X11 vs Wayland: A question

[MurphCID]

Ok, I will be the first to admit that I have not really been bothered by the whole X11 vs Wayland thing, but can someone explain to me what exactly wayland is supposed to eventually do that could not be done by the stable X11, and when will wayland actually be functional, as I understand it, wayland is still a project under development that is not ready for prime time, but is being shoehorned into almost all distros.

I guess what I am looking for is some clarity on the whole X11 (old &Bad), vs the Wayland (New and Good) thing. AFAIK, I am using X11 on all my Linux computers and don't seem to have issues which is where my confusion stems from.

[xenopeek]

Today both Gnome Shell and KDE Plasma default to a Wayland session. That's how ready it is for prime time: it's the default. Cinnamon (like other DE's) lags behind with Linux Mint 22 being the first experimental support for Wayland.

There are some paper cuts, some things that work differently, some edge cases for which plumbing is still under development and may hinder users that need specifically but in general it just works and for most users there are no issues (on current GNOME or KDE). I've used it for at least the past 7 years without issue. More and more apps run native on Wayland and for apps (or games) that don't they run fine in XWayland inside Wayland. Apps built with current GNOME or KDE technology run native on Wayland out of the box. For other apps, major ones are also getting support to run native on Wayland. For example Firefox, Chromium, Element (Matrix) and Slack can all run native on Wayland without problems. LibreOffice can also run native on Wayland but has more noticeable work remaining, for example in Calc some actions with tabs and conditional formatting don't work right yet. But again it also runs fine on XWayland and that is still the default.

X11 was developed in a different era of computing, when there were other concerns and user wants. Security is a primary concern today, users want fast and smooth graphics. Things Wayland does better than X11. Wayland was started by X11 developers wanting to address the limitations, shortcomings and complexity of X11. Starting a replacement project was deemed to be more practical path for that.

There are tons of articles comparing Wayland and X11 if you want to delve deeper. Less complex, more secure and better optimized for modern graphics benefits all users.

[MurphCID]

You described it pretty well for the most part. Thank you. I keep seeing videos where Wayland is causing glitches, and has some issues with Linux gaming. As I said before, I use what Mint uses, and really until recently never really gave it much thought.

[Hoser Rob]

Wayland is just a protocol, and the issue is not that it's still under development but that so much software has to be rewritten for it. It's not a coincidence that Gnome followed by KDE are the leaders in this. They have the best dev pools.

It's not going away. X11 is largely a dead project. Developers don't want to go back to the security problems with it.

I run Debian 12 Gnome on my main box now and I use Wayland sessions because it works better. That's not true with other desktops. Maybe KDE Plasma 6 has a solid Wayland implementation but Plasma 5 didn't, I'd use X11 there. LXQt has Wayland now and it isn't provisional or experimental but I don't know how well it works.

Anything else, I'd definitely run X11 sessions even if they say they support Wayland. It's just there for dev purposes now, which I'm not interested in.

[Hoser Rob]

... I am using X11 on all my Linux computers and don't seem to have issues which is where my confusion stems from.

Well some users do. X11 has real security problems. I saw a recent thread here from a user who had malware from 3rd party sourced software. A hacker was remotely controlling the user input. It's possible for all user input in a window to be hijacked in x11. This is a known flaw in X11, has been for years, and since X11 is pretty much a dead project it will not get fixed.

[MurphCID]

Interesting. I had not thought about all the software that had to be re-written for Wayland, so that makes sense.

[Hoser Rob]

Even Red Hat is dumping X11 packages in their next release, and they're as conservative as it gets: https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20231204#news

[Neil Edmond]

KDE Neon has been my daily driver for the past couple of years, and Wayland is the default now. Wayland worked well for me with one fatal flaw. I use Barrier daily for my workflow, and could not find a suitable replacement that works on Wayland, so I've gone back to X11 for the time being. Just one of those pieces of software that probably won't ever work on Wayland.

[rbmorse]

The wrinkle with wayland (tm) I've discovered is that Pika Backup doesn't yet work with Wayland.

Since I'm too lazy to set up a different backup solution for my personal files and /home/username, I'm back on Xorg for the time being.

[MiZoG]

I've used it for at least the past 7 years without issue.

You are special. Everyone else couldn't even print their screen for the most part of this 7-year period

X11 became an unmanageable patchwork but it took Wayland way too long to catch up with x11's feature set.
X11 is one step away from the... morgue and Wayland just came out from the neonatal intensive care for premature babies.

I saw a recent thread here from a user who had malware from 3rd party sourced software. A hacker was remotely controlling the user input.

C'mon. x11 is dead but this type of "x11 infected my pc wayland saved me" arguments is... nah...

[xenopeek]

Everyone else couldn't even print their screen for the most part of this 7-year period

That has never not worked for me, the builtin screenshot tool on Gnome Shell.

[MiZoG]

Only around 2022 wayland started being smooth for me and that's not on my until recently main nvidia-powered PC

[Hoser Rob]

It is pretty absurd to think that a project that started in 2008 has only recently become useable, and then only on a couple of desktop environments. Honestly this says a lot about FOSS projects in general.

[Professor_Slughorn]

Agreed. Wayland is one of those projects I have been hearing about for years.

Almost there...

Almost there...

Almost there...

[Hoser Rob]

Agreed. Wayland is one of those projects I have been hearing about for years.

Almost there...

I run Debian 12 Gnome and I think it is there in Gnome. Maybe Plasma 6, I haven't tried it, but I used X11 in Plasma 5. But in Gnome 43 I never notice it's there, which is how it should be.