The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

Linux@lemmy.ml – 124 points – 1 years ago

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In response to Wayland Breaks Your Bad Software

I say that the technical merits are irrelevant because I don't believe that they're a major factor any more in most people moving or not moving to Wayland.

With only a slight amount of generalization, none of these people will be moved by Wayland's technical merits. The energetic people who could be persuaded by technical merits to go through switching desktop environments or in some cases replacing hardware (or accepting limited features) have mostly moved to Wayland already. The people who remain on X are there either because they don't want to rebuild their desktop environment, they don't want to do without features and performance they currently have, or their Linux distribution doesn't think their desktop should switch to Wayland yet.

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You need to understand the difference between the quality of Wayland itself and the specific implementation of a compositor but you don’t. “Plasma’s Wayland port is incomplete, so Wayland developers should consider it a failed project and work on X11 instead” as an attitude just makes zero sense.

Now you're using a complete strawman here. I never said it's because the Wayland port is incomplete but because I think it doesn't work on key software in 2023. Wayland had its first release in 2008, that's 15 years ago, that's a long time and if there's still questions about its maturity then that's a fatal flaw. Maybe it even says something if downstream developers have to port it instead of being able to just switch out X11, but of course that might just as well be a quirk of X11.

You initially said that most applications in general are not compatible with Wayland and that’s untrue. If you personally happen to mainly use only outdated Electron applications, that’s your problem but doesn’t reflect of the state of the wider ecosystem. Qt 5&6 and GTK 3&4 applications run on Wayland and most don’t even need a dedicated Wayland port.

It doesn't? Don't get me wrong it's great that Wayland works on so many QT and GTK applications, but if it doesn't work on the key applications users interact with daily, then it's kind of a moot point, isn't it?

No, but it is a fact that Gnome is ahead in Wayland support and all major distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL) default to Gnome with Wayland, therefore your claim of low adoption is just wrong.

Yeah you have a point, Gnome is certainly popular but is that because of Wayland or other reasons? I think Wayland support isn't the reason why Gnome is recommended by default and I think it's a bad idea to even recommend Gnome by default because it deviates too far from Windows design which most people would be most familiar with. A better choice would be KDE in my opinion but ofc as we have discussed KDE has its own downsides.

KDE doesn’t push anything down your throat, you’re just incapable to replace KWin with an alternative, even though at least one wlroots-based one exists.

KDE used to be able to switch out the compositor in the gui, but they removed that feature. And kwin comes with plasma by default. True I can definitively replace kwin but I don't currently know how to and I don't want to break plasma either.

I never said it’s because the Wayland port is incomplete

Yes, because you don't understand the difference between an incomplete Plasma port to Wayland and the maturity of Wayland itself. I showed you how dumb your argument is but you did not even manage to understand that.

I think it doesn’t work on key software in 2023.

First it was most software, then it was most software you personally use, and now it's key software...

that’s a long time and if there’s still questions about its maturity then that’s a fatal flaw.

The fatal flaw is with your knowledge.

Gnome is certainly popular but is that because of Wayland or other reasons?

That has nothing to do with the fact that adoption is high.

I think it’s a bad idea to even recommend Gnome by default because it deviates too far from Windows design

That as well has nothing to do with the widespread adoption of Wayland.

I don’t currently know

Yes, I can see that.

There is no difference between the maturity of wayland and the plasma port. The maturity of wayland hinges on its usage. Thats what this topic is about.

It's after all the cited reason for the limited support for wayland (outside of gnome apparently).

You claim wayland is widely adopted but you're lying about that. Most applications still require xwayland as far as my experience is concerned. So why would I accept your arguments?

Your argument is basically that it works on gnome and since gnome is used by the biggest distributions so it works on most things. It sounds like the goal of wayland as you describe it is to work on gnome and nothing else. It's "a thing for gnome". Am I understanding you correctly?

you’re lying about that.

Someone who doesn't even know how to change the window manager cannot judge that.

Oh piss off. All evidence I have points to that you're lying.