6 ms·

KDE going all-in on a Wayland future

58 points by dualogy 10mo ago

moxvallix 10mo ago
Interesting, I always heard that x11 was not getting dropped until Plasma 7. While I am now fully on wayland myself, still not sure how to feel about this, feels a bit soon.
- trueismywork 10mo ago
  The x11 will be supported for 1.5 more years in latest state. And then there will still be support from LTS distribution for bug fixes. Only new features won't be there. It seems very glacial to me still. > This is a perfect use case for long term support (LTS) distributions shipping older versions of Plasma. For example, AlmaLinux 9 includes the Plasma X11 session and will be supported until sometime in 2032.
hxorr 10mo ago
What I am uncomfortable with is the inability to run Wayland on older video hardware. X11 will happily run with Vesa driver on older hardware which no longer has functional 3D accelerated drivers. What is the way forward for the retro community to run a modern Wayland system on older hardware? Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in or correct me
- trueismywork 10mo ago
  How old? Im running KDE on 6700k and gtx 960. (I can run on without 960 too). Thats 10 year old at this point
- saidinesh5 10mo ago
  Wayland compositors can use llvmpipe: https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/llvmpipe.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/llvmpipe.html That being said, your bigger problem is trying to view modern websites on 1080p displays on that ancient hardware...
- ahartmetz 10mo ago
  Software compositing is possible. Wayland doesn't strictly require hardware acceleration or operations that are hopelessly slow without hardware acceleration.
- eddyb 10mo ago
  If your Linux distribution is handling Mesa packages correctly, you will never lack OpenGL/Vulkan drivers. The reason is that Mesa includes "software rendering" drivers for both OpenGL ("llvmpipe") and Vulkan ("lavapipe"). As the name(s) might suggest, they use LLVM to JIT shaders for your CPU (supporting SIMD up to AVX2, last I checked - although typical compositing shaders tend to get pattern-matched and replaced with plain `memcpy`s etc.). So you should always be able to run a fully-featured Wayland desktop (albeit limited in performance by your CPU), on any unaccelerated framebuffer, nowadays (and I remember doing this even before Plasma 6 launched, it may be older than usable Wayland desktops tbh - the Mesa code sure is, but maybe distros hadn't always built those drivers?).
  - ahartmetz 10mo ago
    Software OpenGL rendering technically works, but is IME unusably slow for compositing. What does work okay is direct software rendering. It might work to configure OpenGL to hit all the fast paths in the software backend (which you might need to add first), but I'm really not sure if you can do it without at least some unnecessary data copying.
  - vrighter 10mo ago
    you missed the "3d accelerated" part.
- Suppafly 10mo ago
  >What is the way forward for the retro community to run a modern Wayland system on older hardware? I'm curious why that's something that should happen. Shouldn't the 'retro community' be happy with retro software and not expect cutting edge software to work on their hardware?
eviks 10mo ago
Oh the downplaying > In certain cases, 3rd-party applications doing specialized tasks like taking screenshots In what way is this copy&paste-like staple of general computing some "specialized" task? Will the new opportunities include reaching "specialized" feature parity? > In the longer term, this change opens up new opportunities for features, optimizations, and speed of development.
- eddyb 10mo ago
  If you're not familiar, the way X11 works is comparable to "multiplayer notepad" for your pixels ("multiplayer MSPaint"?). All your monitors are combined into a large canvas where every pixel can be written and read by any X11 client. Screenshots (and screen sharing) could be silently performed with zero user feedback (or any good way to even detect when apps might be doing this maliciously, AFAIK). This is one of the big "security implications" that motivated Wayland (and somewhat similarly, the Flatpak sandbox and the XDG Portal infrastructure that has by now outgrown it). The infrastructure is already there, for 3rd party apps to request these abilities (with the user getting the choice of following through, or denying the request), e.g.: - https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot.html https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.fr... - https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.ScreenCast.html https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.fr... Keep in mind that any action which doesn't require interactivity every time (e.g. restarting the screensharing of a previously-chosen window/display) could have "user gave permission" be remembered, but that seamless case still only applies to that combination (so that client can't peek at anything else than what it was offered). Anyway, what the blog post is talking about is really just 3rd party apps that haven't been updated (and e.g. might already not function properly inside Flatpak). > feature parity If we are being honest, screenshots/screensharing was never a "feature" of X11, it was a big security hole abused as a feature.
  - eviks 10mo ago
    > The infrastructure is already there, for 3rd party apps to request these abilities (with the user getting the choice of following through, or denying the request), e.g.: Why can't the infrastructure include the user simply allowing the app to continue to have access without a specialized infrastructure of app request (that requires updating the app)? > really just 3rd party apps that haven't been updated What's with the downplaying "just" again? Have all the best or most popular apps been updated to ensure no disruption? > screenshots/screensharing was never a "feature" of X11, it was a big security hole abused as a feature. So what was the screenshot feature of X11? Also classifying use as abuse isn't that honest, only the lack of security is
mazone 10mo ago
I love kde and it is what i use but still having the bug from time to time that the panels dissapear and have to relaunch plasmashell, also i wish they merged the virtual desktops and activities into one concept and allowed different wallpapers on each. The theme settings is also confusing because of gtk apps, global theme etc. Feels everything around theming could be made nicer. Prob some more nitpicks but overall it is a really great desktop environment.
- graemep 10mo ago
  > I love kde and it is what i use but still having the bug from time to time that the panels dissapear and have to relaunch plasmashell I have that too, on Wayland. I also had a bug I mentioned recently in another comment with transparent terminals flickering, but that seems to depend on what is behind them and I think is a bug specific to Konsole. Overall, its very close compared to a few years ago when several things were problematic with Wayland, but I do slightly feel its not quite there yet. > i wish they merged the virtual desktops and activities into one concept and allowed different wallpapers on each. > Prob some more nitpicks but overall it is a really great desktop environment. I agree with both those.
mkayokay 10mo ago
What is the solution regarding the display manager? As SDDMs Wayland support is considered experimental. What do you guys use/recommend?
- tmtvl 10mo ago
  I use lemurs because as far as I can tell there's no good graphical display managers (lightdm may be the closest as SDDM doesn't show battery level and GDM doesn't allow changing the mouse cursor theme).
- LargoLasskhyfv 10mo ago
  It works for me, since about two years. Every single time. Feels really stable. Intel HD630 graphics in Kaby Lake Core i5 7500T & Core i7 7700T. CachyOS.
- auguzanellato 10mo ago
  KDE project is working on plasma-login-manager (https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-login-manager https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-login-manager) but AFAICT there’s no ETÀ for a stable release.
perihelions 10mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 ("KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support (phoronix.com)"—231 comments)
The_President 10mo ago
Bluetooth is still broken beyond belief and here we are with another post from KDE about Wayland. If Wayland will be as buggy as the KDE bluetooth implementation, it’s an easy pass.
ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
Oh, that's a shame, just when I thought KDE was looking quite good. Back to Xorg and Gnome then, because I need accelerated graphics. A very basic functional test, with NVidia drivers 580.95: Gnome and Xorg - Minecraft with a heavyish shader gives 60fps, Kerbal Space Program gives 60fps, DaVinci Resolve works KDE and Wayland - Minecraft with the same shader gives 4fps, KSP gives 2fps, DaVinci Resolve does not work Gnome and Wayland: Minecraft gives 3fps, KSP gives 3fps, DaVinci Resolve does not work. So, acceleration is not supported, it seems. Bummer. Maybe next year Wayland will be relevant.
- devl547 10mo ago
  >NVidia Angry Linus noises...
  - ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
    They make the only accelerated graphics cards supported on Linux.
    - array_key_first 10mo ago
      That's not true. And of course Wayland has hardware acceleration.
estimator7292 10mo ago
I love Wayland. I just absolutely love hard-rebooting my computer twice a day. Oh, need to walk away from the desk? Better switch into a TTY before unplugging the dock so I can force restart SDDM when it crashes. Oh no! Walked out of WiFi range? Your DE is hard frozen and the only operable button is the power button. Wayland truly saves me so much time at work. It's forced me to re-up my ctrl+s reflex. Now I never lose work when it randomly crashes! We've also been playing a fun new game. Every morning when I walk into the office my giant 5Kx1K monitor might be reset to literally any imaginable resolution and I have to figure out how to navigate to the display configuration menu to manually reset it because of course replugging the screen doesn't work. I love Wayland. It's so easy to use and reliable. But MOST IMPORTANT it's newer than X11. Thank god I don't have to use gross old software written in uncool languages. God for-fucking-bid we have to run old software that works instead of new software that-- while not as good as the old software-- is still new What's that? Wayland is almost 20 years old and still not to feature parity with any other OS? Well, it's newer than X11!
- array_key_first 10mo ago
  Nobody is developing x.org because it's a hot mess. It's just been half-baked solutions smacked on top of each other. That's why hardware acceleration barely works and artifacts are just a fact of life. It's just that Wayland is newer, it's that x.org is a dead end and has been for many decades. If other people want to develop it, then by all means. But they're not, and ultimately I can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to work on a codebase. So here we are.
BrenBarn 10mo ago
Yeesh. Not optimistic about this. Fingers crossed but it's really frustrating when people feel this rush to move off the old way that's working in favor of a new way that doesn't yet do everything the old one does.

58 points by dualogy 10mo ago

Interesting, I always heard that x11 was not getting dropped until Plasma 7. While I am now fully on wayland myself, still not sure how to feel about this, feels a bit soon.

trueismywork 10mo ago
The x11 will be supported for 1.5 more years in latest state. And then there will still be support from LTS distribution for bug fixes. Only new features won't be there. It seems very glacial to me still. > This is a perfect use case for long term support (LTS) distributions shipping older versions of Plasma. For example, AlmaLinux 9 includes the Plasma X11 session and will be supported until sometime in 2032.

hxorr 10mo ago

What I am uncomfortable with is the inability to run Wayland on older video hardware. X11 will happily run with Vesa driver on older hardware which no longer has functional 3D accelerated drivers. What is the way forward for the retro community to run a modern Wayland system on older hardware? Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in or correct me

trueismywork 10mo ago
How old? Im running KDE on 6700k and gtx 960. (I can run on without 960 too). Thats 10 year old at this point
saidinesh5 10mo ago
Wayland compositors can use llvmpipe: https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/llvmpipe.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/llvmpipe.html That being said, your bigger problem is trying to view modern websites on 1080p displays on that ancient hardware...
ahartmetz 10mo ago
Software compositing is possible. Wayland doesn't strictly require hardware acceleration or operations that are hopelessly slow without hardware acceleration.
eddyb 10mo ago
If your Linux distribution is handling Mesa packages correctly, you will never lack OpenGL/Vulkan drivers. The reason is that Mesa includes "software rendering" drivers for both OpenGL ("llvmpipe") and Vulkan ("lavapipe"). As the name(s) might suggest, they use LLVM to JIT shaders for your CPU (supporting SIMD up to AVX2, last I checked - although typical compositing shaders tend to get pattern-matched and replaced with plain `memcpy`s etc.). So you should always be able to run a fully-featured Wayland desktop (albeit limited in performance by your CPU), on any unaccelerated framebuffer, nowadays (and I remember doing this even before Plasma 6 launched, it may be older than usable Wayland desktops tbh - the Mesa code sure is, but maybe distros hadn't always built those drivers?).
- ahartmetz 10mo ago
  Software OpenGL rendering technically works, but is IME unusably slow for compositing. What does work okay is direct software rendering. It might work to configure OpenGL to hit all the fast paths in the software backend (which you might need to add first), but I'm really not sure if you can do it without at least some unnecessary data copying.
- vrighter 10mo ago
  you missed the "3d accelerated" part.
Suppafly 10mo ago
>What is the way forward for the retro community to run a modern Wayland system on older hardware? I'm curious why that's something that should happen. Shouldn't the 'retro community' be happy with retro software and not expect cutting edge software to work on their hardware?

eviks 10mo ago

Oh the downplaying > In certain cases, 3rd-party applications doing specialized tasks like taking screenshots In what way is this copy&paste-like staple of general computing some "specialized" task? Will the new opportunities include reaching "specialized" feature parity? > In the longer term, this change opens up new opportunities for features, optimizations, and speed of development.

eddyb 10mo ago
If you're not familiar, the way X11 works is comparable to "multiplayer notepad" for your pixels ("multiplayer MSPaint"?). All your monitors are combined into a large canvas where every pixel can be written and read by any X11 client. Screenshots (and screen sharing) could be silently performed with zero user feedback (or any good way to even detect when apps might be doing this maliciously, AFAIK). This is one of the big "security implications" that motivated Wayland (and somewhat similarly, the Flatpak sandbox and the XDG Portal infrastructure that has by now outgrown it). The infrastructure is already there, for 3rd party apps to request these abilities (with the user getting the choice of following through, or denying the request), e.g.: - https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot.html https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.fr... - https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.ScreenCast.html https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.fr... Keep in mind that any action which doesn't require interactivity every time (e.g. restarting the screensharing of a previously-chosen window/display) could have "user gave permission" be remembered, but that seamless case still only applies to that combination (so that client can't peek at anything else than what it was offered). Anyway, what the blog post is talking about is really just 3rd party apps that haven't been updated (and e.g. might already not function properly inside Flatpak). > feature parity If we are being honest, screenshots/screensharing was never a "feature" of X11, it was a big security hole abused as a feature.
- eviks 10mo ago
  > The infrastructure is already there, for 3rd party apps to request these abilities (with the user getting the choice of following through, or denying the request), e.g.: Why can't the infrastructure include the user simply allowing the app to continue to have access without a specialized infrastructure of app request (that requires updating the app)? > really just 3rd party apps that haven't been updated What's with the downplaying "just" again? Have all the best or most popular apps been updated to ensure no disruption? > screenshots/screensharing was never a "feature" of X11, it was a big security hole abused as a feature. So what was the screenshot feature of X11? Also classifying use as abuse isn't that honest, only the lack of security is

mazone 10mo ago

I love kde and it is what i use but still having the bug from time to time that the panels dissapear and have to relaunch plasmashell, also i wish they merged the virtual desktops and activities into one concept and allowed different wallpapers on each. The theme settings is also confusing because of gtk apps, global theme etc. Feels everything around theming could be made nicer. Prob some more nitpicks but overall it is a really great desktop environment.

graemep 10mo ago
> I love kde and it is what i use but still having the bug from time to time that the panels dissapear and have to relaunch plasmashell I have that too, on Wayland. I also had a bug I mentioned recently in another comment with transparent terminals flickering, but that seems to depend on what is behind them and I think is a bug specific to Konsole. Overall, its very close compared to a few years ago when several things were problematic with Wayland, but I do slightly feel its not quite there yet. > i wish they merged the virtual desktops and activities into one concept and allowed different wallpapers on each. > Prob some more nitpicks but overall it is a really great desktop environment. I agree with both those.

mkayokay 10mo ago

What is the solution regarding the display manager? As SDDMs Wayland support is considered experimental. What do you guys use/recommend?

tmtvl 10mo ago
I use lemurs because as far as I can tell there's no good graphical display managers (lightdm may be the closest as SDDM doesn't show battery level and GDM doesn't allow changing the mouse cursor theme).
LargoLasskhyfv 10mo ago
It works for me, since about two years. Every single time. Feels really stable. Intel HD630 graphics in Kaby Lake Core i5 7500T & Core i7 7700T. CachyOS.
auguzanellato 10mo ago
KDE project is working on plasma-login-manager (https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-login-manager https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-login-manager) but AFAICT there’s no ETÀ for a stable release.

perihelions 10mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 ("KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support (phoronix.com)"—231 comments)

The_President 10mo ago

Bluetooth is still broken beyond belief and here we are with another post from KDE about Wayland. If Wayland will be as buggy as the KDE bluetooth implementation, it’s an easy pass.

ErroneousBosh 10mo ago

Oh, that's a shame, just when I thought KDE was looking quite good. Back to Xorg and Gnome then, because I need accelerated graphics. A very basic functional test, with NVidia drivers 580.95: Gnome and Xorg - Minecraft with a heavyish shader gives 60fps, Kerbal Space Program gives 60fps, DaVinci Resolve works KDE and Wayland - Minecraft with the same shader gives 4fps, KSP gives 2fps, DaVinci Resolve does not work Gnome and Wayland: Minecraft gives 3fps, KSP gives 3fps, DaVinci Resolve does not work. So, acceleration is not supported, it seems. Bummer. Maybe next year Wayland will be relevant.

devl547 10mo ago
>NVidia Angry Linus noises...
- ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
  They make the only accelerated graphics cards supported on Linux.
  - array_key_first 10mo ago
    That's not true. And of course Wayland has hardware acceleration.

estimator7292 10mo ago

I love Wayland. I just absolutely love hard-rebooting my computer twice a day. Oh, need to walk away from the desk? Better switch into a TTY before unplugging the dock so I can force restart SDDM when it crashes. Oh no! Walked out of WiFi range? Your DE is hard frozen and the only operable button is the power button. Wayland truly saves me so much time at work. It's forced me to re-up my ctrl+s reflex. Now I never lose work when it randomly crashes! We've also been playing a fun new game. Every morning when I walk into the office my giant 5Kx1K monitor might be reset to literally any imaginable resolution and I have to figure out how to navigate to the display configuration menu to manually reset it because of course replugging the screen doesn't work. I love Wayland. It's so easy to use and reliable. But MOST IMPORTANT it's newer than X11. Thank god I don't have to use gross old software written in uncool languages. God for-fucking-bid we have to run old software that works instead of new software that-- while not as good as the old software-- is still new What's that? Wayland is almost 20 years old and still not to feature parity with any other OS? Well, it's newer than X11!

array_key_first 10mo ago
Nobody is developing x.org because it's a hot mess. It's just been half-baked solutions smacked on top of each other. That's why hardware acceleration barely works and artifacts are just a fact of life. It's just that Wayland is newer, it's that x.org is a dead end and has been for many decades. If other people want to develop it, then by all means. But they're not, and ultimately I can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to work on a codebase. So here we are.

BrenBarn 10mo ago

Yeesh. Not optimistic about this. Fingers crossed but it's really frustrating when people feel this rush to move off the old way that's working in favor of a new way that doesn't yet do everything the old one does.