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This article, like many, ignores the reality that lots of setups -- especially workstations with several high-res monitors -- do not work at all, or work with e
by veidr 3y ago
This article, like many, ignores the reality that lots of setups -- especially workstations with several high-res monitors -- do not work at all, or work with enormous jank-ass caveats even bigger than the ones that come with using Wayland. (Which I admit are also hellacious in may cases.)
Case in point: I have to use Wayland, because otherwise my Linux machine just can't reasonably drive my monitors (one 8K, three 4K, and one high-refresh-rate 1440p portable). Upon logging into any modern Linux, like Fedora or Ubuttnu or whatever, X will freak out, jank out with its crank out, and -- only if I am lucky -- finally show the desktop.
If I want to switch some/all of those monitors to some other computer for a while... good luck switching back.
And there is AFAIK no distro that supports mixed 8K/4K/2K monitors with working font scaling using X.
So I need Wayland for all that. Extremely relevant technical merits, for me. Not maybe for you.
Unfortunately, my workflow also requires being able to do remote desktop, and share my screen during remote meetings. Which doesn't work a blood clot on Wayland yet.
The TL;DR is that both X and Wayland have awful, crippling flaws that prevent pretty basic things from working.
Windows has always been able to drive this same setup, and do all of these things, without problem (on the same hardware). Recently, even Macs (M2 onward) can finally do so. Linux cannot.
So there are two main graphics/HID subsystems for Linux, and neither one works well for modern desktop computing with high-end/new displays.
But, only one of them is likely to someday work well. And it isn't X.
- jstimpfle 3y ago> (one 8K, three 4K, and one high-refresh-rate 1440p portable) More power to you, pushing the limits. But frankly with this setup, you are in a tiny minority. What is your use case? What is the technical reason that this works on Wayland but not X? I've had one 4K screen since 2018, never had a problem. Other than the fact that older applications don't respect high-dpi so need manual tweaking, or need to be replaced.
- veidr 3y agoMy use case is just regular computer use (browsers/photos/email/3D CAD/video editing), and my day job as a software engineer. I'm just one of those people who likes multiple monitors (one of the 4K is a TV on the wall, so often not in use). I would like all the monitors to be 8K, but that's just too expensive for now).
- gausswho 3y ago> Upon logging into any modern Linux, like Fedora or Ubuttnu or whatever, X will freak out, jank out with its crank out, and -- only if I am lucky -- finally show the desktop. ...and there goes my coffee all over my HiDPI display. thanks for the laugh. I guess.
- e12e 3y ago> And there is AFAIK no distro that supports mixed 8K/4K/2K monitors with working font scaling using X. AFAIK x11 doesn't support this - at least assuming you want fractional scaling. > Unfortunately, my workflow also requires being able to do remote desktop, and share my screen during remote meetings. Which doesn't work a blood clot on Wayland yet. Last i ran Linux - screen sharing worked fine with PipeWire and chromium - is that no longer the case?