing config files from a wiki and half a dozen stack overflow pages.
  - mort96 3y ago
    GNOME has the fatal flaw that you can't configure trackpad scroll sensitivity. That means, if your trackpad is too sensitive out of the box, GNOME is simply unusable. Every laptop I've used in the past many years (a couple of Dells and a Mac) have had touch pads with too sensitive scrolling in GNOME. It's fine in Sway or KDE, as they have scroll sensitivity settings.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      > GNOME has the fatal flaw that you can't configure trackpad scroll sensitivity. Oh, I got bitten by that actually. I ended up just configuring Firefox since that was the main app I used, but most apps aren't Firefox and don't have settings for things that they would expect to be handled by your WM/DE/DM.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      AFAIK it is a fundamental GTK problem, so Sway or KDE can only circumvent it for GTK apps.
      - mort96 3y ago
thewataccount 3y ago
Me and my friend both installed arch at the same time and both tried to use gnome + wayland. Both of us experienced issues with games being inconsistent in frame times, black rectangles over electron apps like spotify/discord, for him his multi monitor setup was somehow broken on wayland but fine with X. Chromium apps in general appear to have varying levels of issues, some applications don't support wayland at all, most can run with the xwayland which IMO mostly defeats the purpose especially when it's still not seamless. We've both switched to X and no longer have any of the above issues. That's not to say the desktop experience on X is seamless of course, but the above issues were all solved. I'm really under the impression that people who use wayland either don't use a wide range of applications (which is perfectly fine!) and/or are used to putting up with "typical linux issues" and accept the quirks. I remember when wayland came out and was supposed to solved the "fragmented/bloated mess of xorg" but it literally just appears to have been a half-baked solution for ~15 years. IMO the issue with the "linux desktop" has always been consistency. You don't have to worry about adding launch arguments, compositor support, graphics drivers, AMD/Nvidia, wine, broken audio/networking when you do an update, etc. MacOS/Windows "just work" - at least with far more consistency.
- nine_k 3y ago
  I'm afraid you're a bit optimistic saying that Windows is consistent, or has no audio or graphics problems. My Linux laptop (xfce) is way more visually consistent than my wife's Windows desktop, and I had to troubleshoot audio issues on it, and on Windows laptops at work, but never on Linux (pipewire, onboard / USB / Bluetooth audio). And yes, I run X, Wayland is too restrictive currently. I should give it another try some day though.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    >and I had to troubleshoot audio issues on it, and on Windows laptops at work, but never on Linux (pipewire, onboard / USB / Bluetooth audio). Funny, it's always been the other way around for me. My Ubuntu 22.04 at work keeps randomly switching the default audio output to the headphone jack of the machine and off my Bluetooth headphones leaving me without sound in my headphones until I go to the settings and switch it back to Bluetooth. Never had such issues with Windows, it's always been rock solid in this regard. Would you mind sharing the exact audio issues you had with Windows?
rwmj 3y ago
I don't think anyone doubts it works in limited circumstances with a curated set of software, provided you don't need anything like remoting or screen sharing.
- sterwill 3y ago
  I share my desktop (single windows and/or whole desktop) at least once every day. Usually with Google Meet in Firefox, but also with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. I don't need remote access to my desktop or laptop (windowing system) though. SSH is just fine for me.
i2cmaster 3y ago
I used plan9 extensively (Almost all my machines including my mail server and primary desktop) before I went to college. That doesn't mean its ready for most people to use.
causality0 3y ago
As a relative Linux outsider, the X/Wayland situation is definitely putting people off switching. We consistently hear "X is deprecated, don't use X, Wayland is the future" yet every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland".
- biorach 3y ago
  > every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland". Eh, what? That's not at all common
hkmaxpro 3y ago
I also know input methods work great on Ubuntu (Gnome Wayland) because Gnome has first-class support for ibus. But the article is specifically about incompatibility of input methods among different DEs: Gnome, KDE, wlroots-based environments such as Sway and Hyprland. After many years, ibus still doesn’t work with wlroots, because ibus supports input method protocol v1 and wlroots supports v2: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2182 https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2182 The list of recommended IMEs on Sway are all WIP: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway#input-method-editors https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway#... There is even v3. Kitty refused to implement v3 because v3 appeared even more unstable: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2814#issuecomment-652142433 https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2814#issuecomment... The wayland input method protocol is stuck at v1, and DEs/applications disagree about which versions to support. That’s why it’s problematic.
- sterwill 3y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with any of the technical points in the article. I'm just saying that my experience with Wayland is pretty good. Someone (GNOME? Ubuntu? thousands of generous developers?) is doing all the work to make it work pretty well for me.
- mfo4321 3y ago
  [dead]
- aumerle 3y ago
  kitty added support for v3 a couple of years ago: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/3410 https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/3410
  - hkmaxpro 3y ago
    Good to know. Thanks.
TwoNineFive 3y ago
Talking past the issues.

Y_Y 3y ago

[flagged]

mzs 3y ago

Guess you don't use cyrillic and extended latin.

Spivak 3y ago

Also been using Wayland for years via GNOME, everything works, I have cool new dbus APIs to control my desktop, the "press ctrl+alt+f2" to bypass the lockscreen" thing isn't a thing anymore, libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it.

bandrami 3y ago
> libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it Oh Lord no. Clickpads are still basically unusable with libinput. There's a reason it hasn't actually displaced synaptics.

talhah 3y ago

I've also been using wayland for a couple years now. Switched from i3 to sway and never had screen tearing as I did with X server. Just recently moved to Hyprland and similar experience. Barely had any hiccups and switching to a non-english layout such as Arabic works like a charm. Perhaps maybe our systems are just ideal? For the record I'm using a thinkpad which generally has good support but even on my Lenovo G505 it worked perfectly.

LoganDark 3y ago
GNOME supports my trackpad better than Windows and, dare I say it, macOS does. As in, it literally supports trackpad gestures and inputs that Apple doesn't, and it's actually really smooth and responsive. You can right-click-drag, and you can middle click. macOS doesn't support either one of these, and Windows only supports assigning a bottom-right quadrant of the trackpad to right-clicking.
- thewataccount 3y ago
  I wish there was an equivalent to "better touch tool" for linux, that program adds so many trackpad/other peripheral shortcuts and gestures it's crazy and doesn't involve editing config files from a wiki and half a dozen stack overflow pages.
- mort96 3y ago
  GNOME has the fatal flaw that you can't configure trackpad scroll sensitivity. That means, if your trackpad is too sensitive out of the box, GNOME is simply unusable. Every laptop I've used in the past many years (a couple of Dells and a Mac) have had touch pads with too sensitive scrolling in GNOME. It's fine in Sway or KDE, as they have scroll sensitivity settings.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > GNOME has the fatal flaw that you can't configure trackpad scroll sensitivity. Oh, I got bitten by that actually. I ended up just configuring Firefox since that was the main app I used, but most apps aren't Firefox and don't have settings for things that they would expect to be handled by your WM/DE/DM.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    AFAIK it is a fundamental GTK problem, so Sway or KDE can only circumvent it for GTK apps.
    - mort96 3y ago

thewataccount 3y ago

Me and my friend both installed arch at the same time and both tried to use gnome + wayland. Both of us experienced issues with games being inconsistent in frame times, black rectangles over electron apps like spotify/discord, for him his multi monitor setup was somehow broken on wayland but fine with X. Chromium apps in general appear to have varying levels of issues, some applications don't support wayland at all, most can run with the xwayland which IMO mostly defeats the purpose especially when it's still not seamless. We've both switched to X and no longer have any of the above issues. That's not to say the desktop experience on X is seamless of course, but the above issues were all solved. I'm really under the impression that people who use wayland either don't use a wide range of applications (which is perfectly fine!) and/or are used to putting up with "typical linux issues" and accept the quirks. I remember when wayland came out and was supposed to solved the "fragmented/bloated mess of xorg" but it literally just appears to have been a half-baked solution for ~15 years. IMO the issue with the "linux desktop" has always been consistency. You don't have to worry about adding launch arguments, compositor support, graphics drivers, AMD/Nvidia, wine, broken audio/networking when you do an update, etc. MacOS/Windows "just work" - at least with far more consistency.

nine_k 3y ago
I'm afraid you're a bit optimistic saying that Windows is consistent, or has no audio or graphics problems. My Linux laptop (xfce) is way more visually consistent than my wife's Windows desktop, and I had to troubleshoot audio issues on it, and on Windows laptops at work, but never on Linux (pipewire, onboard / USB / Bluetooth audio). And yes, I run X, Wayland is too restrictive currently. I should give it another try some day though.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  >and I had to troubleshoot audio issues on it, and on Windows laptops at work, but never on Linux (pipewire, onboard / USB / Bluetooth audio). Funny, it's always been the other way around for me. My Ubuntu 22.04 at work keeps randomly switching the default audio output to the headphone jack of the machine and off my Bluetooth headphones leaving me without sound in my headphones until I go to the settings and switch it back to Bluetooth. Never had such issues with Windows, it's always been rock solid in this regard. Would you mind sharing the exact audio issues you had with Windows?

rwmj 3y ago

I don't think anyone doubts it works in limited circumstances with a curated set of software, provided you don't need anything like remoting or screen sharing.

sterwill 3y ago
I share my desktop (single windows and/or whole desktop) at least once every day. Usually with Google Meet in Firefox, but also with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. I don't need remote access to my desktop or laptop (windowing system) though. SSH is just fine for me.

i2cmaster 3y ago

I used plan9 extensively (Almost all my machines including my mail server and primary desktop) before I went to college. That doesn't mean its ready for most people to use.

causality0 3y ago

As a relative Linux outsider, the X/Wayland situation is definitely putting people off switching. We consistently hear "X is deprecated, don't use X, Wayland is the future" yet every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland".

biorach 3y ago
> every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland". Eh, what? That's not at all common

hkmaxpro 3y ago

I also know input methods work great on Ubuntu (Gnome Wayland) because Gnome has first-class support for ibus. But the article is specifically about incompatibility of input methods among different DEs: Gnome, KDE, wlroots-based environments such as Sway and Hyprland. After many years, ibus still doesn’t work with wlroots, because ibus supports input method protocol v1 and wlroots supports v2: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2182 https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2182 The list of recommended IMEs on Sway are all WIP: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway#input-method-editors https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway#... There is even v3. Kitty refused to implement v3 because v3 appeared even more unstable: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2814#issuecomment-652142433 https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2814#issuecomment... The wayland input method protocol is stuck at v1, and DEs/applications disagree about which versions to support. That’s why it’s problematic.

sterwill 3y ago
I'm not disagreeing with any of the technical points in the article. I'm just saying that my experience with Wayland is pretty good. Someone (GNOME? Ubuntu? thousands of generous developers?) is doing all the work to make it work pretty well for me.
mfo4321 3y ago
[dead]
aumerle 3y ago
kitty added support for v3 a couple of years ago: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/3410 https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/3410
- hkmaxpro 3y ago
  Good to know. Thanks.

TwoNineFive 3y ago

Talking past the issues.