6 ms·

A lot of these complaints seem to boil down to a couple of key issues: 1) Wayland isn't X11. Applications whose core purpose is interacting with X11 features (

A lot of these complaints seem to boil down to a couple of key issues: 1) Wayland isn't X11. Applications whose core purpose is interacting with X11 features (e.g. xrandr, xprop, window managers) won't work on Wayland. 2) Screen recording on Wayland remains an incompletely solved problem, and a lot of applications don't support it yet. 3) Global key capture is, similarly, not a solved problem.

Sakos 4y ago
If I were PM for a consumer-facing product, number 2 would be a blocker for me and a critical issue. It's such a basic, common, everyday use case that it's mind-boggling to me that they're dropping the ball on it.
- orwin 4y ago
  At my previous job, we actually recorded screens of users (and kept activity records ~3months). We couldn't serve them wayland, but X11 was enough (it was mostly datascience) (And by the way, it was only in one of our offer, the most expensive one, and sold as a feature, it was not some shady stuff)
- berkut 4y ago
  Especially in the era of working from home now: I regularly need to share my screen to demo stuff, or record screen recordings of WIP prototypes... Even for code reviews sometimes it's easier to do it via screensharing with a full IDE for jumping around the code...
  - nhumrich 4y ago
    Yes, I was using Wayland fairly comfortably but am now using x again thanks to screen sharing and all the different conference tools everyone uses.
- dralley 4y ago
  #2 is a solved problem. I use Wayland and screen sharing works fine for every app I use (browser-based video chat, OBS). The problem is adoption of the new APIs, not the lack of a solution.
- vetinari 4y ago
  For 2, APIs exist. It is up to the apps to use them. So if you were PM, the ball would be on your side.
doodlesdev 4y ago
2 and 3 are big problems and are making me consider switch back to Xorg as it's made some stuff impossible to do. Not having stuff like Redshift is also a big bummer and makes me think if the people behind Wayland have any idea how people actually use computers. My general perception of it is that it has many good design decisions from the point of software architecture and security, but they are too cumbersome to add stuff to Wayland that is absolutely needed for desktops. The result is that people end up finding a way to do that stuff anyway in the implementations and the ecosystem becomes a fragmented mess that somehow works worse than legacy Xorg.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  I've had no problems with KDE's native Redshift clone on Wayland.
- nicce 4y ago
  Wayland is not preventing screen sharing or recoring. The API supports it pretty well. Problem is that existing applications need to adapt for its use, and if the demand is low, it is not worth the money.
  - xbar 4y ago
    It sounds like you are supporting the author's claim that Wayland will never be a 1:1 replacement for xorg.
    - doodlesdev 4y ago
      To be fair for it to be a 1:1 replacement for xorg that does not mean it also needs to be drop-in (as in all software that works on xorg will work on Wayland right away).
      - xbar 4y ago
        I see your point, but in defense of the metaphor: in your world, we have 1 and 1 but they are not equal.
dralley 4y ago
>2) Screen recording on Wayland remains an incompletely solved problem, and a lot of applications don't support it yet. This is a solved problem, but you are correct that a lot of applications don't support it yet. The solution is Pipewire. OBS works fine, Firefox and Chrome can share windows fine, but there's a lot of software out there that won't be updated overnight.
- viraptor 4y ago
  It's a "there's a solution planned / being worked on". It's not solved until it works for people out of the box for pretty much anything they want to use. Paraphrasing Charity, "approved protocols don't matter if the users aren't happy".
- kelnos 4y ago
  "Overnight"? It's been a decade. Maybe not a decade since these screen-sharing APIs were developed, but that's a part of the problem too, no? Wayland was designed from the start completely neglecting normal every-day use cases.
  - Meai 4y ago
    With wayland I now can't drag&drop to extract files from archives onto the file manager. Issue open literally for 3 years now: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 I don't expect this to be fixed for another 5-10 years. I used to drag to extract files almost every single day, it's a core use for me. Simply broken now. I get nothing from Wayland, it was a net downside for me.
    - duskwuff 4y ago
      From what I'm reading in that bug report, the problem is that file-roller (a GNOME archiving utility) has a hokey homebrewed implementation of drag-and-drop which no longer works under Wayland. This looks like file-roller's fault, not Wayland's -- other GNOME applications have no problems with DnD.
jrm4 4y ago
So one effectively means: We, the creators of the new screen thing, are about to break a TON of your old screen things, on purpose. Now, I'm not saying you can never be that bold -- but if you are, then you need Steve Jobs level effectiveness or you shouldn't do it.
- dralley 4y ago
  The "creators of the new screen thing" are the same people that "maintained the old screen thing". And didn't want to do it anymore, because it was terrible. And nobody else wanted to do it either, because it was terrible. After 3 years someone finally stepped up to do an Xorg release and had to immediately roll back the main new feature because a massive security vulnerability was found. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Server-21.1.2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Se...
  - jrm4 4y ago
    I've heard people say this and I don't understand the "terrible." What do they mean by that? In my experience, "terrible" is provably false, in that in my work I work with lots of differently skilled people using Linux for lots of different things. And I encounter ALL KINDS of Linux headaches, and exactly zero of them have ever been with X.
    - dralley 4y ago
      I'm talking about maintaining Xorg, not using it. The people maintaining Xorg didn't want to do it anymore, and built Wayland. Very, very people wanted to step in and keep Xorg going.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    In my experience, "I don't want to work on $SOFTWARE anymore because it's terrible" just means "I'm tired and would prefer to work on something greenfield". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that (I've succumbed to it myself), but consider how much toil Wayland has created for so many people, and for what benefit after all this time?

Sakos 4y ago

If I were PM for a consumer-facing product, number 2 would be a blocker for me and a critical issue. It's such a basic, common, everyday use case that it's mind-boggling to me that they're dropping the ball on it.

orwin 4y ago
At my previous job, we actually recorded screens of users (and kept activity records ~3months). We couldn't serve them wayland, but X11 was enough (it was mostly datascience) (And by the way, it was only in one of our offer, the most expensive one, and sold as a feature, it was not some shady stuff)
berkut 4y ago
Especially in the era of working from home now: I regularly need to share my screen to demo stuff, or record screen recordings of WIP prototypes... Even for code reviews sometimes it's easier to do it via screensharing with a full IDE for jumping around the code...
- nhumrich 4y ago
  Yes, I was using Wayland fairly comfortably but am now using x again thanks to screen sharing and all the different conference tools everyone uses.
dralley 4y ago
#2 is a solved problem. I use Wayland and screen sharing works fine for every app I use (browser-based video chat, OBS). The problem is adoption of the new APIs, not the lack of a solution.
vetinari 4y ago
For 2, APIs exist. It is up to the apps to use them. So if you were PM, the ball would be on your side.

doodlesdev 4y ago

2 and 3 are big problems and are making me consider switch back to Xorg as it's made some stuff impossible to do. Not having stuff like Redshift is also a big bummer and makes me think if the people behind Wayland have any idea how people actually use computers. My general perception of it is that it has many good design decisions from the point of software architecture and security, but they are too cumbersome to add stuff to Wayland that is absolutely needed for desktops. The result is that people end up finding a way to do that stuff anyway in the implementations and the ecosystem becomes a fragmented mess that somehow works worse than legacy Xorg.

ghostly_s 4y ago
I've had no problems with KDE's native Redshift clone on Wayland.
nicce 4y ago
Wayland is not preventing screen sharing or recoring. The API supports it pretty well. Problem is that existing applications need to adapt for its use, and if the demand is low, it is not worth the money.
- xbar 4y ago
  It sounds like you are supporting the author's claim that Wayland will never be a 1:1 replacement for xorg.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    To be fair for it to be a 1:1 replacement for xorg that does not mean it also needs to be drop-in (as in all software that works on xorg will work on Wayland right away).
    - xbar 4y ago
      I see your point, but in defense of the metaphor: in your world, we have 1 and 1 but they are not equal.

dralley 4y ago

>2) Screen recording on Wayland remains an incompletely solved problem, and a lot of applications don't support it yet. This is a solved problem, but you are correct that a lot of applications don't support it yet. The solution is Pipewire. OBS works fine, Firefox and Chrome can share windows fine, but there's a lot of software out there that won't be updated overnight.

viraptor 4y ago
It's a "there's a solution planned / being worked on". It's not solved until it works for people out of the box for pretty much anything they want to use. Paraphrasing Charity, "approved protocols don't matter if the users aren't happy".
kelnos 4y ago
"Overnight"? It's been a decade. Maybe not a decade since these screen-sharing APIs were developed, but that's a part of the problem too, no? Wayland was designed from the start completely neglecting normal every-day use cases.
- Meai 4y ago
  With wayland I now can't drag&drop to extract files from archives onto the file manager. Issue open literally for 3 years now: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 I don't expect this to be fixed for another 5-10 years. I used to drag to extract files almost every single day, it's a core use for me. Simply broken now. I get nothing from Wayland, it was a net downside for me.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    From what I'm reading in that bug report, the problem is that file-roller (a GNOME archiving utility) has a hokey homebrewed implementation of drag-and-drop which no longer works under Wayland. This looks like file-roller's fault, not Wayland's -- other GNOME applications have no problems with DnD.

jrm4 4y ago

So one effectively means: We, the creators of the new screen thing, are about to break a TON of your old screen things, on purpose. Now, I'm not saying you can never be that bold -- but if you are, then you need Steve Jobs level effectiveness or you shouldn't do it.

dralley 4y ago
The "creators of the new screen thing" are the same people that "maintained the old screen thing". And didn't want to do it anymore, because it was terrible. And nobody else wanted to do it either, because it was terrible. After 3 years someone finally stepped up to do an Xorg release and had to immediately roll back the main new feature because a massive security vulnerability was found. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Server-21.1.2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Se...
- jrm4 4y ago
  I've heard people say this and I don't understand the "terrible." What do they mean by that? In my experience, "terrible" is provably false, in that in my work I work with lots of differently skilled people using Linux for lots of different things. And I encounter ALL KINDS of Linux headaches, and exactly zero of them have ever been with X.
  - dralley 4y ago
    I'm talking about maintaining Xorg, not using it. The people maintaining Xorg didn't want to do it anymore, and built Wayland. Very, very people wanted to step in and keep Xorg going.
- kelnos 4y ago
  In my experience, "I don't want to work on $SOFTWARE anymore because it's terrible" just means "I'm tired and would prefer to work on something greenfield". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that (I've succumbed to it myself), but consider how much toil Wayland has created for so many people, and for what benefit after all this time?