Will wayland completely replace Xorg?

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Drwankingstein@reddit

Possibly eventually but not for a very, very lone time

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I think yes, in the same way that pipewire has largely replaced pulseaudio and Jack. By providing compatible apis and protocols such as Xwayland, there will eventually be enough backward compatibility that it’s a non-issue.

I think it’s 65% of the way there, personally

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C0rn3j@reddit

I think it’s 65% of the way there, personally

What do you miss?

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DazedWithCoffee@reddit

I personally miss nothing, but I hear too many other people with issues to believe that it’s too much higher than that. Mostly related to hardware support, etc.

I’m personally at 100% coverage of my usecase

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C0rn3j@reddit

I hear too many other people with issues to believe that it’s too much higher than that. Mostly related to hardware support, etc.

Probably about 99.9% people can switch with current SW and HW stack.

The rest is people running on 10+ year old Nvidia GPUs. people upset their tool that hasn't seem maintenance for 20 years not working anymore, and people with niche use cases like accessiblity - though that one is being resolved.

Keep in mind Nvidia hasn't worked properly til 2024-07.

You see a lot of people complaining about Wayland because they run out of date software and distributions where it just doesn't and won't work well.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

/u/C0rn4] - that simply isn't the case at all... 99%+, what world are you living in?

I am using AMD RX 580 8GB, and when I tested in 22.04 Ubuntu and 24.04 Ubuntu, I had to roll back to Xorg when fullscreen games, Wine apps, and too many apps that misbehaved became apparent.

The simple fact of the matter is that I won't settle for lack of choice. I have seen curated lists of 100% compatible Desktop Managers, Window Managers, Compositors etc., and there is very little choice in those lists.

I don't understand why you would settle for less, instead of using Xorg, which 100% of people can use with any SW and HW stack.

I remember a weird bug when I was first using Wayland, involving a fullscreen window, with only the top 1/2 of the screen with working mouse... This would have been OK if it weren't a mouse-driven game.

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C0rn3j@reddit

that simply isn't the case at all

Then you proceed to tell me how it does not work on dated software versions.

I remember a weird bug when I was first using Wayland, involving a fullscreen window, with only the top 1/2 of the screen with working mouse... This would have been OK if it weren't a mouse-driven game.

Curious, could you link your bug report?

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themacmeister1967@reddit

That's March at best, it is November

I don't want to be a BETA TESTER when it comes to a Window Manager or compositor. I just want something that works. I don't need to be an up-to-the-second superuser.

Curious, could you link your bug report?

My software has not been updated in years (and never will be). If you're suggesting that Wayland will make workarounds and fixes for obscure apps that don't behave, that is not the software that I want to use. From what I have read, you need to write your software to support Wayland, not the other way around.

How do I use my HDR screen on X again?

What Linux software supports HDR? What use is HDR in running Linux? What's wrong with standard RGB or ycbcr ?

How do I stop X windows from randomly freezing?

I have been using XWindows/Xorg for 16 years, from RedHat 5/Mandrake 5.1 up to now, I have NEVER had a random X windows freeze...

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C0rn3j@reddit

I don't want to be a BETA TESTER

Then use latest stable releases, like I suggested, instead of using buggy old software?

My software has not been updated in years (and never will be).

If you're suggesting that Wayland will make workarounds and fixes for obscure apps that don't behave, that is not the software that I want to use.

That would be Xwayland in your case, I take it you didn't report a bug then.

What Linux software supports HDR?

Uh, my DE, my (modern) games, my video player with my media, ...?

What use is HDR in running Linux?

Since when is color perception limited to people using specific operating systems?

What's wrong with standard RGB or ycbcr ?

Why would you want RGB, what's wrong with staying on a 16-color palette?

What are those questions.

I have NEVER had a random X windows freeze...

Let's have everyone use your computer with your use case?

I've had it happen often, Wayland does not suffer from it.

I do concede that XWindows does not work well with multi-monitor setups, and display-scaling is next to useless. If Wayland can seemlessly handle those situations (along with HDR????) without issue, then I guess Wayland does needs to replace Xorg for most people

Yes, Wayland implements multimonitor properly, unlike X where the protocol only technically handles "one" screen, has scaling and supports HDR.

This is why everyone is in fact moving on.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

Then use latest stable releases, like I suggested, instead of using buggy old software?

Because Wayland is buggy, doesn't make the app buggy. App(s) run perfectly fine under Xorg.

I'm not here to pick a fight, I am just tired of users declaring Wayland finished and perfect, when this is demonstrably not the case. When Wayland reaches a level of completion and compatibility that is acceptable to me, I will move over. I have a single monitor setup with a static 1080p screen (no scaling). My use case doesn't require Wayland in any shape or form, and frankly - I like it that way.

NOTE: I do not have Linux on my 4K deskop, only my laptop.

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nearlyepic@reddit

I dunno about 99%. The problem is that there seem to be a lot of "niche cases". For instance, to calibrate my monitors, I had to run DisplayCAL under an Xorg session. Wouldn't work otherwise. Niche? Sure, but there's lots of professionals who need color-accurate displays.

Push-to-talk is also still an unsolved problem on Wayland. Is that "niche"? Depends who you ask..

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FrozenLogger@reddit

I can't switch.

Multi monitor support for remote sessions will not work in Wayland - unless you run as root, and that is not going to happen.

That is a show stopper, but even the nice to haves are an issue. Such as the extremely convenient method of drop a file link in any dialog box from another one. Save so damn much time, but wayland security is such that it is not allowed.

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C0rn3j@reddit

unless you run as root, and that is not going to happen.

You'd rather have a guaranteed vulnerable system on X11 than a possibly vulnerable service on Wayland?

I also don't see how that would require root even if true when you can do just that with portals without launching anything as root?

I may be wrong there, though that's indeed a niche feature if so.

extremely convenient method of drop a file link in any dialog box from another one

Eh? I drag and drop all the time.

I presume you're using dated software or a bare compositor instead of a DE.

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FrozenLogger@reddit

I would rather be on Wayland, don't get me wrong. But I am not going to run remote service tools as root.

The reason why is that spanning multiple monitors in remote clients are done as separate sessions. Wayland is very explicit about one screen per appliction. It possibly could be worked around if a remote client used an offscreen buffer and virtualized the separate monitors (different resolutions? thats a huge maybe) or wayland was changed to handle multi monitors per application.

The drag and drop: For this example it is KDE 6.2.

Try this: open your file manager. Browse to a file that you are interested in, in this case a JPEG. Open Krita, click on "open images". Now drag the file you are interested in and drop it into the open files dialog. In X this works, in Wayland it does not.

You might be saying, why not just drop the file onto Krita? That is fine and well for something simple, but for things like config file open dialogs, or even uploading a file into a firefox open file dialog is much easier. Also its just muscle memory. I can have my file manager set up to all the locations and files I am interested in, so I do not need to use the "open file" dialog and have to walk through to each one. Or paste.

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C0rn3j@reddit

Multi monitor support for remote sessions will not work in Wayland - unless you run as root

I can do screenshare for the entire workspace at minimum by the way, with no per-monitor hijinks, are you sure about this? Got a link I can follow?

Try this: open your file manager. Browse to a file that you are interested in, in this case a JPEG. Open Krita, click on "open images". Now drag the file you are interested in and drop it into the open files dialog. In X this works, in Wayland it does not.

So since you're on Plasma (KDE is the group, the DE is called KDE Plasma or just Plasma), which I also ran, I opened Chromium on VT file upload - https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload

and KDE's Dolphin.

Drag and drop works into the portal file dialog works just fine.

Krita runs on X11 for now, try with a Wayland application.

X11 Krita uses a different file picker on my system than Chromium and it does not work there, I have not poked further, but this is by no means something Wayland cannot do.

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FrozenLogger@reddit

I can do screenshare for the entire workspace at minimum by the way, with no per-monitor hijinks, are you sure about this? Got a link I can follow?

It is a well known limitation. You have 3 monitors on a remote computer, you want to remote into that machine and have your three monitors each displaying one of the remote screens. This will not work. Example bug: https://gitlab.com/Remmina/Remmina/-/issues/3217

Drag and drop in the OS's open file dialog portal works just fine.

This one is more tricky. It CAN work, but is not consistent like in X. So you click on the "upload file", dialog opens. Now in X you can drop that file name right onto the filename. You cannot do this in wayland. You can drop it into the file picker area, it will switch to the file, then click down below, then open. But not every dialog works the same, where in X it does.

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No-Bison-5397@reddit

Screen sharing is a bastard.

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C0rn3j@reddit

Works fine here, are you perhaps using dated software versions?

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No-Bison-5397@reddit

Bleeding edge Arch baby.

I run pacman -Syu as much as I breathe.

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thrakkerzog@reddit

X11 forwarding, for me.

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C0rn3j@reddit

VNC works just fine, what do you use forwarding for anyway though?

I ended up realizing all the things I used it for were pointless and I can do it better without it.

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thrakkerzog@reddit

I sometimes just want one window and not a remote desktop.

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iluvatar@reddit

A window manager. Client side decorations are a disaster. I understand that it's theoretically possible to write a compositor that behaves like a traditional window manager, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has done so. As an end user, I can trivially configure how I want my windows to look and behave and configure hot keys to do all manner of useful things. Without that, I would be significantly less productive. None of the Wayland options that I've seen provide for that, and their attitude is "who cares what the end users want, they can switch to doing things to how we tell them they should do them". Which is always going to alienate me, even if the end product was good - and I don't think it is yet.

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C0rn3j@reddit

A window manager

X11 Window Managers are X11 exclusive, as their name would suggest.

I have good news for you though, we've replaced those with Wayland compositors.

Client side decorations are a disaster

Got a bug report or a protocol issue you can link?
Works fine here.

configure hot keys to do all manner of useful things. Without that, I would be significantly less productive. None of the Wayland options that I've seen provide for that,

Where and when did you last look?
I can configure whatever I want on Plasma just fine.

Network transparency

Care to elaborate?

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iluvatar@reddit

Got a bug report or a protocol issue you can link? Works fine here.

The fact that you could even ask that question shows you don't understand the problem.

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C0rn3j@reddit

What problem?

No discussion/bug report, no problem.

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ImpossibleEdge4961@reddit

Network transparency. I accept I'm in the minority here, but I still use this on a reasonably regular basis.

Unless you're doing something incredibly weird, you do not. Network transparency doesn't mean ssh -X which is still possible with wayland compositors. Most people think "network transparency" somehow just means "using the network at any point" as opposed to the protocol itself being network aware. ssh -X on the other hand effectively emulates a local X server and more or less just proxies the X11 traffic which your Wayland desktop can just run in Xwayland.

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mitch_feaster@reddit

Screen recording. I accidentally started GNOME under Wayland recently and went through 2 or 3 new screen recorders (only 1 of which had any success whatsoever at actually recording my screen, and only after moving the target window onto the only monitor the recorder wanted to record for some reason) before deciding that the hassle wasn't worth it and went back to Xorg.

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C0rn3j@reddit

Screen recording

Is literally better on Wayland, for example Spectacle, which works great, has screen recording under Wayland only.

OBS works great too.

Are you using dated software or was this a while ago?

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AndydeCleyre@reddit

I still miss some things that wmctrl and xdotool can do in scripts in a desktop-independent way (like the scripts I use to make any app "guake/quake-like" toggle-able/launch-able), and specifically for KDE Plasma the window titlebars still don't support window shading in Wayland, which keeps me from switching.

Until then I won't even try Wayland, whereupon I might learn of other missing bits.

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ThomasterXXL@reddit

gamma-dimming for when your monitors' minimum brightness is still waaay too high and all other options have side effects.

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saboay@reddit

There's a gigantic difference between a drop-in replacement (pipewire over pulse) and strictly incompatible technologies (X and wayland). And wayland has a lot of shortcomings feature-wise.

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DazedWithCoffee@reddit

Hence why I say 65% progress despite having no personal issues with it. I swear, you can’t say anything without annoying someone on these topics.

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saboay@reddit

Sounds like you''re annoyed, I just made a comment. Lighten up.

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pokemonpasta@reddit

Now I'm finally using pipewire I can't look back. Everything just works so much better and I love being able to use stuff like qpwgraph

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trmetroidmaniac@reddit

"Will desktop Linux remain perpetually broken?"

Yes.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

XWindows was the one solid, dependable framework that kept Linux somewhat stable... All these modern software replacements (replaced with scant regard for stability) are killing linux.

I can barely understand PulseAudio, and people are now talking about PipeWire... what was wrong with ALSA?

I was fine with GRUB/GRUB2, and could understand how to change options and reinstall it... what in God's gravy is systemd?

I've just mastered APT for software management... can do anything I want with it... WHAT THE ACTUAL F... are SNAPS, APPIMAGES, FLATPAKS???!!! As soon as they start to install, my CPU usage goes to 100%, and how on earth are you meant to keep track of installs or updates? No-one is going to switch to Linux with FOUR DIFFERENT COMPETING PACKAGE MANAGERS!!!

Add Wayland to the mix, and you can have a computer that has graphical/GUI bugs, has 5 ways to install the same applications, doesn't hibernate, has no sound out (or poor quality sound), cumbersome software management and a bootstrap system that is impossible to change, and simple to break.

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WjU1fcN8@reddit

This looks like copypasta, but I will just let this one bit out:

what was wrong with ALSA?

Only one application could play sound. If Firefox was playing a video, the DE couldn't play a notification sound.

It was broken as heck.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

I have also had to rebuild ALSA from source to support weird audio problems (mainly on laptops). Most can be worked around with a kernel parameter in GRUB boot commandline, but a few required an ALSA rebuild.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

From a debunking website - "This problem was solved a long time ago with the use of alsalib, but doing mixing at a library level isn't a very good solution to the problem"

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FeepingCreature@reddit

This depends on your soundcard fwiw. Only one application could play sound iff your sound card did not have a hardware muxer (or you configured a muxer plugin in ALSA).

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FeepingCreature@reddit

I mean yep. I will say that Pipewire is nice, it lets you do dynamic output switching and muxing which was kind of hard on ALSA. And it doesn't randomly start stuttering like Pulse.

Grub/Grub2 still work fine. You don't need systemd, you can run a system without it if you pick the right distro.

Snaps are Ubuntu's proprietary appimages. Appimage is basically a Docker container that runs as a binary. Flatpak is a standalone appimage. You don't update them centrally, you just download the new version, and it packages all the libraries it needs. Makes the system more predictable because the maintainers can't break it.

And yes, Wayland is and remains optional. I am very happy on X11.

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themacmeister1967@reddit

I really liked Pop_OS! but the systemd-boot broke TWICE on me :-(

Also, I think snaps (and flatpaks?) have been incorporated into the Software Centre, allowing easier (?) updates.

I don't like the way that Wayland is the default in Ubuntu now... you could spend weeks trying to troubleshoot some annoying bug, only to realise you just needed to login to an Xorg session.

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chibiace@reddit

systemd-boot is the only part of systemd i actually like. agree with everything else.

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Zinus8@reddit

Alsa doesn't really allow you to have multiple apps that output sounds. Also it doesn't support realtime (JACK was developed for this). Pipewire solves both these issues (and also manages video streams) and has many other niche features (you can create virtual devices, connect them etc).

Flatpak is kind of winning the race now that immutable distros gain traction (and virtually every distribution but Ubuntu supports them by default).

Personally, I didn't have any issues with Walyand (kde6, TW)

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

/s right?

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6969_42@reddit

Hopefully not. Haven't had a very good experience with it in the past.

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Diligent-Union-8814@reddit

There are some Windows XP around there.

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natermer@reddit

Well the X.org developers are certainly hoping to replace X with Wayland.

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Derpygoras@reddit

I'm an ignoramus, but I fail to find flaws with X.

It sort of does everything it should, whereas Wayland keeps showing up bugs.

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MeanEYE@reddit

It does more than it should. At one point it had a print server. GLXgears have been implemented as a module. It has virtualization options, parsers for a.out, elf and some other executable formats. It's a bloat factory and that makes it hard to maintain and fix bugs. Also had bunch of security issues where any application could take a screen shot of any window, access windows and list what you have running. Biggest offense was listening for key presses globally.

So, X.org developers started trimming the fat, simplifying things and making everything as fast as possible and self-configuring. At some point they arrived at the conclusion that nothing else can be done without breaking the core protocol. If you are going to break the core protocol, you might as well come up with new solution with better base and no technical debt, which is what Wayland is.

In short, X.org had real issues and some pretty serious security issues. Regardless of what others say. It took a long time and a lot of work for X.org be able to run without root. Wayland is an upgrade in every sense of the word, however it was built without some features on purpose. This last fact is what rubs people the wrong way most of the time.

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syklemil@reddit

This last fact is what rubs people the wrong way most of the time.

I think a part of it is just plain change resistance, similar to the systemd story. It's kind of funny coming from users of a minority OS, people that are already well off the beaten path. But I also kinda get it; I had a working ratpoison setup for some ten-fifteen years that I barely touched the config for. Switching from an overripe protocol to one where people are still kind of figuring out the rough edges isn't fun for people who just want that layer to be unobtrusive.

But then again, if all we end users want is for it to be unobtrusive, there comes a point where the Wayland stuff works fine and the X stuff starts creaking. And I suspect for the average user, that point has happened?

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Hellohihi0123@reddit

I think a part of it is just plain change resistance, similar to the systemd story.

I think it's the opposite. Systemd was doing more than is should have whereas Wayland did a lot less than X did. On purpose. They broke everyone's workflows and told them "tough luck". They broke screenshots for so, so many years. I think even now the screenshot protocol is some form of extension rather than part of Wayland itself. I think this is also true for a lot of other things.

All the roadblocks they created for the most basic features and they didn't eveb put a complete working implementation. " Wayland is just a protocol ". If they had put a working implementation with the protocol, the adoption would have been much smoother rather than 5 implementations doing the same work separately

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MeanEYE@reddit

There's for sure friction just for the sake of it. And I think you are correct, for average user that point has passed without most not even noticing a change. But there will always be a vocal minority. No matter the change someone will always find it hindering or annoying or just not fitting the way they are use to work.

From personal experience on my own projects I can tell you this is almost always the fact. Issue is if you allow every single thing to be configurable it soon leads to configuration nightmare. So it's a balance to be struck and simply accepting the fact some will not like it.

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Garfield_M_Obama@reddit

Good summary of the issues. X is old as the hills at this stage, X.org was always going to be a bit of a kludge given that X11 goes back to the days when network security was, at best, a bit of an afterthought in most environments.

The idea that you can keep building on a 40 year old code base when every other piece of software, upstream and downstream, has completely changed is unrealistic if you think about it and terrifying if your job is to maintain the code base. I break out in a cold sweat whenever I need to look at scripts that some sysadmin wrote 10 years ago, and they rarely are designed to allow you to remotely control another system simply by logging into it!

Wayland has had a bit of mixed path to where it is today, but that says more about the actual investment in open source projects than it does about the fundamental architectural choices. But listening to complaints about this change is like listening to people complain that ssh breaks their perfectly functional rsh based workflows... this isn't a vi vs. emacs conversation.

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MeanEYE@reddit

The fact no one has forked X.org to continue development like it happened to Gnome 2.x or MySQL, OpenOffice and many others speaks volumes. Technical debt is simply too grand.

Even Microsoft has at one point rebuild Windows' base to get rid of some of the archaic choices and dropped backwards compatibility. It's a painful decision but a necessary one on old code bases.

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Jward92@reddit

Are you a developer? It may seem to work for you, but the spaghetti code that it’s built with to enable modern display technology and use cases is a jumbled mess. Developers struggle to even patch it these days.

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setwindowtext@reddit

I am a developer, and X works really well for me. I regularly write software with Qt, and it always “just works” there, while on Wayland every single time there’s something broken — system libs are incompatible with each other, signals fire in double, windows can’t resize themselves, etc. The fact that mainstream distros and recent KDE default to Wayland makes my life harder.

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JL2210@reddit

duplicate comment?

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setwindowtext@reddit

I am a developer, and X works really well for me. I regularly write software with Qt, and it always “just works” there, while on Wayland every single time there’s something broken — system libs are incompatible with each other, signals fire in double, windows can’t resize themselves, etc. The fact that mainstream distros and recent KDE default to Wayland makes my life harder.

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argh523@reddit

Besides what others already said, the whole architecture of X is kind of strange. It's made to be run over the network. But it doesn't just send an image of an application, instead, your local computer draws the app on the screen, while the actual app would run on some other machine, just sending information on what to draw. Imagine you're running a spreadsheet, but all the calculations happen on a server somewhere, and it only sends you back the numbers to print in each cell. And also everything else to draw the application, like the position, color, and thickness of the lines to draw that make up all cells.

X is kind of like a browser, a webserver, and the HTML+CSS standards combined. But to draw applications on your desktop natively, controlling your input and output hardware directly. This was created in the early 1980s. The whole thing is pretty wild.

It's also pretty outdated now, because since the 90s, you can just put simple stuff in a web page, do serious number crunching on your local PC instead of the big mainframe in the basement, and transfer an image of an application over faster networks. While X is definitely way cooler than those ad-hoc solutions, not many people use it for it's original over-the-network design. At the same time, this complex design makes it really hard to build into it the new functionality that people crave

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DGolden@reddit

Back in the 1990s there was also an attempt to use X11 itself as a browser plugin for UI, kind loosely of like a Java Applet for a UI but... actual X11 to/from the app server. Called broadway or xrx or xweb. It didn't succeed (gee). Just mentioning as a curiosity in context.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010306072657/http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/TechTexts/Broadway.html

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crowdedconfirm@reddit

I actually used Xpra pretty recently in a project, which is a modern attempt at allowing you to use X in the browser

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reven80@reddit

But it doesn't just send an image of an application, instead, your local computer draws the app on the screen, while the actual app would run on some other machine, just sending information on what to draw.

Back then memory was expensive (for backing buffers) and networking was slow so better to just send a command and two coordinates to draw a line or rectangle. When you moved a windows to reveal something underneath they would just redraw that region.

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koflerdavid@reddit

These days, it would actually send image buffers over the network if applications use modern GUI frameworks. Some applications like Emacs maintain UI implementations in libraries like Athena around for exactly this use case.

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chetan419@reddit

I am also a noob about these. I don't understand why newer linux distros are by default moving to Wayland instead of x11. I use tools like Xrandr and a tiling window manager which doesn't work with Wayland. For me problem with linux is inconsistency, surprise changes and lack of standardization.

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R4d1o4ct1v3_@reddit

Surprise changes? They've bee working on Wayland for 16 years now. Literally since before Windows 7 was released. - That has to be the slowest "surprise" in history xD

The only distros that are using Wayland by default at this point are very early adopters like Fedora and Arch. If you want stability and a "non-surprising" update system, there are systems like Debian Stable you can use. Don't need to be no the cutting edge if you don't want to be.

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bootleg_trash_man@reddit

Both Debian and Ubuntu are using Wayland as the default, at least for GNOME.

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R4d1o4ct1v3_@reddit

Oh so it does. Interesting, I hadn't heard about that. Would have expected more of a fuzz when that happened. Thanks for the correction.

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No-Bison-5397@reddit

Yeah, GNOME recently changed though latest NVIDIA has put me back on X.

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R4d1o4ct1v3_@reddit

Practically speaking, for users, the flaws in X11 show itself mostly in more modern use cases. Which for now tend to be gaming related. VRR, HDR, complex monitor setups. Things like that.

It's not that X11 is bad, it's just kind of outdated, and nobody really wants to dig through the spaghetti to update it.

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WjU1fcN8@reddit

X11 is bad

X11 is bad.

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Ornithopter1@reddit

X11 is great, if you're running a multi-user system on a PDP.

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RangerNS@reddit

Have you ever tried to develop an application on X11, or hack on any X11 implementation?

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setwindowtext@reddit

I did, and I appreciated xlib’s verboseness and transparency. It doesn’t hide things behind layers of abstractions, so you always know what you’re going to get as a result.

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jdigi78@reddit

Ever try monitors with 2 refresh rates? X is also terrible from a security standpoint

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omniuni@reddit

As they have been for 15 years now.

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giannidunk@reddit

I think the point is there are no X developers left

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AtlanticPortal@reddit

The point is that the group of X.org devs that didn't start to work on Wayland is empty. Because the Wayland devs are the X.org devs!

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_buraq@reddit

Red Hat is keeping the dream alive as RHEL 9 will have Xorg until 2032

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6e1a08c8047143c6869@reddit

I mean, "the dream" is just "fix critical security issues". It is already deprecated.

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devoopsies@reddit

fix critical security issues

This is my dream, yes

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setwindowtext@reddit

I didn’t realize that, thanks!

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thomas_m_k@reddit

I think the point was that the X developers said "okay we're done here, let's focus on Wayland"

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Constant_Peach3972@reddit

They were waiting for you to contribute

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koflerdavid@reddit

A lot of Wayland protocols are stuck in design discussions or code reviews and it sometimes take years until one of the parties involved yields and makes it possible to move forward. Classic open source issue, and not something that just goes away by more people participating.

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omniuni@reddit

That's a silly argument, especially since the original point was supposedly that Wayland would be easier to contribute to (it's not).

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vesterlay@reddit

RealcWayland development has started around 2019.

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omniuni@reddit

There were distributions planning for Wayland to be the default by 2015/2016.

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grem75@reddit

Fedora did make it the default in 2016. They were the only major ones I can think of that were pushing for it that early. Ubuntu was off on their Mir adventure.

There was a distro shipping with a Wayland session by default in 2013.

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omniuni@reddit

Then it got backtracked, and took another 8 years before it was actually close to ready.

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grem75@reddit

Fedora never backtracked since making it the default in 25. They had floated 23 as an ambitious goal, but didn't meet the requirements.

Ubuntu tried it in 17.10 and it didn't go so well so they switched back for 18.04 since it was an LTS.

[-]

KnowZeroX@reddit

Ubuntu also made it default in 24.10 for nvidia, but yeah we will have to see if that remains for next LTS or not

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harbourwall@reddit

SailfishOS launched with Wayland in 2013 and has had it ever since.

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omniuni@reddit

And is Sailfish suitable for everyday desktop use?

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harbourwall@reddit

No, it's a mobile OS. But it's been suitable for everyday use since then. Of all the bleeding edge things they adopted, btrfs was the only one that really caused them pain. Even that wasn't too bad though.

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omniuni@reddit

Then it's not an applicable argument. No one is discussing whether Wayland was suitable for a phone.

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harbourwall@reddit

I think it helps illustrate the stability of Wayland back then, whatever the platform. But I'm not interested in arguing about it.

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mattias_jcb@reddit

I ran the non-default Wayland session one or two releases before it was default. It was a bit rough for the first year but has been good (for me) since.

With that said I didn't own any NVidia hardware, and I didn't do any video conferencing. When I started doing vidoe conferencing the portals for screen sharing was in place.

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LvS@reddit

2019 was when the early majority joined.

The early adopters were using it since 2015.

The innovators innovated since 2010.

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mattias_jcb@reddit

Try 11 years before that.

[-]

__konrad@reddit

I wonder if fixing X11 would be faster and less disturbing

[-]

omniuni@reddit

Well, back in the day, they said that could take years, and that Wayland was going to move so fast because it was so much simpler, that it would basically replace X in less time than it would take to fix. I personally am doubtful about that. Prior to Wayland there was a lot of work done on X. The kernel framebuffer and seamless boot support, compositing support, and so on. But it doesn't matter. Even if that would have ultimately been faster, the devs wanted to work on Wayland instead. So they did.

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jamespo@reddit

Have you ever worked on legacy codebases? It's not fun

[-]

omniuni@reddit

Very often. It's what I'm doing now!

[-]

WjU1fcN8@reddit

No one wants to touch X.org with a long pole.

Wayland devs tried to fix X.org three times before comming to the conclusion that it wasn't possible.

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Vegetable_Usual_8526@reddit

I hope!

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AiwendilH@reddit

There are still computers running DOS in the backrooms of some companies/shops...so I am pretty sure that in 30 years there will be still some system somewhere that runs X.org as standalone x-server. Hell..I would belief if someone told me there are still systems running xfree86...

But for the ordinary system it looks very much like wayland compositors are the future. Not that I expect pure x11 systems to disappear anytime the next years but over decades I think it will happen.

Or, is there a compatibilty layer with full support that we will still be able to use all the X tools?

You can run X.org on top of wayland, allowing you to run most of the x11 software already right now. The caevat is that the whole system isn't x11 so any tools that are meant to interact with other windows/programs like they did on X11 will not work (screensharing, input-faking...) and need wayland alternatives. But that's a much smaller group of applications and for most of them alternatives already exist are are being build.

[-]

cAtloVeR9998@reddit

Some UK banks still record balances in shillings in the backend

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ppp7032@reddit

not to be that guy but - source?

i couldn't find anything online.

[-]

cAtloVeR9998@reddit

Reported by The Telegraph and FT

[-]

jamespo@reddit

those are from almost 10 years ago to be fair

[-]

dezignator@reddit

US treasury bonds are still denominated in octal-multiple fractions (up to 1/64ths nowadays).

Because the US dollar derived from the Spanish silver dollar and pieces of eight (the original pesos).

[-]

realitysurf64@reddit

2015, 2016 but saying almost 10 years ago. equivalent of stating 9.99 and thinking 9..

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C0rn3j@reddit

Not that I expect pure x11 systems to disappear anytime the next years

You should, all major DEs are dropping support.

RHEL already completely removed X11, sans Xwayland.

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H9419@reddit

Enterprise doesn't want it, developers don't want it

I still use X-forwarding in ssh from time to time because someone thought GUI would be a good idea for servers. Other than that, zero use of X in my life

[-]

throwaway89124193@reddit

Gamers

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grem75@reddit

SteamDeck uses Wayland for games.

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dev-sda@reddit

The Steam Deck is a bit weird here. It uses Wayland but actually runs ~everything through XWayland.

[-]

throwaway89124193@reddit

bad example, who uses that doesn't care about input lag

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C0rn3j@reddit

Maybe when the tearing protocol will be 20 years old, people will stop claiming it doesn't exist.

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throwaway89124193@reddit

lol never claimed it didn't exist, have tried it to no effect, games feel like shit

[-]

C0rn3j@reddit

Then you have a bug to report.

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throwaway89124193@reddit

how would you even start to debug that xd

[-]

C0rn3j@reddit

Use latest stable software releases.

New user.

Different compositor.

Different distro to try your luck.

Different hardware if possible.

Different apps.

Xwayland vs Wayland apps.

Congrats, you now have a lot of information for the bug tracker, and should have a rudimentary idea where the problem is coming from.

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6e1a08c8047143c6869@reddit

If they want to use multiple monitors with different screen resolutions, VRR, HDR or other stuff, you bet gamers will be the first ones switching to wayland. The only issue with native wayland gaming right now is that Proton and Steam don't work, but those issues are actively being worked on. And they run just fine under Xwayland, so I don't see why anyone would want to run Xorg natively.

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sparky8251@reddit

If they want to use multiple monitors with different framerates or scaling, VRR, HDR or other stuff, you bet gamers will be the first ones switching to wayland.

'Tis why I switched a few years back now... VRR and different resolution + DPI + refresh rate monitors was honestly quite painful on X11. Been a non-issue and breeze on wayland the entire time.

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throwaway89124193@reddit

the inconvenience is a big part of it

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C0rn3j@reddit

On Wayland, to avoid X latency issues and partial or total lack of support when using modern hardware.

[-]

throwaway89124193@reddit

ehhh don't get what you mean by this

[-]

C0rn3j@reddit

I have not re-tested since Explicit Sync got into the Linux stack, but last time I compared even dragging a window around between X, Wayland and Windows, Wayland and Windows were smooth and X terrible.

X has zero support for HDR and specific new displays.

From my experience, high refresh rates work terribly on it.

Bugs galore on X in genral and zero security aside.

[-]

MatchingTurret@reddit

who is left to maintain it?

u/metux-its will do it single-handedly: Brainstorming for X11R8 (xorg/x11)

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MagpieMars@reddit

"I WILL do it. With our without you." ~ metux

[-]

mortuary-paradise@reddit

He sounds like a U2 fan.

[-]

mortuary-paradise@reddit

He sounds like an U2 fan.

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C0rn3j@reddit

That's one of the couple people who campaigns for X and actually sends maintenance patches (312 PRs in xserver at the moment, vast majority of them merged).

Silly effort, but their work is where their mouth is.

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Patient_Sink@reddit

There might be some friction with regards to his work...

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C0rn3j@reddit

Tbh if he wasn't so abrasive, people would like him more.

The bigger problem is that this work would come in handy 10 years ago, not today when everyone already stopped touching it and is afraid to touch it further in fear of breakage - which is apparently exactly what happens when you poke it.

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mortuary-paradise@reddit

Tbh if he wasn't so abrasive, people would like him more.

I think the guy is pretty funny.

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Gugalcrom123@reddit

GNOME and KDE aren't the only DEs.

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C0rn3j@reddit

It's a good thing I didn't say that then.

Not to mention that KDE is not a DE, but one of the DEs that KDE makes is named Plasma, or KDE Plasma.

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SirGlass@reddit

Well its not like it just won't stop working , its 40 years old and will keep working as is for decades

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C0rn3j@reddit

Well its not like it just won't stop working

Provided you won't connect the device to the internet, that's fair.

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SirGlass@reddit

I don't get this comment? Are you saying because security fixes or bugs?

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C0rn3j@reddit

X is insecure by default with no way to fix it as you might know.

There won't be security fixes for anything X for the decades ahead, couple years is all you've got.

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Alarming-Estimate-19@reddit

X11 is started with the flag: -nolisten tcp so I don't understand why you say it is not secure if connected to the internet.

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C0rn3j@reddit

I don't understand why you say it is not secure if connected to the internet.

"There won't be security fixes for anything X for the decades ahead"

I don't understand why you say it is not secure

Because it is not.

You launch even a calculator on X, you give calculator access to all your files, screens and peripherals.

That made sense in the 80s, today it is pure madness.

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hjake123@reddit

So? Don't use a malicious calculator (Besides, a virus would totally find a way to reach past Wayland too)

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C0rn3j@reddit

Don't use a malicious calculator

Yes, just use software without bugs AND possibility of backdoors through the supply chain, why didn't I think of that.

Besides, a trojan would totally find a way to reach past Wayland too

It would stay sandboxed just fine. You can't sandbox anything with access to X.

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hjake123@reddit

I really doubt sandboxing would prevent a competent malware attack, but I concede that it might help a little in a few cases. Also, TIL that wayland uses sandboxing

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C0rn3j@reddit

I really doubt sandboxing would prevent a competent malware attack

It would.

On the other hand, you don't need to doubt X not being able to use sandboxing for GUI apps, it's just not able to, the app has access to X, so it has access to everything.

TIL that wayland uses sandboxing

It enables use of fs sandboxing, and it has a permission system for resources by default, hence the need for various portals.

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wintrmt3@reddit

Don't expect X11 drivers for machines produced 10 years from now.

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LvS@reddit

Xorg runs on top of OpenGL these days. OpenGL drivers will exist in 10 years, even if it's zink on Vulkan.

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6e1a08c8047143c6869@reddit

Even on OS level, the slow rolling RHEL already completely removed X11, sans Xwayland

Yeah, but they still support older versions that use Xorg, so until those reach EOL (which will take a couple of years) they still have to support them.

It's definitely going away, but if there are still running systems in some companies production using DOS today, there will still be some computers running Xorg in two decades.

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C0rn3j@reddit

Sure thing, but even RHEL axing it on current release is a clear sign it's over for X.

There are companies running on COBOL or even more voodoo old technologies and hardware, that won't change, and it won't change the fact that X is dead.

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Mysterious_Bit6882@reddit

How many people actually use GNOME or whatever in RHEL? You can do practically everything system-wise through something like Cockpit now.

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C0rn3j@reddit

They axed X in its entirety, not just a specific DE support for X.

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Mysterious_Bit6882@reddit

And? Most users of enterprise Linux aren't using a GUI.

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alvenestthol@reddit

My company is still using RHEL7 on most of our on-prem cluster lol, with RHEL8 support being kinda spotty, and we are a tech company

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sparky8251@reddit

Zealots whos only skill is complaining I presume.

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LiftingRecipient420@reddit

who is left to maintain it?

No one lol, except according to all the "change bad, X11 is perfect" people, there are untold hordes of developers still working on X11, but when you ask them to name some, suddenly you get silence.

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derefr@reddit

The caveat is that the whole system isn't x11 so any tools that are meant to interact with other windows/programs like they did on X11 will not work (screensharing, input-faking...) and need wayland alternatives.

Can you explain why this is? I.e. why they chose to make XWayland "an X server that hosts its own windows, and uses Wayland as its renderer" rather than "an X11-protocol adapter for Wayland, that allows you to poke at Wayland windows through the X11 API"?

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ilep@reddit

The protocols are entirely different. There is no way to adapt that directly and why would you? Point is to get away from the problems in X11 protocol. If they could be fixed in a compatible way there would have been something like X12.

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UrbanPandaChef@reddit

The quiet parts that no one says out loud are:

They don't want X.org to hamper development so they refrain from going too far out of their way to support it.
If there was better compatibility people would never move to Wayland. They would be asked to support the adapter practically forever.

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Particular-Brick7750@reddit

Well also a lot of the wayland replacements for xorg features are implemented in xdg desktop portal and can be called from xwayland

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AiwendilH@reddit

Not so sure about the "obvious right" there...a large reason for wayland was that the X11 protocol security issues were deemed unfixable without breaking backward compatibility. And that hasn't changed so having a protocol adapter would jeopardize all running applications while the x11-window is contained to itself. The "protocol-adater" isn't really a valid solution at all.

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pclouds@reddit

The latter assumes Wayland is fully compatible with X11. I don't think that's the case. So you probably can make simplest cases work, but as soon as you hit a real program, you're in trouble.

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Blah-Blah-Blah-2023@reddit

XOrg? XFree86 FTW!

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unbounded65@reddit

Tried Wayland with my nvidia 1660 super and Arch, works fine and smooth and all apps work as well but issue is system refuses to go on standby. Works fine under X. Also no provision to change colors or enable full rgb over hdmi with nvidia-settings.

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In-line0@reddit

I think you misunderstood Wayland. Wayland ecosystem itself isn't as monolithic as X. You have dozens of Wayland compositor implementations and all of them theoretically can provide the same tools.

There are protocols missing to do some things, but nobody forces you to only use standard protocols (ones agreed on in wayland-protocols repository), you can roll up your own protocol and do whatever you want.

But some of the tools and supported APIs, just don't make sense to implement for Wayland. For example X has arcane support for printing in X Server. Do you use it? No. Will you use it? No. Is there an old arcane software reliant on X printing API? Yes there is. Is it better to rewrite software to use modern printing APIs? Yes it is.

X is as bloated as it can be, you don't need to support every use case in 2024.

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sparky8251@reddit

X even has an email client as part of the spec. Its insane how huge it is.

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No-Bison-5397@reddit

Can you (easily) link me or tell me which part of the spec. I couldn't find it with a quick google but that just blows my mind.

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sparky8251@reddit

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xbiff

Not the full featured client youd think of, so sorry about that... But yeah. It exists.

Also, https://packages.gentoo.org/categories/x11-apps

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No-Bison-5397@reddit

Thank you... that sure was something... to briefly skim.

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SirGlass@reddit

I find it funny the most vocal people that hate wayland and defend X , are also the people who hate systemd for not adhering to unix philosophy .

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sparky8251@reddit

To me, its all down to the same crap. They've never had to maintain any systems or software. As an admin, a distro maintainer, or a developer...

They just hate change for the sake of hating change. They refuse to admit theres problems with existing stuff.

I mean, ive had an anti-wayland person tell me they still use ALSA only because "who even wants more than 1 application to have sound anyways? No one needs that!" and they had no answer when I pointed out that DEs have notification sounds, meaning that if i just open FF I'm already getting a worse experience since FF takes ALSA from the DE...

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johncate73@reddit

Oh, heck. We actually have people on our distro's message board who ask how they can strip PipeWire out so they can run pure ALSA, or who are already complaining about upcoming Wayland support even though X11 will still be supported when it happens. And yes, it's a non-systemd distro. There are arguments there either way, but there are literally no downsides to moving to PW or Wayland. PW actually makes sound work well and Wayland eliminates a bajillion security issues.

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sparky8251@reddit

Not that I expect this to be an easy to answer question but... How could I go about developing my own distro? I'd love to try it as a learning project some time.

Closest I can find is LFS/BLFS but they only cover a single system and dont seem to have any links to anything I could use to do things like turn an installed distro into an image others can install with Calamares or whatever.

The package manager thing is what I'd like to try and work on code wise, so not too worried on that front.

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vim_deezel@reddit

Learn LFS, Learn a package manager, build your own packages and pkg server, based on rpm, pkg, or whatever. Remember you're doing this all from 0 but you can pick and choose how you boot, whether you use grub, systemd boot, or whatever, I would not suggest doing a package manager from scratch but using existing tech like apt or pacman or opkg. Maybe do LFS, then look into how a small distro like alpine works, and run from there.

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sparky8251@reddit

I would not suggest doing a package manager from scratch

I getcha, but really... the only reason I want to learn this stuff is to try this, solely because I have opinions on what a package manager should do and while I can find distros that are like, 90-95% of what I want, they always miss out on that last bit.

I wont attempt to start there ofc, I def do need to learn how the existing ones work first and you are right on that, so thanks.

As for the rest... Yeah, I guess alpine or maybe even slack? Thanks!

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vim_deezel@reddit

haven't used slack in a very long time, so I'd say alpine lol. I know slack sticks to more vanilla stuff and their packages are just tar.gz with a script or two embedded I believe :)

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johncate73@reddit

That is a bit beyond my pay grade. The idea of maintaining software packages and keeping things up to date would be an undertaking I would not want to tackle. Even if you start out with a huge distro as a base, like Mint does with Ubuntu, it's hard to do.

My approach has always been just to find a distro as a starting point and then just set everything up to my liking. Distros are just collections of software where, in most cases, the developer has chosen the software packages, desktop environment, and defaults they prefer. And obviously, in my case, it's a niche anyway, if we're not using systemd (or even elogind) but are using PW and about to use Wayland.

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th3t4nen@reddit

Dunno. I see no reason to use wayland on a server where everything is CLI anyway..

I both use systemd and other init systems and find systemd totally unnecessary on most desktops.

I may be old school but in most use-cases openrc or sysvinit would suffice. You limit the amount of processes running and you have better control.

It all comes down to philosophy. Complexity for convenience or simplicity and control.

Try Alpine or Gentoo and compare 👍

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sparky8251@reddit

Try Alpine or Gentoo and compare 👍

I have. Still way easier to make a new systemd service than on the fly for any random program or script I write. Its way easier to handle legacy crap that is buggy and crashes often or is in a billion pieces that rely on each other in a complex web of inter-dependency.

On the timers side, I find it so much nicer because it can be configure to automatically smear events out over their "wait" period, so when my devs at work decide they want to spawn 200 processes every minute because we use PHP in greenfield projects at work I can avoid crashing the computer every minute trivially, no matter how many more of these stupid things they add with a new product release.

Boot side, the systemd-boot is one of the nicest and fastest UEFI boot managers ive ever worked with. The networking is also not just easy and consistent to configure, its also got a wide range of handy debugging tools. Like, resolvectl query not only tells me all the v4 AND v6 addresses it gets back at once unlike older tools, it ALSO tells me the protocol it came from (DNS, mDNS, LLMNR, etc) and other things like if it was secured via DoT and if it was DoT how secure it was.

The consistent config and ctl/cli interface for configuring AND diagnosing all these disparate parts of the system is a godsend...

I get that systemd and its many parts arent perfect and without fault or criticism, but the idea they are needlessly complex when in fact it unifies damn near everything is one of the worst things I hear from anti-systemd types. The more I use it and learn it, the easier working on Linux gets both at home and at work. Its very nice.

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themusicalduck@reddit

I always thought it was strange how people who are already going against the grain by using Linux can be so anti anything new.

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th3t4nen@reddit

Are you sure? Hard to argue against wayland. Hard to argue for systemd.

It's not even interesting to compare wayland and init system..

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WjU1fcN8@reddit

Hard to argue for systemd

Ha! So funny.

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ascii@reddit

It's hardly surprising though. A lot of people hate change, and they will make up excuses for why they don't want the change to happen.

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ilep@reddit

In many cases there is no need for similar tool as the functionality is in client libraries instead of in the server. So you are able to choose from various other tools.

Wayland isn't a re-implementation of X, it is different design. So different tools will be used.

[-]

mustardmontinator@reddit

I’m on Debian and Xfce and the latter is looking at some wayland support

It just takes time but it with hard work and persistence it’ll get there

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newsflashjackass@reddit

By the time Wayland could plausibly replace X, the new generation of developers will have found its codebase crufty and onerous to contemplate, and will begin working on a top-to-bottom replacement that omits the sort of shortcomings which are visible only in hindsight.

🙄

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grem75@reddit

The whole point of the way Wayland is designed is the protocols can evolve without breaking existing software.

You can't change the Xorg display server much without breaking everything that depends on it.

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newsflashjackass@reddit

Maybe in the future some genius programmer will devise a way for X to support different compositors, allowing users to choose the one they like best.

I know it may seem impossible now, hence "Maybe in the future".

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grem75@reddit

It does support different compositors, there are many of them. Compositing in X11 is just a hack on top of the display server that was added 20 years ago. It is just another layer of garbage in the pile.

The issue is the display server, replacing that with one that is somehow fully compatible without shortcomings of the original is not feasible.

Wayland is not a display server, it is not a compositor. Wayland is a set of protocols. It is the job of the compositor to implement those protocols and be a display server. It achieves your goal of "allowing users to choose the one they like the best" and allows developers a lot of freedom while still maintaining compatibility with existing applications.

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newsflashjackass@reddit

I'm quite certain in hindsight it will prove to be futureproof.

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Rifter0876@reddit

Yes, but its going to take a while.

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gabrieldlima@reddit

Yes, in 2045

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Netizen_Kain@reddit

Wayland will not replace Xorg because Wayland does not support basic tasks like screen-recording, breaks compatibility with Xorg apps, and requires every WM/DE to reimplement everything.

But Wayland is more secure!

It's secure because it's dysfunctional. The highest level of security is an unplugged machine. Wayland and Xorg are tools. If they don't allow people to get work done, people won't use them. It's that simple.

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xXToYeDXx@reddit

Yes*

*Eventually...

Wayland progress is coming along nicely and it's been increasing pace in recent years but there are still minor issues, primarily on nVidia GPUs, that need to be worked out.

There is one massive issue in that as far as full desktop environments go, only a few have any support for Wayland at the moment. Gnome and Plasma being the 2 biggest. XFCE still doesn't have any Wayland support and even when 4.20 releases in December, Wayland support will be preliminary at best. As an XFCE user, I'm stuck on X11 for a couple more years at least.

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Beryesa@reddit

It'll replace it but it won't be a drop in replacement. It's a whole new approach.

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dobo99x2@reddit

I heard they finally started to really work on wayland and quite some distros got rid of x.org.

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unixmachine@reddit

I'll wait for Wayland 2

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FeepingCreature@reddit

Pipewayland.

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FeepingCreature@reddit

I use Xorg and I don't see that changing.

[-]

DGolden@reddit

Not for a long time as such - but at some point long before that the primary way of using the surviving Xorg codebase will become (arguably has become for some) XWayland on top of Wayland for X11 legacy compat. Major Distros are behind this plan for better or worse.

As someone with 4 screens, one of which is a cintiq, and another tablet, each time I try wayland I end up back on Xorg though, thanks to various multi-screen and tablet input device hassles/jank where Xorg Just Works for me and has for years (thanks linuxwacom). For now. Perhaps time for my roughly annual "try wayland again" attempt though in a few months, I think there's some progress in the general extended input device area happening since I last tried things - https://blog.vladzahorodnii.com/2024/09/20/upcoming-tablet-input-changes-in-plasma-wayland/

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WjU1fcN8@reddit

Multiple screens with different refresh rates and resolutions is exactly where Wayland is way better.

[-]

DGolden@reddit

Concerns more on the multi-tablet extended input device and mappings side than the multi-head output side itself by now - I just do have two distinct gfx tablets that I need configurably dynamically independently mappable between single-desktop 4 distinct heads or arbitrary rectangular subregions thereof. And without weird input jank (that you notice very quickly with a tablet when sketching, much more so than you might with a mouse).

"Oh it's open source you should be filing issues and in your case maybe contributing patches given you're a bloody programmer by trade". Yes, but it's also undeniably naturally more frustrating to have the clock wound back on stuff that already Works for Me (tm), than back when we really were going through it for the first time.

Will just have to see personally, whenever I can next summon the mental energy really. Last time I tried (some time ago now mind), my setup did not Just Work on Wayland. Whereas on Xorg it did, you have xsetwacom to do whatever mappings you want. Nowadays. Actually took quite a while for it to get that mature on Xorg too, mind. I remember engaging via mailing list on a bunch of linuxwacom+xorg multi-head and input-jank issues with previous iterations of my general setup. In, well, 2007-2009... So I thus feel like I've been through all this, over a decade ago

Unfortunately following a link from previous link I can also see at least one other user's very recent report of input jank - at least for KDE Plasma! Can of course now be different behaviors under different Wayland impls - note how same user apparently doesn't report same issue testing under Gnome's Wayland impl! So DE/Wayland-impl specific issues in the area apparently now quite possible too, rather than when it was basically always Xorg really, whatever its undeniable warts. Didn't used to have to worry if my tablets plural working depended on whether I was currently using GNOME/KDE/XFCE/whatever.

Am I just bitching unhelpfully? You betcha. This is a reddit comment.

[-]

stormdelta@reddit

By way of supporting it properly at all, yes.

But unfortunately it doesn't always work correctly. Hell, I've only started seeing work correctly with nvidia cards reliably as of earlier this year - before that, it was so buggy that some distros couldn't even get past their installer without crashing if you ran them with Wayland.

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Isogash@reddit

From my understanding, Wayland is meant to replace X, but not to replace every X feature. By being extensible, it will still be possible to implement features from X or compatibility layers like xwayland but avoids having to inherit every X feature and bloating the Wayland spec.

I'm optimistic that Wayland is already replacing X and will be a massive improvement to the Linux desktop experience.

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daemonpenguin@reddit

Will wayland be capable to replace every single one?

No, the goal of Wayland is to be smaller and more steamlined and less flexible. It won't have all the same tools.

Or, is there a compatibilty layer with full support that we will still be able to use all the X tools?

No.

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habarnam@reddit

No.

What do you consider Xwayland to be?

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nightblackdragon@reddit

Not every X tool works on Xwayland, X apps running on Xwayland are more restricted than X apps running on X Server.

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johncate73@reddit

Which is a big part of the point. They need to be restricted to make the system more secure.

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nightblackdragon@reddit

Sure but that also makes Xwayland compatibility limited so it's not replacement for X.Org Server.

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johncate73@reddit

If Xwayland can't do the job, then they'll have to stay on X. Developers usually try to maintain backward compatibility as best they can, but there are limits to what can be done. In this instance, Wayland by design breaks some things that X does, and if putting a misbehaving X application into a sandbox can't be made to work, then yes, you'll have to stay with X if the program isn't either modified to work or can't be modified.

This was always the plan, anyway. Most Wayland devs are people who work/worked on X11 for years, and they came up with Wayland because so much cruft has built up in 40 years of X development that there was no real going forward. The technical debt is too much.

I do expect that X will stay in maintenance mode for a very long time to come, though. If you absolutely must have real X running, it will remain possible. If nothing else, the people doing Xenocara, the X implementation of OpenBSD, might start taking a bigger role.

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

What if someone needs some x command line tool to get some info or change something that doesn't have a wayland tool for that? What the person should do in this case?

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Piece_Maker@reddit

Like what?

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

I don't know, xorg has more than 50 command line tools, probably something will break and don't work when some need

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Piece_Maker@reddit

I mean without knowing what you're trying to do/replace it's hard to answer your question. Chances are most use cases are covered already

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

I am no trying to do/replace anything, I just asked a question

I don't think most of the more than 50 command line x-tools were replaced... (or even if all of them need replacing)

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TheBendit@reddit

There is a fine X server running on top of Wayland. I don't get what you mean by X command line tool though.

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sparky8251@reddit

They probably mean like, xdotool. of which wayland has ydotool and such.

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

yes, like:

xdm
xdg
xnest
xinput
xdpyinfo
xrandr
xrdb
xdo
xpr
xprop
xrefresh
xdotool
xautomation
xvkbd
startx
xephyr
xvfb
xcsecurity
xterm
xsetroot
xmodmap
xset
xterm
xtrans

and many others. there are more than 50, and many GUI apps use these tools

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daemonpenguin@reddit

Then run X.Org.

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orthomonas@reddit

Screwdrivers aren't being marketed as hammer replacements and the presence of screwdrivers doesn't sap support for hammer factories, meaning hammer users will eventually have to switch, even though screwdrivers aren't suitable.

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

This gist in awesome

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C0rn3j@reddit

Make said tool and push whatever protocol extension necessary, if the use case is valid.

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grem75@reddit

The same thing Xorg users that need Wayland-only features do, switch or deal with it.

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poemehardbebe@reddit

At this moment, cry.

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jon-henderson-clark@reddit

Yes. By the end of this century, I doubt most distros will make X11 the default anymore. Just wait.

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matsnake86@reddit

Eventually ... Yes..

How long Will It take ? Who knows...

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terremoth@reddit (OP)

I guess this could take decades

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jdigi78@reddit

Completely? No. For the average desktop user? Absolutely. There are very few features missing

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bighi@reddit

In about 20 to 30 years, yes.

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MeanEYE@reddit

The answer to that is no. And that is on purpose. One obvious example is screen sharing is not built-in to the core protocol on purpose. They correctly assumed such tasks are better handled by a dedicated service, which is what PipeWire has become and replaced PulseAudio and some others along the way.

Some of the tools like xdo and those that dump key presses and modify window states were omitted on purpose for obvious security reasons and responsibility for such functionality has been moved to compositor, so for example you can implement them in Gnome through extensions. Difference being you as a user decide whether you want that functionality instead of just it being available to every binary.

There won't be any compatibility layer for commands either. We have Xwayland service which acts as X.org for old applications but interracts with Wayland based compositor directly. That is the only compatibility layer to my knowledge that they plan on keeping.

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MichaelTunnell@reddit

The plan is for it to replace X11, yes. When? That’s the question and the only reliable answer to it is “eventually”

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Cunfuu@reddit

Yes.

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Setepenre@reddit

in 50 years or so yeah

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Slight_Manufacturer6@reddit

It pretty much has already in most mainstream distros. Xwayland shim is already there for X only apps to work on Wayland.

I have been only Wayland for almost two years.

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Arteiii@reddit

no Wayland is awfull

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QliXeD@reddit

Is already a thing. With xwayland adding the "glue" required to allow Xwindow apps to run on wayland. Xeayland implements Xserver protocol support for wayland. All mayor desktop linux gui toolkits already support wayland natively, so is actually done. My F41 is full wayland

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nikster77@reddit

Let's hope not. At least not in rhe current state.

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baordog@reddit

Nearly every engineering related headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with “no.” Technology is extremely heterogenous and averse to change. I bet there are still production systemV Unix installations. X will live forever somewhere

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nils2614@reddit

I think for most people it already has. All big three desktops either use it by default or even exclusively. Mint is the only distro still on Xorg by default I think. As Wayland is just a protocol and doesn't have a de facto standard implementation like X does with Xorg the tools to interact with it are compositor specific.

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