7 ms·

I used to be a Wayland maximalist and have somewhat given up. X11 works just fine. The theoretical security benefits haven't really been realized and the incomp

I used to be a Wayland maximalist and have somewhat given up. X11 works just fine. The theoretical security benefits haven't really been realized and the incompatibility inside of the ecosystem due to the aggressive "out of scope" response by the Wayland team massively killed my enthusiasm. All it has done is cement the Gnome monopoly because instead of general-purpose desktop tools, you now mostly have Gnome shell (or KDE) extensions for everything and all other desktops are left out.

blueflow 4y ago
Which terminal emulator did you settle on?
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  I use Alacritty. Works awesome.
deagle50 4y ago
X11 only works fine if you don't use multiple monitors and need vsync, or variable refresh, or different scaling settings.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  I have no experience with variable refresh, but I have been using up to three monitors with different resolutions, up to 4k, under X11, for almost a decade, without any problems whatsoever (mostly with NVIDIA GPUs, where their Settings utility simplifies the configuration of a multi-monitor layout). X11 is very far from an ideal graphics system and I would like to see it replaced by a better system, which would still have to also implement the X protocol for the legacy applications. Nevertheless, I have not seen any argument yet that would indicate that Wayland is the appropriate replacement for X11. On the contrary, some of the ideas on which Wayland was originally based were definitely wrong and they have shown that the Wayland developers lacked experience about how many computers are used. Even if a part of the initial mistakes have been patched meanwhile, that lack of vision at the Wayland origin makes me skeptical even about the quality level of the Wayland parts about which I do not know anything.
  - deagle50 4y ago
    Not defending wayland, but X11 has serious downsides for me with multiple monitors. Are you using fractional scaling (or different scaling values per monitor)? Does vsync work? How about the scrolling stutter at high refresh rates? And if you want to use variable refresh, you have to disable/unplug all the other monitors and reboot.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      All my monitors are fixed 60 Hz, so I have never used variable refresh and there is no scrolling stutter. Vsync works, but I must choose with which of the monitors. For about a decade, I have used only 4k monitors, even starting with the early models that were seen by the computer as multiple monitors, because HDMI and DisplayLink could not carry 4k @ 60 Hz on a single link at that time. Nevertheless, I still cannot understand why would anyone want to use any kind of "scaling" in relationship with a monitor. Any kind of "scaling" is guaranteed to generate sub-optimal images. The correct way to deal with monitor resolutions is to set for each monitor the appropriate dots-per-inch value, depending on the monitor size and resolution. With the right DPI value, all typefaces and vector drawings will be rendered beautifully. Scaling is never needed per monitor, but only per window, either for the windows containing bitmap images, i.e. pictures or movies, or for the windows that contain GUIs implemented by incompetent programmers in Java with typefaces sized in pixels, instead of using scalable typefaces sized in points, like any decent (non-Java) GUI. I did not need to set different DPI values for each monitor belonging to a multi-monitor layout, so I do not know if that is possible in X11.
      - deagle50 4y ago
        There is one DPI setting per X server I think, and I use 192 because I have two 4k screens. Which forces me to xrandr the 1440p display at 2160p then output a blurry 1080p to match the 4k screens at 2x scale. As for why use scaling, I can't read anything at 4k native and the UI elements don't scale correctly with the font dpi. Windows has fully functional 150% and 175% options (one of the few things Windows does well now) and in MacOS has really nice global super-sampling options between 1080p-1440p hidpi.
- tremon 4y ago
  My multi-monitor X11 setup works fine, thank you. But my setup is mostly static, did you mean dynamically adding/replacing monitors? I think I remember doing that without issue on KDE some 10 years back.
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    Multi-monitor was actually kind of wonky in KDE from a few years ago until recently. It seems to be good now.

blueflow 4y ago

Which terminal emulator did you settle on?

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
I use Alacritty. Works awesome.

deagle50 4y ago

X11 only works fine if you don't use multiple monitors and need vsync, or variable refresh, or different scaling settings.

adrian_b 4y ago
I have no experience with variable refresh, but I have been using up to three monitors with different resolutions, up to 4k, under X11, for almost a decade, without any problems whatsoever (mostly with NVIDIA GPUs, where their Settings utility simplifies the configuration of a multi-monitor layout). X11 is very far from an ideal graphics system and I would like to see it replaced by a better system, which would still have to also implement the X protocol for the legacy applications. Nevertheless, I have not seen any argument yet that would indicate that Wayland is the appropriate replacement for X11. On the contrary, some of the ideas on which Wayland was originally based were definitely wrong and they have shown that the Wayland developers lacked experience about how many computers are used. Even if a part of the initial mistakes have been patched meanwhile, that lack of vision at the Wayland origin makes me skeptical even about the quality level of the Wayland parts about which I do not know anything.
- deagle50 4y ago
  Not defending wayland, but X11 has serious downsides for me with multiple monitors. Are you using fractional scaling (or different scaling values per monitor)? Does vsync work? How about the scrolling stutter at high refresh rates? And if you want to use variable refresh, you have to disable/unplug all the other monitors and reboot.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    All my monitors are fixed 60 Hz, so I have never used variable refresh and there is no scrolling stutter. Vsync works, but I must choose with which of the monitors. For about a decade, I have used only 4k monitors, even starting with the early models that were seen by the computer as multiple monitors, because HDMI and DisplayLink could not carry 4k @ 60 Hz on a single link at that time. Nevertheless, I still cannot understand why would anyone want to use any kind of "scaling" in relationship with a monitor. Any kind of "scaling" is guaranteed to generate sub-optimal images. The correct way to deal with monitor resolutions is to set for each monitor the appropriate dots-per-inch value, depending on the monitor size and resolution. With the right DPI value, all typefaces and vector drawings will be rendered beautifully. Scaling is never needed per monitor, but only per window, either for the windows containing bitmap images, i.e. pictures or movies, or for the windows that contain GUIs implemented by incompetent programmers in Java with typefaces sized in pixels, instead of using scalable typefaces sized in points, like any decent (non-Java) GUI. I did not need to set different DPI values for each monitor belonging to a multi-monitor layout, so I do not know if that is possible in X11.
    - deagle50 4y ago
      There is one DPI setting per X server I think, and I use 192 because I have two 4k screens. Which forces me to xrandr the 1440p display at 2160p then output a blurry 1080p to match the 4k screens at 2x scale. As for why use scaling, I can't read anything at 4k native and the UI elements don't scale correctly with the font dpi. Windows has fully functional 150% and 175% options (one of the few things Windows does well now) and in MacOS has really nice global super-sampling options between 1080p-1440p hidpi.
tremon 4y ago
My multi-monitor X11 setup works fine, thank you. But my setup is mostly static, did you mean dynamically adding/replacing monitors? I think I remember doing that without issue on KDE some 10 years back.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  Multi-monitor was actually kind of wonky in KDE from a few years ago until recently. It seems to be good now.