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For me the most frustrating thing about Wayland is that with Wayland a crash anywhere in the stack means I lose all my work. I really like the fact that under X

For me the most frustrating thing about Wayland is that with Wayland a crash anywhere in the stack means I lose all my work. I really like the fact that under X I can simply restart my DE after a crash to get a working desktop back and the open apps are unaffected, this saved me so many times. I tried Wayland for a while, but after losing all my work twice to crashes I came back running to X.

badsectoracula 5y ago
I love X, etc and use it all the time, but let's be honest, X isn't exactly rock solid either. I had X crash due to video mode switches (mainly via games) so many times that nowadays unless i know a game behaves nicely, i tend to first run it under gamescope[0] which shields against these issues. I do find it kinda amusing that my only use for Wayland so far has been to avoid driver issues by running a compositor inside an X window :-P [0] https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope - it is a fork of Valve's wayland compositor which actually works under X11 inside a window and effectively creates a nested XWayland environment but also attempts to minimize latency... it doesn't eliminate it completely but outside of twitchy shooters it is ok
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I have never had that ever happen, I am guessing nvidia? Are you aware of VFIO? Its probably a better solution, 100% gaming on linux with a Windows VM that uses GPU passthrough.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    No, AMD, i have a Radeon RX 5700 XT with the open source drivers. One of the sure-fire ways to crash the entire server seems to be trying to run Wizardry 6 from GOG via Wine, which essentially runs DOSBox for Windows. Somewhere when it tries to change video mode it crashes. Note that this doesn't happen if i use Gamescope under X (which essentially runs Wine under XWayland under its own Wayland compositor that runs in an X window). Of course since this is a DOS game i can simply run it with native DOSBox, but this is just a way to replicate the issue. Since i've found workarounds for these issues i didn't bother much, but i might try and see why it crashes at some point. Also FWIW i do not really consider "gaming on Linux" when i have to use a Windows VM. Besides Wine (well, Wine staging) nowadays works perfectly fine. And if i wanted to use Windows, i'd just be using Windows :-P.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I would rather not reboot and run windows as a captive OS. Would you call using the Win11 android emulator gaming on Windows?
      - badsectoracula 5y ago
        I'd rather not bother with Windows at all.
  - brnt 5y ago
    Thing is, with Proton and X I have a rock steady and capable env to do all of my gaming, and I have been doing so for years now. I've no need or desire to bring windows back into the mix. Wayland messes that up, on top of frequent crashiness. Wayland does not solve any problem I have, but it does break most of the things that were working well.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I don't like windows either, just the best method to run 100% games. >Wayland messes that up, on top of frequent crashiness. Wayland does not solve any problem I have, but it does break most of the things that were working well. That's all I get from the thread, it works well as long as you don't do anything other than use the browser.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  The thing is, with X there were a lot of separate parts - the display server, the window manager, and the compositor were separate packages and if either of the latter crashed and you were set up for it you could keep going. With Wayland, the display server is the window manager and compositor - and is directly responsible for handling all audio, video, input devices, color management, clipboard, and probably other things I'm forgetting - so there's only one thing to crash and it's game over. This also is a pain in terms of features, because you can't tack on, say, a clipboard manager, it has to be directly supported, hence things like GNOME, KDE, and basically everything else (via wlroots) having different, incompatible ways to do things like screen shots.

badsectoracula 5y ago

I love X, etc and use it all the time, but let's be honest, X isn't exactly rock solid either. I had X crash due to video mode switches (mainly via games) so many times that nowadays unless i know a game behaves nicely, i tend to first run it under gamescope[0] which shields against these issues. I do find it kinda amusing that my only use for Wayland so far has been to avoid driver issues by running a compositor inside an X window :-P [0] https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope - it is a fork of Valve's wayland compositor which actually works under X11 inside a window and effectively creates a nested XWayland environment but also attempts to minimize latency... it doesn't eliminate it completely but outside of twitchy shooters it is ok

GhettoComputers 5y ago
I have never had that ever happen, I am guessing nvidia? Are you aware of VFIO? Its probably a better solution, 100% gaming on linux with a Windows VM that uses GPU passthrough.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  No, AMD, i have a Radeon RX 5700 XT with the open source drivers. One of the sure-fire ways to crash the entire server seems to be trying to run Wizardry 6 from GOG via Wine, which essentially runs DOSBox for Windows. Somewhere when it tries to change video mode it crashes. Note that this doesn't happen if i use Gamescope under X (which essentially runs Wine under XWayland under its own Wayland compositor that runs in an X window). Of course since this is a DOS game i can simply run it with native DOSBox, but this is just a way to replicate the issue. Since i've found workarounds for these issues i didn't bother much, but i might try and see why it crashes at some point. Also FWIW i do not really consider "gaming on Linux" when i have to use a Windows VM. Besides Wine (well, Wine staging) nowadays works perfectly fine. And if i wanted to use Windows, i'd just be using Windows :-P.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I would rather not reboot and run windows as a captive OS. Would you call using the Win11 android emulator gaming on Windows?
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      I'd rather not bother with Windows at all.
- brnt 5y ago
  Thing is, with Proton and X I have a rock steady and capable env to do all of my gaming, and I have been doing so for years now. I've no need or desire to bring windows back into the mix. Wayland messes that up, on top of frequent crashiness. Wayland does not solve any problem I have, but it does break most of the things that were working well.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I don't like windows either, just the best method to run 100% games. >Wayland messes that up, on top of frequent crashiness. Wayland does not solve any problem I have, but it does break most of the things that were working well. That's all I get from the thread, it works well as long as you don't do anything other than use the browser.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
The thing is, with X there were a lot of separate parts - the display server, the window manager, and the compositor were separate packages and if either of the latter crashed and you were set up for it you could keep going. With Wayland, the display server is the window manager and compositor - and is directly responsible for handling all audio, video, input devices, color management, clipboard, and probably other things I'm forgetting - so there's only one thing to crash and it's game over. This also is a pain in terms of features, because you can't tack on, say, a clipboard manager, it has to be directly supported, hence things like GNOME, KDE, and basically everything else (via wlroots) having different, incompatible ways to do things like screen shots.