Well known KDE developer Nate Graham is out with a blog post today outlining his latest Wayland thoughts, how X11 is a bad platform, and the recent topic of “Wayland breaking everything” isn’t really accurate.

“In this context, “breaking everything” is another perhaps less accurate way of saying “not everything is fully ported yet”. This porting is necessary because Wayland is designed to target a future that doesn’t include 100% drop-in compatibility with everything we did in the past, because it turns out that a lot of those things don’t make sense anymore. For the ones that do, a compatibility layer (XWayland) is already provided, and anything needing deeper system integration generally has a path forward (Portals and Wayland protocols and PipeWire) or is being actively worked on. It’s all happening!”

Nate’s Original Blog Post

  • bitcrafter@programming.devEnglish
    113·
    1 year ago

    Alternatively, instead of reading a Phoronix article that has a couple of short snippets from a much longer blog post, you can read the original blog post yourself to see the full context.

    Edit: Also, it is worth noting that the author of the original blog post had previously written another relatively recent post criticizing the way in which Wayland was developed, so it’s not like they are refusing to see its problems.

    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
      212·
      1 year ago

      One of the specific issues from those who’ve worked with Wayland and is echoed here in Nate’s other post that you mentioned.

      Wayland has not been without its problems, it’s true. Because it was invented by shell-shocked X developers, in my opinion it went too far in the other direction.

      I tend to disagree. Had say the XDG stuff been specified in protocol, implementation of handlers for some of that XDG stuff would have been required in things that honestly wouldn’t have needed them. I don’t think infotainment systems need a concept of copy/paste but having to write:

      Some_Sort_Of_Return handle_copy(wl_surface *srf, wl_buffer* buf) {
//Completely ignore this
return 0;
}

Some_Sort_Of_Return handle_paste(wl_surface *srf, wl_buffer* buf) {
//Completely ignore this
return 0;
}

      Is really missing the point of starting fresh, is bytes in the binary that didn’t need to be there, and while my example is pretty minimal for shits and giggles IRL would have been a great way to introduce “randomness” and “breakage” for those just wanting to ignore this entire aspect.

      But one of those agree to disagree. I think the level of hands off Wayland went was the correct amount. And now that we have things like wlroots even better, because if want to start there you can now start there and add what you need. XDG is XDG and if that’s what you want, you can have it. But if you want your own way (because eff working nicely with GNOME and KDE, if that’s your cup of tea) you’ve got all the rope in the world you will ever need.

      I get what Nate is saying, but things like XDG are just what happened with ICCCM. And when Wayland came in super lightweight, it allowed the inevitably of XDG to have lots of room to specify. ICCCM had to contort to fit around X. I don’t know, but the way I like to think about it is like unsalted butter. Yes, my potato is likely going to need salt and butter. But I like unsalted butter because then if I want a pretty light salt potato, I’m not stuck with starting from salted butter’s level of salt.

      I don’t know, maybe I’m just weird like that.

      • aard@kyu.de
        342·
        1 year ago

        I don’t think infotainment systems need a concept of copy/paste but having to write:

        Having lived through the whole “phones don’t need copy and paste debate”, which fortunately got solved by now having it everywhere I’m in the camp “just stick that everywhere, just in case somebody might use it one day”

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    863·
    1 year ago

    Wayland has fixed so many head-scratching issues I would get running 6 monitors on 2 GPUs under X11. I’d often end up with missing monitors, placed in wrong spots that I’d have to rearrange every reboot until an update would come through that would fix it again for a few months, then all over again.

    Since I moved to wayland, everything just works. When it doesn’t, it’s not a display server issue, it’s something physical. I just had a couple monitors fail to show up and thought “oh hell, it’s back to this, eh”. But I open the tower, seat the offending GPU better, and everything comes up like normal, and all the screens are in the right position, it just remembers.

    Anyone that thinks X11 is still superior probably runs on a laptop with a single screen.

    • Still@programming.devEnglish
      471·
      1 year ago

      man it crazy I switched to Wayland on my laptop and docking to 3 monitors just worked on Wayland and it would remember all my monitors settings

      I hand like 2 or 3 scripts setup to try and manage that on x11

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        41·
        1 year ago

        I mean I’m fully with you on the fact screen autodetect isn’t stellar on X but there’s no need to exaggerate with “2 or 3 scripts”. It’s one xrandr command.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      2015·
      1 year ago

      And I’m sure all the other people using 6 monitors on 2 GPUs at the same time will appreciate it.

      Seriously, how common is such a scenario that you’d even mention it in this context?

      • iopq@lemmy.world
        31·
        1 year ago

        Two monitors with different refresh rates is very common. Think laptop connected to a bigger monitor.

        • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          I have 2 75hz and a 240hz. It’s been alright for me on kde and x11. Although, I do want to give this Wayland thing a shot after hearing it being brought up so many times

          • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            11·
            1 year ago

            Seriously? That’s my home setup, and a lot of my friends also have 3 monitors.

            I’m surprised you don’t know anyone who has three monitors. It’s common for tech-y people.

          • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
            10·
            1 year ago

            Ive seen several devs do that, and also some of my gaming friends have 3 monitors.

            I barely know anyone who only has a single display. Most people I know have one high refresh rate monitor, and one office monitor for discord and the likes.

          • U de Recife@literature.cafe
            5·
            1 year ago

            Hello! Nice to meet you. I know and love your kind. One monitor is pretty standard, so I have a lot of friends just like you.

            Yup, 3 monitors user here. I guarantee it’s not that uncommon.

            (And yes, I’m still running X11)

      • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
        13·
        1 year ago

        Since it’s probably reasonably rare it’s a good demonstration of the stability of Wayland. It makes sense to mention it imo