Wayland or X11? Why?

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Wayland all the way, 120 hz Freesync monitor with 60 hz second monitor works perfectly on KDE Plasma with AMD. No fussing about with X11 configs or worrying about if the compositor is active or not, it just works.

I'm not having any issue in XFCE on x11/xorg with a 164Hz main screen @2560x1400, and a 60Hz second screen set vertically @1080x1920. Just using the display manager config provided by XFCE.

I can't seem to get Freesync working on KDE Wayland with a single monitor (NixOS with an AMD R9 380). Any tips? I'm using vrrTest to test, and my TV reports when Freesync is enabled.

Don't bother choosing. Use whatever the distro gives you until you actually have a reason to switch

I use arch btw. My distro doesn't give me anything. I was on x11. Wanted to experiment a bit and now I'm configuring hyprland. Going well for me so far

Wayland is the future. X11's future is dead. Unfortunately there are still some growing pains. Xwayland mostly works but I have issues with it sometimes.

If you don't know install a distro and use what comes with it by default and only worry about digging into the plumbing if something doesn't work for you.

Ideally you let your distro worry about plumbing.

I think Mint is nice if you don't need bleeding edge stuff. You can use Cinnamon which runs x11 but will eventually support Wayland.

I've heard good things about suse which has a rolling release option and supports gnome and KDE under Wayland.

Arch of course is a thing if you don't mind a manual transmission as it were.

Personally I might pick Mint to get started.

Wayland. No screen tearing and it doubled my battery life.

hmm interested in the battery life comment. is this a thing? if I could push an extra 20 minutes or so I'd switch

is this a thing?

Honestly, I have no clue. With DWM I had like 3-4 hrs at max and now I am using DWL for 6-8 hrs.

What is also noticeable, is that closing the lid puts the laptop actually into sleep. Because with DWM it continued using the battery as if it was actually used.

I am not advanced user enough to tell what exactly caused this.

I've also noticed a dramatic improvement in battery life with wayland. Been using it since F21 it's very efficient imo

No screen tearing out of the box is a huge plus for wayland. Makes recommending GNU/Linux much easier

Wayland, because it's faster, more stable, handles multi-monitor better, you can have animations while playing a game, no tearing, no fcking around window managers/compositors or shit, lower memory usage and 1:1 touchpad gestures

you have the same with X11... i have all these feats with my intel and AMD GPU.

So why Wayland then? Better architecture/codebase and more manpower. And I think it supports multi-gpu better, not sure as nvidia doesn't play well with Wayland, it would be astonish that Optimus works any better.

Try running multiple monitors with different resolutions or gaming... Just in general (no seriously, people who think that gaming on X11 is better than wayland are fcking insane... No tearing, having to disable compositor to get more than 20fps, just works) in X, bet you'll have a great time. And yes, Nvidia is the only reason why imo anyone should still be using X (if they don't wanna use gnome)

Wayland. Because it's X12. Not a spiritual successor to X11, but an implementation of a subset of X12 by the X11 people. The fact that X11 even works for desktop is a miracle, and only possible due to everyone deploying ass-backwards workarounds to make it work. Now the only changes to Xorg are related to Xwayland.

Wayland for better multimonitor support, scaling, and tear-free rendering.

Both have issues, just that X11 has old issues that rarely someone is workin on, while Wayland has new ones and people are fixing them. So Wayland for me, thank you.

Wayland first, but have both installed so you can fall back to X11 if you need to. If you do have to go back check wayland again after every few updates. X is dying a long-needed death. It started off has a hack decades ago and has just been held together with duct tape ever since. There are some not so great things in wayland with some apps, sometimes issues with context menus or screen recording for example, but they’re getting fixed over time.

I do kind of miss x forwarding over SSH. It was really convenient, there might be something for wayland but I haven’t looked for a while.

X11. I heard NVIDIA is buggy on Wayland. Also, I've never really had much problems with X11 and my system setup.

I found that Wayland works better in my case: XPS 17 with Nvidia on Ubuntu lts. Less stuttering and overall smoother feeling. The only issue is that the screen doesn't always turns on after suspend, but this is healed with ctrl+f1.

X11 for X11Forwarding over SSH.

Wayland because I want something actively maintained and progressive.

I don't think that's a feature many people actually needed, something like accessability is peobably a better argument but I agree with the fundamental statment

Agree, network transparency is a super power user feature.

And frankly VNC is good enough.

I just found it sad that a really powerful feature was dismissed as "no-one actually wants this" (yes I do) and "just use VNC" (I shouldn't have to) and "just plug a monitor in" (well yeah).

I would have hoped that is have been a protocol extension or something rather than outright dismissed as "doing it wrong".

I think thee main reason for some of Waylands feature cuts next to security and legacy stuff no one needs anymore is the unmaintainable giant X11 became but I agree, some sort of reliable way to extend the protocol directly would be cool to have eventually, usually that stuff shouldn't really be in the protocol itself ether tho!

Oh hell no. Vnc isn’t application specific, dynamically resizable, and requires adding that to remote hosts when ssh and x is already there. You know nothing, John Snow.

Good enough, just means barely adequate, it doesn't actually mean good.

But yeah. I like my X11.

Don’t tell me I don’t need it, I use it every day to run apps not yet available on arm from another system. I’ve used it for years at work, as well. Just because it’s for something other than fricking gamer’s doesn’t mean it is not needed.

I never claimed you or others don't need it, just that it's a featore most people don't need... Furthermore almost anyone who claims to need it would be totally fine with a implementation outside of the display protocol (E.g. VNC) too so the amount of people who actually need it is extremly small.

No, Vnc is not a solution. It is an entire remote screen instead of individual remote apps. Claiming Vnc is a suitable replacement is just ignorance of the workflow.

If that's not enough for your workflow you probably want Waypipe, maybe just Google before you rage for no reason next time! https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/

Extra crap as workarounds instead of fixing the real problem, which is Wayland. No thank you.

The actual ptoblem is that X11 is impossible to maintain which is why X.org moved to Wayland... I guess some people don't want to understand jack shit!

Not impossible to maintain, just no one cares to anymore. It's not new and flashy, which is all people care to work on these days. So they make something new with half of what the old standard did. For the rest, they let it fall to others to write hack workarounds, because hey, they didn't need features x y and z, not their problem, right? Why should they care if they create a new standard that breaks shit for tons of people, it does what they want... which is likely fricking useless things like games. This obsession with gaming is out of control, and it's pulling devs away from the things that really need working on. Get a gosh darn console if you need to drown your sorrows in games, ffs. Meanwhile, fix X11, or replace it, but do so FULLY so you don't break things that have worked for over a decade.

I should stop trying to argue with fucking idiots, there is nothing that will convince one of your kind and we sadly have FAR too many in the open source community! :/

Then add the damn missing necessary features so things work as a completely transparent drop in replacement. Wayland is woefully incomplete! It's a damn huge step backwards!

Wayland, especially with a laptop and/or a multi-monitor setup. It has a proper touchpad support with 1:1 gestures and setting different scaling factors for multiple monitors with different refresh rates is a breeze.

Wayland if possible because it generally performes better and is actively maintained. Xorg if Wayland doesn't support your system yet.

Wayland. It generally works a bit better at this point, and it will only continue improving while X11 falls behind. I occasionally need to switch back to X.org for some legacy screen-casting or remote desktop apps, but even the ones that support Linux as an afterthought are starting to add beta Wayland support.

X.org is actually the foundation behind it and it's kind of behind Wayland as well so you mean X11 but that's a minor complaint I guesd

Wayland. Touchscreen support and gestures. No scaling issues. Better smoothness.

And don't forget Crash-Resilient Wayland Compositing that keep applications alive even tho the "compositor" crash, so it does restart without any data loss and the lockscreen protocol, because on xorg if the lockscreen crash then you view the desktop and you have the device unlocked!

Wayland. Touchscreen support and gestures. No scaling issues. Better smoothness.

touchscreen and gestures are managed by libinput/evdev which are independant and works with X11, using it currently on my Yoga C340.

Good point. But I think it would be difficult to configure this bundle within GNOME/KDE. And it's not necessary. Almost everything works fine under Wayland right now.

Wayland, but I mourn for X11. So many great tools, you could truly do anything. You're just not allowed to have fun in Wayland :D

Wayland, because anything I want to do is possible with wlroots compositors like sway. And if you don't need a feature not yet implemented in wayland (e.g. screen tearing), wayland is usually the better experience.

Obviously switching from X11 to a standalone Wayland compositor like sway involves changing out some apps, it's a core component of your system afterall. But xrandr has it's wayland alternatives, rofi has lbonn's fork with wayland support, dmenu has it's equivalent, etc. The X11 tools might work, but usually aren't as good of a experience (e.g. rofi X11 might stay in the foreground while not being able to react to keypresses, rofi-wayland fixes this.).

And I really like to try new things and be at the edge off new technology, so I really wanted to use wayland (And have been using it for years at this point).

Wayland if you have more that one monitor. X11 can support multiple monitors but it is a disaster.

Rustdesk doesn't work on Wayland and that is a real bummer

I run a dual monitor on X11 and never understood why people have issues with it? I'm by no means a Linux expert and I do run in Nvidia, I run different refresh rates. Can someone explain it to me?

If your monitors are different DPIs then multimonitor X11 is awful.

If you're questioning why anyone would have monitors with different DPIs remember that laptops exist.

Even without considering laptops, I can already imagine quite a few circumstances where someone might want monitors of differing DPIs. I've actually thought sometimes of getting a smaller monitor I can have off to the side that I display a browser window containing mostly text on when I'm playing videogames or working in something like Blender or Aseprite; yknow, for referencing a guide, wiki, or manual or something. I don't even have a super high desire for a multi-monitor setup outside of that.

I run 2 monitors with different DPIs and X11 works without an issue. Can't say the same about wayland where scaling still has so many bugs it's just unusable.

You can't set 2 different DPIs for the monitors on X11. On one monitor everything is just going to be bigger than the other. Depending on the DPI difference it can be basically unusable.

Valid point. I forgot about 4K... I run just 125% scale so it doesn't bother me at all. Well it's kinda funny that both protocols are broken in that regard.

I feel like taht's often the case but Wayland as the newer protocol usually has the correct architecture with a early implementation while X11 has hard to fix architectural problems. I am a opponend of "whatever works for you" and I think that will be Wayland for most people fairly soon if it isn't already but in case it actually isn't I wouldn't recommend it because, well, it doesn't work properly for you.

You can configure software rescaling using xrandr and some scripts... But that can cause a massive amount of jank with anything that requires a degree of pixel accuracy

x11

2 monitors 144hz, 1 TV 120hz.

Nothing on any monitor can render at higher than 120hz

Play movie on any one screen, other screens can't render anything at higher than 24fps

Wayland works fine

I do similar. For laptops and docks, especially if they change setups it can be a pita (though you just need to copy files around).

Also the DE monitor config (ie that you use to login) is logically different to a users x config. So you gotta copy that over to make sure the primary monitor etc is right.

Xorg on my desktop. kwin-wayland still has many problems for me, from major things like windows vanishing and screen flickering with my Nvidia card to minor but annoying things like a random system tray pop-up popping up after clearing notifications. Also the force blur kwin script is not working under wayland.

Wayland on my Intel only laptop because it mostly works (apart from the pop-ups)

I get screen tearing when gaming on x11 so i use wayland and I only switch to x11 if i need to screenshare on discord.

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Currently, you should use X11 unless you have a good reason to use Wayland, such as using multiple monitors with different refresh rates.

There are still some issues with Wayland, but once they are worked out, then Wayland will be the better choice.

I think that time has passed. Many distros default to wayland now.

Use Wayland unless you have issues.

X11 because it's what I already have installed.

When I have/want to make a change then I'll go with Wayland :)

Wayland. I'm quite happy not to have to delve into xorg.conf for my keyboard layout.

Wayland for fractional scaling compatibility for my weird laptop monitor.

Wayland. I like smooth and shiny and X is on the way out, even RH doesn't want anything to do with it.

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I use Wayland because of my multi monitor setup not playing nice otherwise.

I'm in Wayland but that's because I'm Intel Integrated. If it was Nvidia I might have leaned more towards X111

For most users, it doesn't matter. Just go with whatever your preferred DE uses. I love Hyprland, which uses Wayland, so I use that. I also like bspwm, so I would also use Xorg for that.

Wayland has a few issues still. I have issues with zoom lately, for example. Share screen also has trouble sometimes.

I honestly just stick with X11 because of the high degree of compatibility, and I often already rely on X11-only software anyways like Redshift (I know there's Wayland-supporting alternatives, but I'm picky and don't like switching if I don't feel I need to), also my DE/WM of choice is currently awesomewm and I think I've heard mixed things about using awesomewm on Wayland (or it might not even be compatible at all. I just woke up and I'm struggling to remember lol)

wayland, because tiny animations like a loading spinner don’t use enough cpu to make fans spin

X11. It just works for me, no reason to switch. Plus I exclusively use Xfce or MATE which as far as I know do not have Wayland support.

Same here; I'll switch whenever Xfce does. Which, by the way, will probably happen sooner than expected, by the time 4.20 comes out. All the core apps & the development version of the panel already work on Wayland.

Both of them have issues depending on the setup. X11 has worked flawlessly in my experience. Wayland has worked the same for most.

Personally, Wayland still has some growing pains, especially in regards to Input handling (mouse, keyboard, etc). In X11 it was "trivial" to edit one file and have the settings stick across different WMs (switching from DWM to i3, etc.) There's no standard for this with Wayland since it's up to the compositor to handle these things, meaning you're relearning how to do something as basic as setting pointer speed each time you try a new compositor. This is my only real fair gripe about it currently, as the rest of my complaints are just due to how young a lot of the Wayland-specific tools are - this will improve with time.

Unless you are on NVidia or need X11 specific things (E.g. a lot of the accessability stuff) I would go for Wayland, it still has some issues but so dose X11 and Wayland is simply the new display server from the xorg foundation because X11 was impossible to properly update by now, it has far too much lagacy code and didn't get any new version in ages for that reason.

Wayland is not a display server, it's just a protocol. The compositor acts as both window manager and handles the graphics card interface.

Either way is fine usually. If you really care about 1:1 trackpad gestures like I do, get Wayland. If you have an nvidia card, get x11. Otherwise it’s probably not something most people will even notice.

what does 1:1 trackpad mean? and again, input is managed by libinput not by wayland's compositors

When performing a gesture, the animation on screen matches up to the motion of your fingers. Stopping moving your fingers halfway will stop the animation halfway, and moving slowly will slow the animation.

X11 because Discord is unusable for me on Wayland, and I use it every day.

Edit: I recently switched to a 7800 XT (was using a 3080), and the discord problem was either solved since the last time I tried it, or not being on nvidia helps - no more weird input lag etc. in discord, so I've moved over to Wayland finally.

I use Webcord (a discord fork client) on Wayland. It works perfectly fine...

I still use X11 because one of my necessary voip apps (mumble) doesn't yet support wayland's method of global hotkeys.

Otherwise I don't particularly care one way or the other.

Hyprland has an option of forwarding any hotkey to an application, essentially allowing for global hotkeys in all apps, including Discord for which it doesn't work normally.

x11 cuz xfce also .. i want a just working system^^

Wayland, works better with games. Unless it's star citizen, then x11 because it somehow breaks the elevators

Gaming isn't a valid reason. You wan't games, use windows or a console. Don't waste a perfectly good linux system.

Linux gaming has come to the point where many publishers and developers literally add Wine support intentionally and the game consol with the biggest game library of all time (Steam Deck) uses it but we still have people like you... If you want to use Windows you are free to do so but Linux is a great option by now too!

Wine is a shim, a workaround, not true native Linux support. Don't care if 'they support it'. Support native Linux, instead. Don't give a damn if it makes their job less easy, you either really support Linux or you don't. Black and white. No middle ground. Wine is being apologetic for Linux being Linux, which is unacceptable.

I don't even know what to say, that's prime stupidity on another level!

No it's not. You are saying you are fine running a program not made for Linux on Linux. That in no way promotes the growth of Linux. It promotes a kludge, a culture of 'good enough' for a pile of dog crap that is going to break sooner or later. No wonder Linux can't gain ground on the desktop. It's frustrating as hell to watch for year after year after year.

Can you run games on proton / wine? Yes Should you? NO! Demand better!

You have to get back to reality, no clue how far off ou are by now but it looks bad...

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Wayland. It's super smooth and supports new display features.

Everything works, but I don't really use global keyboard shortcuts.

X11 because my current setup on Wayland crashes constantly, otherwise always Wayland.

X11 because KDE cut some features for Wayland (some that will be cut in Plasma 6 X11 too, yay) and some apps just don't support wayland for technical reasons.

X11 for xdotool. ydotool doesn't support (& can't really support with it's current architecture) retrieving information like the current mouse location, current window, window dimensions & titles. Also, normal (unprivileged) user ydotool use requires udev rules or session scripts and/or running a ydotool daemon & many distros don't yet ship with this Just Working.

X11 for Alt-F2 r to restart Gnome Shell without ending the whole session. This is a useful workaround for a variety of Gnome bugs.

X11 because i3wm

Honest question: what does i3wm that swaywm doesn't?

Honestly, I never heard of it before, so I checked to see what it is. I wrote a pretty neat config for my i3wm and to this day am so comfortable with it that I would never change it.

From my understanding after a look, it is pretty much i3wm for Wayland. If my config works well with it, I might give it a shot.

Supposedly it works with unmodified i3wm config files, though I haven't tested that myself.

Currently on Wayland with AMD. Only issue is I cannot Steam remote play without relogging into X11, but that is a very infrequent occasion.

Everything else (mostly gaming) works very well for me.

FWIW remote play is fine on GNOME here.

KDE here and definitely was not fine last I tried. I'll keep messing with it though out of curiosity.

You can use the pipewire capture to do the remote play on wayland session.

I use xpra which lets me run persistent seamless windows from my VMs and remote servers. It would probably work okay with xwayland but i might as well keep using X. I understand why people use Wayland though and would recommend it to newcomers.

I found waypipe to fit that role over LAN at least.

Whichever works best for you. I would recommend Wayland to anyone, but if you run into any problems with it (either bugs with your compositor or protocol limitations), then just use X11.

Doesn't Wayland only work with Amd Gpus?

No. AMD and intel both are fine. Nvidia has some issues, though it is getting better slowly there.

I've been using Wayland with Nvidia 1080 on one machine, and with 3080 on another for a year. Most of the time it is pretty fine. The issues happens with some applications (mostly written on Java, ocasionaly). But slowly the situation getting much better than earlier.

I use wayland with my 1060 gtx on kde plasma and it works perfectly

It dose work with NVidia GPUs too but propriatary software adopts slower to new technologies so the cards with propriatary drivers naturally have more issues and that's sadly still the case in a direct comparison but it's getting better fast

If you have got a Nvidia video card and you want to use it, use X11. Other than that use Wayland unless you encounter any bug or incompatibility.

Wayland is more modern and actively receives updates and features.

X11, because I haven't figured out how to get Wayland to work with my Nvidia 1070. One day I'll put in the effort, or finally upgrade my card. But for now it's fine