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Debian KDE: Right Linux distribution for professional digital painting in 2024

306 points by abhinavk 2y ago

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
Wayland is flawless for what it claims to do. The issue is you can't replace X Org with Wayland, you can only use Wayland combined with other software to replace X Org. This is the biggest issue with Wayland: "Wayland is a replacement for the X11 window system protocol,"[0] but you can't actually replace x11 with it. What they should have done is make sure all the features that x11 had were supported by Wayland. By this I mean user facing features like copy-paste and color management. (And if someone thinks copy paste is not secure or whatever, let there be a flag to disable it or something). But instead they wrote a specification that when implemented replaces 90% (lets say) of X11. And since there are multiple implementations of the Wayland server you cannot rely on the other 10% to be present on any given server. If they had not written a specification and just released x12, or if they sanctioned only one specification, or if they had added more features to the specification then the there would be no problem. They still have room to add more features to the specification which I hope they do. [0] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/ https://wayland.freedesktop.org/
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  > copy-paste When I was talking about switching to wayland with a colleague, who was already moved over at the time, he tried to convince me that having no copy paste is better for security. And I, using a password manager that generates unspeakably complex passwords everywhere, was kinda stunned by that blindsightedness. If you don't want copy and paste, use Qubes OS. That's the philosophy matching the rest of the architecture of the OS. But as long as you have a binary named "[" on your system, don't try to convince people that you are doing it in the name of security. There is much more rotten fish to throw away before that. The only thing that recently convinced me to give wayland another go is hyprland. Seeing all kinds of nice WM concepts being implemented in it, maybe hyprland is "the interoperability specification" we needed all along.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    On the other hand, I think it’d make total sense to implement an optional mode that blocks programs’ ability to read the clipboard until the user explicitly approves them. I understand why some people might not want that (which is why I’d like it to be a setting), but it’s always felt a little weird that any program on desktop programs can grab the clipboard at will. Things like making the clipboard “intelligent” might help too. On macOS there’s a bit of this when copying passwords from the system password manager, where the clipboard is cleared either after paste or after some short period of time to reduce chances of grabby programs pulling it.
    - connicpu 2y ago
      I feel like there's some other reasonable middle grounds too. If you don't want your clipboard to always be cleared, it seems sensible to e.g. only allow the currently active window to read the clipboard.
      - vanviegen 2y ago
        Yeah, or show a popup with the name of the window that just grabbed your paste buffer.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      It makes a huge amount of sense to control what programs can snoop on each other. There won't be a lot of people against the idea in principle. Eventually the Wayland ecosystem will be strictly better than X because at least there is some amount of control over that sort of thing. The problem that Wayland had is it took the stance of "just no!" and that means Wayland is now almost an adult (15 years, so a little time to go) and only just arrived at a place where a Wayland compositor is about as useable as an X11 based system (thanks Pipewire). Wayland has been a mess for so long I think even in Debian Bullseye swaywm didn't support Zoom (or any other program) screensharing. Which for 2022 was a remarkable gap in capability. I'm all aboard for the Wayland transition because it is a definite improvement, but Wayland's "security" debacle is a legendary case study in design gone wrong.
- Zetaphor 2y ago
  I'm confused, as every desktop environment and tiling window manager I've tried on Wayland has had copy-paste. There has never been a point in my Wayland experience where I had to even think about this. You're speaking as though there is someone out there operating without that capability, when my experience has been the opposite. If that was the case you'd hear about it in every single "Wayland is bad" video, instead of the usual focus on nvidia (which I also have no issues with, even using Prime).
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    It was a problem in the early days. Some clipboard interop bugs between wayland-native and xwayland apps persisted for quite a while after too, but those have also been solved some time ago now.
  - sandreas 2y ago
    There is (was?) an keepassxc issue where the auto fill shortcut won't work due to wayland limitations... That was one time i remember wayland to be not working for my usual flow.
  - jcelerier 2y ago
    > I'm confused, as every desktop environment and tiling window manager I've tried on Wayland has had copy-paste what's the wayland equivalent to xclip that works on every WM ? e.g. `uuidgen | xclip -selection clipboard`
    - tristan957 2y ago
      wl-copy
  - fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
    Some background here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/PrimarySelection https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/PrimarySelection My understanding is that PrimarySelection is not supported by Wayland out of the box. It has to be implemented optionally by Wayland servers. See https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1012 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1012 . Also IIRC you still can't copy-paste between VMs on wayland (although that could be outdated by now)
- anton96 2y ago
  And here we are, those are my two cents and my experience. I have used Linux for years, I liked the idea of defending something free and open.I absolutely love KDE and its personalization ability, it’s just exactly what I want. Yet, I’m back on Windows, I like well defined screen, I have a 4K another one of lower resolution, to handle that well, I need Wayland, heck KDE just sometimes has less features or less solved bug on X11 now. And at night I just want to watch one or two things before sleeping, I just need to turn my screen to my bed, and choose one the suggestions of plateforms like YouTube or Netflix with my mouse. …Yet, sometimes I like to type something, it’s usually short so I just use and on screen keyboard program which I’ve still wait to find one that works for Wayland. This is so dum, it’s crazy to me that we used to fly away from all the dysfunctions of Windows to go the sane Linux ecosystem to only find that is starting to look a bit absurd on that side too. And we look at the discourse of Wayland devs, they speak exactly like corporate would do. So that and few package management breakage and I think this is also a weak point of the ecosystem, tends to break, to upgrade everything when you only need one thing, too complex too trouble shoot.We usually think we have superior technological paleform on with Linux kernel, but package management is one of the weak point IMO. All of that pushed me outside of Linux for now.When I encounter something that looks infuriating on Windows, I just think I might see something like this on Linux. Edit: typos
  - binkHN 2y ago
    For work, Windows is not it for me anyone; it's a constant and distracting cesspool of ads for Microsoft services. In contrast, KDE wins here, by far, and not just because it's not distracting. As for night time, I don't want or need my computer; I'll grab a tablet and consume all the content I want. As for package management, let me know when I can type a single command on Windows and have my entire system and applications up-to-date.
    - anton96 2y ago
      I can only agree, Windows with its force restart, ads and little bugs and lags everywhere makes it a less suited plateform than Linux for word. I can only lament that it’s kind of the opposite for personal usage.
rasengan 2y ago
This will introduce its own problems though, for example, X11 is insecure.
cardanome 2y ago
I don't get why parts of the Linux community are so resistant to embrace AppImages and provide first class integration for them. Decent desktop integration isn't that hard. As a user I want to download the thing and run it. AppImages provide that. As an app developer I want to create one single package that works everywhere that users can just download. AppImages provide that. Snap and Flatpacks are solving problems that don't need solving for most people. Shitty sandboxing that doesn't even work and makes my app slower? I don't want it. Most software is best installed by the native package manager. For the few exception AppImages are perfects.
- red_trumpet 2y ago
  What's the update story for AppImages? AFAIU you have to download updates by hand?
  - cardanome 2y ago
    Yes. Things that are critical to update regularly should be handled by the package manager. I use AppImages when I want a specific version of a specific app. I never want them to be automatically updated because doing so might introduce breaking changes that might mess with my workflow. Imagine complex software like Blender or Krita updating automatically while you working on a specific project, possibly even breaking your saves, absolute horror.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    There aren't centralized solutions that I know of, but there are projects such as AppImageLauncher[1] that can provide some automated management of that. It's not perfect but it is helpful. [1]: https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
  - c-hendricks 2y ago
    Updating app images are solved if a few ways: https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.html#making-appimages-self-updateable https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.h...
sourcepluck 2y ago
A very lovely read. Well done to the author for taking the time to give such a thorough, generous description of their workflow and the whole process. I don't do any graphics stuff, so it was very interesting to imagine such a different world. Cool!
OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
Hey, I know this author! Great chap, works with a lot of open source art projects to keep them up-to-snuff
- n3storm 2y ago
  https://www.peppercarrot.com/ https://www.peppercarrot.com/ author of a opensource webcomic
- Matumio 2y ago
  Can confirm from personal experience. It has been years, but Deevad was a joy to work with. He will discover your niche project, test your betas, give feedback after trying to work around the quirks and spending time actually using it. He will contribute when possible and promote your software if it gets the job done. I'm glad he keeps doing this over all the years and projects.
jrm4 2y ago
TL,DR Us Wayland skeptics were always right. Again -- I know I'm old, but it still boggles my mind how accepting LINUX people became of breaking backward compatibility in this situation. Like, the opposite of that was our whole thing.
- bsder 2y ago
  It doesn't matter who was right. It doesn't matter how wrong or broken Wayland is. It does matter who is willing to work on code. And no one is willing to do the work on the X11 codebase that it needs. That's it. Plain and simple. Forking X11 and assuming Vulkan while throwing out everything else is probably pretty doable and would result in a 90% codebase reduction. However, nobody is willing to sling the code to make it happen.
  - self_awareness 2y ago
    The problem is I guess that Xorg, a project nobody is working on, still works better than a project that is on full throttle, full of zealots, evangelists, programmers, designers, thinkers, philosophers. That says a lot about the state of those two projects.
    - bmicraft 2y ago
      All that really says about these projects it what's already plainly obvious: X11 is an old project and Wayland hasn't caught up yet for every minor thing you might want it to do. X11 has more than 40 years of development behind it, it isn't easy to catch up to all the features that have been built into and on top of X in the about 8 years (at most) Wayland has been getting the majority of attention.
      - self_awareness 2y ago
        > "you might want it to do" This is my problem with Wayland zealots. First and foremost I want it to display windows on my laptop and my desktop and not freeze my computer on start. Then, I would like to have more than 10 frames per second when it'll finally start. Is that too much to ask? Wayland doesn't deliver these two points on my setup. Should I change my hardware to match your hardware? Wayland development is already in progress for 15 years. And it sill fails to provide basic screen displaying capabilities. I have nothing against the technology, just against the people running the show. I think Canonical has made a mistake to cancel Mir.
self_awareness 2y ago
Very nice cold shower for all the Wayland zealots. I am generally pro-Wayland when it'll work, but against stucking Wayland into my throat and ordering me to abandon my routines, telling me they were no good. And this is what is happening right now with a lot of "enlightened" people.
- kombine 2y ago
  X11 is still there if you need to use it.
moonlion_eth 2y ago
I've been using Debian since it existed. still happy
woolion 2y ago
I work with Krita and digital tablets and made the switch to Arch-based distros in good part to address the problem of Krita being very much behind in official repositories or using the appimage with the problem he mentions. With regards to update, this has been surprisingly smooth, the main problem has been with software development tools (the PostgreSQL and Python major updates for example require a few hours every time to fix everything, and occasionally things like Latex also break and require maintenance). I did not try the switch to Wayland; I've actually tried installing the packages as recommended in the wiki, but despite that launching a session just fails and sends back to sddm, so I haven't tried much more. According to his guide, I won't try before a long time.
kaanyalova 2y ago
Why didn't the author use opentabletdriver, it would have fixed most issues he had with the graphic tablets. It works on Wayland too. https://opentabletdriver.net/ https://opentabletdriver.net/
pm2222 2y ago
Arch user with this update and it has served me well. Just ignore the kernel stuff and only update userland/libs etc: pacman -Syu --ignore linux,linux-headers,linux-api-headers
- bmicraft 2y ago
  Why not use the lts kernel it you want to stay on a version?
Dwedit 2y ago
Do people just not realize that you are supposed to resize images? You don't just upload a 2560x1440 image, then have the client shrink it down to 930x523, unless you can take the server-side hit, and don't care about the time spent by the person waiting for the image to load.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  I feel like the file size of an image that's the dimensions of a standard 1:1 pixel density desktop wallpaper on a site talking about digital painting is simply not the thing to be upset about.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Sounds like these desktop folks need to band together and re/implement/think the donut of missing functionality around wayland and get it standardized. Ship a lib metapackage called "wl-plus" perhaps. Then everyone could move on confidently. What is the freedesktop group doing? I thought this was their area.
cies 2y ago
At this point I have only one app in XWayland (IntelliJ) and they are working on native Wayland support. I hope soon we cross the point where everyone is better off on Wayland. I'm quite glad it works for me now, and I feel bad for everyone who's usecase is not yet catered for.
- iamjackg 2y ago
  I just got a Framework 16, installed Ubuntu 24.04 on it, and have been going through this exact struggle after avoiding it for many years. The screen DPI is just high enough that it's uncomfortable for me to use at 100% scale, so I set it to 125%, but any non-Wayland application would get artificially resized and look blurry. There's a pending Mutter MR[1] to allow XWayland applications to handle the scaling themselves (which IntelliJ IDEs can do) but it hasn't been merged yet, and I'm probably never gonna see it on 24.04 anyway. Apparently KDE already supports this, but the Gnome folks have been reluctant to adopt the same approach. I ended up going back to 100% scaling, increasing the system font size, and then setting `GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.25` in `/etc/environment` to tell all GTK programs to increase their scale. It's not perfect, but most things are the right size. I definitely would not have wanted to switch to Wayland any sooner than this though. Transitional periods are such a pain. [1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3567 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3567
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - spyridonas 2y ago
    The new 13 laptop has a resolution that allows for 200% scale exactly!
    - freedomben 2y ago
      Dang, now I want one! I already have two of the 13s (11th and 13th gen Intel), plus a new 16 with GPU (which I absolutely adore btw) though and can't possibly justify such extravagance. Love that they're fixing the screen though. It's fine for me since I solved it the first time, but it's hard for most people at first. I just enabled "Large Text" in Gnome's accessibility menu and that gets it pretty good. If you want to really hone it in though, enable fractional scaling[1] and then tweak the scaling factor. What I do after a fresh install (with Fedora but should work with most any new-ish Gnome): [1]: `gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"`
toenail 2y ago
Interesting guide. I wasn't aware Wayland still had such shortcomings even for graphics professionals. > It's now up to each desktop environment project (e.g. GNOME or KDE Plasma) to develop their own full featured GUI for tablet configuration. That doesn't sound ideal.
- guilhas 2y ago
  Just go to github and search issues with 'Wayland support' I think is more probable that anyone will have a problem in Wayland than X
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    As much as the "Wayland is now ready since it's the default on big distros" meme goes, it's not really ready if you're having issues with it. Ready means if everything is flawless to MacOS/Windows levels, where you never have to think about display server compatibility, and that's where X11 is still king despite the performance shortcomings. At least it always just works™ and compatibility beats performance most of the days.
    - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
      That feels like a high bar for FOSS (maybe for any software...), but given how long Wayland has been getting worked on, you'd hope it's at least usable for most (but not digital painters, apparently).
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        Keep in mind Wayland has been worked on since 2008 when I was still in school. I think some young HN readers haven't even been born yet. I could excuse it if it had been 4 years old or so, but it's old enough already it can drink and smoke in Europe.
        exe34 2y ago
resource_waste 2y ago
[flagged]
- endofreach 2y ago
  I haven't heard that about Debian. But i am no daily Debian user. Curiosity: What would you recommend then, for someone who doesn't want to be ignorant or complacent?
- bobajeff 2y ago
  One of the things that Debian distros have over RPM based distros to me is installation. Even the worst one I've used (Debian stable) is better any RPM one. I've tried openSUSE and mandriva. Also, there's something about RPM distros, that I've tried, don't feel like they are mine to control.
  - anthk 2y ago
    Also, Debian has backports, so the 'non-supported hardware' babble it's bullshit. For sure you will have the latest MESA and Kernel in backports while keeping the rest stable enough.
  - tapoxi 2y ago
    I don't know why you're comparing them based on package formats as if that makes the distributions similar. Mandriva was also discontinued 12 years ago.
    - bobajeff 2y ago
      I wasn't comparing package formats at all. I only mention RPM to generalize the type of distro. It was definitely more recent then 12 years ago. Maybe it wasn't mandriva but it was a kde based distro. I prefer KDE and many of the recommended ones are RPM based so recently I tried many of them but their installations were far more limited compared to Linux Mint/Ubuntu/MX and the resulting system didn't feel like something I had much control over.
- fefehern 2y ago

306 points by abhinavk 2y ago

Wayland is flawless for what it claims to do. The issue is you can't replace X Org with Wayland, you can only use Wayland combined with other software to replace X Org. This is the biggest issue with Wayland: "Wayland is a replacement for the X11 window system protocol,"[0] but you can't actually replace x11 with it. What they should have done is make sure all the features that x11 had were supported by Wayland. By this I mean user facing features like copy-paste and color management. (And if someone thinks copy paste is not secure or whatever, let there be a flag to disable it or something). But instead they wrote a specification that when implemented replaces 90% (lets say) of X11. And since there are multiple implementations of the Wayland server you cannot rely on the other 10% to be present on any given server. If they had not written a specification and just released x12, or if they sanctioned only one specification, or if they had added more features to the specification then the there would be no problem. They still have room to add more features to the specification which I hope they do. [0] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/ https://wayland.freedesktop.org/

cookiengineer 2y ago
> copy-paste When I was talking about switching to wayland with a colleague, who was already moved over at the time, he tried to convince me that having no copy paste is better for security. And I, using a password manager that generates unspeakably complex passwords everywhere, was kinda stunned by that blindsightedness. If you don't want copy and paste, use Qubes OS. That's the philosophy matching the rest of the architecture of the OS. But as long as you have a binary named "[" on your system, don't try to convince people that you are doing it in the name of security. There is much more rotten fish to throw away before that. The only thing that recently convinced me to give wayland another go is hyprland. Seeing all kinds of nice WM concepts being implemented in it, maybe hyprland is "the interoperability specification" we needed all along.
- jwells89 2y ago
  On the other hand, I think it’d make total sense to implement an optional mode that blocks programs’ ability to read the clipboard until the user explicitly approves them. I understand why some people might not want that (which is why I’d like it to be a setting), but it’s always felt a little weird that any program on desktop programs can grab the clipboard at will. Things like making the clipboard “intelligent” might help too. On macOS there’s a bit of this when copying passwords from the system password manager, where the clipboard is cleared either after paste or after some short period of time to reduce chances of grabby programs pulling it.
  - connicpu 2y ago
    I feel like there's some other reasonable middle grounds too. If you don't want your clipboard to always be cleared, it seems sensible to e.g. only allow the currently active window to read the clipboard.
    - vanviegen 2y ago
      Yeah, or show a popup with the name of the window that just grabbed your paste buffer.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    It makes a huge amount of sense to control what programs can snoop on each other. There won't be a lot of people against the idea in principle. Eventually the Wayland ecosystem will be strictly better than X because at least there is some amount of control over that sort of thing. The problem that Wayland had is it took the stance of "just no!" and that means Wayland is now almost an adult (15 years, so a little time to go) and only just arrived at a place where a Wayland compositor is about as useable as an X11 based system (thanks Pipewire). Wayland has been a mess for so long I think even in Debian Bullseye swaywm didn't support Zoom (or any other program) screensharing. Which for 2022 was a remarkable gap in capability. I'm all aboard for the Wayland transition because it is a definite improvement, but Wayland's "security" debacle is a legendary case study in design gone wrong.
Zetaphor 2y ago
I'm confused, as every desktop environment and tiling window manager I've tried on Wayland has had copy-paste. There has never been a point in my Wayland experience where I had to even think about this. You're speaking as though there is someone out there operating without that capability, when my experience has been the opposite. If that was the case you'd hear about it in every single "Wayland is bad" video, instead of the usual focus on nvidia (which I also have no issues with, even using Prime).
- bmicraft 2y ago
  It was a problem in the early days. Some clipboard interop bugs between wayland-native and xwayland apps persisted for quite a while after too, but those have also been solved some time ago now.
- sandreas 2y ago
  There is (was?) an keepassxc issue where the auto fill shortcut won't work due to wayland limitations... That was one time i remember wayland to be not working for my usual flow.
- jcelerier 2y ago
  > I'm confused, as every desktop environment and tiling window manager I've tried on Wayland has had copy-paste what's the wayland equivalent to xclip that works on every WM ? e.g. `uuidgen | xclip -selection clipboard`
  - tristan957 2y ago
    wl-copy
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
  Some background here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/PrimarySelection https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/PrimarySelection My understanding is that PrimarySelection is not supported by Wayland out of the box. It has to be implemented optionally by Wayland servers. See https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1012 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1012 . Also IIRC you still can't copy-paste between VMs on wayland (although that could be outdated by now)
anton96 2y ago
And here we are, those are my two cents and my experience. I have used Linux for years, I liked the idea of defending something free and open.I absolutely love KDE and its personalization ability, it’s just exactly what I want. Yet, I’m back on Windows, I like well defined screen, I have a 4K another one of lower resolution, to handle that well, I need Wayland, heck KDE just sometimes has less features or less solved bug on X11 now. And at night I just want to watch one or two things before sleeping, I just need to turn my screen to my bed, and choose one the suggestions of plateforms like YouTube or Netflix with my mouse. …Yet, sometimes I like to type something, it’s usually short so I just use and on screen keyboard program which I’ve still wait to find one that works for Wayland. This is so dum, it’s crazy to me that we used to fly away from all the dysfunctions of Windows to go the sane Linux ecosystem to only find that is starting to look a bit absurd on that side too. And we look at the discourse of Wayland devs, they speak exactly like corporate would do. So that and few package management breakage and I think this is also a weak point of the ecosystem, tends to break, to upgrade everything when you only need one thing, too complex too trouble shoot.We usually think we have superior technological paleform on with Linux kernel, but package management is one of the weak point IMO. All of that pushed me outside of Linux for now.When I encounter something that looks infuriating on Windows, I just think I might see something like this on Linux. Edit: typos
- binkHN 2y ago
  For work, Windows is not it for me anyone; it's a constant and distracting cesspool of ads for Microsoft services. In contrast, KDE wins here, by far, and not just because it's not distracting. As for night time, I don't want or need my computer; I'll grab a tablet and consume all the content I want. As for package management, let me know when I can type a single command on Windows and have my entire system and applications up-to-date.
  - anton96 2y ago
    I can only agree, Windows with its force restart, ads and little bugs and lags everywhere makes it a less suited plateform than Linux for word. I can only lament that it’s kind of the opposite for personal usage.

rasengan 2y ago

This will introduce its own problems though, for example, X11 is insecure.

cardanome 2y ago

I don't get why parts of the Linux community are so resistant to embrace AppImages and provide first class integration for them. Decent desktop integration isn't that hard. As a user I want to download the thing and run it. AppImages provide that. As an app developer I want to create one single package that works everywhere that users can just download. AppImages provide that. Snap and Flatpacks are solving problems that don't need solving for most people. Shitty sandboxing that doesn't even work and makes my app slower? I don't want it. Most software is best installed by the native package manager. For the few exception AppImages are perfects.

red_trumpet 2y ago
What's the update story for AppImages? AFAIU you have to download updates by hand?
- cardanome 2y ago
  Yes. Things that are critical to update regularly should be handled by the package manager. I use AppImages when I want a specific version of a specific app. I never want them to be automatically updated because doing so might introduce breaking changes that might mess with my workflow. Imagine complex software like Blender or Krita updating automatically while you working on a specific project, possibly even breaking your saves, absolute horror.
- freedomben 2y ago
  There aren't centralized solutions that I know of, but there are projects such as AppImageLauncher[1] that can provide some automated management of that. It's not perfect but it is helpful. [1]: https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
- c-hendricks 2y ago
  Updating app images are solved if a few ways: https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.html#making-appimages-self-updateable https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.h...

sourcepluck 2y ago

A very lovely read. Well done to the author for taking the time to give such a thorough, generous description of their workflow and the whole process. I don't do any graphics stuff, so it was very interesting to imagine such a different world. Cool!

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago

Hey, I know this author! Great chap, works with a lot of open source art projects to keep them up-to-snuff

n3storm 2y ago
https://www.peppercarrot.com/ https://www.peppercarrot.com/ author of a opensource webcomic
Matumio 2y ago
Can confirm from personal experience. It has been years, but Deevad was a joy to work with. He will discover your niche project, test your betas, give feedback after trying to work around the quirks and spending time actually using it. He will contribute when possible and promote your software if it gets the job done. I'm glad he keeps doing this over all the years and projects.

jrm4 2y ago

TL,DR Us Wayland skeptics were always right. Again -- I know I'm old, but it still boggles my mind how accepting LINUX people became of breaking backward compatibility in this situation. Like, the opposite of that was our whole thing.

bsder 2y ago
It doesn't matter who was right. It doesn't matter how wrong or broken Wayland is. It does matter who is willing to work on code. And no one is willing to do the work on the X11 codebase that it needs. That's it. Plain and simple. Forking X11 and assuming Vulkan while throwing out everything else is probably pretty doable and would result in a 90% codebase reduction. However, nobody is willing to sling the code to make it happen.
- self_awareness 2y ago
  The problem is I guess that Xorg, a project nobody is working on, still works better than a project that is on full throttle, full of zealots, evangelists, programmers, designers, thinkers, philosophers. That says a lot about the state of those two projects.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    All that really says about these projects it what's already plainly obvious: X11 is an old project and Wayland hasn't caught up yet for every minor thing you might want it to do. X11 has more than 40 years of development behind it, it isn't easy to catch up to all the features that have been built into and on top of X in the about 8 years (at most) Wayland has been getting the majority of attention.
    - self_awareness 2y ago
      > "you might want it to do" This is my problem with Wayland zealots. First and foremost I want it to display windows on my laptop and my desktop and not freeze my computer on start. Then, I would like to have more than 10 frames per second when it'll finally start. Is that too much to ask? Wayland doesn't deliver these two points on my setup. Should I change my hardware to match your hardware? Wayland development is already in progress for 15 years. And it sill fails to provide basic screen displaying capabilities. I have nothing against the technology, just against the people running the show. I think Canonical has made a mistake to cancel Mir.

self_awareness 2y ago

Very nice cold shower for all the Wayland zealots. I am generally pro-Wayland when it'll work, but against stucking Wayland into my throat and ordering me to abandon my routines, telling me they were no good. And this is what is happening right now with a lot of "enlightened" people.

kombine 2y ago
X11 is still there if you need to use it.

moonlion_eth 2y ago

I've been using Debian since it existed. still happy

woolion 2y ago

I work with Krita and digital tablets and made the switch to Arch-based distros in good part to address the problem of Krita being very much behind in official repositories or using the appimage with the problem he mentions. With regards to update, this has been surprisingly smooth, the main problem has been with software development tools (the PostgreSQL and Python major updates for example require a few hours every time to fix everything, and occasionally things like Latex also break and require maintenance). I did not try the switch to Wayland; I've actually tried installing the packages as recommended in the wiki, but despite that launching a session just fails and sends back to sddm, so I haven't tried much more. According to his guide, I won't try before a long time.

kaanyalova 2y ago

Why didn't the author use opentabletdriver, it would have fixed most issues he had with the graphic tablets. It works on Wayland too. https://opentabletdriver.net/ https://opentabletdriver.net/

pm2222 2y ago

Arch user with this update and it has served me well. Just ignore the kernel stuff and only update userland/libs etc: pacman -Syu --ignore linux,linux-headers,linux-api-headers

bmicraft 2y ago
Why not use the lts kernel it you want to stay on a version?

Dwedit 2y ago

Do people just not realize that you are supposed to resize images? You don't just upload a 2560x1440 image, then have the client shrink it down to 930x523, unless you can take the server-side hit, and don't care about the time spent by the person waiting for the image to load.

bastawhiz 2y ago
I feel like the file size of an image that's the dimensions of a standard 1:1 pixel density desktop wallpaper on a site talking about digital painting is simply not the thing to be upset about.

mixmastamyk 2y ago

Sounds like these desktop folks need to band together and re/implement/think the donut of missing functionality around wayland and get it standardized. Ship a lib metapackage called "wl-plus" perhaps. Then everyone could move on confidently. What is the freedesktop group doing? I thought this was their area.

cies 2y ago

At this point I have only one app in XWayland (IntelliJ) and they are working on native Wayland support. I hope soon we cross the point where everyone is better off on Wayland. I'm quite glad it works for me now, and I feel bad for everyone who's usecase is not yet catered for.

iamjackg 2y ago
I just got a Framework 16, installed Ubuntu 24.04 on it, and have been going through this exact struggle after avoiding it for many years. The screen DPI is just high enough that it's uncomfortable for me to use at 100% scale, so I set it to 125%, but any non-Wayland application would get artificially resized and look blurry. There's a pending Mutter MR[1] to allow XWayland applications to handle the scaling themselves (which IntelliJ IDEs can do) but it hasn't been merged yet, and I'm probably never gonna see it on 24.04 anyway. Apparently KDE already supports this, but the Gnome folks have been reluctant to adopt the same approach. I ended up going back to 100% scaling, increasing the system font size, and then setting `GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.25` in `/etc/environment` to tell all GTK programs to increase their scale. It's not perfect, but most things are the right size. I definitely would not have wanted to switch to Wayland any sooner than this though. Transitional periods are such a pain. [1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3567 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3567
- deleted 2y ago
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- spyridonas 2y ago
  The new 13 laptop has a resolution that allows for 200% scale exactly!
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Dang, now I want one! I already have two of the 13s (11th and 13th gen Intel), plus a new 16 with GPU (which I absolutely adore btw) though and can't possibly justify such extravagance. Love that they're fixing the screen though. It's fine for me since I solved it the first time, but it's hard for most people at first. I just enabled "Large Text" in Gnome's accessibility menu and that gets it pretty good. If you want to really hone it in though, enable fractional scaling[1] and then tweak the scaling factor. What I do after a fresh install (with Fedora but should work with most any new-ish Gnome): [1]: `gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"`

toenail 2y ago

Interesting guide. I wasn't aware Wayland still had such shortcomings even for graphics professionals. > It's now up to each desktop environment project (e.g. GNOME or KDE Plasma) to develop their own full featured GUI for tablet configuration. That doesn't sound ideal.

guilhas 2y ago
Just go to github and search issues with 'Wayland support' I think is more probable that anyone will have a problem in Wayland than X
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  As much as the "Wayland is now ready since it's the default on big distros" meme goes, it's not really ready if you're having issues with it. Ready means if everything is flawless to MacOS/Windows levels, where you never have to think about display server compatibility, and that's where X11 is still king despite the performance shortcomings. At least it always just works™ and compatibility beats performance most of the days.
  - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
    That feels like a high bar for FOSS (maybe for any software...), but given how long Wayland has been getting worked on, you'd hope it's at least usable for most (but not digital painters, apparently).
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Keep in mind Wayland has been worked on since 2008 when I was still in school. I think some young HN readers haven't even been born yet. I could excuse it if it had been 4 years old or so, but it's old enough already it can drink and smoke in Europe.
      - exe34 2y ago

resource_waste 2y ago

[flagged]

endofreach 2y ago
I haven't heard that about Debian. But i am no daily Debian user. Curiosity: What would you recommend then, for someone who doesn't want to be ignorant or complacent?
bobajeff 2y ago
One of the things that Debian distros have over RPM based distros to me is installation. Even the worst one I've used (Debian stable) is better any RPM one. I've tried openSUSE and mandriva. Also, there's something about RPM distros, that I've tried, don't feel like they are mine to control.
- anthk 2y ago
  Also, Debian has backports, so the 'non-supported hardware' babble it's bullshit. For sure you will have the latest MESA and Kernel in backports while keeping the rest stable enough.
- tapoxi 2y ago
  I don't know why you're comparing them based on package formats as if that makes the distributions similar. Mandriva was also discontinued 12 years ago.
  - bobajeff 2y ago
    I wasn't comparing package formats at all. I only mention RPM to generalize the type of distro. It was definitely more recent then 12 years ago. Maybe it wasn't mandriva but it was a kde based distro. I prefer KDE and many of the recommended ones are RPM based so recently I tried many of them but their installations were far more limited compared to Linux Mint/Ubuntu/MX and the resulting system didn't feel like something I had much control over.
fefehern 2y ago