Xorg vs Wayland - One mans observations

[Snowhog]

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/wayland-2021.html

Some of us know of/remember Igor Ljubuncic. His background is impressive, to say the least!

[claydoh]

I remember that when it came out.
I do agree with the overall gist, but not 100%
Developers do get to decide how things go, for the most part.


More rambling:

Sure, I do agree that the 'security' aspects may be a bit overblown, but if they are going to replace Xorg, shouldn't they have it be a bit more robust?
And the lack of features is of course a pita, but won't be forever. One bad downside I see is that all the features and dials and knobs pretty much have to be done by the desktop compositor -- ie the desktop developers, not any display server developers, if understand things correctly. (wtf are they even doing, or will be doing, when xorg is set aside, anyway??)

A good side is that there has been some collaboration on setting standards so that some bits ban be shared or modified.
An example of this is a spec for on-screen keyboards so that the compositor doesn't have to have it's own implementation -- though this is at least partly why KDE is quite behind on this area at the moment.

it does not consider that development on modern functionality on modern hardware on X11 is pretty much kaput for a long time, and has been hacked and cajoled into doing things. At some point, it won't be able to keep up, at the vert least.
I find this quite similar to KDE 3 at its end. The essentially *had* to recreate things.

Of course fanbois are gunna fanboi, and the anti-whatevers will be loud and obnoxious, as they always are with any change (systemd, anyone?)
As usual, things will play out how they will, and people will mostly forget all this.


Now, for sure Plasma is not 100 ready to move to Wayland, and won't for some time. And X11 isn't just disappearing
I wonder if anyone here has even tried it on Gnome at all in recent months, as their compositor is much further along than Kwin, by a good chunk. And on that note, just why exactly are things so much better/further along on Gnome
Sure Freedesktop.org looks to be independent, but still, things can look fishy when I pull out my corroded tin foil hat..........



I also wonder how much of that 1% of us are using systems where Wayland is already a better experience -- touchscreen devices.



I like to say that Wayland is actually pretty decent already, but of course there are too many caveats to that (Nvidia, Nvidia, and Nvidia)
I have myself been using it exclusively for just about a year now, and I cannot think of any problems I have currently that are specific to wayland. I have semi-minor problems with my dual monitor setup, but the same things happen in Xorg last time I tried (though to a lesser extent). I have two different brands of monitor and my main one wakes up and initialized MUCH more slowly than the other one, and that makes all my windows (mainly different Chrome profiles) move around when the monitors go to standby/shut off, and I don't really want to keep them powered on 24/7

That's about it. Steam gaming I can't tell any difference.

OBS, and other things that have screen recording requires converting over to a full pipewire setup (not hard to, but Ubuntu is behind the ball on this one). Afaik, for Plasma, OBS and Pipewire is the ONLY way to have screen recording in Wayland atm.
I have not had to use Zoom or similar in some time, and I hear that this can be problematic for screen sharing, but normal functions worked for me.

[Snowhog]

just why exactly are things so much better/further along on Gnome

As compared to KDE et al. Well, Gnome is Canonical's favorite son; it's heir apparent. The 'other children' are, well, lucky to be able to sit at the table. Hmm?

[claydoh]

As compared to KDE et al. Well, Gnome is Canonical's favorite son; it's heir apparent. The 'other children' are, well, lucky to be able to sit at the table. Hmm?

Wayland in Gnome has absolutely nothing to do with Canonical or Ubuntu whatsoever.

[Snowhog]

Wayland in Gnome has absolutely nothing to do with Canonical or Ubuntu whatsoever.

Me thinks you're confusing your apples for my oranges.

You made your statement regarding Gnome's compositor and whether Wayland would work 'better' on it than it (currently) does on Plasma, or did I not understand your statement? My response was in regard your question: "just why exactly are things so much better/further along on Gnome" My answer simply meant that Gnome, which is Ubuntu's, therefore Canonical's, preferred DE, so it gets more love (re: financial support).

Or am I totally out in left field while the rest of the team is in the locker room for half-time?

[claydoh]

Canonical , and how many resources it puts into packaging and customizing Gnome's look and feel for Ubuntu, has no bearing on Wayland whatsoever. or very little, depending on how many Ubuntu devs work on Gnome's compositor.
Wayland is a freedesktop.org protocol (the actual display sever functionality is implemented by the compositor -- Kwin, for Plasma), and freedesktop (with my conspiracy-theroist hat on for a momnet) is a heavily Red Hat/Gnome affair.
Ubuntu is irrelevant here, as it is 'downstream' in this area.

[GreyGeek]

I gave Wayland a try a couple months ago. The first thing I noticed is that it was about 2X faster than Xorg. I was ecstatic. For the first couple of weeks things seemed great. Then I began to notice the occasional artifact, and begin having click problems, then wifi and screen freezes for up to 30 seconds at a time, not at the same time. My desktop began to slow down and my journal began to fill up.

I switched back to Xorg and stability returned, but things weren't as snappy as Wayland. While checking "journalctl -xe" I noticed a LOT of rtkit entries, some grouped together by the tens and repeating. A third or more of my journal entries were warnings from rtkit. I purged rtkit. Did that make a difference... wow!. My 6+ seconds to graphical interface at boot dropped to 2 seconds. My wifi freezes stopped and its 5G speed increased from 400Mbps to 867Mbps.

I can't believe the difference getting rid of rtkit made.

[MoonRise]

So, its been a long while since I've tried Wayland. Don't have it installed on any systems now due to reimages. So, the proper procedure to ensure all components are installed? You all make me want to give it a whirl.

[claydoh]

So, its been a long while since I've tried Wayland. Don't have it installed on any systems now due to reimages. So, the proper procedure to ensure all components are installed? You all make me want to give it a whirl.

You do need to install plasma-workspace-wayland to add the session as an option to your login manager.
If you use Nvidia, it could (will? I have no experience) be bumpy without the latest Plasma (5.25 is best) and the most current Nvidia drivers.
Luckily a logout is all that is needed to escape any explosions

[MoonRise]

Yeah, they didn't run to well. As soon as I logged in KWIN and all crashed. I at least had Conky up there but had to shift-alt-Fx into a console session to reboot. I'll hold for now.

EDIT: Yes, I am on Nvidia, so maybe why?

[claydoh]

EDIT: Yes, I am on Nvidia, so maybe why?

Closed source drivers and lack of communication/collaboration. it is not a KDE specific thing. One does need the latest nvidia drivers for the best experience.

If kwin crashed, one can restart it from krunner (alt-space or alt-f2) using kwin_wayland --replace ( or kwin_x11 --replace in xorg).
It might have actually been Plasma, and not kwin, so: plasmashell --replace

I have seen switching between wayland and xorg be a little messy like this last year, so it may be worth testing a clean throwaway user account maybe?

this seems outdated, but potentially useful

Also, upgrading to Plasma 5.25 via the special PPA also includes the Qt patch sets that should help out a lot. Not just for Wayland. but Plasma in general.