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For those who switched in the past few years: Has Wayland given you trouble? I was on a journey this morning after testing my software. It's a GUI CAD-style pro

For those who switched in the past few years: Has Wayland given you trouble? I was on a journey this morning after testing my software. It's a GUI CAD-style program for structural biology. I test it on Linux periodically to make sure it's cross-platform. The checks usually pass, with some subtlety regarding linking Cuda. Today, I observed that mouse + keyboard inputs to the 3D portion stopped working. Root cause: Ubuntu and some other distros recently switched to a GUI backend called Wayland. I don't remember upgrading, but maybe it happened during a system update? It has disabled low-level device inputs except for mouse movement. You can use window-based events instead, but IMO this is a mistake. An OS-level function shouldn't block hardware access. I want the OS to facilitate software and hardware; not create friction.

stratosmacker 9mo ago
Wayland had been around for a while, but I feel your pain. Overall it seems much more performant if that makes it any better
- the__alchemist 9mo ago
  More performant is good! Of interest, I was able to insert a workaround (a few lines of `unsafe` which alter local env vars) into the program to have it use Xorg instead.
Telaneo 9mo ago
> For those who switched in the past few years: Has Wayland given you trouble? No, since I'm on Mint, and thus still on X11. I keep hearing about Wayland problems, and I pray they don't reach me when Mint switches; that the relevant problems will have been fixed by them time Mint does switch.
- SchemaLoad 9mo ago
  Wayland has been pretty much a solved problem for a while now. Most distros have been shipping it by default for many years now.
  - Telaneo 9mo ago
    The fact that I keep hearing people have issues because it's now the default doesn't fill me with confidence. It's probably a minority of people having these issues, and I imagine the problems with screensharing and the like are gone by this point, but accessibility tools which need access to everything X gave them are never going to be compatible without being completely rewritten with Wayland in mind. I'm also not filled with confidence by posts like this[1], which confirm that Wayland was still deeply broken in many ways just in 2024. Two years is not a short amount of time, but given it took Wayland 10+ years to be anywhere close to usable for desktop usage, I'm not placing my bets on the pace having gone up so fast that long-standing issues are solved yet. That post takes somewhat of an extreme position, but kernel of truth is that it breaks a lot of things, many of which apparently still aren't solved. This post[2] has a better outlook I believe. I.e. that things are broken today (since it is for accessibility), but that there is real potential and that it can be fixed. It just has to be done. Shame that doing that is hard and that accessibility ends up taking a back seat. [1] https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d... [2] https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
    - SchemaLoad 9mo ago
      I had a look at that gist, and the majority of it is a result of the responsibility of wayland being smaller. xorg was dumping ground for a lot of functionality it shouldn't have been responsible for, so the majority of those Xs on the list are things that very much do work on a Linux system on wayland, just in theory you could build a wayland spec compliant DE which doesn't have them, but if you just install Gnome/KDE, it will all work. For all the noise about the "unix philosophy" and systemd being too all encompassing, Wayland went the other way and people still aren't happy.
      - Telaneo 9mo ago
        The exact reasons for it not working doesn't matter. It's the 'not working' part that's annoying people when it comes to Wayland. If X worked, and then Wayland doesn't, no matter how small the way in which it doesn't work, it's still a valid reason to not be a fan. I'm yet to see someone complain about systemd and Wayland in the same comment, or even comment chain for that matter, which does scan, given how they have diametrically opposed philosophies to things. The Venn diagram of people who dislike and Wayland and systemd are probably not quite two separate circles, but I can't imagine the overlap is very large. I actually like systemd a fair bit, since it seems to do its job pretty well. I've seen people have problems with it, but most of the opposition to it are on philosophical grounds rather than about matters of functionality, whereas with Wayland, the opposite is the case.
cogman10 9mo ago
Wayland was turned on by default in ubuntu 21.04 xorg (the x11 server) was removed from ubuntu in ubuntu 25.10. Desktops like gnome have dropped support for x11 so you can expect that wayland will be the only way to do things from here on out. There is a compatibility layer called "xwayland" that should work, but there's definitely some rough edges between x11 apps and wayland apps. x11 gave all apps a pretty large ability to intercept information from across the system. Wayland locks that down pretty significantly.
sho_hn 9mo ago
Hi, I make a Wayland-based desktop environment and ship a few million cars a year using Wayland. Feel free to get in touch if you want to talk to someone (for free advice) about this porting problem you're having.
Pfiffer 9mo ago
The interplay between X11 and Wayland is still bad in my experience- if you don't have all of the XDG-portal stuff setup or force all of the constituent drivers and applications to render on Wayland there will be issues.
dormento 9mo ago
Been having random Steam/Proton crashes that take my whole session down with it. Never had those with X. I miss the stability.
snarfy 9mo ago
Wayland crashes my kernel. If I want an uptime more than 24 hours I use X11 instead. Try running your app via gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope

stratosmacker 9mo ago

Wayland had been around for a while, but I feel your pain. Overall it seems much more performant if that makes it any better

the__alchemist 9mo ago
More performant is good! Of interest, I was able to insert a workaround (a few lines of `unsafe` which alter local env vars) into the program to have it use Xorg instead.

Telaneo 9mo ago

> For those who switched in the past few years: Has Wayland given you trouble? No, since I'm on Mint, and thus still on X11. I keep hearing about Wayland problems, and I pray they don't reach me when Mint switches; that the relevant problems will have been fixed by them time Mint does switch.

SchemaLoad 9mo ago
Wayland has been pretty much a solved problem for a while now. Most distros have been shipping it by default for many years now.
- Telaneo 9mo ago
  The fact that I keep hearing people have issues because it's now the default doesn't fill me with confidence. It's probably a minority of people having these issues, and I imagine the problems with screensharing and the like are gone by this point, but accessibility tools which need access to everything X gave them are never going to be compatible without being completely rewritten with Wayland in mind. I'm also not filled with confidence by posts like this[1], which confirm that Wayland was still deeply broken in many ways just in 2024. Two years is not a short amount of time, but given it took Wayland 10+ years to be anywhere close to usable for desktop usage, I'm not placing my bets on the pace having gone up so fast that long-standing issues are solved yet. That post takes somewhat of an extreme position, but kernel of truth is that it breaks a lot of things, many of which apparently still aren't solved. This post[2] has a better outlook I believe. I.e. that things are broken today (since it is for accessibility), but that there is real potential and that it can be fixed. It just has to be done. Shame that doing that is hard and that accessibility ends up taking a back seat. [1] https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d... [2] https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
  - SchemaLoad 9mo ago
    I had a look at that gist, and the majority of it is a result of the responsibility of wayland being smaller. xorg was dumping ground for a lot of functionality it shouldn't have been responsible for, so the majority of those Xs on the list are things that very much do work on a Linux system on wayland, just in theory you could build a wayland spec compliant DE which doesn't have them, but if you just install Gnome/KDE, it will all work. For all the noise about the "unix philosophy" and systemd being too all encompassing, Wayland went the other way and people still aren't happy.
    - Telaneo 9mo ago
      The exact reasons for it not working doesn't matter. It's the 'not working' part that's annoying people when it comes to Wayland. If X worked, and then Wayland doesn't, no matter how small the way in which it doesn't work, it's still a valid reason to not be a fan. I'm yet to see someone complain about systemd and Wayland in the same comment, or even comment chain for that matter, which does scan, given how they have diametrically opposed philosophies to things. The Venn diagram of people who dislike and Wayland and systemd are probably not quite two separate circles, but I can't imagine the overlap is very large. I actually like systemd a fair bit, since it seems to do its job pretty well. I've seen people have problems with it, but most of the opposition to it are on philosophical grounds rather than about matters of functionality, whereas with Wayland, the opposite is the case.

cogman10 9mo ago

Wayland was turned on by default in ubuntu 21.04 xorg (the x11 server) was removed from ubuntu in ubuntu 25.10. Desktops like gnome have dropped support for x11 so you can expect that wayland will be the only way to do things from here on out. There is a compatibility layer called "xwayland" that should work, but there's definitely some rough edges between x11 apps and wayland apps. x11 gave all apps a pretty large ability to intercept information from across the system. Wayland locks that down pretty significantly.

sho_hn 9mo ago

Hi, I make a Wayland-based desktop environment and ship a few million cars a year using Wayland. Feel free to get in touch if you want to talk to someone (for free advice) about this porting problem you're having.

Pfiffer 9mo ago

The interplay between X11 and Wayland is still bad in my experience- if you don't have all of the XDG-portal stuff setup or force all of the constituent drivers and applications to render on Wayland there will be issues.

dormento 9mo ago

Been having random Steam/Proton crashes that take my whole session down with it. Never had those with X. I miss the stability.

snarfy 9mo ago

Wayland crashes my kernel. If I want an uptime more than 24 hours I use X11 instead. Try running your app via gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope