[sterwill]

So much is written about Wayland not "being ready." I've used it exclusively on my desktop and laptops for... as long as it's been available in Ubuntu. It works fine. I don't have any issues with input methods. It puts pixels on my monitors. The screen doesn't tear when I move windows around like X did. It's fine for me.

[thewataccount]

Me and my friend both installed arch at the same time and both tried to use gnome + wayland.

Both of us experienced issues with games being inconsistent in frame times, black rectangles over electron apps like spotify/discord, for him his multi monitor setup was somehow broken on wayland but fine with X.

Chromium apps in general appear to have varying levels of issues, some applications don't support wayland at all, most can run with the xwayland which IMO mostly defeats the purpose especially when it's still not seamless.

We've both switched to X and no longer have any of the above issues. That's not to say the desktop experience on X is seamless of course, but the above issues were all solved.

I'm really under the impression that people who use wayland either don't use a wide range of applications (which is perfectly fine!) and/or are used to putting up with "typical linux issues" and accept the quirks.

I remember when wayland came out and was supposed to solved the "fragmented/bloated mess of xorg" but it literally just appears to have been a half-baked solution for ~15 years.

IMO the issue with the "linux desktop" has always been consistency. You don't have to worry about adding launch arguments, compositor support, graphics drivers, AMD/Nvidia, wine, broken audio/networking when you do an update, etc. MacOS/Windows "just work" - at least with far more consistency.

[nine_k]

I'm afraid you're a bit optimistic saying that Windows is consistent, or has no audio or graphics problems. My Linux laptop (xfce) is way more visually consistent than my wife's Windows desktop, and I had to troubleshoot audio issues on it, and on Windows laptops at work, but never on Linux (pipewire, onboard / USB / Bluetooth audio).

And yes, I run X, Wayland is too restrictive currently. I should give it another try some day though.

[kaba0]

> and/or are used to putting up with "typical linux issues" and accept the quirks

As you later point out more explicitly, there is no way around that.

Linux is the epitome of bazaar style development - it has endless positives, but a huge drawback is not having a consistent direction, nor any real force behind any of the directions.

Apple can just say that they will now support a new compositor, if you wanna stay in business, change. And it will happen. But that’s not a technical thing at all, wayland’s first 10 years is very different from the next 5 one — since it has become mainstream now, its support and hands working on it will result in exponentially more improvements. A new direction needs critical mass, and wayland has only recently acquired that, imo.

[ghostpepper]

Mainline Chromium (and subsequently Electron) support for wayland has only really landed in the last year or so. I'm curious how long ago this trial of yours was?

[hkmaxpro]

I also know input methods work great on Ubuntu (Gnome Wayland) because Gnome has first-class support for ibus.

But the article is specifically about incompatibility of input methods among different DEs: Gnome, KDE, wlroots-based environments such as Sway and Hyprland.

After many years, ibus still doesn’t work with wlroots, because ibus supports input method protocol v1 and wlroots supports v2: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2182

The list of recommended IMEs on Sway are all WIP: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway#...

There is even v3. Kitty refused to implement v3 because v3 appeared even more unstable: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2814#issuecomment...

The wayland input method protocol is stuck at v1, and DEs/applications disagree about which versions to support. That’s why it’s problematic.

[sterwill]

I'm not disagreeing with any of the technical points in the article. I'm just saying that my experience with Wayland is pretty good. Someone (GNOME? Ubuntu? thousands of generous developers?) is doing all the work to make it work pretty well for me.

[aumerle]

kitty added support for v3 a couple of years ago: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/3410

[talhah]

I've also been using wayland for a couple years now. Switched from i3 to sway and never had screen tearing as I did with X server.

Just recently moved to Hyprland and similar experience. Barely had any hiccups and switching to a non-english layout such as Arabic works like a charm.

Perhaps maybe our systems are just ideal? For the record I'm using a thinkpad which generally has good support but even on my Lenovo G505 it worked perfectly.

[BrotherBisquick]

I can never go back to X11 and I think the greatest condemnation of it is that we're still talking about screen tearing in 2023.

Screen tearing is something that simply shouldn't exist by default. A person should be able to count on its absence, like a person should be able to count on a basic USB keyboard working without any headaches.

Now I'll brace myself for the "I've never noticed screen tearing" from people whose brains run on a different refresh rate than mine does.

[LoganDark]

GNOME supports my trackpad better than Windows and, dare I say it, macOS does. As in, it literally supports trackpad gestures and inputs that Apple doesn't, and it's actually really smooth and responsive.

You can right-click-drag, and you can middle click. macOS doesn't support either one of these, and Windows only supports assigning a bottom-right quadrant of the trackpad to right-clicking.

[Spivak]

Also been using Wayland for years via GNOME, everything works, I have cool new dbus APIs to control my desktop, the "press ctrl+alt+f2" to bypass the lockscreen" thing isn't a thing anymore, libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it.

[bandrami]

> libinput is leaps and bounds above everything that came before it

Oh Lord no. Clickpads are still basically unusable with libinput. There's a reason it hasn't actually displaced synaptics.

[rwmj]

I don't think anyone doubts it works in limited circumstances with a curated set of software, provided you don't need anything like remoting or screen sharing.

[sterwill]

I share my desktop (single windows and/or whole desktop) at least once every day. Usually with Google Meet in Firefox, but also with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. I don't need remote access to my desktop or laptop (windowing system) though. SSH is just fine for me.

[mzs]

Guess you don't use cyrillic and extended latin.

[causality0]

As a relative Linux outsider, the X/Wayland situation is definitely putting people off switching. We consistently hear "X is deprecated, don't use X, Wayland is the future" yet every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland".

[biorach]

> every single time we find, read about, or are recommended something cool it always ends with "oh by the way this only works on X not Wayland".

Eh, what? That's not at all common

[TwoNineFive]

Talking past the issues.

[i2cmaster]

I used plan9 extensively (Almost all my machines including my mail server and primary desktop) before I went to college. That doesn't mean its ready for most people to use.