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dark__paladin | 1 year ago

I still use X11 because it just works. I understand that Wayland is the "latest and greatest", but I genuinely do not understand why I need to upgrade yet. Could someone provide an actual tangible example as to why Wayland is "better" than X11? I've only ever heard hand-wavy explanations.

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prmoustache|1 year ago

Appart from security when using jailed applications for me it is the smoothness.

It is something I didn't really care that much when using X11 or that I tolerated because the alternatives (win and macos) were worse for me from an usability standpoint but once you are used to wayland it is hard to go back to x11 and its occasional tearing.

I guess it is like a lot of things ignorance is bliss. Appart from my smartphone I have never used a screen with a high dpi display so I am fine with 1080p on my computers but it may change the day I switch at least one screen for a 4K display.

ranger207|1 year ago

IME Wayland handles mixed DPI, fractional scaling, and mixed scaling far better than X did, which is important for me since I have a couple of differently sized and different resolution monitors

kfghkdghje|1 year ago

security: you can think of x11 as being similar to how memory worked back in the dos world. any x11 client can look at the screen content of any other client, can steal/monitor inputs, etc. in wayland you have a framework called Portals that allows you to grant this access on a limited basis and ensure an indicator is displayed when the screen is being recorded/shared

performance: holy shit it's so buttery smooth, especially if you're on an intel or amd graphics stack. under x11, it felt like it was impossible to actually eliminate tearing everywhere. under wayland (my experience is limited to sway, gnome, and most recently kde) tearing just ceases to be a thing.

Ferret7446|1 year ago

> security

Any process you run can already access the memory and files of everything else as the same user.

Wayland's security properties are over-sold and practically irrelevant, and it doesn't help that it breaks a ton of functionality that people need in the name of this "security", like screen readers.

paulddraper|1 year ago

Performance, security, and ease of configuration