Jordan Petridis: An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal
Posted by marcthe12@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 120 comments
Posted by marcthe12@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 120 comments
acepukas@reddit
Shouldn't we still have the option to use X11 if we want to? There are games that don't play way with wayland still. Some apps still don't work great with wayland yet either.
marcthe12@reddit (OP)
There is Xwayland which games should run on. In gnome, X11 support is effectively unmaintained so it make sense to nuke it. Hopefully this accelerates or forces them to get there shit together. Also GDM will support X11 session for other desktop/WM so you can also have a special session for a few of them.
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
Maybe we can have gamescope for HDR, random X environment for some games, and plain gnome wayland for others and ignore how odd it is to need 3 different sessions to play a game.
flameleaf@reddit
For FOSS games sure, but there's a lot of unmaintained proprietary games on Steam and other storefronts.
TiZ_EX1@reddit
Because Linux doesn't do ABI stability, there's likely going to come a point where it's better to just run the Windows versions of games with old native Linux binaries. And in that case, it's Wine/Proton's job to keep up with the Linux ABI side of things, and ensure that the games in question will run on Wayland.
altermeetax@reddit
All games run on XWayland right now, gaming on pure Wayland is still experimental. The person you answered to meant that games don't play well with XWayland.
_ahrs@reddit
They play well enough. The biggest issue I see is games not grabbing the cursor properly so you can literally run your mouse off the edge of the game and onto your second monitor and weird interactions ensue. Luckily, gamescope fixes this as it has the ability to forcibly grab the mouse cursor and input properly.
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
Games are basically done either at release or months later with the help of all the people who paid the most to be free beta testers! The overwhelming majority of the million and one games you can play will not be "getting their shit together" they either will work or not.
Also question. Isn't scaling still broken with X apps and gnome wayland session?
cAtloVeR9998@reddit
GNOME only does integer scaling for XWayland apps. There isn’t a nice way to get apps without the concept of a fractional pixel to not look blurry when scaled by a non-integer scaling factor.
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
Do games run with proton run via xwayland in general or wayland?
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
xwayland for now. the wine wayland driver is finally hitting real users in actual wine, but not proton yet. Proton GE allows one to opt into it. You can read about the experiences on /r/linux_gaming
mattias_jcb@reddit
You do. You just don't get the maintenance labor for free.
tapo@reddit
Maintaining X11 is a massive burden for developers, so that's why it's being dropped. It's a lot of testing to support two independent sessions types.
As far as games go, the Steam Deck uses gamescope as a Wayland compositor and all games run through that (by way of XWayland). So running something through gamescope is a well tested and completely viable option.
acepukas@reddit
One game in particular (though I'm sure there are more) that does not work great with Wayland is Cyberpunk 2077. It frequently freezes or outright crashes. Smooth sailing with X11. I've tried to find solutions for the Wayland issues but came up empty.
I haven't used gamescope before. I'll have to look into it.
blackcain@reddit
Works great on the steamdeck which I believe uses gamescope/wayland.
acepukas@reddit
I was trying gamescope/wayland on my rig yesterday. After about half an hour of running the game it started micro stuttering like crazy. Don't know if it was a one time thing. I'll have to do some more testing. I kinda went down a rabbit hole of tweaking hardware settings to get things working with wayland alone but then I remembered that it worked perfectly with X11, so likely not hardware. I don't know. I'm burnt out on all the troubleshooting I've been doing lol
maltazar1@reddit
I can play cyberpunk with Wayland just fine (proton ge, forced Wayland, with hdr hacks) on Nvidia, gnome 48. in my year and a half of Linux, ever since driver 555 I've been using Wayland gnome and I have not had one game break. The only actual breaks were things like discord which have long since been fixed.
crackhash@reddit
which version of proton ge you are using?
maltazar1@reddit
10.3 I believe for when I tested it
acepukas@reddit
How do you force wayland?
maltazar1@reddit
check release notes for proton ge
acepukas@reddit
Ok, that seems to be working. I'll have to play it for a long session to really know if it worked or not though.
I keep seeing everyone talking about gamescope. Do you know if that's necessary if you are using Wayland via the latest Proton-GE?
Niralith@reddit
Gamescope isn't needed. I play Cyber with pure Wayland on kde without a problem. Though if you want HDR it might be better option cause both gnome/kde are kinda funky from my experience.
acepukas@reddit
Maybe GNOME is the problem because I was just testing things out with the latest Proton-GE with
PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
set and I still got the freezing happening.Do you have an NVIDIA card or AMD?
Niralith@reddit
Amd, both the gpu and the cpu.
acepukas@reddit
Damn, maybe it's NVIDIA then.
I tried running CP 2077 in gamescope and it was working well for a while and then suddenly it started stuttering like crazy.
Guess I'll just keep hunting for the right config for my setup.
fate6@reddit
its nvidia, I have had pure wayland and gamescope both just freeze on me in some games with a 3080ti.
on the 9070XT system I have had no such issues.
Niralith@reddit
Yeah, might be, unfortunately Nvidia is usually hit or miss with the drivers and how they behave.
crackhash@reddit
What a BS. I have played Cyberpunk 2077 in wayland with Nvidia GPU.
HyperMisawa@reddit
Ok that's REALLY weird, cause I played CP77 on Wayland just fine, can't it be something else? Drivers being dumb, maybe?
acepukas@reddit
Well I'm using an NVIDIA card. That might have something to do with it. The freezing is really weird. I just discovered while I was testing things out that when the freeze happens, if I hit a key on the keyboard (I'm using a controller), the game continues on. I thought that alt-tabbing out and back in to the game stopped the freeze but it turns out I just needed to tap any key. So weird. Maybe the freeze wouldn't happen at all if I was using the keyboard only.
It's a wireless controller with the option to plug in via USB. I might try using the controller wired and see if the freezing still happens.
Troubleshooting is fun...
ilep@reddit
It is more likely a driver/compositor bug. If you are using Nvidia that is nothing new. Some compositors are not as mature yet while KDE 6 is pretty solid.
ComprehensiveSwitch@reddit
This is not a Wayland issue but likely an issue with your setup or your compositor. Gamescope session usually fixes most issues tbh.
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
If it doesn't work on gnome wayland but DOES work on gamescope it means the game isn't outright incompatible with Wayland but doesn't work with gnomes version thereof which suggests something is lacking on that end.
ComprehensiveSwitch@reddit
Right…so it’s a problem with the compositor or some other aspect of their setup.
aliendude5300@reddit
Weird. I played the entirety of CP 2077 on a Wayland session without issues
_pixelforg_@reddit
I've been playing on gamescope since last year, no major issues with it honestly. Currently playing Clair Obscur, before this I played Cyberpunk 2077 on it , I said no major issues because I faced a minor issue with Cyberpunk, when I switched to the steam overlay and went back, Cyberpunk would show up in a very small resolution so I'd have to close and start again. Just letting you know beforehand.
abotelho-cbn@reddit
What's funny about gamescope is that it's actually a Wayland compositor that uses XWayland to run applications. So it can be a Wayland client to another Wayland compositor, but it's own support for Wayland clients is still early as far as I know.
Potential_Penalty_31@reddit
Who is “we” you are talking about? You? A person that doesn’t contribute or donate to gnome, remember we are not customers, we are only benefiting from the work of others.
abotelho-cbn@reddit
You have to wonder if people who say things like this have even 5 mins of experience with Wayland.
LvS@reddit
No.
You should have the option to do whatever you want with your computer.
Gnome developers should have the option to do whatever they want with their computers.
You should not have the option to tell Gnome developers what to do.
acepukas@reddit
You might have a point in there somewhere but on the face of it that is some fundamentally flawed logic you are pedaling there.
The GNOME devs are doing something to my computer that I don't completely agree with. By your logic GNOME should be allowed to put whatever the hell they want in their code base, no matter how destructive or undesirable it might be.
I can already hear you saying "Use a different DE then!". I don't know where people got the idea that open source projects should not be criticized by their user base. Devs are fallible. Get over it.
With regard to the X11 decision, I understand why they are making it, but it's going to inconvenience a lot of people.
Patient_Sink@reddit
You are completely free to continue to use the last gnome version to support x11 for as long as you want, or fork it and maintain an updated version with x11 yourself. You're not in a position to demand that other people maintain the code for you.
acepukas@reddit
At no point did I demand. I simply asked a question. Hyperbolic much?
Patient_Sink@reddit
You accused that other guy of arguing semantics and then do the same thing here?
You're the one talking about something being done to your computer against your will. I'm saying that you do have options, but if the devs don't want to maintain x support (regardless if you "agree" or not) then that's not an option.
LvS@reddit
Criticizing is fine.
But the line of reasoning is flawed. The question to ask is not "Shouldn't I have the option to..." but "Why did they decide to not offer an option..."
The first line of reasoning assumes that the user knows better than the Gnome developers - even though the user chose to explicitly delegate the job of making the computer work to those developers in the first place.
Criticism can come after that. Once someone has understood why Gnome developers chose to do something, they can analyze that decision and criticize it - ideally with an analysis of pros and cons of a suggested alternative.
But this post was not that.
acepukas@reddit
Pfft. Buddy, you're totally lost in the semantics.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
the semantics are what matters though.
MatchingTurret@reddit
They are not. It's your decision to install software they wrote and are nice enough to share with you. You are free to decline their gift.
flying-sheep@reddit
No, they’re not. You’re choosing to install or update their stuff.
If they’re removing a feature you’re using, then nobody forces you to update. You can either choose to upgrade, choose to do nothing (which means you’ll keep using increasingly outdated and insecure software), or choose to switch to / create a fork that has what you want. (Or switch to a wholly different project)
It’s all under your control. The fact that some of these decisions are often more reasonable than others in the long run is something we all have to deal with.
vazark@reddit
You can always choose to not update. Criticising for criticism’s sake helps nobody
MatchingTurret@reddit
Absolutely. Nobody can force you to upgrade and nobody stops you from branching GNOME and maintaining the X11 backend on your own.
Misicks0349@reddit
it can still be built with X11, provided your distribution still does that it'll work, at least until gnome 50. after that you'll probably have to move to a different DE.
altermeetax@reddit
I really don't get why people are hyped on this
flying-sheep@reddit
As a developer, I do. I’m always happy about the moments when I get to drop some old hairy optional dependency that has contributed little to my project in recent years other than being a maintenance burden.
Things outlive their usefulness and new better things take their place.
altermeetax@reddit
On the developer's side I get it, but on the user's side this is a downgrade
nightblackdragon@reddit
In what way?
altermeetax@reddit
In the way that you lose a feature and gain nothing
nightblackdragon@reddit
I didn’t lose any valuable feature and I gained things like proper multimonitor support.
altermeetax@reddit
You already had that on Wayland without needing to drop X11 (don't get me wrong, I very much support Wayland, it just seems weird to see people celebrating for Gnome dropping a feature. Seems like a stereotype of the Gnome userbase turned real).
nightblackdragon@reddit
Maintenance is not free, instead of spending time maintaining X11 support now they can spend it to do something more useful. Also I'm not GNOME user.
LvS@reddit
Users know that it unblocks a bunch of new features.
And for most of them it's not a downgrade because they aren't using the old thing that gets dropped anymore.
josefx@reddit
I depend on a tool that uses a mixture of rather obscure X11 extensions that only work on GNOME. I can only pray that these still work on XWayland because a rewrite is years out.
LvS@reddit
You should probably test that tool and make sure it works.
If it doesn't you'll need to come up with a contingency plan.
mrlinkwii@reddit
depends on the user , for some users its a straight downgrade
wayland devs have said some use saves that arent "valid" their words not mine ,
while i understand Wayland is the future , its curerently not the present
pr0fic1ency@reddit
It's the present for a lot of people.
LvS@reddit
Yeah, there's a few people who've set up their environment in a way that is not forward-compatible.
Those aren't the ones who aren't excited about change and spend their time fighting for the status quo in internet forums.
altermeetax@reddit
That's not true, Gnome has been implementing Wayland-specific features for years without having to drop X11.
LvS@reddit
I know there are multiple outstanding merge requests that are blocked on X11 support because developers are talking about being blocked on them.
Of course there are some things you can implement conditionally or with complicated workaround - but there's also some things you can't implement - or where the implementation is buggy because of it being so complicated.
Zettinator@reddit
Commitment on fully moving to the new display server is good as it will pressure developers (in all parts of the stack) to improve the Wayland experience - all the way from GPU drivers to applications.
rilian-la-te@reddit
Unfortunately, Gnome Folks is only one who does not want to add EWMH to Wayland, and to make Global Menu possible.
ObjectiveJelIyfish36@reddit
lmao
zelusys@reddit
Why is that weird?
ObjectiveJelIyfish36@reddit
Because in regards to LGBT acceptance, Palestine ranks 130th out of 175 countries and locations.
But that's not the surprising part: everyone knows that the majority of Palestinians are Muslim, a religion not particularly known for its tolerance of LGBT people.
The actual surprising part is seeing leftists in the west conveniently "forgetting" the "paradox of tolerance" they love to use in every situation.
zelusys@reddit
I saw in this other comment that you're denying the fact that Palestinians are currently experiencing a genocide. I completely disagree and I also recognize that there's probably nothing I can tell you that will make you acknowledge these events as a genocide. So I'll skip this part.
But what I can tell you is that empathy, compassion and being a decent human is not a zero-sum thing. Yes Palestinians and Muslims are more likely to be anti-LGBT for religious and cultural reasons. Yes that is an intolerant part of their beliefs and culture. But that doesn't mean that other people have to play a zero-sum game with their own morals and decency. You can support LGBT and Palestinians at the same time. Doing one does not detract or oppose the other, you can have enough empathy for both groups of people.
Just because some people are sometimes ignorant, doesn't mean they should be treated badly.
And finally the paradox of tolerance doesn't apply here because (I think) no Muslim society has ever claimed to be tolerant. Muslim culture generally does tend to side towards intolerance, yes.
FistBus2786@reddit
That person probably didn't deserve such a kind and thoughtful explanation. But thank you for taking the time to write it. We need more public education on humane values, instead of "us versus them" mentality.
blackcain@reddit
Only through humans can we change religions. Religions will always adapt to what the community wants or they lose adherents. The world's religions are dependent on worshippers.
zelusys@reddit
Agreed, that's very true.
PixelatingPony@reddit
People can advocate for them being free, then advocate for them improving tolerance. I certainly don't wish them a genocide just because they don't support queer rights.
ObjectiveJelIyfish36@reddit
Thanks for proving my point! Suddenly, the paradox of tolerance doesn't matter anymore.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
They have. We can see it in support for same sex marriage that continued to grow until it reached majority support.
MatchingTurret@reddit
Because Hamas and it's enabling theocracy in Iran has a very dim view on pride month.
DHermit@reddit
You can hate Hamas and still not be happy with some of Israel's actions.
blackcain@reddit
I despise Hamas, but still feel empathy for Palestinians. I despise Bibi but still feel empathy for Israelis and Jews around the world.
skocznymroczny@reddit
I read the title as Jordan Peterson and was confused
mrlinkwii@reddit
wayland is half broken and dosent support all cases
the_abortionat0r@reddit
It's not half broken so stop being a baby. And if you have a niche case we'll tough, nobody is stopping progress for your tiny niche case.
MatchingTurret@reddit
Go and help fixing what is broken for you.
Unicorn_Colombo@reddit
Working as intended #wontfix
herd-u-liek-mudkips@reddit
"Go and help fixing what is broken for you" is not the same as "go and demand others to fix it for you". It means to start putting in the work of maintaining the X11 code yourself if you don't want it to be removed.
Unicorn_Colombo@reddit
Yes. And there were numerous instances were feature was removed or patch refused by Gnome maintainers.
herd-u-liek-mudkips@reddit
Is X11 support one of those instances?
mrlinkwii@reddit
people with same issue was told it "wasnt a vlid use case" but every OSand x11 dose it
nightblackdragon@reddit
Neither X11 does.
ezoe@reddit
"So it has come to this." (xkcd 1122)
I still remember Wayland got adopted by major distros as an option, then slowly switching to the default.
FengLengshun@reddit
I'd imagine Ubuntu LTS is the main point of consideration. Ubuntu probably also want to drop it, but doing so less than one year away from a new LTS release is probably too fast, for a change that isn't just drop-in replacement.
As with any Ubuntu wants vs GNOME wants, I always wonder at which point does it make more sense to use a different DE. System76 pulled the gun way earlier, and they seem to be doing pretty well even if it is taking a while. Obviously, entirely different situation than in this case, as they explicitly make x11 not be part of the design at all, but it is clear that Ubuntu wants vs GNOME wants will always diverge and GNOME is ironclad in following what it wants at the expense of downstream users.
But there has to be a point where the downsides of conflicting with GNOME trumps over their Unity trauma.
mrlinkwii@reddit
Ubuntu devs has said on the PR they will be shipping x11 with 26.04
gnome that ubuntu ships isnt teh gnome gnome ships , ubuntu keeps up their own patches to gnome
FengLengshun@reddit
Yeah, and IIRC a total removal was originally floated for GNOME 49? Sorry, it's been kinda a mess of information, idk which came first.
I know, but it has come to conflicts before. And likely still does, just that it rarely makes it to public as of late.
Patient_Sink@reddit
Current proposal is disabled by default in 49, removed at 50 at earliest, or later if there are issues uncovered. So if Ubuntu wants to ship 49 with the new lts then that should be fine since 50 would probably just have been released by 26.04. That would give them about 6 months of testing 49 before the release.
LoopVariant@reddit
Does this mean xeyes will no longer work?
__konrad@reddit
You need a "wldeadeyes" port
underdoeg@reddit
it still works to identify applications that run through xwayland ;)
c64z86@reddit
And xnsow too, because the snow will only form on top of X11 windows :p
MatchingTurret@reddit
I'm using oneko. The kitty runs to X windows.
c64z86@reddit
I just installed it now, so cute!
FrazzledHack@reddit
xkill is good for that purpose too, and comes with added adrenalin :-)
nightblackdragon@reddit
Xwayland is not going anywhere. This is about running GNOME itself on X11 instead.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
Another GNOME W for opening the path for other distro to follow.
NaheemSays@reddit
KDE is already there since 6.0 though - in Fedora the default KDE is not built with x11 session support and a non KDE-SIG member maintains the x11 session support.
I am not posting this as a typical "KDE did this first, KDE better" flame that others do but to say it isn't a "gnome conspiracy" - developed desktops are all going Wayland. It is only under maintained desktops that due to development resources are falling behind.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
GNOME has been pushing Wayland since 3.22. GNOME is the one getting heated over pushing wayland progress while other distro and downstream enjoying the outcome.
NaheemSays@reddit
Yes and that is why I mentioned KDE. Their development while lagging a little behind gnome in stability has been just as vociferous towards gnome.
A lot of the heat would be "gnome bad for removing X11, KDE better" or similar FUD when both are going down the same roads.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
Yeah, it's kinda weird, but then again it's the internet.
flying-sheep@reddit
The former X11 devs made Wayland. KDE and GNOME helped shape what Wayland has become. Why is it weird that the people most invested into Wayland are pushing Wayland?
ilikedeserts90@reddit
"enjoying"
perk11@reddit
That's a Fedora thing, not KDE thing. X11 still works on other distros, though the breakages have been more common. I would encourage folks that still need X11 to stay on Plasma 5, there is little benefit in 6 and a lot of small issues.
cornmonger_@reddit
and then there's cosmic, which began on wayland
AltToHideSelf@reddit
Not necessarily, there're some that just don't move because them moving doesn't make sense. For example, i3 decided against moving because it makes more sense for i3's devs to just make sure it still works well on x11, since Sway already exists for people who want i3 on Wayland.
BeatTheBet@reddit
KDE already "there" meaning with the exception of
sddm
? Do you happen to know ifsddm
is also (pre)built/packaged without x11 dependencies nowadays?Because, the relevant F43 (Gnome) change states:
Last time I tried installing fedora KDE without x11 packages, login was nuked.
I did read KDE is developing a new login manager altogether, at which point x11 would become irrelevant to this case, but I suspect it'll be some time before that is ready...
sunjay140@reddit
The same is true for Gnome in Fedora so not sure what your point is
Danteynero9@reddit
Because it's not that hard, TLDR (extracted from the article itself...):