4 ms·

I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works, but then it really only works for a subset of th

I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works, but then it really only works for a subset of things. For the rest it's actually worse than Xorg. Multiscreen is Xorg is kinda mushy so I thought maybe Wayland fixes it, but no it doesn't. Wayland is now 12 years old and everything is still half-baked. It quotes an intel developer saying they don't want to do any more stuff on Xorg. But the reality is that as much as I admire intels open source contributions. I don't remember a time where all the features in the Intel driver actually fully worked. But sure, maybe it's an Xorg issue, or they don't know how to do release management. Either way, Wayland doesn't seem to solve the problems it promised to fix.

p_l 6y ago
Having used Intel open source drivers for 12 years, I've never lost the opinion I gained back with X3100 gpu that Intel is the darling because technically open sourcing the driver papered over the many, many faults of their code. Whenever I had a chance to run on nvidia binary drivers, the only things I occasionally missed were some new features, or having to wait a bit longer to update the kernel. Stability was better, drivers more performant, and I don't remember daily fighting with memory leaks. And X.Org's driver architecture could be replaced completely (in fact, it could be made to run on the same stack as Wayland) - it wouldn't be the first compositing Xserver around, and could use methods that would deal with noticeable to many lag involved in compositor-based UI.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  > Whenever I had a chance to run on nvidia binary drivers, the only things I occasionally missed were some new features, or having to wait a bit longer to update the kernel. Stability was better, drivers more performant, and I don't remember daily fighting with memory leaks. I had a Nvidia Riva TNT2 and later on an Nvidia GeForce. I ran Linux on it. I had stability issues with the driver, but I solved it the following way: ran one X server with a DE, and another X server with Nvidia's proprietary driver (mostly for games). This way, if I had to kill the X server using Nvidia's driver I didn't lose any work. If that wasn't enough, all the bloody time there were massive security problems found in Nvidia's proprietary driver. I don't know if that is still the case, cause I switched away to ATi in the 00s, and Intel graphics cards + ThinkPad as laptop. ATi/AMD has come a long way ever since. Their FOSS drivers are stable, and they deliver (see various Phoronix benchmarks).
- ATsch 6y ago
  > And X.Org's driver architecture could be replaced completely (in fact, it could be made to run on the same stack as Wayland) Many distros do this already. Both for graphics drivers (xf86-video-modesetting) and input drivers (xorg-input-libinput)
  - p_l 6y ago
    There's more to it - X.Org is based on lowest-common-denominator code from early days of X11, and the internal driver system despite upgrades is a bit lacking. There's glamor, but AFAIK it's not as tested as it should, and is still shoehorned into old model. An example of not following the old model is Xsgi, which was (hw) compositing and quite ingenious in many ways.
solarkraft 6y ago
Wayland is a protocol. It has nothing to do with multi screen support. You're talking about the compositor you used. The one I use handles multi-screen setups quite well.
- vageli 6y ago
  > Wayland is a protocol. It has nothing to do with multi screen support. You're talking about the compositor you used. The one I use handles multi-screen setups quite well. Which compositor do you use?
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    I use Wayfire [0], a customizable compositor based on wlroots, the same base as sway. It's quite involved and not absolutely perfect yet, but it has some features I haven't yet seen on other DEs like being able to swipe horizontally on your touchpad to smoothly switch workspaces (following your fingers) and the satisfaction of having it properly configured is pretty high. There have been 3 issues I've had regarding it, 2 I'd call minor: - I haven't found a way to rearrange external displays, though it is theoretically supported - After a bug in my TV switching to the lowest possible resolution through switching the input in home assistant it would not work with 4K again until after a complete reboot (so it may not even be a wlroots issue) - XWayland apps are unresponsive in the upper half of the second screen (4K at 1x scaling) Using mostly native Wayland apps neither of these have been deal breakers for me. Something under-discussed is that virtual desktops are per-screen, which I find quite cool. So that's my adventure with Wayfire, but I would assume that Gnome and KDE have perfected multi-screen usage on and off of Wayland by now. [0]: https://wayfire.org/ https://wayfire.org/
    - selectodude 6y ago
      >XWayland apps are unresponsive in the upper half of the second screen (4K at 1x scaling) Seems to be a bit of a dealbreaker for people who want to use 100 percent of their screen instead of only 75 percent.
    - ammen99 6y ago
CyberRabbi 6y ago
I use sway with no issues and a much snappier Desktop with no screen tearing.
josteink 6y ago
> I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works I use Wayland daily and have for a few years. It’s clearly gotten better, and I rarely encounter problems. I do have my load of applications still running in XWayland though. But yes. Support for varying DPI in my multi-monitor setup is handled much better on Wayland than on X11. I would say much better than on Windows too.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  How's the forced v-sync? I assume all games run XWayland, which makes it a non-issue. (Otherwise, it'd presumably be an FPS hit in a world where adaptive sync [like G-SYNC but not really FreeSync since the latter doesn't really work in Linux lol] makes tearing a thing of the past and obviates v-sync entirely.) Also, can you use xdotool for key input redirection or screen capture programs and stuff yet?
  - josteink 6y ago
    > How's the forced v-sync? Not sure what you're talking about. Haven't noticed any adverse negative effects. It's super nice to have a desktop without any tearing though. > I assume all games run XWayland, which makes it a non-issue. I don't do PC-gaming. > Also, can you use xdotool for key input redirection Not sure what xdotool is. I'm using sway[1] with libinput. I haven't had a need to use external tools beyond what they support natively. > or screen capture programs and stuff yet? I have no issues to do screenshots ad-hoc (in fact, I have keybindings to do this, and throw it right in the wayland clipboard). I do notice that most Xwayland-based programs which tries to do screen-sharing fails spectacularly though. [1] https://github.com/swaywm/sway https://github.com/swaywm/sway

p_l 6y ago

Having used Intel open source drivers for 12 years, I've never lost the opinion I gained back with X3100 gpu that Intel is the darling because technically open sourcing the driver papered over the many, many faults of their code. Whenever I had a chance to run on nvidia binary drivers, the only things I occasionally missed were some new features, or having to wait a bit longer to update the kernel. Stability was better, drivers more performant, and I don't remember daily fighting with memory leaks. And X.Org's driver architecture could be replaced completely (in fact, it could be made to run on the same stack as Wayland) - it wouldn't be the first compositing Xserver around, and could use methods that would deal with noticeable to many lag involved in compositor-based UI.

Fnoord 6y ago
> Whenever I had a chance to run on nvidia binary drivers, the only things I occasionally missed were some new features, or having to wait a bit longer to update the kernel. Stability was better, drivers more performant, and I don't remember daily fighting with memory leaks. I had a Nvidia Riva TNT2 and later on an Nvidia GeForce. I ran Linux on it. I had stability issues with the driver, but I solved it the following way: ran one X server with a DE, and another X server with Nvidia's proprietary driver (mostly for games). This way, if I had to kill the X server using Nvidia's driver I didn't lose any work. If that wasn't enough, all the bloody time there were massive security problems found in Nvidia's proprietary driver. I don't know if that is still the case, cause I switched away to ATi in the 00s, and Intel graphics cards + ThinkPad as laptop. ATi/AMD has come a long way ever since. Their FOSS drivers are stable, and they deliver (see various Phoronix benchmarks).
ATsch 6y ago
> And X.Org's driver architecture could be replaced completely (in fact, it could be made to run on the same stack as Wayland) Many distros do this already. Both for graphics drivers (xf86-video-modesetting) and input drivers (xorg-input-libinput)
- p_l 6y ago
  There's more to it - X.Org is based on lowest-common-denominator code from early days of X11, and the internal driver system despite upgrades is a bit lacking. There's glamor, but AFAIK it's not as tested as it should, and is still shoehorned into old model. An example of not following the old model is Xsgi, which was (hw) compositing and quite ingenious in many ways.

solarkraft 6y ago

Wayland is a protocol. It has nothing to do with multi screen support. You're talking about the compositor you used. The one I use handles multi-screen setups quite well.

vageli 6y ago
> Wayland is a protocol. It has nothing to do with multi screen support. You're talking about the compositor you used. The one I use handles multi-screen setups quite well. Which compositor do you use?
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I use Wayfire [0], a customizable compositor based on wlroots, the same base as sway. It's quite involved and not absolutely perfect yet, but it has some features I haven't yet seen on other DEs like being able to swipe horizontally on your touchpad to smoothly switch workspaces (following your fingers) and the satisfaction of having it properly configured is pretty high. There have been 3 issues I've had regarding it, 2 I'd call minor: - I haven't found a way to rearrange external displays, though it is theoretically supported - After a bug in my TV switching to the lowest possible resolution through switching the input in home assistant it would not work with 4K again until after a complete reboot (so it may not even be a wlroots issue) - XWayland apps are unresponsive in the upper half of the second screen (4K at 1x scaling) Using mostly native Wayland apps neither of these have been deal breakers for me. Something under-discussed is that virtual desktops are per-screen, which I find quite cool. So that's my adventure with Wayfire, but I would assume that Gnome and KDE have perfected multi-screen usage on and off of Wayland by now. [0]: https://wayfire.org/ https://wayfire.org/
  - selectodude 6y ago
    >XWayland apps are unresponsive in the upper half of the second screen (4K at 1x scaling) Seems to be a bit of a dealbreaker for people who want to use 100 percent of their screen instead of only 75 percent.
  - ammen99 6y ago

CyberRabbi 6y ago

I use sway with no issues and a much snappier Desktop with no screen tearing.

josteink 6y ago

> I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works I use Wayland daily and have for a few years. It’s clearly gotten better, and I rarely encounter problems. I do have my load of applications still running in XWayland though. But yes. Support for varying DPI in my multi-monitor setup is handled much better on Wayland than on X11. I would say much better than on Windows too.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
How's the forced v-sync? I assume all games run XWayland, which makes it a non-issue. (Otherwise, it'd presumably be an FPS hit in a world where adaptive sync [like G-SYNC but not really FreeSync since the latter doesn't really work in Linux lol] makes tearing a thing of the past and obviates v-sync entirely.) Also, can you use xdotool for key input redirection or screen capture programs and stuff yet?
- josteink 6y ago
  > How's the forced v-sync? Not sure what you're talking about. Haven't noticed any adverse negative effects. It's super nice to have a desktop without any tearing though. > I assume all games run XWayland, which makes it a non-issue. I don't do PC-gaming. > Also, can you use xdotool for key input redirection Not sure what xdotool is. I'm using sway[1] with libinput. I haven't had a need to use external tools beyond what they support natively. > or screen capture programs and stuff yet? I have no issues to do screenshots ad-hoc (in fact, I have keybindings to do this, and throw it right in the wayland clipboard). I do notice that most Xwayland-based programs which tries to do screen-sharing fails spectacularly though. [1] https://github.com/swaywm/sway https://github.com/swaywm/sway