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Should I switch to Wayland?

Hey Community,

Since I just read a post about the X11 vs. Wayland situation I’m questioning if I should stay on X11, or switch to Wayland. Regarding this decision, I’m asking you for your opinions plus please answer me a few questions. I will put further information about my systems at the bottom.

  • What are the advantages of Wayland? What are the disadvantages?
  • I do mostly music production, programming, browsing, etc, but occasionally I’m back into gaming (on the desktop). How’s performance there? Anything that might break?
  • what would be the best way to migrate?
  • why have/haven’t you made the switch?

Desktop: Ryzen 3100, 16 Gig Ram, Rx 570 Arch Linux with KDE 144 hz Freesync Monitor and 60hz shitty monitor

laptop: Thinkpad L540 (iirc), i3 4100, 8 GB Ram intel uhd630 gfx (iirc) Arch Linux with heavily customized i3-gaps

PseudoSpock ,
@PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I am no fan of wayland, but if it works the software you use and your workflow, then it would probably be advisable to do so. It is not for me and my day to day workflow.

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I just distro hopped to a distro that ships wayland by default and I’ve got from a near flawless linux experience to an awful experience. I am gonna have to be careful what distro I recommend to people because I dont want anyone’s first linux experience to be with wayland. So many issues and every single time its wayland related with no fix. I ended up going back to x11. -NVIDIA graphics card user with KDE plasma.

MartinJezhyk ,

If your video card is Radeon, then yes. Otherwise you should wait for opensource Nvidia drivers.

raven ,

I’ve been on sway since 2019 and I’ve had fewer issues than I did on i3. The performance was an immediate improvement. Feels silky smooth like x never did. Stable as a rock.

Why don’t you just install it alongside X?

FluffyPotato ,

The only advantage for the end user is better support for multi monitor systems with different refresh rates. If you don’t have problems with that there’s no real advantage in upgrading. Also avoid using Wayland on systems with an Nvidia GPU.

Jumuta ,

touchpad pinch to zoom

xXthrowawayXx ,

No it’s bad.

E: anti wayland, anti pulseaudio, anti systemd, pro xscreensaver. I-was-saying

Ineocla ,

Isn’t pipewire the wayland of pulseaudio ? (Like pipewire is supposed to modernize pulseaudio just like wayland and x11)

AngryDemonoid ,

I dove headfirst recently and switched from KDE Plasma to Hyprland. I ended up using someone else’s config as a base, and I’m still tweaking, but so far, I have no regrets.

mackwinston ,

Debian (a very conservative distro) switched to Wayland by default in debian 10 if I’m not mistaken (we’re now on 12).

I didn’t notice the change until I tried to run a niche program that really needs X11. Unless you’re doing this kind of thing, then you can probably just use Wayland. At least in Debian it’s really easy to switch between Wayland and X11 by selecting the session type when you log in.

Beowulf ,

Same with fedora iirc.

I’ve used fedora for a long time and pretty much had the same experience you described. It works until some random obscure program doesn’t like Wayland.

possiblylinux127 ,

Try it and pipewire to see how it works

JC1 ,

On my surface go 3, I used pop os at first and the screen tearing was so bad that I stopped using it. I then changed for arch with gnome on wayland and everything works much better.

Though, for my main computer, I recently switched my main OS from Windows and went for Hyprland on Arch. I love it. Most applications run fine. Though I have a 3080. This means that most electron apps are very slow, almost unusable. Also, some applications just refuse to open, notably Plex. For jellyfin, half the time the screen is black and I need to restart the app. I also have a KVM switch that I use for my work computer. When I switched to it and came back, I got a red screen of death for which I had to exit Hyprland and get back to SDDM to log back in. I was able to start and play games though. Global shortcuts didn’t work easily (feature, not a bug), so I want to use a support app for Path of Exile. Impossible on Wayland. And finally, I tend to use a screenshoting tool. Flameshot isn’t available on wayland so I used snappy, but it doesn’t freeze the frame, rendering it useless.

Now I switched over qtile in X11. Everything works fine, electron apps are much more snappy. Most importantly, the WM doesn’t crash when I use my KVM, so my sound device works perfectly. The only issue I’m facing is the audio, there seem to have a very small delay (I’m using pipewire).

The only thing that I miss now is a way for me to assign an audio output to an application so that if I close the application it even restart my computer, that assignment is still remembered. Currently I have a tool that does that that I autostart with my WM, but it doesn’t redirect the audio, it just adds the other assignment without removing the default audio output.

There you go, wayland is not recommended if you have a nvidia GPU, even though it still works.

backhdlp ,
@backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You probably won’t notice a difference in day-to-day use, especially since you use Plasma. I can’t vouch for performance, but you don’t have a Nvidia GPU so you should be fine. The easiest way to migrate for you on your desktop is to install plasma-wayland-session, and for your Laptop to install sway and put in your i3 config.

rbar ,

There is still way too much instability and too many paper cuts on KDE Wayland. IMO if you have waited this long just wait for their Qt6 release. X11 will remain the best supported experience for KDE 5.

Cornelius ,

You’re not using any NVIDIA hardware…? Hmm, nope, that’s all hardware that runs under Mesa. Give it a shot, if it doesn’t work, you can always switch back.

The big advantage is improved support for new features, like adaptive sync, multi monitor support, display scaling, etc. You’ll notice, new features (mostly gaming related features) will just work better on Wayland. There will be a performance hit though.

I made the switch because it’s just plain better, adaptive sync works (it never worked for me on X11), oh yeah and the night color actually works. Night color on KDE just does not work on X11, AMD or NVIDIA, least for me.

PriorProject , (edited )

I’d consider asking in a Linux audio or music production community (I’m not aware of any on Lemmy that are big enough to have a likely answer though). If music production is a primary use case and audio latency matters to you, almost no general users are going to be able to comment on the difference between X and Wayland from a latency perspective. There may not be a difference, but there might and you won’t be likely to learn about it outside of an audio-focused discussion.

Cornelius ,

Ardour and Audacity work just fine for me. Dunno if that’s what OP uses but, worth mentioning

PriorProject ,

That’s an interesting report but it’s possible to “work” at different latencies. And unless you have specialized audio capture/playback hardware and have done some tuning and testing to determine the lowest stable latency that your system is capable of achieving… “works” for you is likely to mean something very different than it does to someone who does a lot of music production.

It remains an interesting question to some users whether Wayland changes the minimum stable latency relative to X and if so whether it does so for better or worse.

i_lost_my_bagel ,
@i_lost_my_bagel@seriously.iamincredibly.gay avatar

I’m not switching on my main laptop until xwayland app scaling is figured out. Either figure out how to make the apps scale properly or just leave them tiny on my screen. None of this stretching them to fit and making them blurry bullshit.

I use it on everything else because all my other computers don’t have high dpi screens.

2xsaiko ,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That’s up to the compositor. Plasma can keep them unscaled, for example. Not sure about others.

norapink ,

KDE plasma has this feature. You can choose between forcing x11 apps to scale or allowing x11 apps to scale themselves. Some apps won’t scale at all when you do the latter option but most at least increase the font size or have their own way of scaling.

i_lost_my_bagel ,
@i_lost_my_bagel@seriously.iamincredibly.gay avatar

I’m aware plasma has it but I don’t like plasma that much. I’m currently waiting for it to be integrated into other compositors (mainly sway).

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