5 ms·

> "80,000 lines of sheer terror" X11/Xorg is in a precarious place with Wayland waiting in the wings. Sadly Wayland "breaks everything" and isn't yet a serious

> "80,000 lines of sheer terror" X11/Xorg is in a precarious place with Wayland waiting in the wings. Sadly Wayland "breaks everything" and isn't yet a serious prospect for anything but a new-broom distro. My personal experiences with Wayland confirm this - most stuff just fails in weird ways right now. So there's a window of insecurity or non-functionality between one world that is dying and one that has yet to be born.

hactually 3y ago
running wayland here - zero issues. What are you struggling with, I might be able to help?
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  Ditto, Wayland user for... at least four years now; on Sway, even. Happy to help where I can - I'm very comfortably settled into this new world. There's a lot of assumption around Wayland handling based on the value of "$DESKTOP_SESSION". This is relevant for xdg portals that make screensharing and the like possible. In the end it's mainly Electron/Chromium things that may need some launch arguments to truly do Wayland. Anything GTK/Qt has been inherent.
  - hackernudes 3y ago
    How about sharing contents of specific windows for webrtc (or OBS)?
    - bravetraveler 3y ago
      I'm a bit naive on things like WebRTC unfortunately. I can share displays... but specific applications, I'm not sure - I don't believe so. This is with WebEx which I think uses WebRTC; it got funny when I disabled too much fingerprinting [in my browser]. I've managed without specific-app-sharing by using workspaces OBS worked okay the last I toyed with it, IIRC using Pipewire for the capturing.
    - hactually 3y ago
      Can you be more specific - what did you try doing specifically? OBS works fine from what I've heard but must admit I don't use it myself.
      - hackernudes 3y ago
        I'm using sway (wlroots + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr). Sharing the whole screen works. I have tried using chrome (stable and unstable) and OBS. OBS uses pipewire to capture (which I believe in turn talks wayland xdg-desktop-portal). I think chromium works the same way (I have the chrome flag "enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer" turned on). There doesn't seem to be a way to share a single specific window. There is so much half-cocked or old information out there it is hard to find the right place to look. At the end of the day I'm not sure if xdg-desktop-portal, wlroots, or pipewire need to be improved.
    - loa_in_ 3y ago
      OBS snap package has everything working out of the box on Fedora/Mate with Wayland and Compiz
      - hackernudes 3y ago
        Does that use gnome for the wayland compositor? Not sure what you mean by compiz in this context -- I thought that was an X11 window manager. I see wayfire is a "spiritual successor" of compiz based on wlroots. I am using sway + wlroots + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr on my system.
- darthoctopus 3y ago
  Not OP, but right now my biggest unfulfilled use cases are: - global keybindings (e.g. I would like variations on super+space with extra modifiers to trigger different behaviours in an application launcher, Kupfer) - remote control (x2x) --- I use this for essentially seamless kvm between different machines driving adjacent monitors - I have no choice but to use Zoom screen sharing for work
  - KingMachiavelli 3y ago
    1. How did you do that with X11? I can't quite remember but I think the solution is wayland-compistor specific... 2. Check out Waypipe, it works really well and supports all application types unlike X11 forwarding. It's more like VNC but easy. 3. Last I checked Zoom screen sharing does work via the browser. The only feature I remember missing was screen control. Same experience with MS Teams too.
    - xcdzvyn 3y ago
      (1) is done by just listening for input events. Any program can, globally. I believe in Wayland it's application-specific?
      - arp242 3y ago
        Yeah, in X anyone can write a keylogger. Or do something really useful with it :-) (Personally I don't think this is a problem: if the attacker can run programs it's game-over already; just replace "su", "sudo", "firefox", or whatnot with your wrapper script which logs stuff, add ~/.local/bin to PATH by frobbing with shell rc, and presto)
  - loa_in_ 3y ago
    I'm running Wayland and do all that. Fedora with compiz. NoMachine/AdminHands/KDEConnect for remote control
  - a-french-anon 3y ago
    There's https://github.com/waycrate/swhkd https://github.com/waycrate/swhkd now. Didn't test it, but sxhkd is also an important part of my workflow. Still missing bspwm, lemonbar and dmenu (bmenu/fuzzel, maybe). For those who care, Steam is also a pain point, from what I've heard.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Too late returning to this thread, but thanks! On reflection, almost all of my problems are to do with audio; pipewire, and it's interaction with pulse, alsa, jack and so on - being a 0.1% "pro-audio" user I probably have needs that the average Wayland user doesn't see. It will get better and I will try again.
  - boudin 3y ago
    You can run a wayland session without the pipewire audio stack (pipewire will still be installed, but for the video media sessions). The pipewire audio stack replaces pulse and jack, it doesn't play well with Jack and Pulse running on the side. It does work well for me (including doing a bit of recording and mixing with Ardour) but, from what I understand, the pro audio use cases, mainly low latency, will be a focus for the version 1.0: https://www.phoronix.com/news/PipeWire-1.0-Release-Plan https://www.phoronix.com/news/PipeWire-1.0-Release-Plan
  - kaba0 3y ago
    What does wayland have to do with audio?
    - Cheeeetah 3y ago
      Screen sharing needs pipewire. My personal experience with pipewire is fine through, just lack good documents, and finding required softwares for screen sharing itself can puzzle quite some people, so far from easy-to-use.
- ranguna 3y ago
  Doesn't vscodium crash for you 1 out of every 9 times? Is there a way to streams steam games from a wayland session? Is it possible to make stacked transparent windows show what is behind them in sway, like we have with i3 and a compositor ?
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  I want to login to my computer over some remote protocol (i.e vnc, rdp), execute "sudo systemctl reboot", wait a little, and log in again. For this I think I need remote access to a logged out session, which as of my last check is impossible. (It's also poorly supported by gnome on x though)
  - kaba0 3y ago
    If you want to execute something in the terminal, why even bother with a graphical interface? Just ssh in and do it?
    - iudqnolq 3y ago
      The use case here is that I'm in a different physical location to the computer and want to remotely connect and run everything I'm working on on the remote computer in my remote window manager, including a browser and ide and terminal and so on. Maybe I was too literal. The problem isn't executing the reboot command. The problem is logging in remotely to a computer that hasn't been logged into locally since it booted. In particular the problem is that if I'm going to be remote for an extended period of time I have to ensure that nothing could interrupt the local session, and there's no fix if it does.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        You can choose to start a session locally though.
- balnaphone 3y ago
  On-screen keyboards all seem to fail, with "onboard" crashing when you try to type, most others not showing up at all.
bitwize 3y ago
Wayland doesn't break anything that doesn't desperately need to be broken. Suck it up, switch, and file bug reports.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  :) Maybe we need more of this kind of attitude, I don't know. But I'm an old guy. Leave me in peace on my porch with my rocking chair and whiskey bottle.
redeeman 3y ago
you might want to check what established distributions are already doing :)
pineapple_guy 3y ago
TIL Fedora is a new-broom distro. Whatever that means.

hactually 3y ago

running wayland here - zero issues. What are you struggling with, I might be able to help?

bravetraveler 3y ago
Ditto, Wayland user for... at least four years now; on Sway, even. Happy to help where I can - I'm very comfortably settled into this new world. There's a lot of assumption around Wayland handling based on the value of "$DESKTOP_SESSION". This is relevant for xdg portals that make screensharing and the like possible. In the end it's mainly Electron/Chromium things that may need some launch arguments to truly do Wayland. Anything GTK/Qt has been inherent.
- hackernudes 3y ago
  How about sharing contents of specific windows for webrtc (or OBS)?
  - bravetraveler 3y ago
    I'm a bit naive on things like WebRTC unfortunately. I can share displays... but specific applications, I'm not sure - I don't believe so. This is with WebEx which I think uses WebRTC; it got funny when I disabled too much fingerprinting [in my browser]. I've managed without specific-app-sharing by using workspaces OBS worked okay the last I toyed with it, IIRC using Pipewire for the capturing.
  - hactually 3y ago
    Can you be more specific - what did you try doing specifically? OBS works fine from what I've heard but must admit I don't use it myself.
    - hackernudes 3y ago
      I'm using sway (wlroots + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr). Sharing the whole screen works. I have tried using chrome (stable and unstable) and OBS. OBS uses pipewire to capture (which I believe in turn talks wayland xdg-desktop-portal). I think chromium works the same way (I have the chrome flag "enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer" turned on). There doesn't seem to be a way to share a single specific window. There is so much half-cocked or old information out there it is hard to find the right place to look. At the end of the day I'm not sure if xdg-desktop-portal, wlroots, or pipewire need to be improved.
  - loa_in_ 3y ago
    OBS snap package has everything working out of the box on Fedora/Mate with Wayland and Compiz
    - hackernudes 3y ago
      Does that use gnome for the wayland compositor? Not sure what you mean by compiz in this context -- I thought that was an X11 window manager. I see wayfire is a "spiritual successor" of compiz based on wlroots. I am using sway + wlroots + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr on my system.
darthoctopus 3y ago
Not OP, but right now my biggest unfulfilled use cases are: - global keybindings (e.g. I would like variations on super+space with extra modifiers to trigger different behaviours in an application launcher, Kupfer) - remote control (x2x) --- I use this for essentially seamless kvm between different machines driving adjacent monitors - I have no choice but to use Zoom screen sharing for work
- KingMachiavelli 3y ago
  1. How did you do that with X11? I can't quite remember but I think the solution is wayland-compistor specific... 2. Check out Waypipe, it works really well and supports all application types unlike X11 forwarding. It's more like VNC but easy. 3. Last I checked Zoom screen sharing does work via the browser. The only feature I remember missing was screen control. Same experience with MS Teams too.
  - xcdzvyn 3y ago
    (1) is done by just listening for input events. Any program can, globally. I believe in Wayland it's application-specific?
    - arp242 3y ago
      Yeah, in X anyone can write a keylogger. Or do something really useful with it :-) (Personally I don't think this is a problem: if the attacker can run programs it's game-over already; just replace "su", "sudo", "firefox", or whatnot with your wrapper script which logs stuff, add ~/.local/bin to PATH by frobbing with shell rc, and presto)
- loa_in_ 3y ago
  I'm running Wayland and do all that. Fedora with compiz. NoMachine/AdminHands/KDEConnect for remote control
- a-french-anon 3y ago
  There's https://github.com/waycrate/swhkd https://github.com/waycrate/swhkd now. Didn't test it, but sxhkd is also an important part of my workflow. Still missing bspwm, lemonbar and dmenu (bmenu/fuzzel, maybe). For those who care, Steam is also a pain point, from what I've heard.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Too late returning to this thread, but thanks! On reflection, almost all of my problems are to do with audio; pipewire, and it's interaction with pulse, alsa, jack and so on - being a 0.1% "pro-audio" user I probably have needs that the average Wayland user doesn't see. It will get better and I will try again.
- boudin 3y ago
  You can run a wayland session without the pipewire audio stack (pipewire will still be installed, but for the video media sessions). The pipewire audio stack replaces pulse and jack, it doesn't play well with Jack and Pulse running on the side. It does work well for me (including doing a bit of recording and mixing with Ardour) but, from what I understand, the pro audio use cases, mainly low latency, will be a focus for the version 1.0: https://www.phoronix.com/news/PipeWire-1.0-Release-Plan https://www.phoronix.com/news/PipeWire-1.0-Release-Plan
- kaba0 3y ago
  What does wayland have to do with audio?
  - Cheeeetah 3y ago
    Screen sharing needs pipewire. My personal experience with pipewire is fine through, just lack good documents, and finding required softwares for screen sharing itself can puzzle quite some people, so far from easy-to-use.
ranguna 3y ago
Doesn't vscodium crash for you 1 out of every 9 times? Is there a way to streams steam games from a wayland session? Is it possible to make stacked transparent windows show what is behind them in sway, like we have with i3 and a compositor ?
iudqnolq 3y ago
I want to login to my computer over some remote protocol (i.e vnc, rdp), execute "sudo systemctl reboot", wait a little, and log in again. For this I think I need remote access to a logged out session, which as of my last check is impossible. (It's also poorly supported by gnome on x though)
- kaba0 3y ago
  If you want to execute something in the terminal, why even bother with a graphical interface? Just ssh in and do it?
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    The use case here is that I'm in a different physical location to the computer and want to remotely connect and run everything I'm working on on the remote computer in my remote window manager, including a browser and ide and terminal and so on. Maybe I was too literal. The problem isn't executing the reboot command. The problem is logging in remotely to a computer that hasn't been logged into locally since it booted. In particular the problem is that if I'm going to be remote for an extended period of time I have to ensure that nothing could interrupt the local session, and there's no fix if it does.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      You can choose to start a session locally though.
balnaphone 3y ago
On-screen keyboards all seem to fail, with "onboard" crashing when you try to type, most others not showing up at all.

bitwize 3y ago

Wayland doesn't break anything that doesn't desperately need to be broken. Suck it up, switch, and file bug reports.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
:) Maybe we need more of this kind of attitude, I don't know. But I'm an old guy. Leave me in peace on my porch with my rocking chair and whiskey bottle.

redeeman 3y ago

you might want to check what established distributions are already doing :)

pineapple_guy 3y ago

TIL Fedora is a new-broom distro. Whatever that means.