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Tell HN: Gnome on Wayland Is Amazing

• Flankk 5y ago
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    > hardware The person said GNOME is like Mac OS. They didn't say their laptop is like a Mac. > software Insomuch that GNOME is not Mac OS, and Mac OS is not GNOME, yes that's true. > user experience Is a personal preference. There are a lot of completely asinine choices on both GNOME and Mac OS, and it usually comes down to what you are used to and what you are willing to tolerate. > design see above. > ecosystem this is definitely a huge thing. I personally prefer to stay without any ecosystem because I consider it putting all my eggs in one large basket, but the convenience is undeniable.
  • archseer 5y ago
    What a silly statement. That's like saying a Mac is an overpriced machine for developers that are forced to use Xcode. Different strokes for different folks.
    • sprash 5y ago
      It's not silly. The target market for GNOME is nobody (except maybe GNOME developers themselves).
      • archseer 5y ago
        I personally don't use GNOME either but I believe Linux isn't only used by JS developers.
      • christophilus 5y ago
        Guess I’m nobody, then. I really like Gnome. It works and gets out of my way. I don’t have to spend days configuring it or researching edge cases (like in WMs) and I don’t have to fiddle like crazy to make it look consistent (like on other DEs). One of the nice things about Linux is, I can choose Gnome and you can choose whatever it is that you like. There’s plenty of room for diversity of opinion.
    • Flankk 5y ago
      The different folks are called poor people. Nobody is turning down a macbook pro for a dusty thinkpad running linux. Get real.
  • MrDresden 5y ago
    That is just as silly as it gets. Not a JS developer. Run a beast of a machine. Use Ubuntu & Gnome.
• immnn 5y ago
  I fully agree. And Wayland supports HiDPI with fractured scaling very well. Also tablet devices work better on Wayland. If you’re running Linux on a Surface, you should definitely switch to Wayland. It’s really time to ditch XServer and I wonder why Ubuntu and derivates still use it by default.
  • pkolaczk 5y ago
    > And Wayland supports HiDPI with fractured scaling very well Very well only for the apps that cooperate well, e.g. GTK-based apps. Non-native apps (eg IntelliJ Idea) on my Ubuntu desktop were blurry when I used any kind of scaling - not just fractional scaling but any scaling != 100%. Reducing the display resolution by 2x resulted in much crispier rendering than full resolution with 2x scaling for those apps.
    • chousuke 5y ago
      I think that's because "non-native" apps run inside an X server running as a Wayland client. So you're basically getting the X experience :/
      • francasso 5y ago
        That's not the case, intellij text rendering looks perfect on X/Gnome with fractional scaling (at least for me)
        • kaba0 5y ago
          But you are still using it as an X app, which uses X configs over wayland’s.
  • int_19h 5y ago
    Isn't fractional scaling on Wayland done by integer upscaling followed by downscaling? Or is it just a Gnome thing?
    • 5y ago
• notemaker 5y ago
  I'd like to use Wayland, but it's not stable enough. I've lost count of the number of times I've lost work due to a segfault and then being logged out. And lots of applications still don't support it for screensharing (looking at you slack). My bug in particular seems to be related with thunderbolt or USB c connected monitors. A disconnect will prompt a segfault. I'd like to contribute with a proper bug report and I probably would if I hadn't had everything working with gnome+X. But now I just can't motivate spending time on it over other things in my life. Hope they have telemetry for segfaults at least.
  • robert_foss 5y ago
    Wayland is just a protocol. The desktop environment or application is likely your actual problem.
    • sprash 5y ago
      Yes a protocol that has no standardized way to share screen content. And as such it is completely usless for todays workflow which is dominated by video call meetings.
      • kaba0 5y ago
        Then how come I use both teams and zoom just fine under wayland? Pipewire support is there for a long time now.
        • sprash 5y ago
          > long time Considering the age of Wayland it's not that long. Besides that, Pipewire is not part of the Wayland protocol. This means external protocols now have to jump in fixing the deficiencies of Wayland.
          • kaba0 5y ago
            No, it means that a problem best solved elsewhere is solved.. elsewhere. Screen sharing is streaming, where audio is also relevant and the two have to be synced. It would be plain incorrect to solve the two thing separately.
• knighthack 5y ago
  I tried to use Wayland, but simply speaking the way it handles/supersedes earlier input mechanisms - which some seem to call a form of security theatre - is disruptive. For instance, I have bound keyboard shortcuts to manage windows via `wmctrl`. It's absolutely crucial to my workflow, since I use an ultrawide monitor. wmctrl is mostly impossible with Wayland, and which required me to revert back to X11. Certain apps also sometimes do not work in X11 (e.g. Ubuntu's Software Center, for reasons lost to me), which then forces me to use Wayland. I've noted a couple of other grievances, so I do not agree that Wayland is absolutely a good thing for now (at least for me).
  • dathinab 5y ago
    wmctrl is X11 specific (it says so itself in it's man page) so it obviously wont work. (Through yes some X11-specific programs did got wayland support.) But all(? at least most) of it's functionality is still supported at least on sway.
    • oauea 5y ago
      > But all(? at least most) of it's functionality is still supported at least on sway. This thread is about gnome and wayland. Sway implements a bunch of extra stuff because wayland itself is unusable. See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots
      • dathinab 5y ago
        The thread has pretty much devolved into a Wayland discussion. And I'm pretty sure there are ways to do so too on Gnome (but idk.). Sure what is missing is a standardized interface to do so. But that could still be added as another Wayland protocol, or through desktop-portal or similar. Just people need to care enough to add such an protocol.
  • KSPAtlas 5y ago
    Try Wayfire, its compiz for Wayland
  • 5y ago
• nurettin 5y ago
  It's like the python3 adoption story again. Wayland compositor with hw acceleration doesn't work well with programs specifically written for x11. I gave up on it fast once I realized that I can't take screenshots or record the desktops.
  • imtringued 5y ago
    I suppose I am too stupid to realize that because I take screenshots and record the desktop just fine.
    • nurettin 5y ago
      Specifically, I record the browser window or the terminal window to demonstrate bugs and accomplished tasks for projects. (I don't have to, but it feels like a nice jest and documents things clearly) Do you know of a program which does that on wayland with hw acceleration? I admit I couldn't do it a few months ago and haven't tried since.
      • GrayShade 5y ago
        OBS Studio via PipeWire.
        • nurettin 5y ago
          That is a good alternative. Yes I could set up a scene in OBS. Or maybe I could fallback to x where things work.
      • jeroenhd 5y ago
        Kooha has replaced Peek for me as a screen recorder on Wayland. OBS also works, but it's not exactly designed for quick and easy screen recording.
    • Sharparam 5y ago
      What WM and screenshot tool are you using? I'm using Plasma on Wayland and there doesn't seem to be any screenshot tool that works properly. Grim only works on Sway. Flameshot's GUI mode doesn't recognize the secondary screen. Spectacle fails to copy the screenshot to clipboard when running in background mode. KSnip doesn't have a region select mode. Shutter only works in X. Out of Spectacle and Flameshot, Spectacle is more responsive and works across both screens. I'm thinking I can work around the clipboard issue by having it save to a temporary file, and use `inotifywait` to monitor that file and copy to clipboard with `wl-copy`. I wish I wouldn't have to use such workarounds though.
• Shadonototra 5y ago
  Gnome is a javascript macOS, they took everything wrong from macOS and made it even more wrong and bad They needed the help of Canonical to fix the stupid performance issues Whenever i have to use a GTK client with the stupid giant headers, i want to nuke my linux partition It is a stupid desktop environment, and they have a stupid gui library that is infecting every distro With gnome, there is no way linux will become mainstream The only time linux managed to penetrate the mainstream market was Ubuntu with Unity7 Thanks to red hat, everything got killed Keep pushing gnome if you want windows to still dominate despite it being a virus
  • KSPAtlas 5y ago
    GNOME can be good for new users joining, expecting a new UI
  • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    Seems like some good points and knowledge combined with an emotional over reaction. I use Gnome for the "Hide Top Bar" extension minimalism. The large window title bars are indeed ugly as can be and I guess must be a reflection of some of the disorganization you refer to.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > With gnome, there is no way linux will become mainstream You can ship turd and make it mainstream (as Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again). Shipping computers linux pre-installed is what makes any OS/desktop adopted in large scale, not design/quality. Ubuntu shipped pre-installed on Dell and a bunch of other computers with strong push from Canonical.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    You are already bad at the javascript word.. just look up the gnome-shell code base, it uses js as a scripting language, nothing performant-oriented is implemented in it for God’s sake. Is luascript the bottleneck of AAA games as well?
  • sebow 5y ago
    A little bit of history note here: the macOS design is in most part copied from gnome 2, which i'm pretty sure was not javascript anything.
• ParadisoShlee 5y ago
  Propaganda. Wayland has usability issues they've yet to fix after 10 years. and GNOME is sadly a DE that's just javascript. The Linux Desktop deserves better than GNOME, and sadly KDE is the one that's gotten massively improved in the last 10 years.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > Propaganda You just accused me of writing up "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view".
    • semi-extrinsic 5y ago
      Except from the "political" part of the definition, which everyone understands from the current context that this does not apply, what part do you disagree with? You are saying "everything works amazingly well". Others are reporting "simple things don't work, sometimes it just segfaults". Of course those other people can perceive your post as a form of propaganda. I have never used Wayland (I don't have a good reason to try it), so I don't know whether you or GP is correct. But there is obviously a possibility that GP is correct. You could even both be correct, if there are hardware-related bugs that you just happen to not experience.
      • fivelessminutes 5y ago
        Even a little experience with it would raise the chance the three paras you wrote on the topic might be worth reading.
  • Lio 5y ago
    Would you mind saying what those usability issues are? Sometimes it's very useful to flag these things up so that they can either be acknowledged or fixed. Sometimes, if you're lucky, they actually have been solved since the last time you checked.
    • bmn__ 5y ago
• rincewind 5y ago
  Gnome is the worst of the wayland compositors in terms of spec compliance. KDE and sway are much better in this regard. What good is having protocol specifications when the reference implementation does not implement it, and Gnome, the biggest Wayland desktop, does its own thing anyway? I am still waiting for Gnome to implement server-side decorations and for proper drag and drop between windows.
  • jhoechtl 5y ago
    > I am still waiting for Gnome to implement server-side decorations [...] This decision of the Gnome folks really means a very bad fragmentation of the Wayland infrastructure
  • vetinari 5y ago
    > Gnome is the worst of the wayland compositors in terms of spec compliance. KDE and sway are much better in this regard. What good is having protocol specifications when the reference implementation does not implement it, and Gnome, the biggest Wayland desktop, does its own thing anyway? The point of extensions being extension and not being a part of core protocol is being optional, you know. On the other hand, compliant clients have to run and behave correctly without them being present. > I am still waiting for Gnome to implement server-side decorations Sorry little wizard, you are going to wait for a while. Don't hold your breath meanwhile :/ That being said, it is not going to be implemented anytime soon. Intentionally. For a good reasons.
• roenxi 5y ago
  It is unfortunate that so many of the early comments are negative. Either Wayland is the future, or something that learns from Wayland's mistakes and leverages its ideas is. There is a really fertile field right now for experimentation in the world of compositors but I think people have been scared away by the long dark era of X Windows + binary graphics drivers. Maybe we're going to see a lot more of it on HN in the next decade? What kept me off Wayland was the screenshots thing, but the argument in favour of the idea is strong. The downside is Wayland's conception of permissions and interactions is too basic and crippled adoption for a few years but the fundamentals (blocking cross-application snooping) is going to be necessary. Operating systems have to be less trusting.
  • semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    After 10 years I still don't understand why I should switch away from X11. It is mature and is still being developed (latest xorg-server release is from January 2022). It does what I need. From my perspective, Wayland is like btrfs - it doesn't seem to offer me anything major worth switching for, and there are still gotcha's lurking.
    • fsflover 5y ago
      > why I should switch away from X11 Security: https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2011/04/23/linux-security-circus-on-gui-isolation.html https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2011/04/23/linux-security-c....
      • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
        In the vanishingly unlikely case that that matters, you can just run things in Xephyr. You can even use firejail to automate it, which is probably a good idea anyways if you're running malicious code on your machine.
        • fsflover 5y ago
          I prefer running Qubes OS, but Xephyr is of course also a possibility.
• ceronman 5y ago
  My experience is very similar. I tried the first iterations of Gnome 3 and was very disappointed. At some point I tried Windows+WSL but that was a complete disaster. A couple of years ago I decided to try Fedora+Gnome+Wayland. It is an outstanding experience. Everything is smooth, the UI is beautiful. Now with PipeWire and Libadwaita things are getting even better. After some stagnation, the Linux desktop is gaining momentum again. There are a lot of hate comments for Gnome in this post. My advice for those reading is: Try it for yourself! Most of the haters haven't used Gnome since 2004. Just try it!
  • christophilus 5y ago
    Fedora is a seriously underrated distro. Excellent out of the box experience and up to date packages while still being quite stable.
    • Barrin92 5y ago
      sometimes a little bit too fast for my taste. Latest example was pipewire which had a super annoying bug for me of sometimes just losing my audio output. But in general it's been really good for many releases now.
    • mardifoufs 5y ago
      As stupid as it sounds, I really think the name has a lot to do with it.
      • dralley 5y ago
        Linus (of Linus media group, not Torvalds) thought it was a meme distro. The name predates the meme
        • Steltek 5y ago
          Linus of LTT is an ascended videogamer. His knowledge ends just past overclocking your watercooled setup to get 2 more FPS out of the latest videogame. He's sometimes entertaining but never informative.
• atemerev 5y ago
  The latest Gnome on X looks no less gorgeous. And Wayland is still mostly unusable with Nvidia cards (and no, “buy another card” is not an answer, sorry). Though at least it is technically working, which is already a major improvement. I am optimistic that I will be able to use Wayland in the next 2 years or so.
• freebuju 5y ago
  It gets better. Seems like Wayland is finally getting closer to delivering on its promise for a silky [0]smooth desktop experience (on Gnome at least). [0]. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1441 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1441
• ttarr 5y ago
  I've used Gnome on Wayland since first available on Fedora, that's until two days a go! What happened you might ask? Well, I had enough of slow performance, with every release I'm thinking it'll improve, it did but at slow pace. It's beautiful, and I like the UX, but it's lacking underneath, go ahead and play a 4k clip on Wayland enabled Firefox then move the mouse pointer, it stutters like crazy. The mouse movements/scrolling in general doesn't feel natural at all, it has some kind of weird acceleration curve, scroll on Wayland enabled Firefox for example and compare that to Firefox under X11, day and night difference, under X11 it's MacOS like smoothness. For some weird reason, switching to X11 fixes the performance, responsiveness and mouse scrolling/acceleration/movement accuracy, without doing a thing. Sadly, because of the above and the fact that Gnome 42 no longer does fractional scaling under X11, I had to leave Gnome behind, I'm now on Fedora 36 KDE which I'm liking so far. * My machine (3900x/rx5500/4k monitor/mx master 3) felt very slow sometimes to the point I was going to get rid of Linux all together and go MacOS or Windows (I dislike both). * Thanks everyone for the continued work on Desktop GNU/Linux, inc Gnome and Wayland guys.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    Are you sure you were using wayland firefox? It is not always apparent. Also, follow the sibling comment on hw acceleration.
    • ttarr 5y ago
      Yes, along XINPUT2 for improved scrolling.
  • cosmiccatnap 5y ago
  • kiwijamo 5y ago
    I wonder if your Firefox is using hardware accelerated video. I know for me I had to play with some about:config knobs before Firefox actually started using hardware accelerated video. It is enabled by default on macOS and Windows, however on Linux it is not. Ensuring that Firefox was using hardware acceleration for video for me improved the performance and battery life enormously.
• krisgenre 5y ago
  I've been using wayland with Gnome 40 (pop os) for a few months now. Though I can't tell if its better than X11 its definitely not worse. Both seem identical to me except that on wayland drag n drop files into Chrome/Firefox and screen sharing don't seem to work.
  • cudder 5y ago
    That really sounds like worse to me.
    • krisgenre 5y ago
      There is a workaround for screen sharing but I couldn't find any for the drag n drop issue.
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        Kinda an essential feature if you're going to give up thumbnails in the filepicker...
• YuukiRey 5y ago
  I'd love to use Wayland but so far I couldn't make input switching work reliably. In X I have a global shortcut to change my fcitx input to e.g., Japanese or Chinese and in Wayland the applications appear to have to implement a lot more and as such it works in some apps but not in others. Screen sharing in Zoom works quite well if I go through Firefox instead of the Zoom client, which I even do under X, otherwise my machine eventually crashes (probably a memory leak)
• vegai_ 5y ago
  Sway works pretty much perfectly for everything I throw at it (which is mostly alacritty, emacs, firefox and chromium). If you can stomach minimalism, give it a try. In my opinion, it represents a significantly better UI than Gnome/KDE/MacOS/Windows paradigms. So much that it's probably the largest reason why I live mostly in Linux land instead of Mac right now.
  • srazzaque 5y ago
    Curious, are you on a laptop? If so, how much of a time investment was it to reach the point where you were no longer customising to reach parity with "batteries included" desktop environments (battery bar, sane sleep/wake-ups, volume control)? And how does it handle being plugged/unplugged from external monitors? I have tried to switch to tiling WMs several times, but I have always found myself going back to Gnome as soon as it's a rabbit-hole of config files to do something "simple" like, adjust volume, or organise monitors. That is, features that are quite discoverable in standard DEs.
    • fuzzy2 5y ago
      Haven’t tried multiple monitors or power-saving yet, but in general you can steal from someone’s config on GitHub. Works mostly fine, including battery indicators, brightness, volume control and whatnot. But it definitely requires more tinkering to reach similar levels of, hm, “convenience”.
    • eterps 5y ago
      Manjaro Sway Edition ( https://github.com/Manjaro-Sway/manjaro-sway https://github.com/Manjaro-Sway/manjaro-sway ) has lots of "batteries included".
    • maxhille 5y ago
      Working with sway on a Thinkpad since 2 years now. Stuff like media/brightness buttons and multimonitor setups (now with kanshi) each took a bit of learning/trying but running perfectly now. Since I am using NixOS my config always just improves and will always be available in a Git repo for when I switch to a new machine or finally also change my gaming desktop from Ubuntu to NixOS.
• unmole 5y ago
  I switched to Fedora Gnome a few months ago after using Ubuntu and derivatives for ~14 years. Everything just works. My only complaint with Gnome is that Nautilus doesn't support splitting panes. So, I use Nemo instead.
• INTPenis 5y ago
  I thought so too, first impression is very good. Unfortunately I couldn't keep using it because you can't screen share in MS Teams with Wayland, and most games don't work in Wayland either. So it was back to X11. Until screen sharing works in more apps, and until Proton/Wine games work I'm sticking to X11 and I'm not complaining.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    Have you tried Pipewire for screen sharing: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_sharing https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_shar...
    • yxhuvud 5y ago
      Doesn't help, Teams doesn't support pipewire yet.
  • 0x38B 5y ago
    I use Sway (and therefore Wayland) for everything except gaming; for that I switch to i3 (X11) on TTY2. Works great for me.
    • Fnoord 5y ago
      Back in the start of the century I used to run two X servers. One with a Linux desktop (tried various stuff) and one with Nvidia's proprietary kernel module, purely to play games, and have any crashes not lock up my whole machine. It worked beautifully. Eventually I switched to the red side, and I stayed there as much as possible.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • sobkas 5y ago
      I use Gnome+Wayland for gaming. I only had one problem for years that I used it. Something related to "Failed to initialize parser".
  • 5y ago
• rlkf 5y ago
  Is remote desktop still in the same, sorry state on Wayland? Then it is simply a non-starter, no matter how tear-less window dragging is locally.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    If you mean “network transparency” (even though X isn’t it either unless you restrict yourself to xmotif. It pretty much sends bitmaps very often), then no, wayland isn’t network transparent. But it can use the litany of streaming protocols allowing for much better responsiveness.
  • yxhuvud 5y ago
    The tools to build a decent remote desktop (less tricks to conserve bandwidth than X, but with sound support) are likely there now with Pipewire et al, but as far as I know noone has puzzled the pieces together for a comprehensive solution yet.
• whitefang 5y ago
  I didn't have any issues with wayland untill I started to have many. My basic toolset on Ubuntu refuses to work on Wayland. 1. Zoom - screenshare doesn't work or crashes - I can't remember now 2. Peek - cannot capture gif recordings 3. Flameshot - cannot take screenshots
  • gspr 5y ago
    > 1. Zoom - screenshare doesn't work or crashes - I can't remember now Some (all?) browsers lack the ability to talk with Wayland's screensharing system. A quick workaround that worked for me (using Zoom at least) was to launch that browser session and the windows to be shared in XWayland. A perhaps more convenient workaround is exposing your entire Wayland session as a fake webcam. I don't remember the name of the software that lets you do this, but it works quite well.
    • kaba0 5y ago
      Most browsers have the ability: firefox and chrome have pipewire support for a long time now, so if they are run as wayland applications (sometimes people don’t even realize what version they are using) they will be able to screenshare just fine.
      • gspr 5y ago
        Wow, I hadn't noticed! That's great news! (For anyone else reading: Firefox has had support since version 84.)
  • kaba0 5y ago
    As mentioned many times — the compositor can take screenshots just fine, but an application running under wayland can only do so if it speaks the protocol. So try the web version of zoom, it will just work. I don’t know the other programs but pipewire is the relevant API they should implement.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    1. There are reports here that Zoom works fine with Pipewire in the browser. 2. Have you tried: https://github.com/SeaDve/Kooha https://github.com/SeaDve/Kooha ?
• foxhill 5y ago
  i've been meaning to give wayland another go since my last attempt maybe ~1.5 years ago. there was some promise, but it was still lacking for me: * i use Kupfer as a quicksilver/alfred replacement. triggering the hotkey made it open the dialog on the bottom left of the window i'd most recently used (rather than centre-screen) * alt-tabbing in and out of fullscreen-games was much less reliable (if at all possible) - which was weird as i'd have said there was a perceptable increase in latency * getting wine/proton games to launch was more challenging * i've modified lots of things on this system to have mac-like keybindings (e.g. "command"-c/v for copy paste in terminal, etc. and not all of these are configuration changes, as in many terminal emulators). i seem to remember wayland behaving strangely with super-based keybinds. i don't think i ever got "command"-w to work properly. * a myriad of behavioral differences in window/desktop management made it surprisingly painful to persist for any length of time. which is a shame because it really does feel that wayland is architected better than X11.
• darkwater 5y ago
  I like it but there is (at least on Ubuntu + Intel graphics) some strange bug with Firefox, Google Meet and screen sharing that when I do it Slack start become unresponsive and clipboard copy from Firefox stops working until I kill Firefox and restart it. It's super-weird and I might be the only one suffering from that (I have a Dell XPS 9300)
  • tgaj 5y ago
    Maybe this problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1722369 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1722369 and yes it's annoying.
    • darkwater 5y ago
      It totally sounds like that but I'm on FF 98.0.1 and still happens, but maybe it needs a GTK update which I might just get in Ubuntu 22.04?
      • tgaj 5y ago
        Yes, I understand the cause of this problem is in GTK - (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/4340 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/4340). So yeah, upgrade to latest Ubuntu should help. Probably worth to check first if latest Ubuntu use GTK version with this patch.
        • darkwater 5y ago
          Let's see, looks like it has been merged in a 3.24.x release, Ubuntu 21.10 is already on 3.24 but most probably the patch didn't land in an official repo bugfix version.
• sleepycatgirl 5y ago
  Wayland... Right, as for now I am still using X, and I like it, and I am way too used to bspwm, But when I Poked wayland WMs, man, Things felt just... smoother. I probably will move to river+waybar, but, I need to just, do the effort of configuring waybar a bit more, to make it prettier. But that is okay, for now, bspwm as fallback :P And GNOME.. About the only DE I actually like, so I agree with you lol
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  I like the idea of Wayland and Gnome. It's just that using my Manjaro linux laptop reminds me of windows 95 in terms of stability lately. - frequent system freezes that don't seem recoverable. Possibly driver related (intel xe with an i5, 5.16 kernel). But really annoying. - I've had to deal with a weird bug where after standby the laptop would wake up and then lock again after a few seconds. I "fixed" it by disabling screen and lock timeouts for now. I have no idea how this started happening; or why. The workaround is of course not great on a laptop. - Screen sharing with discord, slack, etc. seems a PITA. I can share a window but not my screen in discord. And then of course Firefox is not among the windows I can actually share. - A lot of things that would be settings that I'd like to manipulate in Gnome are instead only configurable via perpetually unstable extensions that break between updates; or configuration file. For example, I'd like to get rid of the top bar in gnome because it's a waste of space and a pretty dumb idea on a 1080p screen (sadly the most common form factor for laptops). There's an extension for that that promptly broke with the next Gnome update. - Key settings related to touchpad configuration (appallingly bad defaults out of the box) don't even have UI. You just need to fiddle with configuration files. - The gnome terminal has keybindings for switching tabs that don't seem to work. I've no idea why. I'd like that to work in a sane way. I'm experimenting with alternatives but haven't really found anything that comes even close to what I had with iterm2 on mac.
  • sph 5y ago
    Manjaro isn't known for its stability. The Linux desktop would have a better reputation if people first tried the big name distros instead of small derivatives.
    • squidbeak 5y ago
      Manjaro's best boast is its stability. And I simply can't accept that the second most commonly used linux distribution is a 'small derivative'. https://www.tecmint.com/top-most-popular-linux-distributions/ https://www.tecmint.com/top-most-popular-linux-distributions...
      • sph 5y ago
• _shadi 5y ago
  Every time I used Gnome 3 I ended up leaving it after few months, it always get slower with time, especially with Firefox, and yet I couldn't find any memory leaks in it.
• cookiengineer 5y ago
  I was using GNOME 3 and wayland since it came out. But around 2 years ago there was an update of gjs that crashed GDM but was required for GNOME and GTK itself. It was kind of a paradox because gjs is used everywhere, and it crashed everything losely related to GTK4. So there I was, unable to start any wayland session that had any GTK in it, and decided that I'm gonna retry migrating to i3. Never regretted my decision. Now I'm using i3 or sway everywhere, depending on driver support (age) of the system. But if you rely on conventions that a Desktop Environment offers, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're willing to write a lot of shell scripts and bindings and config files.
  • christophilus 5y ago
    What distro? Haven’t had any issues with Fedora. Just put Arch on my box this weekend (because, you know, that itch happens sometimes). But this kind of issue is my biggest hesitation with Arch.
• mootzville 5y ago
  Gnome comes stock with RHEL, so I'm not bothered to use other desktops as most of my time is spent in the terminal. I did get into some of the minimalist desktops at some point to see how little I could get away with. In that regard, OpenBox is pretty good, yet there are other more extreme minimalist desktops if you want. Having said that, I have yet to have anything crash while running Gnome, but have had to limit a couple services provided by Gnome over time...sometimes -- maybe bugs in updates -- they can get resource hungry even while idle, but nothing beyond what an obsessive admin or power user might care about.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• npteljes 5y ago
  I installed Fedora 35 and Pop OS to try them and I've been blown away by the interface (both have the current Gnome). It looks sleek and modern, and the usability is also good. I felt the kind of joy where I want to show other people how cool it is.
• pabs3 5y ago
  Be careful about relying on GNOME shell extensions; they are similar to Firefox XUL extensions in that they can do anything to the internals of GNOME shell, often break on each version upgrade, often are poor quality with memory leaks, often get abandoned upstream and removed from distros etc.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    Mostly avoid them because the GNOME devs refuse to make a stable extention API, though. Or, use them liberally in protest of that stupid mentality and watch them recoil in horror!
    • perihelions 5y ago
      This is a good argument in favor of stable/LTS distros on the desktop. You can basically pin specific releases of GTK/Gnome/Adwaita for multiple years, and then just put the whole perpetually-churning Gnome conversation on "mute".
• pabs3 5y ago
  I really wish GNOME Wayland supported crash resilience like Arcan does, so it could cope with GPU hangs and driver crashes etc. https://arcan-fe.com/2017/12/24/crash-resilient-wayland-compositing/ https://arcan-fe.com/2017/12/24/crash-resilient-wayland-comp...
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    You used to be able to press alt-f2 and then "r"/"restart" if/when your compositor shit the bed, but that was removed without replacement in Wayland... a complete blocker to me using it on certain devices where Wayland support is poor and crashes happen every 5 minutes.
    • eterps 5y ago
      That doesn't seem to be a Wayland issue, switching to a text console (and back) seems to work fine, no different than last time I did that in X11.
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        You're right, it's a GNOME issue. Doesn't make it any less critical though, I'd like to restart my compositor without taking my entire window server down with it.
• sph 5y ago
  Forget Ubuntu and their old software, Fedora GNOME is where its at, finally a forward facing distro for workstations and professionals. I highly recommend giving it a shot. Fedora is the new Ubuntu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9h_0dnSGWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9h_0dnSGWk
• ulzeraj 5y ago
  The Gnome-ish shell on Pop 21.04 running on my full AMD laptop (5900hx cpu/apu, 6800m gpu) works smooth as butter. It games great and I'm using with 2 monitors one being 165Hz 1440p and the other 60Hz 4k. I had to enable Wayland on the login manager config files. No driver installation required. I have no regrets for ditching my Nvidia RTX 3060 hardware.
  • sph 5y ago
    Fedora 36 releasing next month will ship with Wayland enabled by default for NVIDIA as well.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrrr 5y ago
    You probably mean Hertz instead of Megahertz
    • ulzeraj 5y ago
      Fixed. Thanks.
  • Tehchops 5y ago
    Beware if you depend on the tiling window management and keyboard shortcuts from the Pop shell. Gnome developers apparently randomly decided to change just enough about how they handle workspaces and shortcuts that it breaks/changes Pop shell. This occurred on the Gnome3 version that ships with 21.10. I ended up switching to i3 after that. Currently on Ubuntu 21.10 with i3wm.
    • grey_earthling 5y ago
      Ubuntu 21.10 (and therefore presumably Pop!_OS) ships with GNOME 40, not GNOME 3.
      • Tehchops 5y ago
        Thank you, that is a meaningful distinction I should've paid more attention to. This reddit thread sums up my issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/o27q4z/gnome_3_vs_gnome_40_opinion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/o27q4z/gnome_3_vs_gn... Forcing horizontal workspaces, and requiring an extension to go back to vertical, seems like a regression.
• yathaid 5y ago
  How is the HDPI experience? I am using KDE with a lot of hacks [1] currently, would love to try something that is more native. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30752499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30752499
  • mijoharas 5y ago
    I can't speak about KDE, but properly working HDPI (4k monitor, and a couple of 1080p monitors) is what brought me to wayland (sway) and has required almost no setup (I think I enabled a setting for chrome, and might have installed a different emacs with wayland compatibility). It's been absolutely fantastic, and it's the primary reason I can't go back to X.
  • dathinab 5y ago
    Hm, I have to look into this (HDPI, >>fractional scaling<<) again. - Last time I looked into it, there was no Wayland protocol for clients being able to handle the scaling themself (if they want to) and as such do it "properly" (e.g. for font rendering). Through I think now there is, I think Gnome supports it, KDE and Sway might but I'm not sure either way. - This still needs to be supported by the client, which it should be for modern Qt,GTK applications. - If not supported by the client it will render at a non-fractional scaling and then scale the image. - Here the quality can change depending on the algorithm used (e.g. downscaling vs. upscaling and if downscaling how much "bigger" the image is rendered before downscaling and what algorithm is used there). Last time I checked (very long ago) the algorithm sway used on my laptop (could be GPU dependent) was bad, like really bad, but this was also very long ago. So there is a high chance this improved. Given that I'm going to setup a new HDPI laptop soon, I guess I have to check this points again soon ;) As a side note: Non-fractional scaling works perfectly fine on at least sway since years.
• jasoneckert 5y ago
  The long-term merits of Wayland aside, I must admit that I too find Gnome on Wayland polished, smooth and fun to use. Since 2021, I've preferred using it over the macOS desktop.
• thanatos519 5y ago
  Thanks for saving me the time. I definitely don't want a "MacOS interface for Linux".
• danjac 5y ago
  Gnome on Fedora is my daily driver. I occasionally play with KDE and other environments for fun, but when it comes down to something I need to get on with my work I just go with stock default Gnome. It gets out of the way, which is exactly what a DE needs to do.
• dotancohen 5y ago
  Here's my short list of KDE features that I use daily: - Multiple desktops: Win-Tidle - Move app to next screen: Win-N - Move app to next desktop: Shift-Win-N - Maximize window: Win-PageUp - Switch windows: Alt-Tab - Switch windows in application: Alt-Tilde - Show all Windows, filter by typing: Win-Tab - Launch program: Win-F2, Win-F12 - Vertical task bar with task manager, analogue clock, system tray, main menu, language switcher indicator. - Window always on top toggle - Open specific application window with "always on top" activated - Open application always on specific desktop - Volume down: Win-[ - Volume up: Win-] If you tell me that Gnome now supports all that, then I'll invest the time in installing, configuring, and daily driving it for a few weeks.
  • jeroenhd 5y ago
    I don't know if this is my config or the default, but on my machine those features are set up like this: - Multiple desktops: Winkey (list) or ctrl+alt+arrow (left and right) or triple finger drag on the trackpad (wayland) - Move app to next screen: I know this is possible to configure, don't know the key combo, I move windows between virtual desktops more often - Move app to next desktop ctrl+alt+shift+arrow keys (similar to switching desktops) - Switch windows: alt+tab - Switch windows in app: alt+tilde - Launch program: alt+F2 - Vertical task bar with widgets: not without a bunch of extensions. You're stuck with a horizontal one in the vanilla config. I've enjoyed the default config Manjaro ships for Gnome myself, which provides a more fully featured task bar than the default setup, so maybe there's an extension that's right for you. - Windows always on top toggle: in the window menu (when you right click on the window chrome) - Volume up/down: bound to media keys by default, but I'm sure you can configure the necessary shortcuts. I'd probably bind a shortcut that injects media keys (xdotool?) to ensure compatibility with other programs but you could set up a shortcut to your favourite audio manager if you wish I don't know about a searchable window list or launching a program always on top. You can configure a shortcut to mark a window as always on top after launching, and for the window list there's probably an extension out there (this seems promising https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1001/window-search-provider/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1001/window-search-pr...). Opening a window on a specific desktop should be possible with extensions (I think https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/ does this?)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nyuszika7h 5y ago
  I still have several issues with Wayland on Ubuntu 21.10: - windows (especially gnome-terminal and gedit) sometimes randomly extend behind the dock and top bar (apparently this is fixed in a newer GNOME version) - apps using a recent version of Qt and native Wayland rather than XWayland have an excessively large cursor on HiDPI (fixable by setting an environment variable, but that's a hacky solution) - Firefox addon popups are cut off on HiDPI - Oracle SQL Developer just doesn't work at all (the window doesn't show when I try to launch it) [EDIT: this actually seems to work now] - Onboard (on-screen keyboard, because GNOME's built-in one has a horrible UX) can't be moved around on the screen when using Wayland (which was one of the main reasons I switched from the built-in one) - Chrome Remote Desktop doesn't work at all on Wayland, and in fact prevents you from logging in to the Wayland session at all once you log out / reboot after installing it I still try to use Wayland though, because Xorg isn't perfect either: - colors seem to be more accurate on Wayland - Diodon (clipboard manager) randomly doesn't trigger with my custom Win+V keyboard shortcut on Xorg - some apps default to an extremely tiny window on Xorg HiDPI
  • tapoxi 5y ago
    It’s worth noting that Ubuntu will always be a major GNOME release behind the rest. Regarding Firefox, you can try forcing it into Wayland native by setting MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    Use a rolling release distribution, or something like Debian unstable, if you want a better Wayland experience.
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    Honestly - I find Ubuntu desktop a pretty bad experience these days. I still think they do a pretty solid job with Ubuntu server, but I much prefer something (really anything) other than Ubuntu these days for my daily driver. I'm not a fan of Snap (I don't hate it, but it's just really not ready yet), and I think they do a bad job of getting required desktop features in place - and have ever since they gave up on Unity, basically. Plus they have a pretty poor track record around user privacy and advertising. In my opinion - Pop!_OS has kind of taken the role of "Best default" for linux users who just want things to work (they took Ubuntu and drove it back to where it started - a big focus on the DE), and I'm firmly in the Arch camp for anyone who wants the best experience and is willing to put in the time. Frankly - I'd even recommend a plain Debian install over Ubuntu at this point. The foundations are the same, and the tooling is basically identical, but you have much less cruft. That said - Wayland is moving really fast still, and I find being on the latest updates on Arch is my preferred experience.
• levluna 5y ago
  I used sway as my daily driver for about a year. It was great, and I never thought I'd move back to xorg. Unfortunately I built a new machine with a discrete nvidia gpu, and the choices are: - Use sway with the nvidia driver and accept massive numbers of artefacts - Use sway with the (open source) nouveau driver and leave performance on the table - Switch back to xorg + awesomewm. I chose the last one :(
  • philjackson 5y ago
    FWIW, I'm using Sway with Nvidia right now and it's as smooth as silk with no white flashes. The wlroots-eglstreams package is key to avoiding the artifacts. The only issue I have is Zoom - but that's hopefully being solved by the Zoom guys themselves. Arch: lib32-nvidia-utils 510.54-1 lib32-opencl-nvidia 510.54-1 nvidia 510.54-7 nvidia-utils 510.54-1 wlroots-eglstreams-git 0.16.0.r5388.0558b203-1 sway-git r6897.1e79088a-1 Good luck!
    • levluna 5y ago
      Oh, interesting... I thought that since nvidia had added GDM support, the eglstreams stuff was obsolete, but I will give it a go. Thanks! Edit - That did it, thanks!
    • mijoharas 5y ago
      for what it's worth, I used to use the nvidia driver and eglstreams but a few months ago (I think shortly after nvidia started supporting gbm), that started crashing, and I had to uninstall wlroots-eglstreams and switch to the nouveau driver to keep a working system. I no longer have the patience to deal with nvidia bullshit, and will happily leave perf on the table to not have to deal with that, so I'm sticking with nouveau for now. (Obviously this is just my experience, and it's possible that it was somehow a me-problem, but it took some diagnosing and the fix I did was the only permutation that worked. I am on arch, so rolling release and bleeding age e.t.c. YMMV)
• _joel 5y ago
  Does screen sharing via video conf apps work yet? Last time I tried Wayland it didn't support any of the common apps sharing screen. Was just blank (obviously)
  • major505 5y ago
    I did not try Zoom, but I was trying team viewer to help my dad install a printer and had to boot into X for it.
• Tehchops 5y ago
  After upgrading Ubuntu from 21.04 to 21.10, the shipped Gnome3 version apparently included a bunch of new shortcuts and a change in workspace management functionality such that the Pop OS shell management worked significantly worse. I gave up and went to i3wm after that. It's not perfect and requires some time to configure but at least I can count on the configuration and functionality to remain stable.
  • agrue 5y ago
    You might like Regolith.
    • Tehchops 5y ago
      I tried it in a VM before, definitely enjoyed it. I always worry about bundled distributions like this. You're subject to the whims of the maintainer in terms of implementation choices, packaging, and whether or not long term support exists.
      • agrue 5y ago
        Absolutely. The Regolith website puts the full iso front and center (for some reason), but you can also just add the PPA and install one of the `regolith-desktop-*` packages - mostly config with dependencies on gnome, i3, and picom. It easy to drop back to vanilla ubu/gnome when the project goes stale or you find something that doesn't play nicely with tiling WM like Unity editor.
• CyberRabbi 5y ago
  > it's MacOS interface for linux If this is something you want I recommend you just use macOS. It will always be the best macOS experience.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    I want the user interface and experience but that's it. I need a linux kernel and I need the customization and openness afforded by a linux system. My workflow, business and more is tied up heavily in that ecosystem.
    • CyberRabbi 5y ago
      Run Linux in a vm on macOS.
      • oxplot 5y ago
        No thanks
        • CyberRabbi 5y ago
          Why not? You can ssh into it and also run X applications in your Macos session.
• oauea 5y ago
  When Gnome crashes, which happens a lot, you can't restart it in wayland without logging out
• barrkel 5y ago
  What about those of us who don't like macOS UI? I don't like the dock, I don't like the way it (usually fails) to maximize windows, I don't like full screen apps anywhere other than a laptop, and I especially don't like Finder and every other attempt at representing hierarchy as anything other than a tree view of folders (not files) and a flat list view of files. Gnome's prediliction for putting UI controls into the titlebar is dreadful, IMO. However it seems that the designers of every other desktop OS have macOS envy.
  • pavlov 5y ago
    Use KDE or something else? There’s no shortage of options on Linux (unlike macOS).
    • bayindirh 5y ago
      I'm using KDE for more than a decade and it's the ultimate flexible DE. I don't dislike GNOME, but KDE provides unprecedented customizability.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > What about those of us who don't like macOS UI? Uhh, choose from countless other desktop environments out there for linux?!! Like I mentioned in the post, I used MATE desktop which is Gnome 2 style with classical UI metaphors. Works and is well supported. > Gnome's prediliction for putting UI controls into the titlebar is dreadful, IMO. It bothered me for an hour and then it was fine (as soon as I realized, it didn't interfere with dragging the window around). I'm talking about Gnome 40+ btw. > However it seems that the designers of every other desktop OS have macOS envy. Because it turns out the majority love it. Every developer/entrepreneur/maker soon realizes that having focus is crucial to success. In a lot of scenarios, that translates into accommodating the masses and if time and cost permits, allow for future customization.
  • neurostimulant 5y ago
    People who don't like Gnome seems to love KDE, and vice versa.
  • 5y ago
• jeroenhd 5y ago
  I love Gnome on Wayland, but don't be a fool like me, and stay away from it if you use any nvidia hardware. The most recent drivers supposedly add support fort proper Wayland (instead of relying on optional extensions) but enabling it under nvidia has caused nothing but trouble for me. I wouldn't call it the MacOS interface for Linux. It's more of a mix of Windows and macOS paradigms with its own unique spin on things. I strongly dislike the macOS interface with its arbitrary limitations (window snapping? what's that?) and plain weird keyboard shortcuts (hitting enter on a file in Finder renaming the file instead of opening it, for one) and I find the Gnome interface much usable. Sadly, the gnome people are a weirdly political bunch when it comes to things like server side/client side decorations and other such decisions. There are also comical problems like the lack of a thumbnail preview in the file picker, an issue that has been waiting to be resolved for longer than some of the people here have been alive (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141154& https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141154&, https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233). In a month the issue will be old enough to vote, drink and drive. Gnome is great when it works for you, but if you give it an honest try and it doesn't, you won't be able to fix it. Luckily, KDE supports Wayland and its niceties as well, and it's quite good for the people that tend to dislike Gnome.
  • seanw444 5y ago
    > In a month the issue will be old enough to vote, drink and drive. What an irresponsible issue!
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    does kde/nvidia/wayland work better for you than gnome?
    • jeroenhd 5y ago
      I haven't tried it recently. There's a good chance it'll work better because the nvidia compatibility bugs seemed to be mostly centered around libmutter. However, there's just something about the design of KDE and its applications that puts me off. It's hard to put to words, but I always feel like the spacing is off just slightly enough to annoy me. That's not necessarily a critism of KDE, I just personally dislike it, the same way many people dislike Gnome's design. I should probably give it a go at some point. I do think KDE is superior from a technical perspective, just less aligned with me when it comes to look and feel.
• quanticle 5y ago
  My experience has been nothing like yours. In my experience with Ubuntu 21.10, Wayland is still a glitchy, bug-ridden mess, despite more than a full decade of work. Just some random things that don't work: - If I alt-tab, I need to move the mouse before I can use my scroll wheel. If I try to scroll before moving the mouse, nothing happens. It's almost as if I need to move the mouse for Gnome to realize that a different window has focus - Basic Gnome commands (like restarting) are unavailable - For some reason, Gnome on Wayland can't handle Bluetooth as well as Gnome on X11. I used to have pretty regular Bluetooth disconnections on Wayland. Switching back to X cured the problem It's tempting to say that Gnome is the problem, but Gnome on X11 works just fine. To put it succinctly, it's MacOS interface for linux. Yes, insofar as recent versions of MacOS have also been glitchy, bug-ridden messes.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > Wayland is still a glitchy, bug-ridden mess, despite That sucks. As to your specific points: > If I alt-tab, I need to move the mouse before I can use my scroll wheel. Just tested this, doesn't seem to affect me. > Basic Gnome commands (like restarting) are unavailable. I can tap Command and then type restart and it shows up as an item on the drawer. Fastest way to restart short of assigning a shortcut for me. > For some reason, Gnome on Wayland can't handle Bluetooth as well as Gnome on X11. Too early to say for me, but so far, Bluetooth has been equally solid. As a bonus, I discovered Pipewire from the comments on this post and now I can use the headset mode of my Airpods Pro! > Yes, insofar as recent versions of MacOS have also been glitchy, bug-ridden messes. The issue with Mac is that a glitch or a bug isn't something you can hope to fix even if you have the skills. Linux affords you that which is very powerful. EDIT: I run Arch Linux btw.
    • oauea 5y ago
      > I can tap Command and then type restart and it shows up as an item on the drawer. Fastest way to restart short of assigning a shortcut for me. Then you're not using GNOME on Wayland. Or are you mistaking restarting GNOME with restarting your whole operating system? GNOME is rather buggy, so for years you've been able to restart it (when running under X11) with Alt+F2 and typing restart. This keeps your login session, all your running apps, it just restarts the bugged out GNOME. Very convenient. And in case you want to develop GNOME extensions, almost essential. This is simply not available under Wayland, unless there have been very recent changes?
• kizer 5y ago
  When will I be able to run Linux on my M1 iMac and should I? I read about Asahi Linux supporting it, but I don’t know about performance.
• draw_down 5y ago
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  If you want a macOS-style application menu bar, though, you'll need to go over to Plasma. Latte Dock feels like a better replacement dock than GNOME's.
• leguminous 5y ago
  I had to go back to GNOME on Xorg. GNOME on Wayland won't run my 4k display at a consistent 60Hz, which results in horrible issues in games and emulators, as well as massive numbers of dropped frames in 50/60Hz videos. It is set to run at 60Hz in the display settings, but actually seems to run somewhere in the 50s. The easiest way to see this is checking the "stats for nerds" while watching a 60fps YouTube video and noting the persistent dropped frames. glxgears also doesn't maintain a consistent framerate. This doesn't happen in Sway, so I can only assume there is some bug in Mutter that has persisted across several versions of GNOME and Fedora. So Wayland might be great, but my experience with GNOME on it has not been.
  • zekica 5y ago
    There is no "GNOME on Wayland" - Mutter <b>is</b> the window server - it talks directly to the Direct Render Manager and manages buffers. It's just that most of the GPU interfaces are standardized in mesa and the kernel so there is no need to reinvent the wheel and makes it so Wayland window servers + window managers are feasible to implement, and also why wlroots exists. You could have implemented Mutter on Windows NT using DirectX and such - Microsoft has done such a thing in WSL2.
    • leguminous 5y ago
      I don't know a lot about the graphical stack, window servers, etc. All of my professional work has been on systems with no graphical components. I am trying to understand what you are pointing out. Is it that there is no separate "Wayland service" in the way that there is an Xorg service? That Wayland is just a protocol? Is using Mutter as a Wayland display server not "GNOME on Wayland," even if there is no separate service running?
• knorker 5y ago
  Sway (i3 but Wayland) is also great. I can't stand looking at X anymore, with its screen tearing. It's like back in the 90s where some monitors were set to 50Hz and it just hurt to look at.
• codedokode 5y ago
  I like UI minimalism and launch screen, but I don't like some features that they copy from MacOS. For example, separate keys for switching between windows of one application and between different applications. So inconvenient. Poor Mac users. Also I don't like "(un)natural scrolling", a feature when the content is scrolled in the wrong direction. Gnome seems to be optimized for high resolution (expensive) displays. On a normal laptop display, everything (buttons, window headers, input fields) seems too large. Also, Gnome needs better discoverability for its features. For example, on first launch there is an empty desktop and it is not clear that you need to press Windows key to access launch screen.
  • 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    > separate keys for switching between windows of one application and between different applications This is configurable, but in a bizarrely obscure way: if the "Switch applications" keyboard shortcut is disabled, then the "Switch windows" shortcut will cycle through all windows on the current workspace.
  • wkirby 5y ago
    Poor mac user here; just want to weigh in with the opposite: I feel bad for Windows users with their single key combination and inability to discern between cycling windows and cycling applications. Just to show that this kind of variability between DEs is good and healthy, as it better reflects the broad spectrum of user preferences.
    • Steltek 5y ago
      Why should I want a key that focuses a window (app) on a separate hidden workspace that doesn't also cycle to that workspace? What am I supposed to even do with a focused app where all the open work is somewhere else? Every Apple fan argues that Mac shortcuts are superior but instead I, a rabid shortcut enthusiast, end up using the mouse on MacOS for almost everything because the shortcuts are so goddamned brainless.
      • wkirby 5y ago
• hughrr 5y ago
  Give it a month and it'll start hurting. It always does.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    Thanks for wishing me pain and suffering.
    • hughrr 5y ago
      I'm reflecting on my own pain and suffering. Sorry :)
• seltzered_ 5y ago
  I switched from macos to gnome (on a tablet PC no less) nine months ago, and while there's annoyances it is getting mature enough to consider trying. I left a comment explaining why and with some helpful links here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364919
• blfr 5y ago
  > I can do everything I used to have on Compiz Can you do the color manipulation a la Redshift[1]? Can you take a proper screenshot? Can you limit the size of top bars like you could in Ubuntu Unity? Most importantly, does it have the cube? [1] http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
  • olau 5y ago
    Redshifting is built in. Although to be honest, recently it has been a bit unstable for me in the sense that some applications seem to cause it to disappear. Don't know what's up with that. Screenshot works fine for me, but I guess you have a specific problem since it's not working for you. Cube - yes, there's a plugin for that. I'm not using it, but there is another one called "Burn My Windows" https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/ which I'll admit to having installed since it was just so easy. Now, when I go home, my windows explode. I was never into the Compiz thing, but I'm enjoying those exploding windows. I just tweaked the animation length slightly and turned off a couple of the effects. It looks much better than that genie effect on MacOS.
• ephbit 5y ago
  It's obviously difficult to compare, but how's the RAM usage of this new setup compared to MATE on Archlinux?
  • oxplot 5y ago
    In context of 16GB of RAM, I can't tell the difference.
• runjake 5y ago
  Counterpoint: I suspect you're still new to GNOME 3 and are still in the honeymoon phase, and haven't yet noticed the regular app crashes and annoying UI inconsistencies. Source: Self. I use it daily. It's not the worst. It shows great promise, but it is not really what I would describe as polished.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    It's actually cutting edge GNOME 41 on Arch Linux and I hear Ubuntu folks run an older version. But you are right in that I haven't used this for long at all. However, I have run every application and use case I do every day and so far, no issues at all.
• __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  > it's MacOS interface for linux Work bought me a MacBook, and after using it for a year I still can't get over how obnoxious the window manager is: No horizontal window splits, and vertical splits only supports two-per-monitor, window switcher hotkey has no positional awareness, there's like two kinds of maximized and some apps don't give you a way to get out of one of them, the list goes on. I also dislike gnome, but I had never put them together before. I started today disliking two things, and now I realize that they're actually the same thing. Somehow that's better, thanks.
  • benwaffle 5y ago
    https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ might make your life easier on MacOS
    • zamadatix 5y ago
      Also Middle, or Multitouch if you want the extras, from the same author if you're used to middle clicking links/tabs. Along these lines if resolution and scaling in macOS make you think "I know what I want to do why can't I just do it"™ consider EasyRes (which is refreshingly not trialware). If you use O365 for work try installing the PWA versions of Teams and Outlook instead of the native apps. And of course Homebrew to update the ridiculously out of date CLI tooling (as well as pull in additional things you might be familiar with like htop) Another thing that made it significantly easier to use was finding the secret incantation to make dock and menu auto-hide instant rather than a slow effect. I gave up on trying to find a way to get the fullscreen app views to snap into place quicker though.
    • fernandotakai 5y ago
      i've been using amethyst (https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst) for the past few weeks and i absolutely love it.
    • brimble 5y ago
      I'm still on Spectacle. Will be until it stops working (still fine on M1). Installing that and making CAPS LOCK an extra ctrl is pretty much the extent of customization I do on a new Mac. So little it's not worth scripting. Much simpler than wrangling Linux to work halfway OK (which I did for about a decade before finally joining the Mac world).
• izoow 5y ago
  I really want to like GNOME since it’s the desktop that gets the most attention and everything just works, but the interface just doesn’t work for me. I always end up coming back to a more traditional desktop sooner or later and it just feels like home. I know I can force it to be one with extensions, but those never feel as good as the real thing.
• juanci_to 5y ago
  I had to switch back to Xorg in my Framework laptop mostly because of the screen share, but also because of an issue with the mouse lagging. The mouse lagging turned out to be a problem with Panel Self Refresh, so I had to disable it: <https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop/109?lang=en https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on...> Now it's fixed (although I would like to have the PSR back), and I don't think I'll try Wayland until I can get: 1) Google Chrome Teams screen share working or a good, native, official client for Teams 2) Discord screen share (well, I use the Snap version, I should try the Flatpak version) I would like to use Wayland 24/7, but probably won't get to try it again for a few months
  • dismalpedigree 5y ago
    I run Ubuntu 21.10 on a Dell XPS laptop. Smooth as silk. Works with docking station and multiple monitors. MS Teams beta is good except for screen share. I just use brave browser for teams meetings and can share screens and individual windows.
• qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Gnome on PopOS has been perfect for me for the last couple years. It feels as productive, functional and out of your way as Windows 7 used to feel. The settings and other menus are all consistent and easy to find things inside. The file manager does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. I have no complaints at all and wouldn't change a thing.
• jrm4 5y ago
  "It's MacOS interface for linux." Yeah, you lost me right there. Everything I've seen here amounts to "it's pretty." No mention of the stuff that matters to a lot of us, and I would be so bold as to suggest that it's more important -- namely "backwards compatibility with X." Look, a LOT of stuff relies on it, especially if you've tweaked your desktop in a way that works for you. It's like you're offering me a Lamborghini, but I need my Toyota Tacoma because I have things to do.
  • zamalek 5y ago
    > backwards compatibility with X. XWayland works just fine.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > Everything I've seen here amounts to "it's pretty." First: pretty matters to me and incidentally to a lot of us. Second: Look harder. I've noted performance multiple times to the point that it saved me $2000 buying a new laptop.
  • xiphmont 5y ago
    In fact, the 'does what I want, does it well, and does little else" is very much the reason I like it. Whatever you think of it under the hood (and I have opinions, both positive and negative here), I do like using it. It's the first 'desktop' I wanted to use, and have used for more than a few weeks, approximately 10 years now. I've generally liked the changes and improvements over time. It finally budged me off of (wait for it) vtwm.gamma. To each his cup of tea.
• rascul 5y ago
  I'm still running blackbox on x11. I have looked at Wayland from time to time but nothing has yet convinced me to change what I have been using for decades.
• bibelo 5y ago
  Does anyone have this problem with VMware Workstation Player in Gnome/Wayland, where the VM keyobard shortcut are captured by the host? Like ALT-TAB inside a Windows VM actually does ALT-TAB in the Gnome destkop? Had to switch to Gnome/Xorg for that to disappear
• Yaa101 5y ago
  For me it is the other way around, I stuck with Gnome for a long time since 2003 up until 2020, my problem is that with every update I had to work harder and harder to make unwanted changes go away, especially when you have to cater more users than yourself on the machine. That said, the underlying libraries and systems are amazing in that everything goes smoothly, same can be said for Kde. Nowadays I use LXQt and I am so happy with that it adheres opendesktop standards and is flexible but not changing under my ass. I use Gnome and Kde under the hood and this combination keeps me happy.
• j_oshi_curu 5y ago
  After having enough of Microsoft about 8 weeks ago I've tested several distros. I have a wide screen monitor and need fractional scaling of 1.25. With wayland all non native apps were blurry. Ubuntu LTS worked best, but I dislike Snap so I ended up with Linux Mint. Nevertheless, if the fractional scaling issues with wayland are solved I'd like to give Fedora a try. P.S.: I'm more than happy with Linux. Really, night and day compared to Windows. 15 years ago everything was easy with Windows and hard with Linux Desktop. Now it's the opposite.
• burntoutfire 5y ago
  I tried Wayland out in December 2021. Unfortunately, screensharing in Slack and Zoom (and Google Meet IIRC?) did not work for me, which makes it an instant no-go for anything work related for me.