Curious what you guys think of wayland.

[Anon-E-moose]

For those who think wayland is lacking whatever minor nit you think it should have, you can add protocols till it makes you head swim.
Whether others will accept and use said extensions, that's up to them.

But you can always produce and offer the protocol, whether it's in wayland repo, blessed by wayland devs or not.
If it becomes useful enough then it might become a standard by default, like kde system tray helper or gnomes lilbrsvg.

[Zucca]

I interpreted Moose's post not being targeted to any specific person.

But I'm along the same line pretty much in that:

• This is Gentoo. You have choice to choose the software you use. You even have choice how to compile the software. And sometimes you have even choice to install precompiled binaries.

For some people X forwarding via ssh is important and waypipe doesn't do the cut.
For some people there needs to be a concept of primary display, which is not a thing on most of (?) the wayland compositors.
Heck, I even have one quite troublesome problem with wayland on my desktop PC: I'm unable to map a mouse button as scroll button when using my 4-button trackball. This was once a total dealbreaker for me. I just got back to searching a solution to this. Maybe it's been solved by now...
Neither choice is perfect for me.

EDIT: Added link to said post.

[stefan11111]

[...] Again, I ask moderation to be more careful about comments such as the one I quoted above. [...]

The moderation is very careful when it comes to forums such as “Programming” or “Desktop Environments”. In “Chat” we are a bit more “lenient”. Also, we try to help and not punish (you probably remember your frequent USE="-*" and I advised you to create a thread in “Documentation”). I don't mean to reply in place of @Anon-E-moose, but I didn't see his post as a direct attack on you so much as a general complaint about repetition; and yes I've already stopped it and I get the impression all users in this thread have a desire to talk about Wayland in a factual way again. You have now replied to @Anon-E-moose and I think that settles it. We are all human and not perfect.

I thought he was referring specifically to me, and that's why I wrote my post the way I wrote it. If I misunderstood that, then I'm sorry.
I never asked for anyone to be punished. I believe that should be used as a last resort, and only for things like spam.

Agree we're all human and we make mistakes. I hope that also applies to me regarding posts like mine.
It;s not nice when people call you entitled and say you don't do the work, while you spend hours each day contributing to open source in your free time.

About my USE="-*" threads, I don't think I ever attacked anyone, or even criticized anything (it is something that is already implemented, what is there to criticize).
From what I remember, I was telling people in various threads to switch to USE=-*, and this is where I was wrong.
If I ever wrote a personal attack in one of those threads, I'm sorry for that, but I don't remember.

[Naib]

Its incomplete and Xwayland is the biggest incomplete feature.
JAVA-based applications suffer the most and one issue for me is Matlab (yer yer proprietary software... big corps use matlab on linux btw)
The "splashscreen" isn't a splashscreen... its an oversized window with a logo in it on a white background ... BUT it does work. Simulink starts and the library opens. HOWEVER... you cant move or resize the canvas.... This and other Xonly applications are aclusterFK on Wayland and thus XWayland is incomplete so why is it being pushed so hard when they havn't shown completness?

I still wayland (labwc) as I only need to use simulink sparingly on my $home machine

[pietinger]

[...]

For me - as a moderator - everything is good (again) in this thread. (No, you never wrote a personal attack; AFAIR)

[Spanik]

For those who think wayland is lacking whatever minor nit you think it should have, you can add protocols till it makes you head swim.
Whether others will accept and use said extensions, that's up to them.

But you can always produce and offer the protocol, whether it's in wayland repo, blessed by wayland devs or not.
If it becomes useful enough then it might become a standard by default, like kde system tray helper or gnomes lilbrsvg.

I fear this will lead to applications becoming usable only on some desktop/compositor/windowmanager/video card combinations. Leading to only a few incompatible "linuxes" remaining. "Linuxes" as in complete systems, the kernel will hopefully stay a singlepackage.

[Zucca]

This and other Xonly applications are aclusterFK on Wayland and thus XWayland is incomplete so why is it being pushed so hard when they havn't shown completness?

Have you tried via rootful Xwayland? I know it's not ideal...

I'm left to wonder why haven't these pragrams been

• ported to work on wayland
• ... or patched to work properly on (non-complete) Xwayland

It's another case if the program is unmaintained, unfortunately... And also sometimes it's a lot of work (take a look at XFCE, for example).

I'd still guess patching to make it work on Xwayland would require least effort in most cases. It may be a temporary patch until Xwayland gets fixed.

[Naib]

This and other Xonly applications are aclusterFK on Wayland and thus XWayland is incomplete so why is it being pushed so hard when they havn't shown completness?

Have you tried via rootful Xwayland? I know it's not ideal...

I'm left to wonder why haven't these pragrams been

• ported to work on wayland
• ... or patched to work properly on (non-complete) Xwayland

It's another case if the program is unmaintained, unfortunately... And also sometimes it's a lot of work (take a look at XFCE, for example).

I'd still guess patching to make it work on Xwayland would require least effort in most cases. It may be a temporary patch until Xwayland gets fixed.

yup, same effect.

Why don't they patch? well for starters some releases are under configuration control so its not like you can then just go an retrospectively "patch" as downstream qualify a specific toolchain.
Likewise, Xwayland was advertised as being the means that legacy applications can work on a wayland display and thus it is their responsibility to do that. The wayland layer still can't do mouse warping and precise windows positioning, something Kicad, a FOSS software, relies upon and thus it is between a rock and a hardplace... force-enable wayland and experience serious CAD issues or force X11 and go via Xwayland with other issues...
A back to proprietary... do you blame them... every other day there is some hip new FAD that is proclaimed to replace everything else and ends up taking longer then they said and doesn't meet the needs ... remember Mir...

[Anon-E-moose]

If wayland doesn't offer x,y,z option or doesn't do things the way you think they should, your choices are
1. stick with what is working (X or whatever)
2. go with wayland and deal with things not working the way they did under X

I still maintain repeating (on this forum) that x,y,z is needed or isn't working in wayland will have zero effect on fixing your problem.
It's not like all the developers of different software check different forums to see what's being said.

If a protocol needs to be added or changed it could be brought up on wayland-protocols,
or check with software maker to see if they are going to make their software work properly under wayland.

From what I see, some of you seem to think that wayland should duplicate X warts and all and yet somehow provide a better X. An impossibility.

Now if you ask will so and so work under wayland, you'll probably get an answer.
The same if someone knows of a workaround for problems of software running under wayland.

For those who claim Xlibre or whatever fad project is front and center, will fix all problems, I have a wait and see attitude.

For those multi-window apps like cad programs, gimp, etc, running under wayland, that need window positioning like X,
I don't know if that will ever happen, but it's unlikely given the design differences between X and wayland.
Note: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/ ... quests/264 but who knows if it will be accepted and whether
packages like wxwidgets will modify their code to make things work.

Edit to add: I went looking for info on Kicads problems with wayland and I feel sorry for the Kicad users.
From what I gather the few problems seem to be because that's the way they did things in X and
they won't relook at their design to see if it could be redone properly under wayland.

Kind of like Xorgs design hampers trying to enhance it to add many features that wayland has.
Sometimes its easier to just start over with a clean design rather than trying to retrofit new ideas into a old piece of software that's had cruft added over a 40+ year period.

[Zucca]

The wayland layer still can't do mouse warping and precise windows positioning, something Kicad, a FOSS software, relies upon and thus it is between a rock and a hardplace... force-enable wayland and experience serious CAD issues or force X11 and go via Xwayland with other issues...
A back to proprietary... do you blame them... every other day there is some hip new FAD that is proclaimed to replace everything else and ends up taking longer then they said and doesn't meet the needs ... remember Mir...

I heard about KiCAD problems in wayland. That's, for sure, a showstopper for many, it that's an issue to them. Sounds pretty important.
Care to explain (in simple terms) what these "mouse warping and precise windows positioning" mean, or rather why those are needed for KiCAD?
In the past I've toyed a little with KiCAD, and still plan to get back to it, so this is quite relevant for me.

Also Mir... Almost everyone thought it was a bad idea. I don't even remember what was so bad about it.

[Anon-E-moose]

As far as window placement, I've never used Kicad, but think of gimp.
It might open a main window and 2 other windows to each side of the main one.

X allows application windows to place their main and sub-windows where they want.
Under wayland the application is not allowed to place windows where it wants, that's the compositors job.
Because X owns the screen, well all the hardware actually, it does things a certain way,
that's a central design of X so it can allow an application to own the screen.
Now whether this is a good thing or not, is debatable, you wind up having to trust that the applications that you use won't don't stupid or malicious things.

Mouse warping is similar, in X the app decides where it wants to put the cursor, in wayland the compositor does.
Though to be honest mouse warping is problematic in many cases.

[dmpogo]

\
But also this is why "the year of Linux desktop" will never come.

Year of Linux desktop is such a funny persistent meme. I remember it being discussed in 1999, with RedHat 5.2, just after I installed my first Linux

[pa4wdh]

If wayland doesn't offer x,y,z option or doesn't do things the way you think they should, your choices are
I still maintain repeating (on this forum) that x,y,z is needed or isn't working in wayland will have zero effect on fixing your problem.
It's not like all the developers of different software check different forums to see what's being said.

If a protocol needs to be added or changed it could be brought up on wayland-protocols,
or check with software maker to see if they are going to make their software work properly under wayland.

I understand that your statement is true.
For the things i'm missing in wayland they've expressed specifically they won't implement it, so why should i take interest in their hobby project to implement something they won't accept anyway?

[Anon-E-moose]

If wayland doesn't offer x,y,z option or doesn't do things the way you think they should, your choices are
I still maintain repeating (on this forum) that x,y,z is needed or isn't working in wayland will have zero effect on fixing your problem.
It's not like all the developers of different software check different forums to see what's being said.

If a protocol needs to be added or changed it could be brought up on wayland-protocols,
or check with software maker to see if they are going to make their software work properly under wayland.

I understand that your statement is true.
For the things i'm missing in wayland they've expressed specifically they won't implement it, so why should i take interest in their hobby project to implement something they won't accept anyway?

That's the beauty of the whole thing, no one forces you to either use it or not.
Don't like wayland, use X, don't like X use wayland, don't like either use FB.

You interest isn't required (eta. by the devs) and your input has little value to others evaluating whether to use wayland,
other than knowing that certain things don't work for you and others might not care about that.

I will add I wish it worked well for everyone, including you.
But for those who think that wayland was supposed to X12 or X11++ they are wrong, it's a new critter not a feature for feature rewrite of what was.

[pa4wdh]

That's the beauty of the whole thing, no one forces you to either use it or not.
Don't like wayland, use X, don't like X use wayland, don't like either use FB.

I'm not stating anyone is forcing me, and i've made the choice to stay at X11 as long as there is no alternative. But since i made a comment earlier about some missing features and someone made a (general) remark on that, i felt the need to respond to that.

You interest isn't required (eta. by the devs) and your input has little value to others evaluating whether to use wayland,
other than knowing that certain things don't work for you and others might not care about that.

Well, the quote i replied to stated that i should implement the features i'm missing in wayland, that does require my interest. But even if i would be interested, the waytand devs have already stated they are not interested, so gone is my interest.

I will add I wish it worked well for everyone, including you.
But for those who think that wayland was supposed to X12 or X11++ they are wrong, it's a new critter not a feature for feature rewrite of what was.

I guess that comes from the fact that they intend to replace X11. Replacing something usually implies being able to do similar things and (hopefully) doing them better. I can't judge for the "better" part, but when you exclude some use cases right from the start of the project the "similar things" part won't happen.

[Anon-E-moose]

I will add I wish it worked well for everyone, including you.
But for those who think that wayland was supposed to X12 or X11++ they are wrong, it's a new critter not a feature for feature rewrite of what was.

I guess that comes from the fact that they intend to replace X11. Replacing something usually implies being able to do similar things and (hopefully) doing them better. I can't judge for the "better" part, but when you exclude some use cases right from the start of the project the "similar things" part won't happen.

I look at it like buying a new car, it certainly going to be different than my last one.
The similarity is that it's got 4 wheels (usually), steering wheel and gas/brake pedals.
Other than that many things are different, layout, some things work different or are not even offered anymore.
And this is just comparing a gas powered vehicle against another gas powered vehicle.

I'm not stating anyone is forcing me

I didn't mean it that way, it was just a generic statement for all, no one specific.

As far as implementation, if it is not offered by the software (no matter what software) then one only has a few choices.
If source is available and can be patched, that's one option.
If it can't be patched, then one either has to live with it that way, or find another piece of software that does what you want/need.

For me, I've found that no compositor has all of what I want.
So I've started creating my own, that does what I want.
Sometimes I wind up enhancing an existing protocol to add what I think it needs.
And I don't care if wayland devs accept my changes, they're for me anyway
Other times I have to write new code or modify what exists to make it the way I want.

If one wants to enhance protocols, or create a new one, one has to realize that they are really doing it for themselves.
If it gets accepted by "the mainstream" that's good but even if it doesn't get accepted, it doesn't reduce the usefulness to oneself.

[pa4wdh]

I look at it like buying a new car, it certainly going to be different than my last one.
The similarity is that it's got 4 wheels (usually), steering wheel and gas/brake pedals.
Other than that many things are different, layout, some things work different or are not even offered anymore.
And this is just comparing a gas powered vehicle against another gas powered vehicle.

That's indeed a way of looking at it. On the other hand, if i buy a new car i expect it to do more than the one i had. With that i don't mean things like a higher top speed, but all the safety features and all features that make it easier to drive.
For example, if i'd like to buy a new car and for some reason all new cars come without a radio, i'm not buying it. In that case i'd rather have my old car then the shiny new one.

For me, I've found that no compositor has all of what I want.
So I've started creating my own, that does what I want.
Sometimes I wind up enhancing an existing protocol to add what I think it needs.
And I don't care if wayland devs accept my changes, they're for me anyway
Other times I have to write new code or modify what exists to make it the way I want.

Good to hear that works for you, but that probably means you'll be maintaining it as long as you'll use wayland and your implementation will be incompatible with all others. I'm not prepared to take that kind of effort for a project that chose to explicitly ignore my use case in the first place.

If one wants to enhance protocols, or create a new one, one has to realize that they are really doing it for themselves.
If it gets accepted by "the mainstream" that's good but even if it doesn't get accepted, it doesn't reduce the usefulness to oneself.

Sure. I've written dozens of programs for myself that probably have no use outside my house. But those are my projects, i'm not putting that kind of effort into someone else's project that explicitly chose to ignore my use case.

[Anon-E-moose]

pa4wdh, then stick with X. May it serve you well.

[pa4wdh]

That's exactly what i'm planning to do .

[Naib]

The wayland layer still can't do mouse warping and precise windows positioning, something Kicad, a FOSS software, relies upon and thus it is between a rock and a hardplace... force-enable wayland and experience serious CAD issues or force X11 and go via Xwayland with other issues...
A back to proprietary... do you blame them... every other day there is some hip new FAD that is proclaimed to replace everything else and ends up taking longer then they said and doesn't meet the needs ... remember Mir...

I heard about KiCAD problems in wayland. That's, for sure, a showstopper for many, it that's an issue to them. Sounds pretty important.
Care to explain (in simple terms) what these "mouse warping and precise windows positioning" mean, or rather why those are needed for KiCAD?
In the past I've toyed a little with KiCAD, and still plan to get back to it, so this is quite relevant for me.

Also Mir... Almost everyone thought it was a bad idea. I don't even remember what was so bad about it.

Cursor warping is where the application sets the cursor NOT the user. This is key for something like kicad because you may have a component (symbol or footprint) selected and then you press "m" to move... You /really/ want the cursor to WARP to the reference point of the symbol (ie the geometric centre of the part, as per and KLC-S3.1 and KLC-F6.2 to conform with IEC-60617 and the centroid definitions of ODB++, GERBER-X3, IPC-2581 and the centroid file.
IF the part is starting to move but hte cursor is on the other part of the screen, it is extremely disconcerting as what do you concentrate on... the moving part or the moving cursor because now both will be moving but with a massive xy offset UNLESS you warp the cursor to the centroid.

Precise window positioning is critical in determine the EXACT position of the window to interpret an EXACT positional movement of a part, downto 1nm accuracy, to the pixel concordance displace that the display engine uses: "The user need to move the component by 27nm and based upon this zoom level and the information the display is telling me, this is equivalent of 45pixels"

wayland can't do this so its X11 only for now.

Good news is Kicad via Xwayland is "ok" for me at the moment (not for long as I am upgrading to 4k and thus high-DPI (Something Xwayland can't do).
Legacy Xapplications (or even present) like Matlab is a different story...

[wildhorse]

Good news is Kicad via Xwayland is "ok" for me at the moment (not for long as I am upgrading to 4k and thus high-DPI (Something Xwayland can't do).
Legacy Xapplications (or even present) like Matlab is a different story...

I am using Kicad with an X11 server and a "5k" monitor. Works fine.

I would not call Matlab a "Legacy Xapplications". Besides, I have many other X11 applications which I need. I see absolutely no point in running them under something like xwayland that will eventually be killed along with all X11 applications by the wayland developers. I use systems which have X11 and will never receive any support by the wayland developers. I use X11 over the network. I see absolutely no reason to following the wayland developers like a lemming. These people pretend that they are do-gooders, they produce nothing useful for me, they try to define my work environment for me, and they only split the non-MS-Windows world.

[asturm]

I am upgrading to 4k and thus high-DPI (Something Xwayland can't do).

What makes you say that?

[Anon-E-moose]

I see the same arguments every time some variation of is wayland ready comes up.

From the X11 people:
it doesn't work for me or I refuse to change my habits (your choice)
they're trying to tell me what to use (which isn't true)

and a lot of other self-entitled garbage, to me all I hear is

X11 will no longer have corporate employees work on it. No more free labor for the masses ie me, me, me.

If you like X or have to have some feature of it, then by all means stick with X. Nobody is coming for your keyboard.
Let the rest of the world evolve if that is what they choose, unless you're trying to make choices for them which would be more than a tad hypocritical.

Fragmentation has long been part of many projects which is why many of them evolve.
But it's hard to be more fragmented than aix, dec, sun, and all the other X variation providers used to be.

Note: I'm not talking about the reasonable people, who mention why wayland doesn't work for them, and then leave it at that.

[Spanik]

I see the same arguments every time some variation of is wayland ready comes up.

From the X11 people:
it doesn't work for me or I refuse to change my habits (your choice)
they're trying to tell me what to use (which isn't true)

No, that isn't the case. A whole group of applications doesn't work and will never work because Wayland has taken the standpoint that the needed functionality will not be implemented. And changing your habits isn't possible because the software will not be available anymore as Wayland is getting into the mainstream distros (that don't care much for that group of software). They don't tell us what to use, we are left with no other choice.

Sooner or later it will not be possible anymore to run X11 because the rest of the software needed will not be able to work with it anymore.

[Anon-E-moose]

Sooner or later it will not be possible anymore to run X11 because the rest of the software needed will not be able to work with it anymore.

That's a very good possibility.

And I do admit, the lack of info on how to do many things, is scary.
I know, I've had to try and look up many things, (I curse google a lot for their lack of help)

I know things like wlrctl (wayland version of wmctl) work, so things like mouse positioning, ie warping works, it just needs to be implemented by software moving to wayland.

Absolute positioning is also being worked on, and it's coming along slow.
But I would rather them take their time instead of winding up with the hodge-podge mess of code we call X.

So for now, use X, but keep an open mind about replacement whether wayland or whatever coming along.
Everybody forgets when X on the pc wasn't that great of an experience.
X still had a lot of warts in the 2000 time frame, which puts it at appx the age of wayland now. And wayland is usable for >95% of users.