> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already.

This is my understanding of his actual concern - Linux corps are pushing Wayland as a replacement for X11 when it is full of issues.

Anecdotally my experience was the same. I'm a dev so I'm fine in a terminal, but trying to switch to KDE actually sent me BACK to Windows. Basic windowing stuff just does not work, and like the OP says, tons of stutters and crashes for a simple 2-monitor setup. Even something as simple as alt-tabbing lagged for seconds on an overpowered machine. Just does not feel like polished software which is a huge reputational risk for Linux right now.

Anecdotally, my experience with Wayland has been a lot better than with X11. I have been on Wayland for years, I can't remember the last time I had an issue (running Sway).

Same here, there are some pain points with swaywm (notably screen sharing is only per display, DisplayLink support and screen mirroring is a pain). Most of these points however are IME a worthwhile tradeoff. Sway has also been astoundingly stable (compared to gnome or KDE)

> I can't remember the last time I had an issue

Depending on your workflows the comment just described three issues

Kde has been stable too So much more than x11 kde

With the next release of sway (1.12) you should be able to share individual windows.

https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr/issues/10...

https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/8170#issuecomment-3962...

Thank you for pointing that out, I'm looking forward to this release a lot then

I suspect part of that is the Xorg maintainers (who are also behind Wayland efforts) are actively trying to kill it and make it as unbearable as possible

It's all open-source. If you think the maintainers are trying to sabotage the codebase, you have the freedom to fork it.

I don’t get all of what’s going on but from the outside it seems like the xLibre guys got a lot of negative attention for doing that.

If you don't know what's going on, why comment?

A guy decided that after getting all his patches rejected because they cause tests to fail, doesn't compile, etc. that the problem is everyone else and decided to fork XOrg.

He then announced that the problem wasn't his code that didn't compile but DEI so based the entire forking around being a political conservative.

Everything I've seen written by him shows him to be insufferable, thats where the negative attention comes from.

There are a lot of distros that have xlibre packages for something that ostensibly doesn't compile.

I wouldn't trust the reason given by the people who have said that they're trying to kill Xorg for why they're rejecting patches from someone trying to improve Xorg

> There are a lot of distros that have xlibre packages for something that ostensibly doesn't compile.

No one says xlibre doesn't compile, but good attempt at a distraction. Have you considered invading a country as an alternative way to distract from terrible views?

> No one says xlibre doesn't compile

>> A guy decided that after getting all his patches rejected because they cause tests to fail, doesn't compile, etc. that the problem is everyone else and decided to fork XOrg.

Emphasis mine, words yours.

Yeah, some submitted patches failed to compile. Others compiled and failed tests.

Not the same as XLibre doesn't compile.

Wow here it shows who's politically motivated and like it or not Xlibre probably felt the same way. Some people cannot sleep or chill if it is not theirs world view.

"... generic human experiment ... creates a new humanoid race ... toxic spike protein ..." - Enrico Weigelt on LKML

"... insane and technically incorrect ... idiotic lies ... you don't know what you are talking about ... SHUT THE HELL UP ..." - Linus Torvalds

https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/957

It's not just his code.

The COVID conspiracy theories Enrico Weigelt pushes are riddled with bugs, logical errors, and security holes, and don't compile or pass tests either.

Linus already reviewed both the code and the reasoning, and rejected them for failing basic correctness.

This is indeed not at all about his code. I don't care what he thinks of vaccines and COVID - I just as much don't care what Linus Torvalds thinks about these things. They are damn programmers. Their business is to ship reliable, usable, secure software.

What a flippant low effort unoriginal unhelpful cliché cop out to make. Why don't you put as much time and effort and thought into your comments and money into supporting open source developers as you demand other people to put into forking code bases and rearchitecting enormous monolithic socially and economically entrenched pieces of software without getting paid for their time?

If you're going to criticize, then at least make some constructive comments about how you think they SHOULD do it instead of just telling them to fork off.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398...

"If you don't like the direction of a multi-decade-long, hundreds of manyears, deeply esoteric project, you have the freedom to go in, fork it, and maintain it"

is the most technically true, practically meaningless argument in FOSS

But it happens successfully.

The code base is Xorg rather than Xfree86 because of one such fork.

Gcc went through the egcs fork.

OpenOffice became LibreOffice in a fork.

When leadership of a project fails to keep the volunteers behind them such forks happen.

And? I'm tired of thoughtless drive-by comments pointing out problems with a given solution without proposing any alternatives, which tends to be a tacit admission that there is no better solution. If you think you have a better solution, let's hear it:

>I'm tired of thoughtless drive-by comments pointing out problems with a given solution

And? Fortunately, free speech and criticism doesn't stop when someone is tired of hearing it.

The alternative doesn't need to be some new solution. A course reversal or change on the existing ones is enough. In which case the criticism already highlights the solution. Besides, the first step of fixing a problem is identifying it.

> If you think the maintainers are trying to sabotage the codebase, you have the freedom to fork it.

But do you have the skill to actually maintain that fork? Do you have the time to keep it going?

We all need to decide where to spend our efforts. If you decide that maintaining a fork isn't worth your time, then that's a revelation of your own preferences.

Sucks for you, but you can't then turn around and expect someone else to invest these for you when they don't want to.

I'm still using Xorg after all these years, on a laptop with 150% scaling, which I occasionally plug into an external monitor with 100% scaling. Somewhat surprisingly, it works great. (Cinnamon desktop, Ryzen 7840u integrated graphics. And also a desktop machine with Radeon RX 6800XT, but it's not surprising that still works great.)

Same here. Wayland has been fine. (Hyprland)

Me too. I just swapped waybar etc for the dank shell etc and love the setup. It feels polished now

I second this. I had issues years ago, but those have mostly been fixed.

Additionally, the Steam Deck ships with Wayland by default. Hundreds of thousands of gamers are stress-testing it without any complaint that I'm aware of.

Just guessing, are we?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1445kc7/citie...

That post is 3 years old, so basically around 1 year into the Steam Deck's release.

And yet, Cities Skylines still (last tried: about 2 months ago) crashes for me when I try to load it in Wayland on Fedora, which has removed Xorg from its updates.

Wayland has broken dozens of my Steam games.

I just played Skylines last night via Proton-GE. AMD GPU. Fedora 43. Gnome.

CS1, right? If so, can you please detail what you might have done differently?Load options? Some package or another I might be missing? All I know is that with Xorg it worked perfectly, I upgraded Fedora, and now that I only have Wayland, whatever I was doing before no longer works. I'd be grateful for the help.

I am using a system-installed Steam, but sometimes a Steam Flatpak can help with troubleshooting, because it bundles components inside of the flatpak. Running games this way may give you a 5% performance penalty, but it's a good way to see if you have a packaging issue (other things needing installed, or misconfigured).

Also are you running th Linux native one or the proton version?

I run everything through Steam with the proton compatibility layer forced. It's a steam client option somewhere.

I think they're an app called ProtonQT or something like that. It will enable you to easily download the latest proton-ge version. Once downloaded and installed you will need to restart the steam client, then restart the steam client again after selecting the new proton-ge version as the default.

---

https://www.protondb.com/app/255710

I'll try again. I tried both native Linux and a dozen Proton builds, and none would load, even with no mods or DLC. I'll try again with the latest, and if that doesn't work, I'll try the flatpak instead of via RPM Fusion.

There is a note on protondb about needing the most recent proton-ge release. Use ProtonQT flatpak, should help you install / maintain proton-ge versions. Will get you the latest updates as they release.

The Steamdeck loads games into some kind of nested x11 renderer-in-a-window, I think. If for no other reason than to try to avoid Wayland’s extra input latency? Dunno. Maybe you lost some component it needs to work, if regular Steam also does that.

Regular steam does not do that. At this point on most hardware (minus SOME Nvidia, I think older stuff like 2XXX) you should have less latency in Wayland than x11.

I was under the impression that some of the anti-screen-tearing and other features in Wayland unavoidably set a higher (and, higher-enough to be noticeable in some contexts) floor on latency, though, because of how those features necessarily work. I don't mean drivers.

[delayed]

It ships with Wayland, but it does almost everything with X(wayland)

Wine 9.22+ has the native Wayland backend by default. Now Xwayland is barely needed.

As someone who uses my steam deck as a workstation too, I really really wish this were fully true. The desktop is still X based, and that suuuccckkksss.

The next SteamOS release will use Wayland by default for desktop mode, too:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detai...

I've had bazzite on mine for a year and wayland by default

The desktop sure, but the primary handheld mode uses Gamescope which is a Wayland-based session.

It's true that Gamescope is a Wayland compositor, but it does not support Wayland clients ("native Wayland programs" if you're unfamiliar with *nix terminology). In handheld mode, everything you see on your screen is an X11 client running under Xwayland. I have no interest in arguing over whether X11 or Wayland is better (I've used both and both work fine for me) but I would not use the Steam Deck to argue that Wayland is being stress tested by hundreds of thousands of gamers when none of their games are using Wayland.

Using Xwayland is using Wayland. It's entirely a moot point anyways, since Wine/Proton supports a native Wayland background these days anyhow.

There’s a gradient. For example, if I ran rootful Xwayland, ran an X11 DE inside that, and then solely used X11 software, it would technically be using Wayland but it would not be what most people are referring to when they are discussing the Wayland transition on the Linux desktop. Similarly, arguing that Wayland is being battle-tested by hundreds of thousands of gamers by citing a single-tasking gaming focused Wayland compositor that only supports X11 clients is not what most people are referring to discussing the Wayland transition either.

Wine/Proton may support a native Wayland backend but it’s not currently being used on the Steam Deck.

Games isn't exactly the best stress test for a windowing system. Most (if not all) run in full-screen mode and don't really use it much after the launch. And that's not what desktop computing is about. You want to run multiple programs, you want them to integrate with each other. But games don't need any of this.

There is a "Desktop mode" that I, at least, use more than the handheld mode. Not sure if it's running Wayland though.

Desktop mode on the Steam Deck uses X11. I think that's why the brightness control is fucked up (ever notice how the brightness is always 40% when you switch to desktop mode?). You can manually switch it to Wayland, but Steam input is broken under Wayland (or at least it was last time I checked, which is admittedly half a year ago or something).

> input is broken under Wayland

Drop the ‘Steam’, it's cleaner. Wayland's raison d'etre is to push frame buffers without tearing. Input is an afterthought.

That's odd, I'm using Wayland on my desktop and, for example, Japanese input works 問題ない. Then again, I haven't tried every possible input method/peripheral in existence, so I may just be the one in [some arbitrary large number] who lucked out.

> Input is an afterthought

This. You need more than graphics to have a windowing system. Wayland team threw out X11, did graphics and left the rest for the others to figure out.

> you want them to integrate with each other.

Do you? Not going to lie, I'm perfectly happy just using the apps I want to use and having none of them talk to each other. 90% of my use is covered by Vivaldi (browser stuff which is most stuff these days) and Kitty (Neovim, random TUIs and utilities). The few other apps I have are Steam, Krita and Blender, which are all worlds unto themselves and have no need to integrate with anything.

I don't disagree in principle, my workflow is pretty similar, most of the integration part goes thru kitty for me too. But I also need need screenshot and screencast - which need special permission in Wayland because reasons. Fine for me, but I can imagine some having their workflow around specific tools, that might or might not work with Wayland - and apparently, Wayland team thinks it's not their problem.

And I personally need kicad - it doesn't support Wayland at all because of some mouse-related stuff. Again, Wayland team thinks it's not their problem.

Then I had a lots of issues with a graphics tablet. Yes, it's a cheap chinesium knock-off, but it does work on X11. Wayland - no chance and it's obviously not their problem.

So I dropped Wayland altogether and went to X11/herbstluftwm. Was a few years ago, but I didn't bother to go back since - why should I? These aren't their problem, but now I don't use Wayland anymore, so these aren't my problem either.

What I'm trying to say, "hundreds of thousands of gamers stress-testing" have very little to say about usability. Yes the graphics part is excellent, nobody is denying that. There is more to a WM then graphics.

Running fullscreen games on a single fixed hardware configuration isn't exactly 'stress-testing', it just tells you that a single code path works.

Exactly. Ubuntu LTS 24 and Intel integrated GPU + Wayland is zero problems even when running 4k120 and 150% scaled resolution. Chrome / vscode / zed / Rstudio / Youtube 4k60, it just works.

Edit this is running a 32" 2160p120 (4k) monitor alongside a 24" 1080p144 monitor.

> Even something as simple as alt-tabbing lagged for seconds on an overpowered machine.

This may not be KDE's fault; I tracked these kinds of issues down to some bad tunable defaults.

I came up with this:

    ----
    cat /etc/sysctl.d/50-usb-responsiveness.conf
    #
    # Attempt to keep large USB transfers from locking the system (kswapd0)
    #
    vm.swappiness = 1
    vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5
    vm.dirty_ratio = 5
    vm.extfrag_threshold = 1000
    vm.compaction_proactiveness = 0
    vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 200
    # FIXME? 64K too big?
    vm.page-cluster = 16
    ----

I have fast everything, NVMe SSD onboard and others in Thunderbolt 4 enclosures and 32GB of RAM on my 12th-Gen i7 with 20 (6+14) cores; there should have been no reason for any stuttering and/or Alt-Tab slowness while doing large file copies and finally got fed up, did some research and experimentation and use the above and it's not happened since.

YMMV, but it's worth a try.

(Oh, and on-topic, I've had to try Wayland (vs. X11) on my KDE desktop 'cause it seems to handle switching monitors when I go from home to work better; jury's still out if I'm keeping it)

You really only need dirty_ratio/bytes and dirty_background_ratio/bytes set to something lower than default. It also makes your progress bars show values closer to reality, especially when copying from fast to slow media.

Some distros already do set lower defaults, e.g. pop os:

https://github.com/pop-os/default-settings/blob/master_noble...

Bazzite: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/system_files/d...

> You really only need dirty_ratio/bytes and dirty_background_ratio/bytes set to something lower than default.

The vm.swappiness=1 was very necessary for me as well, and made as much difference as the dirties you'd mentioned.

I usually run Linus' master kernels (as I look for regressions in certain subsystems) and I know there's been some recent changes to the MM subsystem so this may explain some of the necessity for me.

Funy that you mention multi-monitor since it's one of the reasons I eventually moved to Wayland. The only way to support different DPI monitors in X was to do janky scaling or even jankier multiple X servers.

I don't use KDE (or GNOME anymore) but while I had to deal with a lot of initial speedbumps a couple years ago, these days instead of a full DE, I'm using a Niri setup and it's worked out great for me.

For my laptop, I have my own monitor-detection/wl-mirror script for example that is faster and more reliable for plugging into projectors/meeting room HDMI than even my old Macs.

Does anyone have links on how to set up multi monitor on Sway?

The default config file explains some common things you might want to do. E.g. left or right side and scaling factor.

I use a docked ThinkPad with the lid closed and two external monitors. Here are my config bits.

  set $laptop eDP-1
  set $landscape 'Hewlett Packard HP ZR24w CNT037144C'
  set $portrait 'Hewlett Packard HP ZR24w CNT03512JN'
  bindswitch --reload --locked lid:on output $laptop disable
  bindswitch --reload --locked lid:off output $laptop enable
  
  ### Output configuration
  output $laptop bg $HOME/pictures/wallpaper/1529004448340.jpg fill
  output $landscape bg $HOME/pictures/wallpaper/1529004448340.jpg fill
  output $portrait bg $HOME/pictures/wallpaper/portrait/DYabJ0FV4AACG69.jpg fill 
  # pos args are x coords and y coords, transform is degrees of rotation counter-clockwise
  # set $portrait as left monitor and rotate it counterclockwise
  output $portrait pos 0 1200 transform 270

The funny thing about this myth is that wayland does not even try to support Mixed DPI setups, the only thing it supports is, as you put it, janky scaling. Not that X is any better in the end but at least it has the data available if any application wants to try to do correct Mixed dpi (nobody does)

http://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/mixed-dpi-x11/

So in yet another case of worse is better, wayland has the reputation of supporting mixed DPI environments, but not because it has any support for actual mixed DPI but because it is better at faking it (fractional scaling).

Myth or not - it is absolutely much better on wayland. I really don't care or know how to tweak linux so i've been using straight install Fedora for years. I also have 4 screens. When Fedora switched to wayland it got much better and it keeps getting better.

I've had an interesting experience with creating a wayland compatability layer with Bitwig. Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager, it is even harder to use as a base as it less supportive of X11 compared to other WMs like hyprland.

This may be Niche, but DAWs are very rare to support linux, especially this stack. I would say it might be a stretch to say the company behind Bitwig is punishing Wayland users, I am sure they don't have the personnel for it, but it is a legitimate issue that companies will most likely be 10 years late to the new modernization into Wayland.

Anyways, I was able to configure it with a specific flake configuration. I had issues with third party windows, which was more of an issue with the floating nature of Niri, since Gnome with Wayland displayed external VSTs fine.

You can find my repository here if interested. It consists of a few files, and I made it easier to use with justfiles. https://github.com/ArikRahman/Nixwig

Pretty much every vst, clap, etc plugin on Linux requires X calls because of how windows get created and then managed by the host.

I've moved to running Bitwig in an Ubuntu distrobox container. Hope you're enjoying 6, it seems they fixed a lot with the piano roll.

I had to set mouse warping off in my tiling manager for yabridge/wine plugins.

I assume you, a technical person, made sure to help the people giving you the software for free to diagnose what is obviously one or more bugs?

I did not. While I am open to switching to Linux desktop for my primary PC, I'm not open to troubleshooting that level of software in my free time. As a FOSS maintainer I have the utmost respect and admiration for the effort and work done so far. My anecdote was not meant to discount the work, but to highlight friction points which prevented me from switching over.

as much as i dislike m$, at least windows works and it works for games and graphics. when i need text or computation without a ui, i use linux. similar to the argument in the article about use what works, i use what works.

> at least windows works and it works for games and graphics

It doesn't, actually. I vividly remember trying and failing to play some old games on Windows. GTA San Andreas, I think. Didn't even launch due to missing DirectX libraries or whatever. I hunted down and installed all the redistributables and DLLs. Still didn't run.

So much for the fabled backwards compatibility of Windows. Microsoft clearly does not give a shit anymore. Wouldn't be surprised if Linux with Proton becomes better at running games than Windows one day.

In 2008, I remember playing starcraft over LAN with my roommate. It played better on Wine/Ubuntu than it did on his Vista machine (and unrelatedly but hilariously, in the middle of the game his computer gave him a countdown to reboot with no option to cancel it)

Yeah much as it sucks, i went back to Windows+WSL on my laptop. It just straight up works better. I really wish it didn't, but it's the reality.

I got a gaming computer during covid and initially ran Windows on it. It had so many problems with the audio and random crashes I eventually gave up and switched to Linux. Only loss was the newer Blizzard games, all the Steam games worked.

Idk - I’ve been trying out Linux gaming on Bazzite and everything seems to just work? It’s been a basically flawless experience.

I dual boot Linux + Windows (technically triple boot - I have a third drive with a different distro for dev work) and I haven’t needed to boot to windows a single time in the ~5 months I’ve been testing out Linux gaming. Not a single game has required any tweaking with proton settings either. My plan is to remove Windows entirely if I make it through the year without needing it.

No issues with drivers, no issues with peripherals (Wired speakers, Bluetooth headset, usb headset, webcam), with 3 displays at different resolutions/framerates/orientations. Running Ryzen 9800x3d and an RTX 4070ti.

Games I’ve played on Linux cover a pretty wide spectrum too.

- Arc Raiders

- Stalker 2

- Kingdom come deliverance 2

- Doom the dark ages

- Timberborn

- Pacific Drive

- Baulders Gate 3

- Disco Elysium

- Peak

- Alan Wake 2

- RV there yet

- Yapyap

- Pentinence

and probably others I’m forgetting.

I honestly wasn’t expecting the experience to be this smooth. Windows days as the gaming default feel numbered.

ok im going to try linux again lol, hopefully this time it sticks. just need to find an image program that resembles paint as closely as possible.

Comments like this make me feel like we are living in different worlds, I have KDE/Wayland on multi head machines with different DPIs and laptops. KDE has been the smoothest most reasonable desktops for a long time, I play games they just work, I can make zoom calls, they implemented device recovery. How are you experiencing this, are you rendering in software?

Honestly I'm a regular user on my home PC which is what I was talking about in my comment. Discord, music player, games through GeForce Now/Steam, some coding. I went through a default install, didn't really tweak much and was hoping KDE would just do its thing.

I'm on a Radeon card, 2 monitors of different resolutions, 1xDP 1xHDMI. I check my AMD drivers and upgrade those regularly (as well as BIOS/chip firmware).

I did try to do all the basic troubleshooting steps and making sure all my software was up-to-date. Just felt like the default state without tuning did not meet what Windows' defaults give me.

If you don't mind me asking...are you using nVidia by chance? Have you tried something besides KDE? How long ago was this?

I've read about some terrible experiences with Wayland and I've just never had any of these problems in nearly a decade of using it almost every day (sway was a little rough around the edges in the first year it came out, but even then it fixed screen tearing, which I was never able to entirely eliminate with Xorg). The two things I've always stayed away from though is KDE, and nVidia.

I'm just trying to figure out why there's such a discrepancy between my experiences and what I read online from time to time.

Happy to share more info, I truly want Linux to be as good as the competition! I had no true technical complaints, only UX ones.

Copying from another reply: > I'm on a Radeon card, 2 monitors of different resolutions, 1xDP 1xHDMI. I check my AMD drivers and upgrade those regularly (as well as BIOS/chip firmware).

This experience was about 3 months ago, and I only tried KDE this time around. I'm not a huge Linux person, so I did some searching and it seemed that (despite some very spicy discussions), KDE was agreed to be pretty bleeding-edge for window management and all the nice features Windows users expect.

I've also noticed vastly different anecdotes, which sucks for maintainers and users alike! Maybe KDE needs a telemetry push since the desktop env specifically targets users who are less willing to troubleshoot at such a low level.

This seems more like a KDE thing then a Wayland thing. At least for me on GNOME Wayland is strictly better. And the newer Wayland-only desktops like Niri are arguably better then that.

Wayland is so much better than x11. Sure there might be bugs in wayland which are not in x11, but in geberal wayland is better.

> Even something as simple as alt-tabbing lagged for seconds on an overpowered machine.

In what way? If there’s a delay for the task switching menu to close after alt-tabbing (~500ms) this might be due to a kde animation default (it really tripped me up, I’m a rapid window switcher). I can share the fix once I get on my kde machine.

The specific thing I noticed was that, when pressing alt-tab the very first time, there was a noticeable, variable delay for the actual window previews to appear. I don't care as much about the window previews, but the delay in feedback to know which window I was potentially focusing on was painful. I also alt-tab like a madman, for better or for worse. Testing this now on Windows, after I press tab there is an _immediate_ rendering of the previews, 0 (noticeable) delay. On KDE, I'm not exaggerating, I could count 1-2 seconds until I saw something on screen, even when my machine was mostly idle (Discord+music player running).

Does disabling “fade popups in and out” help? Settings -> Animations

> trying to switch to KDE actually sent me BACK to Windows.

....uh, why not use Cinnamon or MATE or Gnome or XFCE?

Conflating KDE with desktop Linux is strange

I say this as someone who suffered the same problems trying to use KDE (frequent windowing freezing requiring logout) and just swapped to Cinnamon. It's two mousebutton clicks at the login.

As someone who was trying to switch to Linux desktop for the first time, I didn't research all the many options available and didn't try multiple ones. I read that KDE was kind of 'bleeding edge' (I know this is a hot topic) and so that's the one I decided to give a try. I tried to get used to the quirks for a few weeks rather than switch to something else.

> I actually think it's nice to have both

Options that are equivalent enough for most end users just cause confusion. There are also too many distros, and the Gnome vs. KDE competition set desktop Linux back another 10 years. That's three dimensions of big, important choices with not much downside if you pick the happy path and a whole lot of downside if you don't.

I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others.

The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop.

Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them.

But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow of "systemd=bad", "snap is bad", “only the distro xyz is the real one because it respects principle abc".

Even the emacs VS vim debate seems saner than this.

I know the underlying spirit of Linux is the liberty to choose whatever you want, but this perpetual debate over which is the best only tricks me into believing that whichever distro I'd choose, it will be the wrong one.

Even for my old media server, there are 3 differents Linux mint : Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE.

What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?

>What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?

The performance difference will be minimal. It's an aesthetic choice, pick the one you like the look of or give a few of them a try.

It's like cars. Some people have extreme opinions on matters, some would be fine picking almost any car, and most test drive a few before picking their favorite.

Yeah, I think the answer if you aren't sure which car to get is "any of the popular ones are probably fine for you" and that's probably true for Linux distributions and software choices too.

Very good, I'll see it that way now.

If you have a spare usb stick, the cost to trying them is only the download time. Each is capable of the same things, the differences are purely aesthetic. So try them out and see which you like best. Or install all three and switch each time you login.

You actually don't know the true cost until you learn the quirks of the UI, how it handles proprietary drivers, upgrades, the packaging system, how up-to-date and complete its packages are, etc.

Spend a few hours having fun and then not think about it for years.

If you just want something to use: install one of the most mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Fedora, accept the defaults, and move on with your life. There are compromises in all of the options, even my Mac has a handful of irritating problems.

> this perpetual debate over which is the best only tricks me into believing that whichever distro I'd choose, it will be the wrong one.

What a bizarre conclusion to draw! Why don't you believe that whichever distro you choose, it will be way better than what you have now?

There was a book on this called "The Paradox of Choice." Its argument is that too many choices stress people out over the fear of choosing wrong.

Yeah, uniformity of opinions is way better. Or not.

Well it is fine if Linux is not for you, I want to say.

But in the macOS vs Windows vs Linux debate, obviously one has to say what Linux does differently: and that's exactly what you seem to dislike. I.e. the freedom of choice.

The very reason I like Linux is for this diversity. I genuinely don't really get your point of view, which I actually see a lot, and which to me sounds like you want Windows or macOS, but somehow don't realise it.

Let's imagine this: some company makes an operating system based on Linux, in an efficient manner, by systematically choosing one way to solve a problem (one window manager, one init system, one file system, ...) and trying to meet the requirements of the mass to the detriment of freedom. It exists: it's called Android! Android is great, and it will eventually come to the Desktop for people who don't want Windows or macOS.

But fundamentally, what I call "Linux distributions" is not that. The whole point of Linux distributions, to me, is that even saying "GNU/Linux" doesn't work, because there are other userlands like "busybox/Linux"! Other init systems, other file systems, other windows managers, etc.

The cost of having a powerful core choosing "sane defaults" for the users (Windows, macOS, or similarly Android) is that it is very difficult to modify the system or even contribute to it. Look at e.g. GrapheneOS, an Android alternative (and which I use and love): it relies a lot on Google. Linux distributions are not like that: I can create my own Linux distribution as a weekend project.

Some people just want to get work done and fine tuning or customizing their OS is not that.

And the market is full of OSes for them. Why are you unhappy this one isn't?

Sure, I have nothing against that. They should just not tell me that I cannot be different.

> Doesn't sound like a super informed way to look at security (not even mentioning that Wayland was started in 2008, and Rust was not a thing). One can also say that "as long as you run X11, there is no need to think about security because X11 just defeats it all".

Yeah, we're talking about completely different threat models here.

> Who is forced to use it?

The people forcing Wayland are also the people who own and are trying to kill Xorg (stated explicitly) and also trying to cancel people who fork or implement their own X11. So yes, they are actively trying to prevent people from using X11

> also trying to cancel people who fork

Care to elaborate on that accusation? I have a suspicion you're referring to Xlibre.

Yeap, it sounds like a big rant with multiple exclamation marks. Having both is a way to go. Recently I purchased a new laptop and thought should I go full Wayland? No way. I started with X11 and then added Wayland. Things break on Linux. You need a stable display server where you can still open a browser, and that is X11. Most of the time, I stay on Wayland until it breaks.

I won't accept that "nobody was forced." Major mainstream desktops either already have or are very shortly dropping X11 entirely.

Microsoft is correctly being called out for forcing people onto Windows 11, even though it's entirely possible for users to remain on 10 with workarounds.

Gnome is forcing people onto Wayland, that you can stop using Gnome or choose to use an outdated OS doesn't really change that for me. I guess if you don't want to say they're being forced onto Wayland, they are definitely being forced to change their display setup: use Wayland, or don't use Gnome, starting with Ubuntu 26.04 next month.

I am "forced" to use Windows or macOS for work. I do not have a choice, I am not allowed to install something else. Thus I "am forced". I am not forced to by Nike shoes, I can buy any other brand. Even if I have been buying Nike all my life and now they switch to a material I don't like, I am not forced to wear the new Nike shoes; I can switch to a different brand. I have the choice to switch.

I believe that a project decides what they do. If Gnome decides to move to Wayland, someone could fork and start XGnome. That's how FOSS works, and I accept it for what it is.

I feel like too many people believe that FOSS means "people around me should build my dream system just for me, and for free". If Gnome gets more traction than XGnome, it sounds like the Gnome users are generally fine with its choices. And those who are not can switch to an alternative.

I don't use Gnome, I don't use systemd, I don't use ext4, I don't use NetworkManager. The beauty of Linux is that I can choose. And yes, most of the time I am in the minority.

"Who is forced to use it" is an extremely dated argument strategy that has absolutely no place whatsoever in modern computing. Linux is far too ubiquitous for such a notion to be taken seriously. It's not far from "who is forced to use Macs instead of Windows."

To be fair, I am not the one bringing that point up. The author says "I am forced to use it", they bring it up.

I may be on the "Wayland" side here, but I have the exact same reasoning when I am on the other side: I hate systemd, but I genuinely cannot say that "I am forced to use it". I have the freedom to choose a distro that supports alternatives, and that is what I do.

For Wayland it seems even easier: it's just something you install on top (unlike the init system or the libc).

I think it's fine to hate Wayland and to believe that it is the wrong direction, just like it is fine to hate systemd and believe it is the wrong direction. But I don't think I am forced to use any of those.

No, double down -- You personally are not forced to use it, but today this is a terrible argument that, perhaps subconsciously, reinforces the falsehood that "you don't have to use it" is an okay and reasonable response, when it's really merely a selfish one.

Again, Linux is everywhere and the better thing to do is to consider how the bad rollout of Wayland affects everyone -- especially, e.g. that rising 2 or 3 percent who are going for it on the desktop. It is FAR more important to raise that marketshare -- or at least to consider the possibility of it -- than it is to preserve some notion of "well it works for me."

> It is FAR more important to raise that marketshare

I don't see why. Most users of OSes couldn't care less about their OS. The vast majority of humans are happy with Windows, macOS, iOS or Android. To the point where those who aren't are a rounding error.

I don't want to make Linux look like Windows, such that those people can finally use Linux and I can proudly look at a marketshare. If a Linux distro ever gets a "decent" marketshare, if won't be Linux: it will be a specific distro that managed to look like Windows or macOS. I most certainly won't be using that distro.

eh, look up Richard Stallman et al. This isn't about "user preference," it's about preserving freedom in computing.

  > I don't see why

I'll take a stab at this, setting aside all the arguments I could make about software freedom, etc etc (and there's lots of those).

Regardless of which distro you use or how into free software you are, there's a very simple truth: the more Linux users there are, the more people will develop software for Linux. More software supporting Linux == better.

This applies both to proprietary software that people might want (e.g I'd kill for a Linux-native version of FL studio, the only thing I use wine for these days), and also for FLOSS software (more Linux users -> more exposure to FLOSS ideals -> more converts -> more FLOSS software).

Having the ecosystem grow is a good thing.

Isn't it interesting how perspectives differ?

See, I'd argue that the "nobody is forcing you" rhetoric, spoken out loud and with a straight face while vendors drop support for decades-old, stable, and well-established standards in favour of immature, incompatible, broken new shininess, is an extremely dated argument strategy.

Are we disagreeing? It sounds like we agree.

No, we're not. Sorry, my bad.

It would seem I didn't read your post properly, I think I must have just been tired or something. I took "who is forced to use it" as a statement (i.e "I'm a user who is forced to use it") rather than a question. Reading it again now when I'm awake it makes a lot more sense!

Hehe, I was confused like -- no yes this what I think too!

for me it's just utilities that don't work workrave, activity watch, flameshot, polybar. (waybar is not as polished) automating stuff with xdotool. There is no way to get the current window focused. Even on windows there is a simple api to get that

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already.

I can no longer use GNOME on X11, and the decision to remove support was a deliberate one. Users are definitely being forced.

And who is forcing you to use GNOME?

You can use an old version of Gnome and accept older software, or you can organize some fellow GNOME enthusiasts to maintain it, possibly with paid developers.

You can't legally get old versions of Windows or Photoshop, and you can't legally fix them if you find problems. GNOME gives you that freedom.

This isn't just a theoretical possibility: both MATE and Cinnamon are GNOME forks.

You can argue that maintaining and developing a desktop environment is an huge project and you can't expect someone to take that on - I completely agree, which is why I think we should be thankful of the developers instead of complaining about being "forced" to use new versions of their software.

Having technical discussions about the merits is fine, but in the end in the free/open source software model the people that make the technical decisions are the ones that make the technology possible. And if so many of those people are moving to Wayland, maybe there is a reason for that.

You can legally get old versions of Windows, but it isn’t recommended.

Technically you can get second-hand keys, but good luck verifying that it's actually a legal resale. Also good luck getting the latest, most up to date version of Vista.

You still aren't allowed to start a group to collectively patch bugs in the old version.

Unless security patches are still developed and released for older versions, I'd strongly discourage it.

Yes, and the developers of Gnome are strongly encouraging you to move to Wayland. You are free to ignore that suggestion.

If you delete the first 13 words from my previous comment it may be a more suitable comment for you.

You're not forced to use Gnome. The Gnome devs have the freedom to decide they don't want to spend their own time maintaining an X11 version.

I've used linux desktop environments using Wayland and others using x11. No real problems with either.

Let's instead get excited by all the new linux users coming in thanks to SteamOS and Valve. If the trend continues, we might start seeing larger software companies releasing native linux versions of their software -- and then, the year of the linux desktop will start becoming an actual possibility!

(I heard affinity suite is linux friendly now btw, and davinci resolve too -- not sure if proton is necessary or not, but either way, really cool)

> we might start seeing larger software companies releasing native linux versions of their software

I like the idea of course, but I don't believe it for one second. Unless software is open source, it never properly supports Linux. A company making a proprietary executable for Linux will generally just make an Ubuntu executable.

My biggest fear with something like "the year of the Linux Desktop" is that it may end up making Linux be like Android: open source on the paper, but there is practically really just one way to do things, and that's the one controlled by Google.

What I like with Linux is this big mess of alternatives that manage to somehow compete with each other. Sure, it's not as polished as Android or Windows or macOS. But it's free (as in freedom).

Davinci resolve has had native Linux support for like a decade now.

This page linked in the bottom explains a lot:

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support...

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already.

Recent versions of gnome session are compiled only with wayland support in archlinux. To change DE or distribution or use custom package is quite a stretch to call it's not forced.

But then it's not Wayland's fault: Gnome decided to move to it and stop supporting X.

I don't like systemd and the fact that mainstream distros push for it, but as a result I use a distro that gives me the choice (Gentoo). Who am I to tell the distro maintainer what they should do for free?

Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call them out on their stupidity.

> > I also don't care for the "security" argument when parts of the core reference implementation are written in a memory-unsafe language.

> Doesn't sound like a super informed way to look at security (not even mentioning that Wayland was started in 2008, and Rust was not a thing). One can also say that "as long as you run X11, there is no need to think about security because X11 just defeats it all".

I think the argument is not that X11 defeats it all - but that for 99.9999% of users its security theater when deployed in the real world. Most commonly, as long as processes can read each other's memory/configuration/etc.

I'm sure there is a use-case for untrusted sharing of Wayland enabled GPU rendering or something - though AFAIK none of the enterprise remote desktop use it, and they have the resources to implement it themselves anyway.

I've been running Wayland for two years now. I still hit weird bugs with desktop sharing / obs tinkering; It's just not a critical use for me.

So it's fair to question the design wisdom of adding the complexity and UX pain points if it seems to be worth so little.

But maybe i'm overlooking some large group of people dependent on Wayland security boundaries?

> Most commonly, as long as processes can read each other's memory/configuration/etc.

And there is no point is working on the Desktop security as long as X11 defeats it all.

> if it seems to be worth so little

I, for one, value the security standpoint.

The main problem of Wayland is fragmentation, technical problems could be solved by throwing work at it, but not as long as Wayland is "just a protocol". Designing it as a protocol (and with optional extensions on top!), instead of a traditional centralized implementation was a pretty stupid decision (and not just in hindsight).

Instead of bundling forces to improve a single implementation like it was the case with X11, now everybody and their mother writes their own incomplete implementation of the Wayland protocol, and badly. I don't understand how anybody thinks that this mess is a good thing. At least for X11 on Linux there was a single implementation that contributors could focus on, now the bugs are spread over dozens of projects. If I'd like to sabotage the entire desktop-Linux idea, this is exactly how I would do it ;(

I feel like it's a philosophical question.

I like freedom and diversity. I don't want Linux to be like Windows or macOS with one window manager, one init system, etc. I like that people (and I) can experiment.

Is it less efficient than paying for Windows and macOS? Probably. Is it less polished? Certainly. But that's exactly what I want. If I wanted Windows or macOS, I would use Windows or macOS.

But that attitude means that “the year of the Linux desktop” will never actually arrive because the vast majority don’t want less polished, hard to choose, undocumented testing.

Sure. I don't want the year of the Linux desktop. Why would I care, really? I want Linux to be the Linux I like.

I sometimes feel that people try to explain to Linux people how they should modify their distro in order to make it look more like Windows, such that they would get more newcomers who like Windows. I don't want that! People who like Windows should use Windows, and we should make Linux look like a system I left for Linux!

> Who is forced to use it?

Anyone who wants to continue using a modern, actively-developed desktop environment. GNOME has dropped X11; KDE has announced the transition. I would consider being told "use Wayland, or find a different desktop environment" being forced, even though nobody has actually put a gun to my head.

I have managed to make Wayland work for me, but only by patching away the hardcoded gestures. I also developed a means to start and stop XScreenSaver, although that is thankfully now obsolete thanks to some work by JWZ. Just yesterday I still had issues with an entire window of text gibbering up and down in VSCode at a certain scaling level (used to have that in Firefox, as well, but it was evidently fixed).

To put a positive conspiratorial spin on the recent Wayland push: maybe they think that taking away the option to fall back to X11 will finally get enough eyes on Wayland to fix its remaining issues.

> To put a positive conspiratorial spin on the recent Wayland push: maybe they think that taking away the option to fall back to X11 will finally get enough eyes on Wayland to fix its remaining issues.

Yes, and I also think it's important to focus on that part in particular: X11 is not a feature, it's not a user story, it's an implementation detail of the desktop environment / window manager.

There are certainly historical architectural choices that imply many aspects of what X11 can or can't do for the user, likewise with desktops' implementation of the Wayland protocol. The differences between these approaches is real, and substantial.

But in the end, X11 is not a cause unto its own. It's a component in service of the user experience at large. People criticize the removal of X11 support either because their use cases have been affected in some inconvenient way, or because they're afraid of future consequences one way or another.

It's important that desktop environments work on providing the features/UX/quality that users need and expect. It's also important that users tell their DE developers what their needs are, in terms of what problems they are trying to solve, not in terms of which components to use underneath. Choice of component stack is a developer issue and should remain this way.

In the end, the DEs/WMs that solve their users' problems to a high degree of satisfaction are the ones who will retain and gain the most users. Approaches will differ across the Linux desktop space regarding what problems to solve specifically, which problems to prioritize, and how best to implement solutions for them. Dependencies like X11 shape the ultimate user experience one way or another, in terms of features, constraints, development effort, and continuity.

And so do many other implementation choices that need to be made or revised along the way. Ideally most users will end up with DEs/WMs whose development philosophy is aligned with their personal priorities. Friendly bug reporters can help out with the awareness part at least :)

> It's also important that users tell their DE developers what their needs are

It's further important that relevant developers actually listen rather than ignoring, dismissing, or saying (and I quote!) "...Regardless, I simply don’t give a shit about you anymore."

Paint me crazy but for last ~10 years I'm having this weird feeling that FOSS embraces corporate-style of management, development for projects too much. The ethos of having a choices is slowly and steadily being replaced by "comply, adapt or begone" tactic. And if you try to voice your opinion or heavens forbid - criticize, you are committing a crime against the coding humanity.

The changes are being done by small steps and I'd say this removal of fallback to X11 option counts as such.

It definitely feels like there's a dedicated core of people insisting on removing choice from the Linux ecosystem. RedHat, Gnome, fredesktop.org ... they have an ideology and a strategy to make it dominant in the Linux world and it does not feel nice to many people.

> I don't understand the complaints about Wayland.

The last time a distro tried to sell me on it, it left me unable to drag/drop browser tabs to reorder them (a fundamental part of my daily workflow). Thankfully, Mint still has the option to use X11 so reverting was trivial. That won't always be the case because...

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already.

Which, like avoiding systemd, is becoming increasingly difficult as distributions prematurely switch. Like when some Linux distros made KDE4 the default (~20 years ago) before most graphics cards could actually handle KDE4's requirements. Switching distros after years, even decades, of use is not as trivial as distro-hoppers who swap out their distro every three weeks might like to think. Lots of know-how and muscle memory gets lost in the transition, both of which have to be rebuilt.

I think the argument is that Linux as a whole doesn't progress much because new projects constantly replace old projects without actually improving the underlying issues. X11 is old and has a bunch of issues, but those issues have largely been addresses, whereas Wayland is new and neat, but has a lot of issues that won't be addressed for years to come.