4 ms·

Are we subjecting ourselves to the sunk cost fallacy with Wayland? It's been "almost ready" for 6 or 7 years at this point.

by jdlyga 3y ago

OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago
Ignoring the exponential pace Wayland has improved for end users in the last 36 months (see for example Plasma/Wayland Showstoppers[0]), would staying on X11 not be more of a sunk cost fallacy? There aren't even any Wayland alternatives with meaningful momentum [0] https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers&action=history https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=Plasma/Wayland_Sho...
- barkingcat 3y ago
  It's entirely possible that both suffer from sunk cost fallacy, and from that analysis there isn't a "better" or "more" sunk cost. It's already sunk, anything you sink further into it is a waste.
  - gryn 3y ago
    So what's your suggestion start a 3rd initiative ? It will suffer the same same problems that Wayland has. the problem is that X is flawed at the design and level and whatever you propose that fix those design issues will face the same type of push-back from the communities that don't like it because it's not the way their grandpa taught them to do things. keep in mind the wayland devs are the xorg devs that gave up on that project because how hopeless it was to fix things around.
    - starkparker 3y ago
      > the wayland devs are the xorg devs Are we sure _this_ isn't the problem?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - esjeon 3y ago
    Right. X11 is just old and widely used. Wayland is entrenched in its own bad decisions. It used to be one legacy and one new thing, but now it's one legacy and another dragging its own legacy.
rcxdude 3y ago
A way forward probably looks like a more feature-oriented fork of wayland than a do-over. The basic protocol is fine, it's just there's no sense of urgency to actually add important features to the standard, just a long design-by-comittee process which bogs down progress and frustrates developers and users.
- vetinari 3y ago
  There doesn't need to be any sense of urgency; see all the people complaining that there is no screen casting API? Well, it was implemented three years ago by all three major compositors, and they still didn't manage to notice.
Gigachad 3y ago
It's been ready ready for a long time now. It's been on by default in Fedora for a long time now and I've not experienced issues. Or at least fewer issues than with X11.
- askonomm 3y ago
  Ready ready on what? Select hardware? I've thrown 4 regular off the shelf laptops at various DE's using Wayland and they all suck in various ways to the point that they're not even usable. Meanwhile I can throw Windows on all of them, and they work flawlessly. I'm quite tired of Linux guys saying their stuff works just fine, without mentioning how extremely limited is the hardware support to actually run any of those things, and judging from various forums, even if you have supported hardware, things break.
  - Laaas 3y ago
    This is about X vs Wayland, not Windows vs Linux.
    - askonomm 3y ago
      It's about the GPU used in regular laptops, I'd imagine, for which Windows has drivers and support, and Linux does not. That's my point. X11 for those laptops works more reliably, but even then there's immense screen tearing, blurry texts, broken fractional scaling, etc. I just don't know why I would ever use software of this quality when even Windows XP had less issues like this in its hayday, and it released 20 years ago.
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        The large majority of laptops use Intel or AMD APU's, both of which work fabulously. Gaming laptops using NVidia chips aren't regular laptops.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        If you mean NVIDIA, then they haven't played nicely with the kernel or X11 either. Distros that "work" have to pin and lock your X11 and kernels to get the magic combination. Nvidia has been terrible for a while, and this is not Wayland specific. My Intel and AMD laptops have worked great. My SteamDeck is awesome.
agildehaus 3y ago
I'm using it full-time and the only issues I experience are with XWayland. But even those have been going away as native Wayland support lands in apps and nVidia slowly improves their drivers. Scaling and overall performance it's night and day versus X11.
tannhaeuser 3y ago
If you mean wayland compositors in general, that's more like 15 years according to [1]. For gnome's Mutter, it's 12 years: > Until they sort their s*t out, which is unlikely, since there's been very little progress over the last decade, just keep it disabled. Begging the question if Wayland itself is already antiquated and if its maintenance perspective is any better than X.org's. When lack of developer motivation to work on X.org appears to be the sole point of leaving it behind since new apps haven't been created and (Nvidia) drivers for Wayland may still be problematic. I can totally understand the desire to start with a clean architecture, but chances are we have to basically start over at square one, with the problem of how to attract younger devs now who want to invest their time into newer languages and/or graphics pipelines rather than maintaining Wayland. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)
- mort96 3y ago
  Lack of developer motivation to work on X is FAR from the only reason to leave it behind.
Zambyte 3y ago
I think it's more interesting how Wayland has worked fine for me on AMD, Intel, and Nvidia for the last 4 years on my personal machines and work machines, and yet here we are still talking about if it works or not.
- k8svet 3y ago
  If you pay enough attention you'll start to notice the same users names across comments and threads. Hallmarked by ignoring any replies, repeating their pet peeve, repeating experiences from years ago as if they were recent re-tries, and ignoring the laundry list of features possible with Wayland that are impossible or declared as never happening with X11. I made the mistake, I clicked the thread, and even replied. Meanwhile, I too have been using Wayland for years without issues. I'm on multiple video calls a day for work. I give screen share demos on Discord and Meet. Literally the only issue I've ever had was gamma ramp support, due to Nvidia, and they've even finally fixed that Idk, see the Pipewire threads for more examples. And/or insert the link to the XKCD comic about the foot pedal. It's all so damn entitled too, from seeming OSS adjacent folks that apparently don't understand the first thing about OSS work. Those same people will never even acknowledge that "Wayland devs" ARE THE DAMN "X11 devs" and they've all declared X11 bankrupt. Buncha people here need to start ramping up on their non-XWayland X11 codebase knowledge if they think they're going to go the MATE route or something.
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    Why should someone care about the laundry list of features that Wayland has if they don't need those features, and the feature that they do need doesn't work?
  - rickstanley 3y ago
    I too, have been using Wayland for quite some time. I have some issues with it, but by no means they are deal-breaker, otherwise I'd have returned to Win10. Most issues (that I've faced) are related to Hardware Acceleration, which, by my knowledge, is a common issue in Linux ecosystem; others are NVidia related, when playing games. From my experience, overall: it's fine. (At least on KDE Plasma.)

Are we subjecting ourselves to the sunk cost fallacy with Wayland? It's been "almost ready" for 6 or 7 years at this point.

by jdlyga 3y ago

Are we subjecting ourselves to the sunk cost fallacy with Wayland? It's been "almost ready" for 6 or 7 years at this point.

OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago

Ignoring the exponential pace Wayland has improved for end users in the last 36 months (see for example Plasma/Wayland Showstoppers[0]), would staying on X11 not be more of a sunk cost fallacy? There aren't even any Wayland alternatives with meaningful momentum [0] https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers&action=history https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=Plasma/Wayland_Sho...

barkingcat 3y ago
It's entirely possible that both suffer from sunk cost fallacy, and from that analysis there isn't a "better" or "more" sunk cost. It's already sunk, anything you sink further into it is a waste.
- gryn 3y ago
  So what's your suggestion start a 3rd initiative ? It will suffer the same same problems that Wayland has. the problem is that X is flawed at the design and level and whatever you propose that fix those design issues will face the same type of push-back from the communities that don't like it because it's not the way their grandpa taught them to do things. keep in mind the wayland devs are the xorg devs that gave up on that project because how hopeless it was to fix things around.
  - starkparker 3y ago
    > the wayland devs are the xorg devs Are we sure _this_ isn't the problem?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- esjeon 3y ago
  Right. X11 is just old and widely used. Wayland is entrenched in its own bad decisions. It used to be one legacy and one new thing, but now it's one legacy and another dragging its own legacy.

rcxdude 3y ago

A way forward probably looks like a more feature-oriented fork of wayland than a do-over. The basic protocol is fine, it's just there's no sense of urgency to actually add important features to the standard, just a long design-by-comittee process which bogs down progress and frustrates developers and users.

vetinari 3y ago
There doesn't need to be any sense of urgency; see all the people complaining that there is no screen casting API? Well, it was implemented three years ago by all three major compositors, and they still didn't manage to notice.

Gigachad 3y ago

It's been ready ready for a long time now. It's been on by default in Fedora for a long time now and I've not experienced issues. Or at least fewer issues than with X11.

askonomm 3y ago
Ready ready on what? Select hardware? I've thrown 4 regular off the shelf laptops at various DE's using Wayland and they all suck in various ways to the point that they're not even usable. Meanwhile I can throw Windows on all of them, and they work flawlessly. I'm quite tired of Linux guys saying their stuff works just fine, without mentioning how extremely limited is the hardware support to actually run any of those things, and judging from various forums, even if you have supported hardware, things break.
- Laaas 3y ago
  This is about X vs Wayland, not Windows vs Linux.
  - askonomm 3y ago
    It's about the GPU used in regular laptops, I'd imagine, for which Windows has drivers and support, and Linux does not. That's my point. X11 for those laptops works more reliably, but even then there's immense screen tearing, blurry texts, broken fractional scaling, etc. I just don't know why I would ever use software of this quality when even Windows XP had less issues like this in its hayday, and it released 20 years ago.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      The large majority of laptops use Intel or AMD APU's, both of which work fabulously. Gaming laptops using NVidia chips aren't regular laptops.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      If you mean NVIDIA, then they haven't played nicely with the kernel or X11 either. Distros that "work" have to pin and lock your X11 and kernels to get the magic combination. Nvidia has been terrible for a while, and this is not Wayland specific. My Intel and AMD laptops have worked great. My SteamDeck is awesome.

agildehaus 3y ago

I'm using it full-time and the only issues I experience are with XWayland. But even those have been going away as native Wayland support lands in apps and nVidia slowly improves their drivers. Scaling and overall performance it's night and day versus X11.

tannhaeuser 3y ago

If you mean wayland compositors in general, that's more like 15 years according to [1]. For gnome's Mutter, it's 12 years: > Until they sort their s*t out, which is unlikely, since there's been very little progress over the last decade, just keep it disabled. Begging the question if Wayland itself is already antiquated and if its maintenance perspective is any better than X.org's. When lack of developer motivation to work on X.org appears to be the sole point of leaving it behind since new apps haven't been created and (Nvidia) drivers for Wayland may still be problematic. I can totally understand the desire to start with a clean architecture, but chances are we have to basically start over at square one, with the problem of how to attract younger devs now who want to invest their time into newer languages and/or graphics pipelines rather than maintaining Wayland. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)

mort96 3y ago
Lack of developer motivation to work on X is FAR from the only reason to leave it behind.

Zambyte 3y ago

I think it's more interesting how Wayland has worked fine for me on AMD, Intel, and Nvidia for the last 4 years on my personal machines and work machines, and yet here we are still talking about if it works or not.

k8svet 3y ago
If you pay enough attention you'll start to notice the same users names across comments and threads. Hallmarked by ignoring any replies, repeating their pet peeve, repeating experiences from years ago as if they were recent re-tries, and ignoring the laundry list of features possible with Wayland that are impossible or declared as never happening with X11. I made the mistake, I clicked the thread, and even replied. Meanwhile, I too have been using Wayland for years without issues. I'm on multiple video calls a day for work. I give screen share demos on Discord and Meet. Literally the only issue I've ever had was gamma ramp support, due to Nvidia, and they've even finally fixed that Idk, see the Pipewire threads for more examples. And/or insert the link to the XKCD comic about the foot pedal. It's all so damn entitled too, from seeming OSS adjacent folks that apparently don't understand the first thing about OSS work. Those same people will never even acknowledge that "Wayland devs" ARE THE DAMN "X11 devs" and they've all declared X11 bankrupt. Buncha people here need to start ramping up on their non-XWayland X11 codebase knowledge if they think they're going to go the MATE route or something.
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  Why should someone care about the laundry list of features that Wayland has if they don't need those features, and the feature that they do need doesn't work?
- rickstanley 3y ago
  I too, have been using Wayland for quite some time. I have some issues with it, but by no means they are deal-breaker, otherwise I'd have returned to Win10. Most issues (that I've faced) are related to Hardware Acceleration, which, by my knowledge, is a common issue in Linux ecosystem; others are NVidia related, when playing games. From my experience, overall: it's fine. (At least on KDE Plasma.)