GNOME 50 removes the X11 backend ... are we finally at the end of the Xorg era?

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Synthetic451@reddit

• Remote desktop workflows

Gnome has remote RDP login and it works great. KDE only has RDP if the user is already logged in, but they're working on adding remote login support with Plasma Login Manager.

• NVIDIA users

I've been daily driving KDE Wayland on my Nvidia 3090 for the past year and a half. Works without issue, I barely think about it now.

• Older apps that still expect X11 behavior

Not sure how Gnome does it, but KDE has options to allow modfiier and key combos to still get passed to X11 apps. I think the only apps that truly break are multi-window ones that absolutely need to define their own window positions, but those are so rare.

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the_nazar@reddit (OP)

Interesting, sounds like wayland has matured a lot then Most of the concerns i still hear are around niche workflows rather than normal desktop usage

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rscmcl@reddit

I bet most concerns come from people who don't use Wayland and/or haven't use it in the past year

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Prestigious_Ad5430@reddit

No apparent benefits, but only pains with remote desktop sharing.

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r3volts@reddit

I use Wayland for work every day, at least when I don't have to use an x11 session.
Multi screen remote desktop sessions don't work, so remoting into a windows host is borked. Things like screen connect don't work.
I've recently had issues with copy paste into remmina but I'm not quite sure what the issue is, but it hasn't happened at all when I'm using x11.
These are the main ones that give me issues, there's a bunch of other smaller things that happen as well that are hard to pin down.

Wayland has made great steps forward. There is no way it's ready to be the only option though. Even if that's for the sole reason that many vendors haven't released compatible versions of LOB apps yet.

If I can't have a stable, secure device with x11 fallback I straight up have to go back to windows for work and that sucks.

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chocopudding17@reddit

Wayland has made great steps forward. There is no way it's ready to be the only option though. Even if that's for the sole reason that many vendors haven't released compatible versions of LOB apps yet.

LOB apps that can't run under Xwayland?

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p47guitars@reddit

According to a lot of people from redhat, it is. That fucking scares me.

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r3volts@reddit

Yep, screen connect is a big one.
Even if it does run under Xwayland you still have issues with shortcuts, clipboard, scaling etc.

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p47guitars@reddit

Let's be honest here. Remmina kinda sucks. It's trying to be a lot of things all at once while not being good at any of them.

I don't know why they didn't use xdg_shells Wayland extension's xdg_popup for the tooltips... it's supported by every compositor...

https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-shell#xdg_popup

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ChromaticStrike@reddit

What was the issue with blender?

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Homie_No@reddit

It was very slow when I for example tried to rotate an object in the layout editor. First thought that it was maybe not using my GPU but when I set an env variable to use X11 everything was fine again.

Don't know why though yet. Normally I use xfce so no wayland but have KDE plasma as second DE installed. Maybe that's an issue?

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ChromaticStrike@reddit

I see, I'll watch out, just made my transition and always used blender under wincrap.

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p47guitars@reddit

Yeah.

I just hate being part of that niche class myself. Some software really freaks the fuck out with Wayland. Frankly, I've been feeling like this whole push to Wayland has been part of the downward spiral of usability lately.

I'm not usually one to go ricing a system or do anything too crazy, I'm nearly at the point of ditching windows. But I swear the amount of bickering between all these people about the future of xorg and the vitriol and contempt for the users that still use xorg is absolutely unacceptable.

I get it. There was a big schism, xorg wants to die, but a lot of users don't want it to. So then these devs deny a bunch of commits and pull requests from a dude that's actually interested in trying to improve the quality of said software... Just for him to get kicked out of the project, and him have to fork it to continue to improve xorg. It makes absolutely no fucking sense.

I know there's a lot of different spins about this specific situation, but at the end of the day open source software is not supposed to be about people killing software. It's the preservation of software and the improvement of software that keeps open source software alive. Like I get that a very real thing about xorg is that it sucks, but Wayland sucks too! It's literally a choice of which one of these is going to cause me the least headaches and a lot of time xorg is that for me.

Honestly, I'm a little disappointed in xorg who are continually trying to kill their own software project. Especially considering the history and significance of what xorg came from.

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the_nazar@reddit (OP)

I think a lot of the frustration comes from specific workflows breaking. for people who rely on those, x11 still makes more sense

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wlroots still works wonders

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KnowZeroX@reddit

It isn't like they have to write a compositor from scratch, they can borrow code. For example, Cinnamon's Muffin is based on Mutter.

Others are using libaries based on wlroots, smithay and etc.

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Toorero6@reddit

In Gnome there are two concepts:

Desktop Sharing: Share your existing desktop with other devices. The remote connection uses the existing screen resolution.
Remote Login: Remotely connect to your user account when it isn't being used. The display resolution can be set from the remote.

What you want is Desktop Sharing. To enable Desktop Sharing open the Gnome Control Center and go to ＞ System ＞ Remot Desktop ＞ Desktop Sharing. Maybe you have to explicitly install gnome-remote-desktop to see the setting.

Note: For connection you need a password that is usually different from your normal user password. The current password set is listed on the panel and can be changed.
Note2: Even if the screen is locked. You can remotely unlock your screen. I haven't tested if it's possible for another user to use the system simultaneously while your account is locked and not in the foreground but I think not.

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mort96@reddit

I just got back to my desktop and tested it. Desktop Sharing only works when the screen is unlocked. When I lock my desktop, the RDP client on my laptop just says "Unable to connect" with error code 0x207. When the screen is unlocked, it works, but my desktop is usually locked.

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Toorero6@reddit

I can't share that observation. If my screen is locked I see the normal lockscreen. I then can simply unlock the screen as I would do if I'm present at the screen.

I think the best thing would be if the hybrid headless/headfull feature gets implemented. Feel free to vote on it. As far as I can understand it, you could then "hijack" your locally inactive session remotely, and have all the features of Remote Login like the ability to change the resolution. This would also enable you to resume your work after you physically returned to your desktop.

Currently, you only have the two options each with their own downside:

Desktop Sharing:
only influences your headfull session
unable to change the resolution
requires an active user session (physical login required after you start your machine)
Remote Login:
only influences your headless session
conflict of headfull and headless session

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mort96@reddit

Well, I sadly can't reproduce what you're seeing. Unless the session is currently unlocked, I can't connect to the existing session at all; I either get the error message I described or just nothing happens. Both SSH and the "kill the session and start a new one" remote login works, so the system is definitely responsive and reachable.

If desktop sharing worked as you describe, I would be happy with GNOME.

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brina_cd@reddit

I had to deal with this recently... There seems no way to take over an INactive console session... I've found that some tools (VirtualBox VMs) behave strangely via xrdp and (I think) gnome remote login. I need to double check the latter... Of course it COULD be because I'm using Ubuntu, where some components seem to be 1-2 generations behind the current one. (Like dovecot... )

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Toorero6@reddit

Try it first on your local network without SSH to eliminate failure potential. For me as long as I can see the Gnome lock screen (User Icon + Password Prompt in front of the blurred wallpaper) I can unlock the session remotely. Even if my screen went blank this still works for me.

Since there is this issues opened of gnome-remote-desktop I suspect the issue is silently fixed on my system by using up-to-date components.
I'm running Arch Linux with the following versions:

GNOME Shell: 49.4
GNOME Remote Desktop Server: 49.3-1
GNOME Control Center: 49.6-1
Pipewire: 1:1.6.1-1

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mort96@reddit

I tried on my local network. As I said, SSH and Remote Login works, and Desktop Sharing works when the screen is unlocked.

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Toorero6@reddit

Okay weird. Are we on the same software versions?

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TiZ_EX1@reddit

Share your existing desktop with other devices. The remote connection uses the existing screen resolution.

That's VNC, not RDP. RDP is what Windows uses, and it's all around a much, much, much better experience than what we can do on Linux. It sets the desktop resolution to whatever the client resolution is, clients can set custom scaling factors, it preserves sessions in-progress, lets you connect and disconnect from them, and resume locally or remotely. Windows absolutely beats the crap out of us on this.

There's only one way to get remotely close to Windows's remote desktop experience: XRDP. And what's more, you'd have to configure local login to run a minimal session that runs FreeRDP and connects to the local XRDP session over localhost. I haven't tried to implement this yet, but it's on my projects list for my homelab.

I think that Xorg made it impossible to replicate Windows's experience nicely. It might be possible with Wayland.

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Brillegeit@reddit

There's only one way to get remotely close to Windows's remote desktop experience: XRDP.

NoMachine is the best experience and easily beats any alternatives on Linux. Unfortunately I think their innovation stopped around 2014, and even more unfortunately, none of the DEs have managed to catch up to even where they were in 2010.

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Toorero6@reddit

No it's RDP by defaults but can also use VNC.

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gmes78@reddit

Not true. GNOME provides persistent remote sessions since GNOME 47.

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dronostyka@reddit

Aka - not in Ubuntu 24.04.

But on the - as of now - latest 25.10 version, I can switch RDP clients and still come back to the same working session

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thefanum@reddit

Incorrect. It supports both.

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Use nomachine

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zoetectic@reddit

Sounds like you are on an old version of GNOME, this has not been the behavior since GNOME 47

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mort96@reddit

I'm on Fedora 43, which has GNOME 49. How do you remotely log in to the currently running (but locked) desktop session without user interaction on the desktop? From what I can tell, there are two options: log in to the current desktop session which requires clicking an accept button on a prompt which pops up, and remote login which creates a new session and force quits the existing one.

Have you tested using xpra? That's how I used to run X applications remote 15+ years ago.

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Might be the particular VNC server you use. Some are or were built into desktops, some can be started inside one and export it, some provide a low level X11 framebuffer themselves and start a desktop/WM inside.

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The__Amorphous@reddit

Oh this was like 15 years ago.

RDP, or the Remote Desktop Protocol, does not rely off of a desktop being drawn by the GPU to work.

And neither does VNC (the protocol) – headless VNC existed long before running desktop sessions could be shared via VNC.

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Constant_Boot@reddit

Today, I learned something.

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ntropia64@reddit

Remote desktop and screen sharing/capture are still a hot mess in Wayland, which took the "Not My Problem" approach that led to the extreme fragmentation we have so far.

As of today, every DE/WM has to implement their own infrastructure, which takes resources away from the development of important or new features in order to support again something that was already working in the past. An equally wrong strategy for both large/established and small/new DE/WMs.

Something as simple and ubiquitous as VNC now has a usable replacement (WayVNC) that work only for window managers built on top of wlroot.

We'll get there, eventually, when we'll have feature parity with X11 ("Nature finds a way", as a certain fictional mathematician once said), but the cost will be an unfathomable amount of human hours.

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Synthetic451@reddit

We'll get there, eventually, when we'll have feature parity with X11 ("Nature finds a way", as a certain fictional mathematician once said), but the cost will be an unfathomable amount of human hours.

It's not like those unfathomable hours are going to waste though. Wayland is by far a better and more secure foundation to build upon, especially if we're headed in the direction of sandboxed apps. Yes hours will need to be spent to get feature parity for certain things, but Wayland is more ready for the future than X11 will ever be.

The VNC stuff honestly is overblown, a lot of compositors already implement RDP for remote desktop, the last 10% just needs to be completed for the last few usecases. I'd take that trade off anyday for a smoother more stable desktop experience, like the fact that my screen doesn't flash whenever a silly volume OSD pops up over a unredirected fullscreen windows.

The fact that the developers themselves are eager to go to Wayland and drop X11 is telling, despite what Redditors love to say. This is just growing pains.

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kingofgama@reddit

Wayland is more ready for the future than X11 will ever be.

Feel like I've been hearing this for 9+ years, and to this day we still don't have a decent working remote access client via Wayland...

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SpacetimeConservator@reddit

I have a laptop with hybrid GPUs, intel and nvidia. The external monitor output is hardwired to the Nvidia gpu. When I want to use an external monitor the performance is really bad on it. Doesn't happen on X11 and that is a problem that Nvidia seems to be unable to fix. Luckily I like KDE a lot more anyway.

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ivanjxx@reddit

>Gnome has remote RDP login and it works great

try to use actually functioning rdp implementation like the ones in windows before you write something like that

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Synthetic451@reddit

I have used it. It's literally like the first remote desktop software people ever use. Maybe explain with words what you have issues with instead of giving attitude. Honestly, you have the social skills of a 10 year old.

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ngaywood@reddit

RDP is fine if you are the single user of the computer you are remoting to.

There are plenty of sites that need multi-user desktops though. I've had over 100 users on a server using x2goserver. You can't do that with RDP.

If you don't like x2goserver, you can also use Thinlinc for a commercially supported server/client.

Both x2go and thinlinc rely on ssh/X11 support.

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It's still much more lightweight. While the contents of a window may need to be sent "in full", operations like moving the window require just a command.

Also, I'm not really referring to network bandwidth. Wayland's approach requires significant GPU resources, both for rendering and video encoding, on the server to work well. The X11/x2go/RDP(*) approach works well even on servers that don't even have a GPU.

* Modern RDP is a bit of a hybrid of approaches, things like video or 3D content can be rendered server-side while simple UI elements remain client-side. This is still better than rendering everything server-side.

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Tradingview, or most Electron app for the matter.

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Synthetic451@reddit

I use a ton of electron apps on Wayland just fine. What issues are you seeing with it?

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Slight_Manufacturer6@reddit

X apps work via XWayland.

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The__Amorphous@reddit

Last I checked Tilda still doesn't work on Wayland and I believe it's down to hotkeys.

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nilsph@reddit

Gnome has remote RDP login and it works great.

Using GNOME/Wayland, I would love to have that experience in the session (admittedly, exporting a locally running rather than creating a new one). I’ve ran into hanging sessions that could be recovered by reconnecting (until they wouldn’t), stuck Alt keys when Alt-Tabbing out of and into the client, many key combos I want to use but don’t have the faintest how to achieve it.

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xumix@reddit

I'm using proprietary driver with fedora KDE 43, no issues

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Synthetic451@reddit

Yes the nvidia-open package in Arch repos. The name is a bit confusing but its what Nvidia calls their open kernel module + proprietary userspace graphics stack combo, which is now the officially recommended install method.

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underdoeg@reddit

I use the proprietary one with gnome/wayland. No issues (anymore)

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iAmHidingHere@reddit

I think the only apps that truly break are multi-window ones that absolutely need to define their own window positions, but those are so rare.

newsflashjackass@reddit

People don't go out of their way to not use Wayland for no reason. Just last Friday I was trying to copy a large block of text (>1GB) and the gnome Wayland session soft locked to a black screen. Worked fine under X11.

Something similar is happening in the quake community.

The people who make Quake engines (Quake.exe) are inclined to praise the virtues of "modern" quake engines- that often require a 2026 graphics card to run a game from 1996.

The people who make Quake maps, I suspect, want as many people as possible to play the maps they have made. Some may use the features of modern quake engines but I expect most make quake maps at least in part because of its nostalgia factor and lack of those features.

The people who play the Quake maps just want to run the maps. When they can't, the engine-builders say "If you want to run that game from 1996 it is time to upgrade that old hardware from 2012."

burning_iceman@reddit

Having several instances of the same program open does not make it a relevant multi-window app. What is meant by multi-window apps is programs that try to place multiple windows in relation to each other, e.g. a toolbar next to the main window. Firefox and Thunderbird are not such programs.

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siodhe@reddit

GIMP is an obvious example of a single program with multiple windows where those additional windows affect one or more main windows while acting as menus and other controls. Maya worked like this too historically (or so I seem to remember, it's been ages), and I think it was one of those that cared about "side(?)"window positioning.

No, no, you're right. My mistake, my frustration with Wayland is bleeding out at the edges. Although it sounds like GNOME has abandoned X for Wayland, so it might still apply in this thread, while it certainly doesn't to the r/linux forum.

GNOME jumping to Wayland doesn't really matter, since I've never liked GNOME to begin with as a so-called "desktop environment", although I do like a good number of their tools and have been disappointed to see some of them now fail where they used to work in X. But as a window manager, GNOME was mostly rather meh.

So while GNOME may have left X, X never needed GNOME.

Anyway, my core frustration with Wayland is that it is proselytized as a "replacement" for X. Which is very much not based in fact. It is not a superset of X. But this fantasy is what gets in the way of seeing that both Wayland and X are both independent tools, both essentially born from 1980s objectives, with Wayland having the more localhost focus, and X having more of the network focus. Different tools for different users.

DIstros should just by default make both available at login. But it is too bad that the X side will no longer have an X + Gnome option.

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NITROGENarcosis@reddit

The biggest one for me is Firefox. I use a window per workspace and it can't restore windows to their own workspace when launched.

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It's necessary for VJ and video mapping workflows

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Irverter@reddit

VJ?

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jcelerier@reddit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJing

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stormdelta@reddit

I am curious how many are actually using multi-window apps these days.

Input grab is evil. Somehow I suspect this obvious sin is supported by Wayland, just for irony.

It does not and I'm pretty sure they specifically never will.

It is supported via Xwayland but compositors that do require you to add a program to an allow list for it to even work.

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siodhe@reddit

What I've read agrees that compositors are involved and that grab prevention might be different with different compositors. I'm not talking about Xwayland because X already does what I consider to be the Wrong Thing here. Another weakness in popups is when they block interaction with windows outside of popups - worse yet some system block modifying the popup window itself other than using or dismissing it. The can lead to a popup hiding the exact information needed to answer the popup, or a popup hiding information in itself because it's too small. If Wayland actually fixes all these issues, then yes, that would be one feature that is user-visible and better than X.

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Dr_Hexagon@reddit

Every windowing system except Wayland.

Wayland is not a windowing system. There was a reasonable argument to make that the DE should be the one providing this functionality. eg KDE, Gnome, XFCE etc.

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crazy_penguin86@reddit

Yes, the protocol is finally being addressed. It was annoying trying to get gnome to let it through.

lets applications restore window locations for various purposes

arthurno1@reddit

There's nothing equivelant to grep | sort | uniq in any editor as far as I'm aware.

That is because you have been using wrong editors :) Start using Emacs.

But yeah, you are correct, Ctrl+F is not the way to do. They are either just trolling or fantasizing.

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caprisunkraftfoods@reddit

I knew someone was gonna say Emacs :D

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arthurno1@reddit

Hehe :)

Well it is a better shell and has a better glue language and built-in text editor, so perfect. But I wouldn't open 1 gig file in Emacs to interactively search for something either, even though Emacs has support for big files, and works better than Sublime. It is just not comparable.

Those people who downvote has obviously not tried.

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dev-sda@reddit

There's nothing equivelant to grep | sort | uniq in any editor as far as I'm aware.

Pretty easy in Sublime Text: Find All, Expand Selection to Line, Cut, New File, Paste, Sort Lines, Unique.

In a file that size you probably aren't looking for 3 or 4 specific instances of something.

I was :)

or you're trying to get a sense of what happened around something, in which case grep -B x -A y would give you an even more distilled version of that.

This is a lot easier in a GUI, where if you want to see x+1 you just scroll further. Especially when you're multiple searches deep.

There's also the fact a single 1 GB log file is a bit dodgy too. That amount of log output should really be bucketed or rotated in some way

For a server or service, sure. There's lots of other kinds of logs, for instance the output from strace, or application logs.

Anyway whatever. Maybe CTRL + f'ing a massive text file was their best option, but I've been there too and I'm just sharing some cool things I've learned over the years that are often much better depending on what you're trying to do.

I do genuinely appreciate that. The way you conveyed that came across as a hostile "you're doing it wrong", rather than a helpful suggestion, hence the negative reaction from people.

For reference, I use command line tools for system logs all the time, so I can say with confidence that my way was both easier and faster.

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arthurno1@reddit

For reference, I use command line tools for system logs all the time, so I can say with confidence that my way was both easier and faster.

No way dude. That certainly is not faster, and that is easy to demonstrate for anyone who has sublime installed:

fallocate -l 1G bigfile.txt

and than

subl bigfile.txt&

Enjoy waiting. A tip, it takes long time.

You are either trolling on purpose or truly have no idea what you are talking about, because you have probably not tried to open 1 gigabyte file in Sublime. No sane person would open one gigabyte file to Ctrl+f for something in file. By the time Sublime has just read in that 1 gigabyte file, you could have find what you were looking for 10 times around via

cat your-file | grep your-search-term.

Also no sane person have 1 gigabyte logs, because that's insane amount of text. Logs are typically configured to grow to some specified size and than we start a new log. That size is normally megabytes, not gigabytes. 1 gigabyte from strace? Nah.

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dev-sda@reddit

You're right, it probably wasn't a gig. Certainly tens of millions of lines.

By the time Sublime has just read in that 1 gigabyte file, you could have find what you were looking for 10 times around via

Maybe if you actually read anything I said you'd know that I wasn't just trying to find a log entry.

Also no sane person have 1 gigabyte logs, because that's insane amount of text. Logs are typically configured to grow to some specified size and than we start a new log.

No one is doing fucking log rotation when debugging a program.

1 gigabyte from strace? Nah.

I wasn't using strace, I gave an example of logs you don't rotate.

Also I just got a 300MB strace log from running the servo browser for a bit. Perhaps consider that other people have a different experience to you.

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Bulky-Bad-9153@reddit

No one is doing fucking log rotation when debugging a program

🤔 I certainly am, if I'm constantly referencing the log I don't want it to be large and full of irrelevant content

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dev-sda@reddit

Neat, while it's running? I haven't found the need personally - had a few times where the extra context turned out to be relevant, but whatever works for you.

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dev-sda@reddit

Why are you suggesting I use grep/head/tail when you think searching and scrolling won't be useful? Yes I was searching and scrolling through logs, and yes I got useful information from that.

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DerfK@reddit

I haven't done a gigabyte but I absolutely have pasted text from a web page (ticketing system) into a shell over ssh and even in X12 performance of this degrades rapidly over a few KB. Less harrowingly (and more KBs of text), copying and pasting websites to text files so I can collect the text without the rest of the HTML or being bothered to browse to it in elinks to use its native save as text function. Just tested firefox's "save as text" function on this very page and its full of

[–] <javascript:void(0)>caprisunkraftfoods <https://old.reddit.com/user/
caprisunkraftfoods>2 points3 points4 points 17 hours ago (12 children)
<javascript:void(0)>

If you don't mind me asking, what were you doing when you needed to copy
paste a gigabyte of raw text?

* permalink <https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ru6wbg/
  gnome_50_removes_the_x11_backend_are_we_finally/oak4gx3/>
* embed <javascript:void(0)>
* save <javascript:void(0)>
* parent <#oajejio>
* report <javascript:void(0)>
* reply <javascript:void(0)>

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altometer@reddit

It's 2026 and fractional scaling on Wayland still brings my computer to its knees. I genuinely don't care why. I care that it's still a problem. Tiling has never quite worked right, and desktop automation is basically locked out entirely.

There are reasons to dislike

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Araumand@reddit

maybe you need a windows 11 compatible PC to have enough cpu power for running wayfuck with fraction scaling.

Others suggest renaming Wayfuck to X12 and then everything is suddenly fine.

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Araumand@reddit

Yea, rename WayFuck to X12 and then headless remote desktop suddenly works.

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AtlanticPortal@reddit

It’s a totally different protocol. Not just a big revamp.

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TheOneTrueTrench@reddit

Ever looked at X10 vs X11?

There was a windowing system at the end of 90s, that meant to replace X11 called Y. It was from some university in Germany, I don't remember which one, I can't find a link now. I don't think it was ever used in real life.

Consider that your Distro might be the issue especially if it’s Debian based. Everyone likes to pretend that Debian has no issues but actually the newer the hardware the more likely you’ll have stupid issues like that.

Newer hardware should use more recent distros like Fedora or OpenSUSE. Debian is not a one-size-fits-all

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Irverter@reddit

They didn't mention Debian at all, why go off topic to bash Debian like that?

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Scandiberian@reddit

Am I bashing Debian?

I am just trying to offer some perspective that I wish I was offered when I was new to Linux and everyone recommended Mint, which is super cute but gave me multiple issues because my hardware from 2019 was apparently too new to run properly. As soon as I moved to a Fedora-based distro all issues suddenly disappeared.

I’ve never seen anyone talk about this in the wild so I thought I’d jump in.

Those features are copy and paste, accessibility and screen capture.

All of those work fine.

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xmBQWugdxjaA@reddit

Is there an equivalent to xdotool though? I think input automation is not great? Which is terrible timing as we enter the agentic AI era.

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sparky8251@reddit

Yes...? Has been for years.

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flameleaf@reddit

ydotool is supposed to be an xdotool replacement, but lacks every single xdotool feature I use.

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sparky8251@reddit

Not just ydotool. There are specific ones for different compositors/families, like kdotool that has a lot more direct interaction features.

ChickenOverlord@reddit

Those features didn't work fine when Wayland was first pushed out onto users, and had to be implemented on a per DE basis instead of a single shared implementation in the compositor.

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gmes78@reddit

No, they all worked when most distros started switching over to Wayland by default.

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GolemancerVekk@reddit

X11 had their own SE linux compliant sandboxing and nobody used it.

That's the really weird part about it, that Wayland would make this mandatory rather than opt-in.. Especially after seeing that so few people really needed this feature on X, and how it wasn't really the universal issue they claim it to be.

If Wayland hasn't chosen this particular hill to die on I reckon adoption would have been much further along by now.

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nightblackdragon@reddit

>That's the really weird part about it, that Wayland would make this mandatory rather than opt-in..

Opt-in would be ignored by everybody and become useless. X11 also have security extension. You can probably guess why no one uses it.

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krzyk@reddit

I wonder why.

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GolemancerVekk@reddit

Nobody uses it because it's useless, not the other way around. By the time your machine has been owned to the point that malware can spy on your window positions it can also do things like read your files.

It's ludicrous to worry about GUI sniffing when apps on Linux don't even use sandboxing. The logical order to improve security would be immutable system, then AppArmor or SELinux enabled out of the box, then sandboxed apps, then after you've solved everything else you can worry about the GUI as a distant 4th.

Locking down the GUI "just in case" is pointless, annoying, and has slowed down Wayland adoption immensely.

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nightblackdragon@reddit

It's useless because there is no way for performing certain actions in "secure way" and nobody bothered to make such way because security was just an extension that you could simply ignore. If Wayland would make security optional then every application would ignore it and simply stop working with enabled security making it basically useless. In that case why bother with Wayland at all?

None of the options you mentioned would work for a windowing system. They are for different things, not for making sure that calculator application won't be able to read browser keyboard input when you are entering password.

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burning_iceman@reddit

I think it's a mischaracterization to call it "opt in". The Wayland protocol provides a specific limited set of features. Other things need to be handled separately. How it is done or who does it and whether it is opt-in or opt-out does not concern the Wayland protocol.

You absolutely can create a Wayland protocol that does all the things people want and even make all the features opt-out.

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Glad-Weight1754@reddit

"Security" is most non-sensical excuse ever.

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digiphaze@reddit

Its not ridiculous when it still breaks too many things we need.

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Reigar@reddit

Now I'm no programmer, and I want to admit that up front, but the biggest hurdle that I've heard in switching over to Wayland (and I did see something similar to this effect in a particular game that I was using between mint cinnamon and Debbie KDE) is how windows are understood in the position of the environment. Wayland wants Windows to be positioned in the middle and doesn't really do well with Windows being positioned outside of structurally aligned positioning. Again, I'm not a programmer, but I can give a small example that kind of shows what I believe is one of the biggest hiccups.

There is a particular game that I play that launches in a rectangular window. This window can be resized and in theory should be able to be moved to any position in the desktop. Using lutrus in a flatpak, in both environments, and using proton 8 under mint, while using the newest version of proton under KDE, I noticed a very odd issue.

In cinnamon, and with proton 8 {which by understanding is an x11 base proton) I'm able to run the game and move the window wherever I want on the desktop and I can still interact with the game. I can also resize the window and still interact with the game. However, if I resize it into a too odd of a position, the window will immediately jump to the middle of my screen and resize back to a specific default. Regardless, I'm still able to interact with the game regardless of position or window size. Proton 8 seems to have no issue with allowing interaction inside the window regardless of placement or size.

Now under debian's KDE, I am using the same hardware, same version of lutrus, and the only difference is that I was using Wayland and the newest version of proton. The wine runner in both setups was the exact same. Even lutrus was the same as I was running in a flat pack. However, using KDE, Wayland, and the newest version of proton. I was only able to interact with the game when it was dead center in the middle of my screen, and at a very specific size. If I move the window to a different position on my screen, it stopped registering any mouse, clicks or keyboard interactions with the game (though I could see the game the entire time). Roughly half the time. If I move the window to a very odd position, the window would immediately jump back to the center of the screen and resize itself to its default setting. Only when these conditions matched up perfectly, was I able to interact with the game using my mouse and keyboard.

Beyond some other frustrations that I had with KDE, I inevitably went back to Mint and cinnamon (even if I find many of kde's product offerings vastly superior), because the x11 design allowed for a better floating position (for lack of better terms). I still support wayland, and believe that it is the direction that Linux Community as a whole is moving to, but if my experience is anything like what others have experienced (which based on my own research, I was not the only one experiencing this issue), then Wayland needs to address this glaring issue as quickly as possible. As one person puts it in another Reddit post, free floating tooltips need to be able to be positioned wherever the user wants them to be and not in uniform positions Wayland dictates they have to be.

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GolemancerVekk@reddit

The only ridiculous part is dismissing other people's concerns because it works for you. Stop and consider that maybe it's not just obstinacy.

If someone's not using Wayland they most likely have their reasons. It still has huge unresolved issues with remoting, automation, accessibility etc.

I believe that is the stupidity the parent comment was referring to.

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siodhe@reddit

Easy now, we don't know what they've been putting in the cool-aid at the Wayland parties. Chat silos get pretty wound up in their own stories. (Perfect comment, though)

X's adoption was slower and kinder and it had a huge killer feature: All the other window systems were single vendor†. X didn't need to be arrogant and pushy. Moving was inevitable. Wayland has, in contrast, vague handwaving about security (from most users' perspectives) combined stuff it can't (or won't) do, and chatter about how it's easier to write for. Yet in contrast it sounds like it's much harder to write a compositor than a window manager - in many ways.

I am still repeatedly surprised at the Wayland team's arrogance at claiming to be a "replacement", to be easier to write for, to be superior through blanket client isolation despite that crippling some users, to be a better choice performance wise despite the both the lack of proof and that Wayland tends to consume substantially more CPU, sometime double the load versus X.

Basically Wayland's end user benefits are so limited that most users wouldn't notice. But users do notice when Wayland blocks being able to do something they could do in X.

Wayland does not deserve the sort of mandate that X earned.

This is no way is an argument that X is ideal. I have my own raging frustrations with X at various levels. But Wayland's focus on 2D internally, local-only GPU use by local apps, and general attitude of turning its back on the network feels a lot more like a step into the past than a step forward.

Hell, even W(1982), the predecessor to X(1984 to now), and W's predecessor V(1981-1988) had higher aspirations than Wayland.

What happened to one of the coolest visions in computing, Sun's motto of "The network is the computer" ?

---
† I'm not sure this is literally true, some might have worked across several vendors, but forget universality.
‡ Oh, and I'm typing those with leftshift+rightshift+6 = ‡ and right-shift+6 = † … can Wayland do something similar?

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dkonigs@reddit

And yet there's no end to people with simple needs, who claim "it works great for me" as a way of dismissing all the concerns.

The problem with any foundational piece of software, is that there's an endless long tail of "niche" use cases. And to the people affected by them, they really don't feel so niche. They feel like showstoppers.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

Linux has a whole step first from this problem.

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Well in that case the person or people expressing that criticism has absolutely no idea of Wayland. Wayland is minimalist. It couldn't be less "overloaded".

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Scandiberian@reddit

If someone's not using Wayland they most likely have their reasons. It

Yes. Usually these people are using GNU/Hurd or Debian, their hardware is 25 years old and badly glued together, and they don’t care about basic security features because they themselves are fossilized into their chairs and long retired.

Sorry that I do not enable such people by listening to their non-concerns.

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wpm@reddit

What "basic security features" has Wayland brought to the table that actually solve any real, documented threats?

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Scandiberian@reddit

Eh… programs not seeing your entire desktop at all times comes to mind. You know, proper isolation? That thing that X11 was allergic to.

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wpm@reddit

What programs used the ability to see the entire desktop at all times to facilitate a documented cyberattack? And how does Wayland actually solve that problem?

And why can any app on Wayland access any secret in the keyring if you're logged in? Seems like a much more serious vector for an attack/exfiltration.

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Scandiberian@reddit

What programs used the ability to see the entire desktop at all times to facilitate a documented cyberattack? And how does Wayland actually solve that problem?

I’m not gonna bother searching for documented cases because that’s not the point, and frankly it’s a childish understanding of how software development (particularly for enterprises, which is Linux’s main audience) works.

If there is a known vulnerability, it gets patched regardless of whether it has already claimed any victims.

And why can any app on GNOME/Wayland access any secret in the keyring if you're logged in? Seems like a much more serious vector for an attack/exfiltration.

I was talking about Wayland, not GNOME. Way to derail the conversation mate.

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Irverter@reddit

Ahh yes, it's Hurd and Debian fault that KDE Wayland has problems on my 2024 device running opensuse.

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LigPaten@reddit

The only ridiculous part is dismissing other people's concerns because it works for you.

I think some of this comes from seeing people with truly insane (and honestly straight up bad) set ups and workflows complaining that wayland doesn't work exactly like like X11 did with their hacked together solution. There are definitely issues with remoting, automation, and accessibility that definitely need fixing, but you have to think about how long it took to get some of these things to the way they are on X11.

Another part of the issue is there's a weird entitlement in some people's complaints that their issues need to be fixed now, but this is open source and developers aren't beholden to our desires

it or Gnome if you want Wayland

Those are the two DEs with the most resources, so of course they'd be the first to do it. The others are catching up. I disagree with what you said though. There are quite a few wayland compositors based on wlroots like hyprland, labwc, etc and then other newcomers like Cosmic.

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the_nazar@reddit (OP)

I totally agree with this, different workflows definitely surface different issues

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_oohshiny@reddit

dismissing other people's concerns because it works for you

Not like any other major architectural change to Linux in the last 15 years did exactly the same thing...

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bullpup1337@reddit

I am not going out of my to not use it. I just have been using X11 for 20 years without issues and no reason to switch. Why should I? Xmonad works great for me.

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avg_php_dev@reddit

yeah, more I read comments here, more convinced I'm to stay with my old i3wm :D

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zeanox@reddit

but it is ridiculous how some people go out of their way to not use Wayland.

Why? it's not a drop in replacement.

But why would you even assume that?

Because they hang too much on Internet and drink too much cool aid.

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garblesnarky@reddit

Why is it ridiculous? I switched back because Wayland doesn't support CLI window management tools.

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norlock_dev@reddit

What do you mean with CLI window management tools?

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garblesnarky@reddit

wmctrl, xdotool, xwininfo. I use these to create custom workflows, and solve problems that are otherwise impossible to solve. The system that enables this is one of the biggest differentiators for desktop Linux for me.

My understanding is that Wayland is incompatible with these tools by design for "security" reasons, IMO this is a colossal mistake. I'd say Wayland designers are going out of their way to break stuff that works.

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olig1905@reddit

What are your use cases, problems and workflows that you can only solve in X11. I'm very curious.

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garblesnarky@reddit

I use them for automating UI interactions for apps that aren't designed for it.

Looking through old scripts...

Controlling the layout for multiple figure windows produced in matlab. Similarly for python+matplotlib.
Automating web browser workflows, particularly downloading documents from sites with shitty java applet or flash interfaces
Controlling window focus for tkinter apps

Currently: - Saving state of apps that would otherwise be lost upon unintentional shutdown. If you are skeptical about this one and you want to help me troubleshoot, I would love the help!

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SignedJannis@reddit

I'm you.

Hit so many wayland issues with this.

Tip: I did find (eventually): there are a number of Extensions that solve these issues, that bring back Cli window/program control under wayland

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garblesnarky@reddit

Ah, that's good to know, which ones have worked for you?

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SignedJannis@reddit

"Activate Window by Title" is one name otmh i can recall exactly. Apologies I dont have a full list on hand, but as you can see by this time, the names are often "perfectly descriptive".

The key I needed, that I didn't know earlier, was that it was Gnome Extensions that was the place to look for my "automations under wayland" solutions. (under Ubuntu anyway)

As an aside, i use ydotool for text insertion to any window in wayland for a speech-to-text prog I made for linux.

I also use ydotool for progmatic mouse movements testing software and websites, and IIRC I had big probs with that too, under wayland, and I think the solution to that (getting the mouse X/Y pos) was also in the above extension, ActivateWindowByTitle.getCursorPosition or some equally simply named IIRC

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dthdthdthdthdthdth@reddit

A normal application cannot move windows around etc on wayland, the window manager/compositor can. You need one that has an api to do that, kwin for example has scripts.

Wayland changed the architecture for that, that's why certain utilities cannot work like that anymore. That does not mean you can't provide the functionality.

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garblesnarky@reddit

I'll be honest, I have an inplict requirement of "doesn't involve replacing my entire desktop environment", which as a gnome user I think rules out kwin.

It looks there may be a way to do this with a custom gnome shell extension, so that would be my first attempt, if X11 gets fully removed some day. If that doesn't work, then it will be time for me to consider switching to a different window manager. That's a hassle that I don't look forward to, but I'd probably take the opportunity to consider options other than kde/plasma.

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dthdthdthdthdthdth@reddit

Yeah, kwin was an example, cause I'm using kde and know about that. Gnome surely has similar APIs. Maybe there will even be a standard one for certain things, like there already is for stuff like docks and notifications.

This is just what happens if you change the architecture of such a central component. To me it makes sense though that the compositor is in charge of placing windows and of defining the API to do that. Different compositors even have very different concepts of what that can mean.

And for an ecosystem to move over takes a very long time. All these niche applications really only start to develop once the mainstream has switched over. Now that this has happened, a these niche problems will probably get solved.

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iAmHidingHere@reddit

I would guess that KWin could do 1 and 3.

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tom-dixon@reddit

Same issue here. I use my own script to automate window handling, and the Wayland folks call it "niche workflow" and "I shouldn't be doing it like that". Well, ok then...

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norlock_dev@reddit

xwininfo is now moved the to compositor implementation so for example: `niri msg windows` or `hyprctl monitors`, but I'm not sure if every compositor has a CLI like the tilling window managers have, same can be said for wmctrl. However for xdotools there are indeed no wayland equivalent because of security reasons.

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Yea. Just like how well Perl 6 worked.

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FortuneIIIPick@reddit

> it is ridiculous how some people go out of their way to not use Wayland.

Not really, I tried to daily drive Wayland, it sucks, it has weird quirks, odd behaviors, poor gaming performance, etc.

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thecause04@reddit

Going out of one’s way to not use something that always gives them problems and valuing choice and options that work for them is ridiculous? You really don’t know anything about Linux, do you?

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AWonderingWizard@reddit

I think it is ridiculous how some people judge others solely based on the software they use.

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Drwankingstein@reddit

My want to preface this comment that I use wayland myself, I had been daily running cosmic since it was an alpha. I used sway since it became actually useble on intel, and weston on all my servers for years now. I like Wayland a lot.

It has issues. It has so many fucking issues with fragmentation and lack of features. I maintain systems for all sorts of people from those with large A11y needs, to those that just have a super specific set of controls schemes.

Wayland is not ready to replace X11 completely and it most likely never will be. It's an explicit goal not to do everything X11 does and discounting the people that fit outside of that area does no one good. People with unique needs exist, and x11 will stay around for a long time because of this.

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siodhe@reddit

Except that it isn't remotely like X except for still being in that 1980s mentality of a 2D desktop - except this time localhost only.

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ivanjxx@reddit

it’s ridiculous to call wayland an upgrade to X11

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Boomer_Nurgle@reddit

I think for the majority of users it probably is. There's still some use cases that you need X11 for but all the ones I know are niche and not things I imagine most users would need. The only one I know of that is a major concern is accessibility options but since I don't use those I can't speak for them.

I won't speak for everyone but for my use cases (backend dev, running TTTPGs, gaming, working with databases and docker mostly) it's been a painless transition for like the last year.

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indvs3@reddit

Except that it didn't or still doesn't work properly for a few pretty important things. Most notably with nvidia gpu's, but gaming, screen capture and remote desktop style programs simply don't work properly under wayland (or at least didn't, though I haven't heard anything about it working properly now with any compositor).

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QueenOfHatred@reddit

Gaming and screen capture works.

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FranticBronchitis@reddit

Gaming performance on non-native titles is superior in X11 over Wayland

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GolemancerVekk@reddit

Dude, they're obviously referring to concrete problems they're seeing with the apps they use and their specific use cases and workflows.

"Gaming" and "screen capture" are very broad and complex categories that are not 100% solved. When you make sweeping statements like that you're dismissing that some people continue to have real problems and cannot upgrade just yet.

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QueenOfHatred@reddit

Okay, how about they don't make general sweeping statements themselves.

gaming with nvidia - yes, it used to be a huge problem, but works fine on newer drivers. honestly, the problems I did see however, were not wayland specific.

though I will admit, i am not sure how is the VR situation for example. If that is the problem, sure.

screen capture - OBS, gpu-screen-recorder, web browsers, seems to work just fine?

Yeah, i may have been too dismissive, my bad and I apologize, but I would also just appreciate.. getting to know what doesn't work.

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gmes78@reddit

Most notably with nvidia gpu's, but gaming, screen capture and remote desktop style programs simply don't work properly under wayland

All of those have worked fine for years.

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indvs3@reddit

Not for everyone, which is my point. If it works flawless on your setup, good for you, but that doesn't magically make it work on my three pc's with different hardware configs.

I have both i3 and sway installed on all three and with every sway, kernel and/or driver update, I try to switch to sway again to see if it works better. While I have noticed occasional improvements here and there, quite a few annoyances that I can't resolve for myself keep me on i3.

So you can say it a thousand times that it just works, but I'll respond as many times that it doesn't just work for everyone, because it's a sad truth that I'd love to see change sooner rather than later, as I do think a lot about the security implications that come with x11.

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Paumanok@reddit

I don't go out of my way to not use wayland. I'd essentially need to write my own compositor to get the DE behavior I want. I don't have the time for that shit anymore.

Araumand@reddit

Who uses that shitty Gnome Desktop. I am staying the fuck away from Wayfuck.

Can you objectively explain why or is it just to join all the Wayland vs X11 wars?

I stopped caring and just using the OS as it is. Works flawlessly.

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xgui4@reddit

i hate the security first aspect of Wayland, i want to be the admin of my laptop not a guess of my os and also Wayland is way too slow to update.

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jknvv13@reddit

What does not provide that you miss?

You are the admin of your laptop, what does it have to do with apps having access to the whole display content?

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xgui4@reddit

i mean i hate the paranoiac aspect of waycrap, it break everything.

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jknvv13@reddit

Like... ?

X11 used to break multi monitor, I had no VRR, no HDR, no trackpad gestures, no good touch input...

So what's the equivalent command to alter the gamma on wayland then? Or do you mean having to make ICC profiles somehow?

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gmes78@reddit

So what's the equivalent command to alter the gamma on wayland then?

For what purpose?

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BaconCatBug@reddit

So I can change the gamma values?

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gmes78@reddit

Since you refused to answer my question, I'll just say: use Night Light.

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BaconCatBug@reddit

Because I need to change the gamma settings because my monitors are not oled so the OSD settings still result in washed out and incorrect colours. Night Light is just a red filter, right?

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jknvv13@reddit

You should really calibrate your monitor and generate an ICC profile.

There are ways of modifying color spectrum and some values through gdctl (GNOME) or under Display Settings in KDE.

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xgui4@reddit

wayland be like : 🫪

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xgui4@reddit

switch to a fork of xfce that is based and support XLibre or Pheonix

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Jristz@reddit

The IceWM folks look like are tinfoil hat guys and don't like Wayland, they prefer the user to use xwayland or satellite or whatever the tool is called and run X11 with iceWM inside Wayland

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gbrennon@reddit

i think for newcomers yes...

They are laid to develop Gnome because support and time costs money. Did you think things just magically came from nothing?

That's not at all what "freedom" means in the context of software freedom. It means that you have the four freedoms that allow to run, modify, and redistribute software however you so please.

It doesn't mean that the original developers of the software need to cater to some desires for particular bits of modularity; a developer can make software that's tightly coupled to some other component. You, a user with the four freedoms, are totally free to modularize that coupling.

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mort96@reddit

Libinput is intentionally not user customisable, for whatever idiotic reason. The libinput philosophy is that the DE exposes the configuration interface. The GNOME philosophy is to not expose config interfaces. The result is a system where plenty of libinput settings can't be configured under GBONE Wayland.

Yes you can hack your local hardware database, but the hardware database is really intended to be provided by the distro. It's not really fit for purpose as an end-user configuration interface.

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KronenR@reddit

So the problem is GNOME not Wayland

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mort96@reddit

This thread is about GNOME

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KronenR@reddit

No, this topic is about new GNOME Wayland versus old GNOME X11.

The difference between the two is that under X11 you could still use runtime workarounds like xinput or libinput quirks, while under Wayland those workarounds no longer function. This makes missing GUI settings much more visible.

FlyingBishop@reddit

I want the freedom to know that when I turn on my computer, the touchpad works well and I won't have to spend hours trying to find a lua plugin so I can calibrate it so it works well.

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KronenR@reddit

Then don't buy a laptop with a touchpad that noone uses, buy a mainstream laptop

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FlyingBishop@reddit

I'm quite happy to pay money for a working touchpad, which is what I do.

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KronenR@reddit

Yes, it does demonstrate a problem—just not the one you think. Expecting niche hardware to be fully supported without cost isn’t realistic. I’d also like a free car that works perfectly without spending tens of thousands, but that’s not how things work.

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FlyingBishop@reddit

If the drivers were open source, it would not be tens of thousands to fix.

Although, in this case, it's a bit more like people are saying we need a new kind of road that requires everyone to get new tires, and the tires don't work with my vehicle's frame.

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KronenR@reddit

Again you are assuming open source is free. Open drivers don’t magically make support cheap or guaranteed. Someone still has to do the work, and for niche hardware there often isn’t enough interest to justify it.

The cost isn’t just “because it’s closed”—it’s because debugging and maintaining hardware support is complex and time-consuming. Open source doesn’t remove that.

In practice, niche devices stay poorly supported unless there’s real demand, regardless of whether drivers are open or not.

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FlyingBishop@reddit

There's no such thing as mainstream hardware when you're talking about Linux support. Everything is niche. Again, I'm not assuming anything is free, I pay for Windows laptops because nobody sells laptops with Linux drivers that meet my needs.

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KronenR@reddit

Sure, that just proves my point. Your problem isn’t Linux, it’s that you bought niche hardware that nobody cares enough to fully support. And seriously, remember what you said yourself?

Shouldn’t you be complaining to those hardware companies for not providing Linux drivers? This is the nonsese you said:

>This is really why I don't use Linux is that it's often impossible to implement things correctly because you've got two interacting systems, you need a fix in one of them, you cannot do it with a third tool, and neither maintainer is able/willing to fix the problem. The code problem is simple, the social problem makes it literally impossible for your trackpad to work properly.

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FlyingBishop@reddit

I wasn't complaining to anyone in particular, you're acting like I was complaining to Linux.

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KronenR@reddit

and neither maintainer is able/willing to fix the problem

Ok sure. Mr. Not Complaining

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flying-sheep@reddit

then either 1. go to the repo where the device config for your touchpad lives and fix it, or 2. pay someone to do that.

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KronenR@reddit

Wayland doesn’t force anything. The lack of a standard ecosystem is not Wayland’s responsibility. It’s up to the DEs or other projects to provide that. Wayland is just a display protocol, not a full ecosystem. You can blame DEs, the ecosystem, or even build it yourself. Wayland itself isn’t at fault.

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redd1ch@reddit

Thank you for further explaining my point.

Let's introduced that for the Kernel as well. Oops, you wanted drivers for AMD graphics cards for Arch? The Kernel now only defines a portal for it, Arch could adapt the implementation from Fedora if they need it. Or the rivaling of Debian, they even support dual screens! They can't run on batteries, however. Its up to you to choose. If you dislike it, just complain at your distro, they are responsible to implement all the Kernel portals on their own. Its not the Kernels fault they don't reimplement everything.

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I mean I haven't done so myself but you might recall that Toorero6 said you can do it via xinput

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KronenR@reddit

Yeah and he said that you can set it through libinput itself which you can even under GNOME Wayland,

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flying-sheep@reddit

We’re under

I really dislike Wayland's anti-customization philosophy.

what's with the hating on nautilus, jesus. What has it done to you?

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DudeLoveBaby@reddit

lol why are you taking this personally I just think it's a shitty app

FlyingBishop@reddit

Gnome was never actually used on touch devices though, they built it for something no one ever used it for. They had this idea that touch would be the standard, and it is, kind of, but no one who was using Gnome wanted that, and still no one using Gnome really wants that.

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Thetargos@reddit

You just described Wayland

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FlyingBishop@reddit

Which part of what I said describes Wayland?

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I personally love that. One of the reasons why I don't want to switch to Wayland on my personal computers. Network protocol is not that much important to me longer, because I don't login into remote machines any more, but back in time it was important to me.

I think people should be able to modify tools, incluse the OS, to suit their workflows, habits and so on. People should not modify their habits and workflow after the computer. Computers are tools to help us do work, they should not give us more work. When we have to work more and adapt, we are really failing to use the automation. For me, the idea of window managers, a small program that can change completely how one interacts with the windowing system and input devices is really one of best parts of X, and really unique to X.

If that explains why I like it. Sure, there are concerns, but I think we could have solved those problems instead of rewriting everything from scratch and throwing away a good idea because we saw a problem.

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kill-the-maFIA@reddit

It works well, doesn't feel like a Windows imitation, has the most cohesive design of any OS/DE I've ever seen in my life, is well supported, had a great app ecosystem, powerful plugin support, etc?

If you don't like it then fair enough. But if plenty of people use it, including Linus Torvalds himself, there are obviously reasons to use it.

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atomic1fire@reddit

As a side note, when I was configuring my trackpad for Gnome instead of having a setting dialog that let me turn on a feature, I had to go into gconf and hunt down the proper setting.

Something I think is pretty user unfriendly.

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cosmicorn@reddit

There was an old joke that the Gnome developers ideal DE was just a giant shut down button, for the user to use in case they accidentally turned their computer on.

I don’t hate Gnome but it seems that joke still has a bit of relevance.

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SDNick484@reddit

Libinput is intentionally not user customisable, for whatever idiotic reason. The libinput philosophy is that the DE exposes the configuration interface. The GNOME philosophy is to not expose config interfaces. The result is a system where plenty of libinput settings can't be configured under GBONE Wayland.

It's crazy to me that after all these years, GNOME is still holding true to that philosophy. It is why I left their DE in the early Gnome 3/Shell era. I run Linux for its configurability.

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gmes78@reddit

Libinput literally provides Lua plugin support nowadays.

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flying-sheep@reddit

“quirks” is libinput terminology for how devices differ from the baseline, not a value judgement
local-overrides.quirks exists for … local overrides, in other words, configuration. Might be that there’s no good UX for that yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

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Toorero6@reddit

The file is literally called a quirk file. And for 99 % of the users it's non essential since the trackpad should be calibrated correctly out of the box. Feel free to create a beautiful gui to configure quirk files or just direct people to literally write a quirk file as in this doc once and it's done. It's not that hard to write a file down.

Additionally how has it been configurable under Gnome X11? You use xinput at best (which doesn't have a user gui as well or you use libinput and well use the same quirk file to configure it exactly the same :O Where is the Wayland specific quirk you're crying about?

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RB5Network@reddit

Good lord this is the quintessential annoying ass Linux user behavior everyone talks about. I know damn well you don't talk to people face to face like this, stop doing it anonymously behind a screen.

The overwhelming majority of people don't want to edit configuration files for simple trackpad adjustments. It's as simple as that. And it makes perfect sense this should be adjusted via settings.

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Toorero6@reddit

Okay so let me get things straight for you: The initial comment claimed it's not possible to adjust the trackpad sensitivity under Wayland. I responded with a comment showing how in fact it can only be done using quirk files of libinput which is completely disconnected from X11/Wayland since it's on the drivers level. Then one responds to cry about how this is totally bad under Wayland and how great X11 is because there is xinput (which doesn't even expose this driver level setting and is not a GUI as well). I'm not open to a discussion about usability.

And maybe you should actually learn to read.

The whole post is asking, 'Do you think the ecosystem is truly ready for a Wayland-only desktop now?' Everything being complained about has nothing to do with X11 vs Wayland—these points are completely off-topic

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Toorero6@reddit

Thank you. Finally someone that can read. Additionally my intention was just to aid the person in their Wayland problem to ease his transition and people start randomly arguing on how bad the Wayland experience is (although it has nothing to do with Wayland nor X11 but just bad driver profiles for the touchpad in use).

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Existing-Tough-6517@reddit

X and Wayland have non overlapping areas and people care about the parts that are external to Wayland which were part of X

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KronenR@reddit

But those complaints were directed at Wayland itself, when they’re really about GNOME not providing certain features. Wayland is just a display protocol; it doesn’t aim to replicate every utility that existed around X.

What end users actually want is a GUI option in their desktop environment, not tools like xinput. If GNOME doesn’t expose that functionality, that’s a GNOME design decision—not a limitation of Wayland itself.

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KronenR@reddit

I’d give up. It’s not worth arguing with people who installed Linux yesterday.

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KronenR@reddit

And you're the quintessential annoying ass GNOME user who never touched another DE and is blaming the whole Wayland ecosystem for GNOME's garbage settings philosophy.

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RB5Network@reddit

I am a KDE Wayland user, man lol.

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KronenR@reddit

Then why you disagree with him.

You don't need to edit any config files on KDE Wayland, it's just a slider in System Settings like any normal OS. The capability is there, Wayland is not the problem.

GNOME is the one responsible for providing a visual settings interface and they simply chose not to. That's on GNOME, not Wayland. Don't blame the whole ecosystem because GNOME has a minimalist settings philosophy.

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Well, the solution was informative. He never argued that it was the best approach for usability.

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Existing-Tough-6517@reddit

This is way below windows usability where things actually work out of the box

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Toorero6@reddit

So why does Windows offer the same settings and even provide advanced config settings in the registry? Because different users expect different behaviour from their hardware or their hardware degrades.

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Existing-Tough-6517@reddit

The OEM tests their hardware with Windows and the driver handles any obvious issues.

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Toorero6@reddit

So you're saying the settings exposed by Windows are useless and unnecessary because OEMs manage an oracle that can predict user preferences?

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bprfh@reddit

Installing temporary local device quirks

The model quirks are part of the source distribution and should never be modified. For temporary local workarounds, libinput reads the /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks file. Users may add a sections to this file to add a device quirk for a local device but beware that any modification must be upstreamed or it may cease to work at any time.

Thats from the given link, the project directly contradicts that this should be done by any end user and is a sustainable change across version.

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mort96@reddit

Under GNOME X11 it's user configurable through xinput.

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Toorero6@reddit

There is no Gnome X11 anymore. Additionally you can't set AttrPressureRange since it isn't even exposed by the libinput driver as a config.

It's an advanced driver setting meant to be set automatically on initial creation on the device profile. If there isn't a device profile, you can create one yourself and create a pull request to upstream your profile. Additionally if your trackpad behaviour is somehow diverging from the default behaviour observed and thus you meant to provide a local overwrite of the default quirk profile.

this is libinput's fault, there is multiple settings in libinput not exposed to even desktop environments and most people don't even know what its doing.

For example libinput has a forced debounce "feature" limiting your mouse cps to 20 that you would only know about by reading the code

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The__Amorphous@reddit

Alls I know is it worked fine under X11 but as since switching to Wayland it's been borderline unusable.

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dnu-pdjdjdidndjs@reddit

I agree but I'm just clarifying it's more of a goofy issue than an actual architectural flaw of wayland, I wouldn't be surprised if the issue you're having is something like libinput preventing accidental taps with its debounce code. If your touchpad isn't very precise it's easy to activate the tap when you're just leaning on your laptop (I actually have the opposite issue on my laptop) and it has to decide how sensitive to be. xorg also used libinput so either your DE chose different settings it isn't exposing or something similar.

All the freedesktop stuff is esoteric c code and weird stuff like their async c runtime, over reliance on dbus which should have been dropped/replaced 10 years ago, and its just a few people working on these things who genuinely aren't aware of all the features that need to be exposed. Like it makes sense that a c engineer working for redhat on gnome wouldn't think anyone would ever click at more than 20cps or care about the mild latency from the debounce algorithm but a person who plays video games would think the complete opposite way.

I've even seen people completely misrepresent things like I've seen people say "libinput normalizes input above 10,000 dpi" but in reality it's impossible to know a generic mouse's dpi and what it was actually doing was completely different unfortunately I forgot what it was actually doing this was like 10 months ago I looked at it

I've also seen people say libinput adds no latency but some of its algorithms in isolation take 200us to run which is 0.2ms which is significant if you're thinking at 240hz which is 4.17ms. I started seeing if I could write a libinput alternative in rust but I got like 10 projects I'm working on right now including a wayland compositor and ui toolkit so I only got as far as a proof of concept that I got running. I also don't have a wacom tablet and stuff like that so it's hard to test.

gmes78@reddit

You can select ICC profiles in KDE anyway. I haven't looked into Gnome for a while.

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siodhe@reddit

If you can directly customize it through scripts or whatever, then that's great.

No color names, though, according to what I've read?

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_vfbsilva_@reddit

I got a second monitor with a different gamma setting and I agree with you.

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Pollux442@reddit

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues

KDE plasma has something planned to get this feature back

https://invent.kde.org/libraries/plasma-wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/94

Basically creating your own profile if you don't have a colorimeter

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Interesting-Layer580@reddit

the WHOLE GOAL HAS BEEN TO REPLACE X11.

That is exactly what we have been complaining about all this time.

Not run side by side.

Guess what, we do not want side by side either, we want Wayland to go away.

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

Well child Wayland isn't going to go away just because your non technical has irrational emotions. Neither will that save x11.

It'll be just like the freaks who lost it over systemd 13 years ago, you'll shake your fist and shit your pants while the civilized world passes you by.

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

There is a whole bunch of non-systemd distributions, they even successfully soft-forked Debian (see Devuan).

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Matilde_di_Canossa@reddit

Xlibre

lol

lmao even

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Hot-Employ-3399@reddit

The biggest pain for me is keepassxc can't autotype(no, setting env vars to xcb is bull fucking shit - it doesn't work in half of cases)

In the end I edited it instead of x11 to use ydotool after 5 seconds, so from nonworking pita it's now working pita at least

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tonymurray@reddit

Yeah, I hope a password manager portal gets implemented sooner rather than later. I'm not a fan of the autotype hack.

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7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8@reddit

Could you extend what hack, how you deployed it? I'm currently contemplating rejecting Wayland mainly for this.

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tonymurray@reddit

Password managers in X11 work by simulating key presses into another application (which is a hack). There are tools that allow simulating user input in Wayland (such as ydotool). As you can imagine a lot can go wrong allowing any application to send input into any other application, so this is not available by default in Wayland.

As for the portal, think about smart phones. When you have a password prompt they offer to fill in passwords from your password manager.

If Linux has a way for applications to ask password managers for credentials (likely an xdg desktop portal), that would be superior to the X11 hack which functions, but is very dangerous.

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M_asak1@reddit

I'm guessing we are considering Copy-Paste a vulnerability, then? I did miss Autotype, but I switched to wayland so long ago that I completely forgot about it.

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7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8@reddit

On a short-term solution, i'd appreciate allowing a specific application to type to another specific application.

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

Most of this is made up.

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MaCroX95@reddit

Wayland has received many updates that used to be dealbreakers for many people... And got implemented in a better, more secure way. So feel free to reach out to community on which solutions are priority for you and what would the options be. I don't feel like any of those are reason enough to keep the entire userbase on legacy tech.

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kingofgama@reddit

Seriously though, why replace X11 if for the vast majority of users it's simple more feature complete?

To flip you question around, why force users to lose many features for basically zero gain?

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siodhe@reddit

I never mentioned keeping them there. What I reject is replacing X with Wayland. Having both in major distributions would be a much better way to move forward than switching to what is little more than another 2D desktop from a very similar mindspace - and none of the illuminated aspects. Of course, that would normally make me start grumbling about how Display PostScript from the NeXT got wasted. Grr.

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MaCroX95@reddit

I personally am not against choice, as long as there are enough people to maintain and develop X11 and if there are enough people to maintain X11 compatibility for app frameworks and developer tools the forseeable future.

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FeepingCreature@reddit

wow there's a lot of stuff there that I didn't even knew were critical X11 features that would keep me on X11 forever. I mean, I wasn't gonna switch to wayland in the first place but now I have a ton of additional reasons not to, thanks!

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siodhe@reddit

Whether they're actually critical is subjective and user-dependent.

My frustration with Wayland is that the Wayland guys market it as a replacement for X, which it is not. I would much rather see distros put them side by side rather than tell people the like the Wayland can do everything X does.

If you as an user are ok with gnome, good for you!

OP said they dont use gnome and answered the post maker question. Now you jumped in and act out of topic...

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kinda_guilty@reddit

I just find it weird that people find it necessary to chime in with dismissive opinions as if no one ever could find Gnome fine to use. People discuss KDE here from time to time, and it's very popular. Every time there is a KDE post, I don't go on there to say that I find it too needing too much configuration, its apps' interfaces being busy to the point of distraction, and overall much more unstable. I just scroll past and talk about other things where my experiences, and thus contributions, are more positive. And I recognize that there are people who like that customization ability, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don't have to open every KDE thread and say "I stopped using KDE a long time ago, Irrelevant!" It is obnoxious, very I-am-the-center-of-the-world-listen-to-me and adds nothing to the discussion.

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ptoki@reddit

Maybe its because gnome is really that unfit for (as you can see) many people yet they are still cool enough to not start a flame about it?

I see the problem you described in a different way:

To know how the world/situation really looks like we need to collect multiple types of information. Not only "this is good because..." or "this is bad because..." but also "its so bad I have no words besides stay away" or "I stopped using it when and never looked back" and few more.

Each type of feedback gives us different view and can influence us in a different way.

The "stopped using and never returned" can be helpful because it may mean the cost of trying is high so maybe we need to factor that in.

Different info to set our strategy to deal with the issue.

I look at such posts from statistical point of view. Sometimes I feel validated that I am not alone in the same situation and at times I am unhappy because so many people may not see the real value in something.

That helps me to see a broader view.

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kinda_guilty@reddit

The problem is people who are unhappy are far more likely to complain than people who are content (unless you are a hateful curmudgeon, like me) are silent. However, the fact is looking at hard numbers, Gnome is far more popular.

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ptoki@reddit

True, to a degree.

With Gnome its a bit different. It is packaged/bundled as default. It resembles android in its simplicity so for now it is popular.

I am hoping that consumer computing will go back to more custom, less "one size fits all", less of "few options will make you happy", "my machine, my control" so gnome will become less simplistic or will be replaced with kde or some more "elaborate" gui.

I find gnome critique valid. But I am one of those "I control this thing" people. BUT! the interesting piece here is that once I have my setup configured I dont change things. I just want them in a very certain way which is totally incompatible with gnome.

I use it at work though. And even my limited use proves it is buggy.

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kinda_guilty@reddit

proves it is buggy

Buggy how? I use Debian sid, which means I am all the way on the bleeding edge most of the time, and Gnome never crashes for me. "Gnome does not support some use case I desire" is not a bug. A bug is only a failure to give you something that is promised.

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ptoki@reddit

Its not a lot about crash bugs but more about the functionality not behaving right or just silently failing.

There is a lot of long posts around the internet where gnome issues are described. I remember one about single app where like 20 screens worth of complaints was put together and it was valid complaint, not some vague accusations.

I dont see such significant whining about kde/mate/lxde etc.

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kinda_guilty@reddit

Again, just a loud minority whinging. Gnome works just fine, and it is the least buggy DE I have used. Again, things working as designed is not a bug. If the way Gnome is designed doesn't work for someone, it just doesn't. Just like programming languages, there are two kinds: the ones people complain about, and the ones no one uses.

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ptoki@reddit

If the way Gnome is designed doesn't work for someone,

turns out it does not work for many.

IMHO gnome is popular because most of people tend to just passively consume content and for them simplicity is ok. They dont care. For more demanding folks gnome just does not work.

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kinda_guilty@reddit

gnome is popular because most of people tend to just passively consume content and for them simplicity is ok.

Nonsense. Because spending time tweaking your desktop is hella productive, am I right? Extra widgets and settings all over the place that have nothing to do with your actual productivity tools?

I wager the opposite is true.

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ptoki@reddit

Not nonsense.

You are proving my point. Majority of people tend to not tweak their gui. Some folks do initially but then they usually settle and gradually arrange their workspace to their liking. This is true on Windows and on linux. That is why so many people is asking "What distro" when they actually want to know "which gui to use" as they rarely know the deeper differences of package selection or inner os workings.

People you accuse of spending hella time on customization actually dont do that. They pick a distro with gui already suited for them. Either kde or mate or lxde etc. And then lightly tweak them adding things to panel/dock, customize decorations or behaviors.

With gnome the customization is either minimal or people just go with what is given to them. For many folks gnome customizations are insufficient or the general feel is too distant from their workflow.

I NEED Synergy KVM to work - f--ked if I'm gonna plonk 3 keyboards and mice on my desk... I work from home...

I've tried the 3.x version - and it "seemed" to work on Wayland, as the server - but - my two other machines are Macs (one is supplied by my employer) and I was unable to drive the cursor on them from Synergy 3 KVM as server (Ubuntu 24.04).

So I canned it all and went back to Synergy 1(.20.x) on all my equipment (I occasionally put other Linux systems in my Synergy setup). It's a PITA to remove Synergy and install another version and very disruptive (I last tried Synergy 3 about 4 years ago and wasted about 3 hours trying to get it to work).

The other thing, besides having a single mouse / keyboard on my desk, is shared clipboard - that's a feature I really would rather not live without.

If worst comes to worst - I may end up replacing my Ubuntu desktop with a Mac Mini and go with Universal Control...

And apparently the fork of Synergy FOSS "barrier" is no longer maintained...

I paid for Synergy Pro and I NEED it to work... Synergy 1.x works well enough for me across Linux and MacOS (I don't have any Windows systems). There's other alternatives to Synergy, like "rkvm" - but - they're Linux only...

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the_nazar@reddit (OP)

Hmmm... thats a pretty real workflow. stuff like kvm and shared clipboard is where things can still get messy

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armozel@reddit

As a user with an nvidia GPU on my newest laptop, I'll say wayland actually plays nice with me on the 580 drivers which surprised me when I installed Fedora on it as I was having issues with other distros where it they would lock up mid-boot from the thumb drive. So I'll say I feel Nvidia cards should be more than able to work under Wayland.

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the_nazar@reddit (OP)

Nice... I use both Wayland and X11 and honestly don’t see much difference day-to-day. It’s been pretty fine for me overall. i guess it really comes down to hardware and what you use it for

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RileyGuy1000@reddit

I'm a big wayland user and I think it's the future.

But.

As long as the developer can't access the clipboard or do autotype without circumventing wayland altogether, X and/or XWayland will still see use.

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redditor_286@reddit

Daily driving Fedora with Intel GPU and the inbuilt Remote Desktop is a breeze to use

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ptoki@reddit

GNOME is dead to me for very long time. For many reasons and I think I'm not the only one. So no, X11 is not going away.

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

So what happens when every drops x11 you just gonna stop using computers?

What's with this stupid x11 cult?. I use a display server to use a computer but it seems like you only want to have a PC to use a certain display server.

You know these groups aren't going to focus on nonsense when they need to focus on practical use right? Why keep x11 for no reason?

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ptoki@reddit

every drops x11

you should start investing. With such skill in telling the future you are wasting your time here.

Also, if you think that we only have x11 and wayland and x11 will for sure die then maybe dont try telling future.

X11 is not stupid cult. It works. You could say email is stupid cult and email is much inferior technology than x11 but nobody does.

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homelabrr@reddit

Cannot full screen my Linux VM using VmWare Workstation Pro while using multiple monitors.

i switched to x11 and it works

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mariyamahu@reddit

Hope not. Wayland has been anything but reliable for me, most software I run under it more than 5 years old either has tremendous performance hiccups or doesnt run at all.

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

Well for one that not a thing and two Linux doesn't have the whole old software issue. Modern programs are updated and packaged for modern systems and a modern software ecosystem.

No clue why emotional clowns lie and make stuff up about a display server.

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leonbollerup@reddit

Things I am wondering …

stability .. Wayland is NOT stable
custom resolutions.. Wayland sucks

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DoubleOwl7777@reddit

so everything you listed is the exact opposite in my experience.

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leonbollerup@reddit

Happy to hear that.. on my machine Wayland is slower, takes up more cpu resources, feels less responsive and I can not add custom resolutions ..

X11 is rock solid

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

It's called a placebo.

It's like when silvers in CS try and tell me 4:3 makes them better and if I was good then I'd understand. And yet I sat 3rd highest rank while they were at the bottom.

Wayland is way more stable than X11 in my experience.

All that spaghetti code leads to bugs/jankiness, I guess.

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natermer@reddit

X11 support isn't going anywhere. X11 Applications will continue to run as well as they ever did. There is going to be ton of applications that will see no real benefit from being ported to Wayland because they are effectively "done". Nobody is really developing them aside from bug fixes, but people continue to use them. Just because something is old doesn't mean that it isn't still useful.

That is why I don't think that X11 support is going away any time soon. Probably in the next 5 years, or whatever, it will become a optional add-on. Like X11 support on Apple OS X was for at least a decade.

And you can still run X11 on Microsoft Windows and OS X just fine with add-ons.

What is really being lost, and isn't going to come back, by eliminating the "X11 backend" is the ability to use X11 tools to manage window position/sizing and modify input.

• Remote desktop workflows

Out of modern desktop "remote workflows" X11 networking is easily the most miserable.

Out of users taking advantage of remote applications the ratio of people doing it on Windows versus Linux has to be in the 10's of thousands to one.

With the advent of web applications maybe it isn't used as much as it used to be. But remote applications on Windows has blown the doors off of X11 since around Windows 2000 release. Maybe even with Windows NT 4.0 release in 1998.

It was, for a while, essentially the standard approach used all over the industry for call centers and applications that were controlled over group policies and such things.

Most of Windows desktop users are not even aware that they were using them. They just showed up as a extra corporate tray or menu item on their dekstop. They clicked on them to launch and they worked with no real discernible difference from apps running locally.

A lot of Linux users that think they are running X11 network really are not. They think they are using "Compression" with X11, but the reality is that the apps are running on the server with its own X11 server completely separate from the one they are running and uses a different protocol to actually do the networking and compression. Like with "No Machine" NX and similar solutions.

In other words... remote Desktop with X11 isn't anything worth worrying about.

• Older apps that still expect X11 behavior

XWayland works fine.

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mort96@reddit

Losing Remote Desktop with X11 is something to worry about; not because X's "network transparency" is a big deal, but because you can't make a Remote Desktop application for Wayland. The protocols for it just don't exist. The screencast protocol requires user interaction to approve the screencast every time, which makes it not fit for purpose. The built-in GNOME remote login solution creates a new desktop session and kills the old one.

With X11, on the other hand, you can make Remote Desktop applications which just stream what's on the screen to another computer.

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burning_iceman@reddit

You're confusing two separate things. Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing. Remote desktop creates a new session, screen sharing uses the current one. Trying to use one to do the other is just incorrect usage.

This works completely fine on Wayland. Screen sharing is supported on both Gnome and KDE. Remote Desktop works on Gnome, while KDE is close to getting it to work.

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kingofgama@reddit

KDE and GNOME's implemented remote desktop sessions are beyond awful, and work very very poorly lacking major features required to make this a usable experience.

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mort96@reddit

You're confusing two separate things. Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing.

I'm not confusing two things. I was using remote desktop in the generic sense, with the same meaning as in the sentence "rustdesk is a remote desktop application".

Anyway, the GNOME desktop sharing feature doesn't work when the screen is locked.

And no, "The screencast protocol requires user interaction to approve the screencast every time" is incorrect.

I was talking about how GNOME handles it.

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natermer@reddit

With X11, on the other hand, you can make Remote Desktop applications which just stream what's on the screen to another computer.

No, that isn't how X11 works.

X11 works by applications send instructions on how to render the application from the remote machine to the local X11 server.

It is like how HTML works. HTML is just code. Code is sent over HTTP to your web browser and then the web browser renders the web page.

If you are doing "desktop streaming" you are not doing X11 at all.

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mort96@reddit

You're mixing up what I'm saying with the people who say X11 network transparency is an important feature. I'm not one of those, I know that in the modern accelerated graphics and raster pixel buffers based world, you don't gain much if anything from "network transparency" and I don't criticise Wayland for dropping it.

What I am saying is: for Windows, macOS and X11, anyone can make a Remote Desktop application which listens for incoming connections, and when a connection comes in, it starts capturing video from the screen and streams them over the network (using H.264 or as a JOEG stream or whatever). In Wayland, you can't do that, because the APIs to capture the screen and emulate user input without user interaction don't exist.

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Linux on desktop is not a thing. Linux on HPC is a thing. On HPC, X11 is and will be the standard thanks to network transparency and very good and tested X11-based technologies. So, X11 era is not coming to an end where Linux is a thing.

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dthdthdthdthdthdth@reddit

how the fuck do you need an UI for HPC?

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idontchooseanid@reddit

Many advanced 3D and fluid simulations use X11-based UIs. They rarely update their software base. So if Linux distros start completely dropping X11 then what will happen is the usual trend in last 2 decades. The UI will be Windows-only and the server is CLI / RPC only.

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dthdthdthdthdthdth@reddit

They won't drop running X11 based apps for decades. Also, if the toolkit is not form the dark ages (which it of course just might be) you should be able to run the app natively on wayland, maybe with some tinkering.

And if you cannot invest in slightly in your frontend every 1-2 generations well, you might even have to do that on windows...

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SuperGNUser@reddit

For this kind of software toolkit is usually motif or a custom xlib-based thing. But this is not the main problem, the fact is that Wayland lacks network transparency. Waypipe is a toy developed by 1 person, no one would use it in this kind of environment.

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dthdthdthdthdthdth@reddit

If you need "network transparancy", you are doing something wrong. Use rdp if you have to run your UI remotely. Better, just don't. Your UI will not run distributed on your cluster.

No idea what you even want any more. You were criticizing Wayland replacing X, now you are celebrating Windows, and making points a made several posts ago. So bye.

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graphics drivers aren't necessarily going to stay compatible with Xorg

FishMonkeyCow@reddit

Citrix workspace

Tried on fedora, cashos and Arch.

Took me a while to figure out it's a buggy mess and only seems to work using xorg on debian/Ubuntu/mint. Could be a skills issue, but seems others have this problem also.

Currently using mint.

Need it for work and work has it blocked from running within a VM. So stuck for now. Hopefully by the time mint fully switches to Wayland Citrix workspace will be supported.

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m4teri4lgirl@reddit

Remote Desktop and virtual displays are the only reason I'm not using Linux on my gaming PC. It's so bad on Wayland.

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gmes78@reddit

Both of those things are supported on the current versions of GNOME and KDE.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

I will emphasize that "supported" does not mean "works well".

  Remote Desktop was supported under GNOME 42 (released 2022).

  Virtual Displays was supported under GNOME 42 ("easy virtual monitor setup via Remote Desktop (RDP)") and in GNOME 49 (adding "Extended virtual monitors" to remote desktop capabilities, allowing additional virtual monitors when connected remotely) ....

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If it doesn't work as well as Windows virtual displays and Remote Desktop then it's not good enough. It's not even close to what Remote Desktop on other systems can do and Wayland is a giant leap backwards from what xorg is capable of.

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gmes78@reddit

So now we're moving the goalposts.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

You're replying to a different person. Try to follow the threads.

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m4teri4lgirl@reddit

No, I never said that it didn't have those things, I said that their implementation is bad.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

It also doesn't mean it doesn't work.

That's true.

And you seem to be under the impression that I said "it doesn't work well." I said what I said and it is 100% true. You're reading more into it. So I will repeat:

  "supported" does not mean "it works well".

I wanted to make sure nobody was confused by your assertion of "supported". Or did you mean to assert that "it works well"? If so, you certainly didn't provide any evidence of that. That's why I provided the dates when it started being supported --- presumably most people had tried those features out for GNOME 42.

"See! It doesn't work." is a non-sequitur.

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bigbearandy@reddit

I mean, as one of the OG oldsters on Linux, who has been using X since it was part of Project Athena at MIT, an entire skill set I have has been rendered obsolete after four decades. Sorry to see that constant go, but not sad. If they do it right, it will be about as relevant as my experience with the NeWS window manager on Sun workstations. If they do it wrong, I'll be able to continue getting that side hustle contract work, along with my Mainframe and COBOL skills, well into my retirement.

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It isn't inaccurate.

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Adryzz_@reddit

apart from zones, which are experimental, wayland doesn't explicitly allow window placement or pointer placement not for nebulous security reasons, but because it is explicitly made to support platforms that do NOT have an explicit rectangle display, like VR/XR.

wayland on VR/XR for example, works almost flawlessly on all wayland apps, because the wayland protocols don't assume what the user is viewing the content with.

the_abortionat0r@reddit

God, this fucking mental illness conspiracy shit has to end.

You people are not well.

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WaitingForG2@reddit

Wayland has been “the future” for a long time

Still is.

Do you think the ecosystem is truly ready for a Wayland-only desktop now?

I think this is the real issue with the whole Wayland vs X11 debate.

Decisions about architecture are being made by what looks like a single company, most likely with an emphasis on corporate use, and anyone who wants an exception carved out is getting drowned out by vitriol.

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burning_iceman@reddit

by what looks like a single company

To people not actually looking.

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gmes78@reddit

Decisions about architecture are being made by what looks like a single company,

Have you actually looked at who the Wayland project members are?

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pezezin@reddit

> Problem is, it's going to kill a lot of projects that rely on X11 and don't have the resources to rewrite.

Which projects?

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6e1a08c8047143c6869@reddit

especially when it's driven by Red Hat

What makes you think it's driven by Red Hat?

which has a long history of borderline behavior towards open source.

borderline what?

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stormdelta@reddit

I consider dimming to be a bit of a workaround to begin with, ideally you control monitor brightness directly (something Linux can do way better than Windows in my experience), or using HDR to set base brightness (only possible in KDE Plasma under Wayland so far AFAIK).

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That was a typo, I meant 595. It doesn't matter which version of gnome or kde. This has been a problem for years across probably a dozen different machines. It happens on both gnome and kde. Right now I'm using the latest kde 6.6 or whatever it is.

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gmes78@reddit

GNOME 50 includes optimizations targeted at the proprietary Nvidia driver specifically. I would advise people to wait for the new Ubuntu release, and to not speculate on its performance.

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DistantRavioli@reddit

I would advise people to wait for the new GNOME release, and to not speculate on its performance.

I'm not speculating, I'm telling you what my experience has been on every wayland config with Nvidia that I've used for years including kde, gnome, and cosmic. It's not unique to a desktop environment nor are these the first nvidia performance optimizations that have been done since the transition. Every single time I see "it's fixed now finally" from either driver releases or other components like the compositor, it never is. I don't even use Gnome anymore either, I use KDE and I'm not interested in switching back.

The mere fact that AMD and Intel do not have this problem and that it does not exist when using Xorg shows it is a specifically an Nvidia on Wayland problem.

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gmes78@reddit

You act like there's a singular problem that Nvidia needs to fix. That is not how things work. Different Wayland implementations will trigger different driver problems, and issues have to be found and resolved one at a time.

In any case, disregarding measurable improvements and doom-posting about performance isn't going to help things.

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DistantRavioli@reddit

You're clearly more interested than anything in being condescending and dismissive of the fact that it is 2026 and I cannot even reliably drag a window or move my mouse or open a menu without experiencing random frame drops and stutters on the some of the most common hardware configurations there are. I don't care if it's 1 issue, 2 issues, 3 issues. The desktop experience with Nvidia on Wayland SUCKS and it has never stopped sucking for years. I know it's crazy to expect better from the most valuable company in the world. It's laughable that it's this bad still and I'm allowed to be frustrated about it, I'm allowed to express that frustration, and I'm allowed to be skeptical of fixes that claim to solve an issue that may or may not be the same issue and may or may not actually solve the problem (for a desktop environment I don't even use) because we've been down this road so many times before.

I know that it's a monumental ask on the Linux desktop that I'd like to be able to move my mouse from one area of the screen to another without it dropping frames but until then it's too infuriating for me to have as my primary OS like I used to do. It's been a death by 1000 cuts for me.

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Our current automation sets up Xrdp. And changing would require testibg. And from what I see gnome RDP doesn't have great multi user support (?) we have a few remote workstations where many users log in as their own users

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gmes78@reddit

And from what I see gnome RDP doesn't have great multi user support (?) we have a few remote workstations where many users log in as their own users

https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html/administering_rhel_by_using_the_gnome_desktop_environment/remotely-accessing-the-desktop#connecting-to-a-remote-desktop-session-on-a-headless-server-for-multiple-users

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2rad0@reddit

With GNOME 50 that fallback seems to disappear completely. The X11 backend in Mutter is gone, which effectively means the GNOME desktop itself becomes Wayland-only.

Oh no did the foot clan finally finish moving their technodrome through the portal from dimension X? Where is Yamato Yoshi's faithful rat apprentice and his 4 edgy pizza loving mutant turtles when you need him?

I'm curious how people here feel about it.

Things I'm wondering about:

• Remote desktop workflows
• NVIDIA users
• Older apps that still expect X11 behavior
• Power-user tooling

For Remote Desktop, I use anydesk to connect to my workstation running RHEL with Cinnamon on Wayland and so far it works gr8 and as a backup I have already setup and tested Rust Desk which also works

I am personally an nvidia dGPU user (on laptop) and it has been a pretty smooth experience for me on Cachy OS, Fedora, Linux Mint (with Cinnamon on Wayland), Nix OS with labwc etc....the only places where I have had a problem, it wasn't because of wayland (eg. openSUSE installer, for some god forsaken reason their distro's installer requires a nomodeset flag in the boot options and when I was starting out I was really confused with the black screen)

And I do need to use old GUI apps which were made with X11 in mind, either in person at my workstation or via ssh display forwarding and it works gr8 atm (there was a bug some time ago with KDE but I filed a bug report and now it seems to have been fixed)

idk what you are referring to as power user tooling but I use stuff like distrobox and even normal docker containers to run proprietary software which require an X11 server to draw their GUI windows on my personal PC and they have all been working fine with Xwayland so far

grimacefry@reddit

If you like and use Gnome or KDE sure. I have a custom DE built around Openbox, Picom and Tint2. I want to use Wayland, I regularly test and try.... but the alternatives for my setup labwc and Waybar still feel like alpha, missing many features and lots of little annoying issues. I tried again as recently as last week using the Waydog distro as a starting point. Then I go back to my X11 setup and its rock solid perfection, and it disappoints me but Wayland is just not there yet.

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Tropical_Amnesia@reddit

I have a custom DE built around Openbox, Picom

Me too, that's my secondary, or fallback. We should be able to continue like that for a very long time, depending on hardware requirements and maybe what your distribution supports. I'm also using LXQt, again with Openbox/Picom, that setup could be a goner sooner, not sure what LXQt's plans are at this time. Wouldn't be as pretty but still survivable.

I want to use Wayland

That's the difference. I'm not going to make that leap, this is simply a matter of what defines my Linux experience. The day (after) X I'm probably buying my first Mac and learn something really new. Or might even go mobile only, what virtually anybody else did, we're talking about the distant future after all. Possibly by that time mobile means some VR headset and that's it. I'm fully relaxed, for me the Linux desktop dies with X.

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zinsuddu@reddit

Like you. I have a custom DE built over years on fluxbox. It has features not provided by official DEs. I build now on Gentoo on top of XLibre. An advantage of this approach is that I don't have to reinvent myself. I do multiboot and often run Gnome or Xfce but when I want to set myself up for a day of coding it works best on my own Fluxbox/XLibre environment with its rock solid perfection.

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grimacefry@reddit

I'll add that my Raspberry Pi 5 is all Wayland, and even then compared to their older Openbox based distros it again noticeably feels very alpha and unfinished. Conky flakes out all the time, VNC access is sporadic, there is no screensaver utility for Wayland (like Xscreensaver) and so on and so on

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arthurno1@reddit

I'm curious how people here feel about it.

I used Gnome briefly, back in late 90s since it was always default on RedHat Desktop. I never really liked them and I never really like "freedesktop" and things they do. So I haven't been using Gnome for last 20 years at least, and I have no intentions to ever start again.

I am happy with X11 and a simple window manager. Gnome and KDE can do whatever they like and feel, I couldn't care less. As long as my graphics card supports X11, I am happy :).

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I mean, Gnome itself has been borderline unusable ever since Gnome 3. Why not make the backend unusable as well.

Bring on the downvotes.

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humanistazazagrliti@reddit

My current showstoppers:

Is screensharing on Zoom fixed in Gnome Wayland? If not, I need to keep an Xorg fallback on my laptop, so I'm happy I'm on Debian stable.
Are all gaming related things working without Xorg or without losing FPS compared to Xorg?

I sadly can't ignore 1 due to being back to long distance uni. Number 2 I'm too scared to try out, as I don't feel like touching the mess I made with Arch+Xfce+AUR in my gaming rig 😂

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gmes78@reddit

Is screensharing on Zoom fixed in Gnome Wayland?

That was fixed years ago.

Are all gaming related things working without Xorg or without losing FPS compared to Xorg?

Wayland has had performance parity in gaming for years. It was already pretty good in 2021, and that was without the tearing-control protocol to further reduce latency.

(Note that GNOME doesn't yet support the tearing-control protocol, so, if you care about that, use KDE or a wlroots-based WM that supports it, such as Sway.)

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kepstin@reddit

1) I'm not sure. Screensharing has worked on Wayland for a while now, but it uses a new API and requires apps to update. I think the Zoom app has been lazy about this, but if you're able to use Zoom in a web browser it should work there.

2) Yes. In some cases it'll run using XWayland, but that doesn't cause any performance problems. And you need to use Wayland if you want to use HDR or VRR, those will never be supported in X11.

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jknvv13@reddit

Yes.

Are we Wayland yet? https://arewewaylandyet.com/

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Any_Preference5344@reddit

No because wayland isnt stable yet. My wayland drm backend crashes now and then. Also wayland doesnt yet support all X11 apis so all apps will never work on wayland, I myself will never rewrite my applications for wayland because some of them is not even possible due to the design choices of wayland itself.

My GPU is a RTX 3050, and I have zero issues with Wayland using Aurora OS (KDE is the DE).

With GNOME and KDE dropping support, Cosmic been Wayland only since the start and DEs like XFCE and Cinnamon preparing to switch, it's pretty much the end of line for X11, at least on Linux (I don't know about BSD).

I sure hope so.

Holding onto insecure software just because some fossilized users decide they don’t want to update their hardware, dragging everyone else down, is a lost cause.

We all know those are not the users that contribute to the community in any meaningful way other than complain about everything anyway.

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zeno0771@reddit

Holding onto insecure software just because some fossilized users decide they don’t want to update their hardware, dragging everyone else down, is a lost cause.

That's the exact same thinking Microsoft used to force everyone onto Windows 11. "You'll use it and you'll like it" is not a valid problem-solving methodology.

We all know those are not the users that contribute to the community in any meaningful way other than complain about everything anyway.

The lead for XLibre would like a word. He's not only "contributing to the community", he was previously an Xorg dev. As for the rest of your army of strawmen, who the hell do you think got Linux distributions this far in the first place? Hint: Not "nEW mEANS iTS bETTER" hipsters who think their inside-the-box use-case represents the majority.

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thinkingperson@reddit

Nvidia user here. Not upgrading anytime soon I guess.

Also, I'm on Zorin, so it's on an even earlier version of gnome, so there's that.

And I need my xbindkeys and xdotool.

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FlashOfAction@reddit

Gnome is literally the worst DE I have ever used so I really don't care if they go Wayland exclusive

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Pollux442@reddit

Here is what is left for a gamer.

Steam client needs to support Wayland properly so it fixes its local streaming feature as its broken under xwayland.

Wine Wayland enable ny default so latency is low as possible + steam overlay not working which is back to steam support Wayland, which requires CEF to support Wayland and thats been delayed as the Toyota developer(yes that's right a Toyota developer is using a wayland compositor in their car screens) has gone on another holiday or is doing other work even tho they said they were "motivated" to get it done by Jan 2026.

HDR to be enabled by default in wine so the user doesn't need to force enable it as a launch command like what you have to do with wine Wayland aswell.

Thankfully valve have started to enable Wayland as the default session in steamos master branch(not what people are using on steamdeck yet) so these problems should be resolved.

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proton_badger@reddit

This conversation comes up all the time, with all the same comments, it's like Groundhog day.

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DialecticCompilerXP@reddit

The GNOME project can do what they will, but X11 is unlikely to vanish until its full functionality has been replicated, because there still remain workflows that depend on it. For instance the fact that KiCad doesn't work correctly on Wayland is not nothing.

There's also the possibility (however slim) that a fork of X11 or a new X server may pull through and turn out to be the better option.

Some steam games I play don’t work under wayland. No matter the version nor other settings, Gnome or KDE, opening a Mate session (under X11) does the trick.

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Nexis4Jersey@reddit

Do you have the DLLs from Simtropolis?

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Drwankingstein@reddit

the "MPV hack" is a vulkan layer, just like wayland used to use. It doesn't need to be added to MPV at all.

"10bit" is standard HDR, every single movie is 10bit, PQ is by spec 10bit, HLG is 10bit. scRGB is an issue, but it's full 16bit, not 12 bit, but that is also supported on the current WIP.

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Glad-Weight1754@reddit

I remember. I "used" it.

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gmes78@reddit

Or they used Fedora Workstation and didn't have an Nvidia GPU.

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andymaclean19@reddit

I've used Linux as a daily driver for the best part of 20 years with only a few short gaps. I've been using Wayland problem free for a couple of years now. Before that there were may issues with it and I would typically try it and go back to X11 after getting annoyed with glitches (e.g. Wayland sometimes crashing when the laptop woke up after an idle-blank-suspend cycle). It seems pretty good to me and has been since FC 41 and 43 (I use every second one).

I have a mix of X11 and Wayland apps running on top of that and it's actually very difficult to tell the difference these days. For some things I have had to use flatpak/flatseal to *force* wayland mode because the X11 mode has become glitchy for, eg, the slack app now while wayland mode works fine.

For me this is a good direction. I was initially against it when FC started removing X11 support but it all worked out very well IMO.

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chris17453@reddit

I still have all sorts of screen recording issues, even from. Modern apps. And I'm using Nvidia/ gnome.

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bobbie434343@reddit

Laugh in i3wm

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spacelama@reddit

Wayland has been “the future” for a long time, but most people still had the option to fall back to an X11 session when things broke.

With GNOME 50 that fallback seems to disappear completely.

Gnome hasn't been relevant to me since I first tried it 27 or so years ago.

It is still irrelevant to me, and I continue to enjoy X11.

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sleepingonmoon@reddit

Do you think the ecosystem is truly ready for a Wayland-only desktop now?

If Xwayland is also Wayland, probably. Still a long way to go for anything beyond the fundamentals.

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Nuxlight@reddit

It's frustrating for me... I understand what people say about GNOME's autocracy, but I love GNOME's choices. It's not perfect, but for me, the workflow is excellent.

The only reason I need to stick with X11 is the DeskFlow application, which I use every day. They’ve done a great job with the Wayland implementation, but there are still issues with clipboard sharing and key bindings.

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mrdeworde@reddit

My sense is that for 95% of use cases and rank and file users it's fine but for power users it's a bit more iffy, though lots of them seem fine. I've heard mixed reviews from people with accessibility issues too but not sure if that's still a problem.

Eight or nine years ago, when I switched away from Linux for “x” reasons, Wayland was already a headache. This year I came back, and the last thing I expected was that this wouldn’t change after such a long time. I’ve always been a fan of GNOME, and when I returned, it was the first desktop environment I wanted to try. But when I found myself without X11 support, I tried to adapt for two months but couldn’t get myself comfortable, so I ended up switching to KDE. I guess in 6.8 (when they drop X11 support) I’ll have to go back to Openbox.

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InfiniteSheepherder1@reddit

We have only used Wayland at work whenever fedora went Wayland by default. So 10 years now, at work I had to wait until 2019 due to bugs in paradox. For me the xorg era ended 6 years ago

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MysteriousLion01@reddit

Moi je veux wayland sur cinnamon

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dasmau89@reddit

The only time I was missing X11 in the last couple of years was when I wanted to set up an on-screen keyboard. I think there was only one option and it wasn't great, all of the other options where X11

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Nice-Object-5599@reddit

Gnome is not Xorg. Xorg is still good for many pc users.

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Time_Way_6670@reddit

I use KDE Plasma on an NVIDIA card daily and it works fine. Xwayland works fine for X11 apps. I've definitely done remote desktop and screen sharing with Plasma Wayland so I'm not sure exactly how it's broken--that being said I'm not a power user when it comes to RDP.