Wayland vs X11

That’s because normal programs don’t have access to the screen buffer due to security reasons. You have to use the screenshot program that comes with the particular Wayland compositor you are using or one that has explicit support for it. For e.g. sway try grim.

Same for the Colour picker.

I am using X.org but that’s because I am not happy yet with the robustness of sway, so I’ll still have to stick to i3 for now.
However, I really want to make the switch, not just because of security but also because video performance should be better on Wayland…

What really sucks about Wayland is that programs like xbindkeys, color pickers and such stuff don’t work with it. Xdotool works through the XWayland layer which is not perfect because it’s not something native and it has problems sometimes with programs that use native Wayland.
Wayland devs decided to make everything responsibility of the compositor which means that we have to rely on DE specific tools for rebinding keys, color picking, keypress/mousepress scripting and the DE devs for the most part are not interested in developing such tools. And even if they did it would be nightmare having 10 xdotool tools, 10 xbindkeys tools, 10 color pickers (for each DE different tool (most accurately a tool per compositor but every DE uses different compositor)).
I’m not sure if you can develop programs that speak directly to the compositor for things like keyremap, pixel color pick, simulating kb/mouse events but even then you’d have to write your program to speak to 1000 different compositors which is hell.

That not so much an issue with Wayland, it is simply out of scope of their project.

it doesn’t necessarily mean every DE has to use different stuff either, if someone was to develop an API for doing these things the DEs in question could make use of it.

So we’re some way off that, but again… not a wayland issue. That stuff probably shouldn’t be in the low level display subsystem anyway.

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I have used Wayland since I decided to pick up an AMD RX 480 and open source driver AMDGPU. That is also why I switched to Fedora and stuck with it even when a few steam games broke.

I cant stand video tearing, Youtube tearing on a Desktop OS and well Wayland solved that.

I agree not being able to configure my mouse well sucks. Its a razor monstrosity that even breaks into the middle of a windows install to update itself.

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Currently on GNOME on Wayland, plan on moving to sway on Wayland. It should be a smooth transition.

Is there a wayland compositor working on DRM leases? Will Not switch untill the musltiseat on one GPU is possible.

I found a screenshot program that works well on wayland, being flameshot. It’s actually a whole lot better that shutter ever was I think. Gonna try later if it works on my desktop on xorg too.

On Fedora it’s in a dnf repo too, so you can just dnf install flameshot currently for some reason it does not launch when i click the shortcut icon (but not sure maybe that will work on reboot or I gotta fix it, but I really don’t need the icon anyways). flameshot gui works and I just deleted the default screenshot gnome thing shortcut on print and replaced it with flameshot gui. I think screenshotters are pretty worthless without a shortcut, because then you aren’t able to screenshot what you want to screenshot half the time anyways.


Anyways, glad I found this. Actually like it more than greenshot. Where as before everytime I used shutter I though. “Well it works, but greenshot was better.”

I use way land its not bad on amd for reason x11 dont like my 580. Im fine with it I notice a big performance in my system. I played games on it along with rpcs3 and testing out emulators like it as well.

I found your comment very helpful, thanks.

I use KDE Plasma Wayland. All i can say is that is very unstable and crashes frequently, but it’s not a very big problem for me. As for the app compatibility, most of the QT/GTK app are working natively, while electron apps still have to run under xwayland.

Isn’t the idea of Wayland to just make the compositor responsible for everything.
That’s a bad thing. There should be some standardized middle layer between the compositor and Wayland to handle things with input and screen capture. You can’t expect every compositor to implement everything.
Maybe we can achieve that with Wayland Protocols.

I use Xorg due to being a noob and just wanted something that I know works. I’m on Ubuntu 18.04.

I tried using Wayland on 17.10 and it was a pain in the butt. Was buggy as hell, and didn’t do much in the way of solving any tearing.

On xorg, once I got Ukuu and installed 4.20 kernel, all my tearing disappeared.

My normal gnome shortcuts work PRTSCR and alt and ctrl variants.

Xorg. I hate libinput.

Why do you hate libinput?

BTW, libinput can also be used by x.org. :wink:

Yes it can. But Xinput on Wayland is a mess. I don’t care for libinput because I’ve had so many broken installations across multiple laptops where my touchoads refused to work properly. It’s not ready for prime time. I don’t care how streamlined it is. Xinput just works and I’ve never had to worry about it all too often. I can configure it on a per program basis with the simplicity of a shell script. I’m not saying libinput can’t be but it’s much more tedious.

Not only that though but all programs written for X have to be ran in some wrapper. I think that’s where people encounter the most problems. Instead of pushing an entirely new system improve the one that’s there. Could you imagine if the Linux kernel was consistently replaced? What a mess that would be (I’m aware of how long X has been around).

Point being, I see the benefits of Wayland. It’s great that there’s an alternate. But when developers of a program aren’t passionate about making it happen then it will fail. Distro’s overlook this time to time and that’s why we have this mess.

I know they do. But gnomes built in screenshot program cant do a whole lot of anything. Flameshot is the best ive seen, highlighting/obfuscating tools be integrated into a screenshot program, yet. Only thing it cant do yet is the ability to put text on your screenshots. Not sure when thats comming but it appearently is.

these guys sum up what i’ve heard quite well. here is the 411, modern oses EXCEPT linux have extra security in way that separate some things from the kernel for security purposes windows for example has it.

you may remember back in the day when your windows 98 could get infected with a “laced” gif or jpeg file or something like that. These days there is supposed to be a user space and a kernel space this makes things pretty tricky but, easy for windows since it’s closed source and they can force partners to comply. ie drivers and shit.

This is extra tricky for linux sure it’s open source but, man power and developers who aren’t crazy or pissed and constantly forking is an issue. ie man power.

yeah supposedly they were saying some important stuff asn’t needed or being worked or could be done by someone else or in desperate app or god knows but, after all these years, PROBABLY explains why wayland “hasn’t happened”.

I remember “this will be better” “more secure” etc etc, screw it!

EDIT: BIG GRAIN OF SALT, my memory is fried any more, so feel free to correct me!!!

what’s the state of fractional and multi dpi in wayland these days?

(e.g. dragging an app between two monitors with different scaling parameters - does that work?).