5 ms·

Wayland: I3 to Sway Migration – Anarcat

28 points by ossusermivami 2y ago

gausswho 2y ago
Always interested to read how others are choosing their tools, but if you don't want to get as bogged down in these details and are more inclined towards a rolling distro, I can vouch for Manjaro Sway. I've been using it for three ywars now on the original Framework laptop and while it has had some bumps along the way I am happy for the sensible decisions the maintainers have made for me, including most of the items here. Would be nice to see a Debian or Fedora Silverblue equivalent of this kind of opinionated Sway base.
jokethrowaway 2y ago
I used wayland for a long time some years ago and it was basically the same experience, Screensharing was the main blocker back then. Never noticed a difference in terms of snappiness or tearing. Nowadays I have a nvidia gpu and wayland + proprietary drivers has tons of issues, so I switched to x11. I could probably use the integrated gpu (amd) to drive the desktop and use nvidia purely for ai/ml (which would free up some extra vram) but then I can't play videogames on the nvidia card.
- abhinavk 2y ago
  What drivers are you using? 555+ have improved a lot.
  - jokethrowaway 2y ago
    560! I get all sorts of weird artifacts on the screen, sometimes I keep seeing a still image of a previous window. I didn't use sway though, I accidentally logged in into plasma wayland and noted the issues. I doubt it's caused by Kwin though, it would likely show up on their bugtracker.
usr1106 2y ago
I still have the i3 to sway switch in front of me. Screen sharing is a daily must in my work, so at least somewhat in the past there were too many warning voices. Fedora has a sway spin. I wonder whether that "just works" (TM).
- kaba0 2y ago
  Screen sharing has been working fine for years now. Chromium-based browsers and firefox all “just works”, that is every electron-based app as well. Sometimes the latter may use a too old version of electron, but it’s just a website either way, or you can just update its dependency.
  - usr1106 2y ago
    Was that a comment particularly to the Fedora sway spin or generally to some carefully crafted setup?
    - kaba0 2y ago
      Completely ordinary setup, as is, both arch and nixos.
  - goosedragons 2y ago
    That hasn't been my experience. Last time I tried Wayland earlier this year it was a 50:50 chance screen sharing worked. I just gave up on it. X11 works. And I'm still pissed we went from centralized settings that work across WMs to completely different settings in every WM, with no guarantee what you want is even implemented. A bit less screen tearing (which I haven't noticed in X11 in years) and supposed security benefits don't seem worth it. I hope Wayland doesn't stick around and it's successor is actually thought out and reasoned about real world use cases and cooperation.
- getwiththeprog 2y ago
  Fedora net install minimal with Sway pulled in is great, and I can't see why Fedora Sway spin would be any worse. It just works, with extra config optional.
dubbel 2y ago
The article was written on 2022-11-16. Would be interesting to know if things have gotten easier.
kisonecat 2y ago
I tried moving to Wayland and hyprland last year, but I couldn't get Zoom to handle screen sharing (specifically window sharing). I wonder if this has improved at all?

28 points by ossusermivami 2y ago

Always interested to read how others are choosing their tools, but if you don't want to get as bogged down in these details and are more inclined towards a rolling distro, I can vouch for Manjaro Sway. I've been using it for three ywars now on the original Framework laptop and while it has had some bumps along the way I am happy for the sensible decisions the maintainers have made for me, including most of the items here. Would be nice to see a Debian or Fedora Silverblue equivalent of this kind of opinionated Sway base.

jokethrowaway 2y ago

I used wayland for a long time some years ago and it was basically the same experience, Screensharing was the main blocker back then. Never noticed a difference in terms of snappiness or tearing. Nowadays I have a nvidia gpu and wayland + proprietary drivers has tons of issues, so I switched to x11. I could probably use the integrated gpu (amd) to drive the desktop and use nvidia purely for ai/ml (which would free up some extra vram) but then I can't play videogames on the nvidia card.

abhinavk 2y ago
What drivers are you using? 555+ have improved a lot.
- jokethrowaway 2y ago
  560! I get all sorts of weird artifacts on the screen, sometimes I keep seeing a still image of a previous window. I didn't use sway though, I accidentally logged in into plasma wayland and noted the issues. I doubt it's caused by Kwin though, it would likely show up on their bugtracker.

usr1106 2y ago

I still have the i3 to sway switch in front of me. Screen sharing is a daily must in my work, so at least somewhat in the past there were too many warning voices. Fedora has a sway spin. I wonder whether that "just works" (TM).

kaba0 2y ago
Screen sharing has been working fine for years now. Chromium-based browsers and firefox all “just works”, that is every electron-based app as well. Sometimes the latter may use a too old version of electron, but it’s just a website either way, or you can just update its dependency.
- usr1106 2y ago
  Was that a comment particularly to the Fedora sway spin or generally to some carefully crafted setup?
  - kaba0 2y ago
    Completely ordinary setup, as is, both arch and nixos.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  That hasn't been my experience. Last time I tried Wayland earlier this year it was a 50:50 chance screen sharing worked. I just gave up on it. X11 works. And I'm still pissed we went from centralized settings that work across WMs to completely different settings in every WM, with no guarantee what you want is even implemented. A bit less screen tearing (which I haven't noticed in X11 in years) and supposed security benefits don't seem worth it. I hope Wayland doesn't stick around and it's successor is actually thought out and reasoned about real world use cases and cooperation.
getwiththeprog 2y ago
Fedora net install minimal with Sway pulled in is great, and I can't see why Fedora Sway spin would be any worse. It just works, with extra config optional.

dubbel 2y ago

The article was written on 2022-11-16. Would be interesting to know if things have gotten easier.

kisonecat 2y ago

I tried moving to Wayland and hyprland last year, but I couldn't get Zoom to handle screen sharing (specifically window sharing). I wonder if this has improved at all?