In response to Wayland Breaks Your Bad Software

I say that the technical merits are irrelevant because I don’t believe that they’re a major factor any more in most people moving or not moving to Wayland.

With only a slight amount of generalization, none of these people will be moved by Wayland’s technical merits. The energetic people who could be persuaded by technical merits to go through switching desktop environments or in some cases replacing hardware (or accepting limited features) have mostly moved to Wayland already. The people who remain on X are there either because they don’t want to rebuild their desktop environment, they don’t want to do without features and performance they currently have, or their Linux distribution doesn’t think their desktop should switch to Wayland yet.

  • @orangeboats
    5•1 year ago

    Most programs you use (provided they are FOSS) probably already support Wayland, they just don’t do it by default. The following list of environment variables can go a long way in making your system largely Wayland-native.

    GDK_BACKEND=wayland
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
#SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland # this one is dangerous if you play games
    • @[email protected]
      2•1 year ago

      My desktop is basically just used for gaming so like nothing there is FOSS. My laptop is used for work which requires a ton of remoting so again Wayland would not work.

      • @woelkchen
        4•1 year ago

        My laptop is used for work which requires a ton of remoting so again Wayland would not work.

        Funny how a 10 second “wayland remote desktop” web search disproves that claim.

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          Last time I tried that it just launched through xwayland. And currently my laptop is using X11 because Nvidia GPU so I can’t re-test.

          • @woelkchen
            1•1 year ago

            And currently my laptop is using X11 because Nvidia GPU

            All notebook released in the last several years with an NVidia dGPU also have an AMD or Intel iGPU.

            • @[email protected]
              1•1 year ago

              Sure and X11 actually works with it’s GPU while Wayland causes more issues than its worth. I’m not gonna use software that locks off my GPU especially if that software has no advantages for me.

              • @woelkchen
                1•1 year ago

                Wayland causes more issues than its worth. I’m not gonna use software that locks off my GPU

                Sure, shift the blame of NVidia’s shitty Linux and Wayland support to Wayland. How on earth could a multi-billion dollar company ever manage to make proper drivers only 11 years after Wayland 1.0 has been released…? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! WAYLAND BAD!

                • @[email protected]
                  1•1 year ago

                  Never said that. It’s probably going to be better at some point but for the average user X11 is still a better option.

                  • @woelkchen
                    1•1 year ago

                    for the average user X11 is still a better option

                    The average user has Intel/AMD iGPUs and uses whatever is default which in fact is Wayland in case of Gnome and Steam Deck Game Mode.

      • @orangeboats
        1•1 year ago

        On the other hand… if you are primarily gaming on your PC, then the moment Wine supports Wayland 90% of your programs will be Wayland-native.

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          And that would be great if/when it happens but currently Wayland offers very little over X11 to the average user. Better multi monitor support is like the only thing.

          • @orangeboats
            2•1 year ago

            Theoretically an average user should feel nothing. The benefits of Wayland are usually more visible when more modern technologies are involved, for example VRR, high DPI, HDR, etc.