this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Hey Community,

Since I just read a post about the X11 vs. Wayland situation I'm questioning if I should stay on X11, or switch to Wayland. Regarding this decision, I'm asking you for your opinions plus please answer me a few questions. I will put further information about my systems at the bottom.

  • What are the advantages of Wayland? What are the disadvantages?
  • I do mostly music production, programming, browsing, etc, but occasionally I'm back into gaming (on the desktop). How's performance there? Anything that might break?
  • what would be the best way to migrate?
  • why have/haven't you made the switch?

Desktop: Ryzen 3100, 16 Gig Ram, Rx 570 Arch Linux with KDE 144 hz Freesync Monitor and 60hz shitty monitor

laptop: Thinkpad L540 (iirc), i3 4100, 8 GB Ram intel uhd630 gfx (iirc) Arch Linux with heavily customized i3-gaps

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[–] JC1@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

On my surface go 3, I used pop os at first and the screen tearing was so bad that I stopped using it. I then changed for arch with gnome on wayland and everything works much better.

Though, for my main computer, I recently switched my main OS from Windows and went for Hyprland on Arch. I love it. Most applications run fine. Though I have a 3080. This means that most electron apps are very slow, almost unusable. Also, some applications just refuse to open, notably Plex. For jellyfin, half the time the screen is black and I need to restart the app. I also have a KVM switch that I use for my work computer. When I switched to it and came back, I got a red screen of death for which I had to exit Hyprland and get back to SDDM to log back in. I was able to start and play games though. Global shortcuts didn't work easily (feature, not a bug), so I want to use a support app for Path of Exile. Impossible on Wayland. And finally, I tend to use a screenshoting tool. Flameshot isn't available on wayland so I used snappy, but it doesn't freeze the frame, rendering it useless.

Now I switched over qtile in X11. Everything works fine, electron apps are much more snappy. Most importantly, the WM doesn't crash when I use my KVM, so my sound device works perfectly. The only issue I'm facing is the audio, there seem to have a very small delay (I'm using pipewire).

The only thing that I miss now is a way for me to assign an audio output to an application so that if I close the application it even restart my computer, that assignment is still remembered. Currently I have a tool that does that that I autostart with my WM, but it doesn't redirect the audio, it just adds the other assignment without removing the default audio output.

There you go, wayland is not recommended if you have a nvidia GPU, even though it still works.

[–] MartinJezhyk@discuss.online 1 points 1 year ago

If your video card is Radeon, then yes. Otherwise you should wait for opensource Nvidia drivers.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

I just distro hopped to a distro that ships wayland by default and I've got from a near flawless linux experience to an awful experience. I am gonna have to be careful what distro I recommend to people because I dont want anyone's first linux experience to be with wayland. So many issues and every single time its wayland related with no fix. I ended up going back to x11. -NVIDIA graphics card user with KDE plasma.

I dove headfirst recently and switched from KDE Plasma to Hyprland. I ended up using someone else's config as a base, and I'm still tweaking, but so far, I have no regrets.

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I switched recently and it's still just a tiny bit rough around the edges. People have been saying to switch for years and that can't have actually been a good idea until like half a year ago. KDE fills in some of the missing functionality with e.g. its screen sharing portal and global hotkeys emulator, so if you use something with less Wayland support/shims it might be rougher. The upside to me is FreeSync/VRR and security improvements.

Staying on X.org is fine for now if you don't need any Wayland features - Wayland is very close to being completely polished so if you really can't deal with one of its rough edges I'd check back in like a year and it will probably be seamless.

Performance is the same. Nothing has broken for me for gaming yet, and I've thrown some obscure games at it. Xwayland seems sufficient to fix any Wayland quirks that programs aren't expecting.

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Last time I tried it, obs studio was unable to capture video on Wayland, which is a dealbreaker. Functionally they're are the same point for a regular user, so I've been shown using xorg without issue but it is a point for to consider

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 0 points 1 year ago

I can do video on OBS on Wayland (as a Flatpak). KDE pops up a screen sharing picker so it works that way, or you can probably use this plugin. Like I said this seems to be a bandaid that KDE put in to fix this shortcoming, so if you use a different DE then it probably doesn't work as nice.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What are the advantages of Wayland?

More modern and in some cases better performance (as if Xorg performance were bad ... but hey)

What are the disadvantages?

Basically none of your current software works out of the box (you'll need a special Xorg implementation that works with your Wayland implementation in order to run non-Wayland applications). Most applications are specific to your Wayland implementation instead of a general application that runs in all environments.

why have/haven’t you made the switch?

I did not find one single floating WM that is as good as Openbox for Xorg. Also: Screen recording with OBS is problematic in some constellations.

[–] i_lost_my_bagel@seriously.iamincredibly.gay 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I did. It misses (or missed?) most of the functionality I use with Openbox.

  • shading (rolling up) windows
  • “resistive” window borders
  • menu icons
  • pipe menus
  • freely bindable key-and-mouse combinations for window movement (including all buttons and including all 5 wheel directions/clicks)
  • customizeable decorations (no minimize/maximize buttons, for example, size, mouse interactions, etc.)
  • and some other minor issues.

Especially the menu stuff makes me not wanting to use it. Since my Openbox menu uses icons for 100% of the entries and 95% of the menus come from pipe menus this is an absolute deal breaker.

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[–] rbar@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

There is still way too much instability and too many paper cuts on KDE Wayland. IMO if you have waited this long just wait for their Qt6 release. X11 will remain the best supported experience for KDE 5.

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