3 ms·

I don't have a firm answer, but considering how much Wayland pushes off on the compositor (seemingly everything, nothing is ever Wayland's fault or responsibili

I don't have a firm answer, but considering how much Wayland pushes off on the compositor (seemingly everything, nothing is ever Wayland's fault or responsibility) I'd expect that the compositor (every desktop environment or WM also needs to be a compositor, now) crashing is identical to all of Xorg crashing, not just the DE or WM under Xorg crashing.

dyingkneepad 5y ago
You are right. The compositor crashing is equivalent to X crashing: everything goes boom. In the X world, if gnome-session dies another one gets automatically started and you may not even realize what happened.
- simion314 5y ago
  So KDE will have same issues ? I am wondering if they can architect it somehow where you put minimal code in the compositor and move the window management, and the complex effects (like zoom and animation) into a different process. If Linux would have decided to use Mir would have at least shared same "server" code and probably also get around this issues but is hard to promote quality when Gnome and RedHat has a different idea.
  - intergalplan 5y ago
    In fact, KDE might have entirely different issues that cause the same problems. The frustrating thing about Wayland's design is that every single WM/DE now gets to have its own, unique set of "crash the world" stability bugs.
    - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
      (I'm not denying that possibility, and I'm only one datapoint, but) In practice I have only ever seen one DE (GNOME) with these "crash the world" stability bugs, and they also happen on X, which makes me think the problems are not with Wayland.
      - simion314 5y ago
        GNOME crashes a lot probably because of how people are forced to patch the DE with extensions or maybe even the bad quality of their code, but I have crashes of KWin or Plasma hangs sometimes on X , so KDE is not perfect and if I would use wayland on my NVIDIA system I would be hit with work losing crashes. KWin and Plasma are pretty complex so there will always be bugs , this is why I am wondering if there can be soem kind of refactoring to a safer architecture.
Quekid5 5y ago
> (seemingly everything, nothing is ever Wayland's fault or responsibility) That's because there is no such thing as "wayland" actually running on your machine -- it's simply a protocol for compositors and applications to talk to each other.
- intergalplan 5y ago
  > That's because there is no such thing as "wayland" actually running on your machine -- it's simply a protocol for compositors and applications to talk to each other. "Wayland" is also an implementation. The protocol and implementation share a name. By the look of things, Gnome does indeed require it (that is, various "libwayland" packages) on Ubuntu.
  - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
    (I'm not the one who downvoted you, so have an upvote, but) I think they renamed their reference implementation to "Weston" to differentiate it from the Wayland spec/interface. Gnome implements its own, as does KDE, as does Sway. But I'm a simple person, and in my eyes even bare Weston is "good enough" in that "startx" sort of way...
    - intergalplan 5y ago
      They have a compositor named Weston, yes, but then what is libwayland, on which Gnome (and others) depend? Wikipedia: > Wayland is a communication protocol that specifies the communication between a display server and its clients, as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. That's the C library also named Wayland and made by the people guiding the Wayland spec on which Gnome depends, no? Or are there three things going by the name Wayland, one of them not actually associated with the Wayland project?
      - Quekid5 5y ago
        They could have perhaps done better to differentiate All The Things, but libwayland is just a C implementation of speaking the Wayland protocol...? AFAIUI, e.g. KDE doesn't actually use any of that. (I could be wrong, I honestly don't care that much about the minutiae.)

dyingkneepad 5y ago

You are right. The compositor crashing is equivalent to X crashing: everything goes boom. In the X world, if gnome-session dies another one gets automatically started and you may not even realize what happened.

simion314 5y ago
So KDE will have same issues ? I am wondering if they can architect it somehow where you put minimal code in the compositor and move the window management, and the complex effects (like zoom and animation) into a different process. If Linux would have decided to use Mir would have at least shared same "server" code and probably also get around this issues but is hard to promote quality when Gnome and RedHat has a different idea.
- intergalplan 5y ago
  In fact, KDE might have entirely different issues that cause the same problems. The frustrating thing about Wayland's design is that every single WM/DE now gets to have its own, unique set of "crash the world" stability bugs.
  - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
    (I'm not denying that possibility, and I'm only one datapoint, but) In practice I have only ever seen one DE (GNOME) with these "crash the world" stability bugs, and they also happen on X, which makes me think the problems are not with Wayland.
    - simion314 5y ago
      GNOME crashes a lot probably because of how people are forced to patch the DE with extensions or maybe even the bad quality of their code, but I have crashes of KWin or Plasma hangs sometimes on X , so KDE is not perfect and if I would use wayland on my NVIDIA system I would be hit with work losing crashes. KWin and Plasma are pretty complex so there will always be bugs , this is why I am wondering if there can be soem kind of refactoring to a safer architecture.

Quekid5 5y ago

> (seemingly everything, nothing is ever Wayland's fault or responsibility) That's because there is no such thing as "wayland" actually running on your machine -- it's simply a protocol for compositors and applications to talk to each other.

intergalplan 5y ago
> That's because there is no such thing as "wayland" actually running on your machine -- it's simply a protocol for compositors and applications to talk to each other. "Wayland" is also an implementation. The protocol and implementation share a name. By the look of things, Gnome does indeed require it (that is, various "libwayland" packages) on Ubuntu.
- CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
  (I'm not the one who downvoted you, so have an upvote, but) I think they renamed their reference implementation to "Weston" to differentiate it from the Wayland spec/interface. Gnome implements its own, as does KDE, as does Sway. But I'm a simple person, and in my eyes even bare Weston is "good enough" in that "startx" sort of way...
  - intergalplan 5y ago
    They have a compositor named Weston, yes, but then what is libwayland, on which Gnome (and others) depend? Wikipedia: > Wayland is a communication protocol that specifies the communication between a display server and its clients, as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. That's the C library also named Wayland and made by the people guiding the Wayland spec on which Gnome depends, no? Or are there three things going by the name Wayland, one of them not actually associated with the Wayland project?
    - Quekid5 5y ago
      They could have perhaps done better to differentiate All The Things, but libwayland is just a C implementation of speaking the Wayland protocol...? AFAIUI, e.g. KDE doesn't actually use any of that. (I could be wrong, I honestly don't care that much about the minutiae.)