this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 107 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I firmly believe this will be the year of the Wayland Desktop. Everything is shaping up to finishing off the transition for regular people and further stabilisation of the Wayland desktop space.

[–] misophist@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

This won't be the year of the Wayland desktop for me unless I can afford to replace my Nvidia card this year. I'll never buy one again, but I've still gotta suffer with the one I have a bit longer.

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 14 points 10 months ago

I'd suggest you check out NVK.

[–] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 10 points 10 months ago

NVK is looking to be a viable replacement for general desktop computing in a few months, so long as you don't need NVENC and any of the other stuff.

[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

By the time you're ready to buy a new card, Nvidia might be working well under wayland. They've already made significant changes in the past couple of years, like implementing GBM and hardware accelerated XWayland. To my understanding, this MR will also fix some remaining issues in the future. I don't know how much more work needs to be done after that, but just the fact they are cooperating with the free software ecosystem is a good sign.

Perhaps more importantly, the free nouveau driver can now experimentally reclock nvidia gpus from the 2000 series and newer. With this breakthrough it is possible that nouveau + nvk will be able to compete with the proprietary driver in the near future. If/when we have a well-supported free driver, we will probably have proper wayland support as well.

I'm not really in a hurry to switch to Nvidia. I've been quite happy with my AMD cards so far. But it's definitely a good thing to have the option to buy from any vendor.

[–] misophist@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Oh yeah, I'm also keeping a eye on that. Every time I see nvidia pop up in my updates, I try logging into Wayland and doing my usual tasks. If it starts working, that'll just let me extend the life of this card. I'll probably still strongly consider switching flavors with my next card.

[–] amju_wolf@pawb.social 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

As someone using Wayland on a HiDPI screen it's not a great experience with legacy apps. You can't completely rely on application-controlled scaling since not all apps support it and if you switch to system-wide scaling everything looks like crap.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Which apps? I've discovered recently Electron apps can enable Wayland support with a command line argument.

[–] amju_wolf@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago

Just last time it was free:ac; I had to change to system scaling because it would be unreadable otherwise, and that in turn fucked up Steam that I had managed to configure properly before.

[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But isn't that still on par with xorg where you can't have any fractional scaling?

[–] amju_wolf@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be fair I haven't tried. But I believe even at 2x scaling it looked like shit.

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Integer scaling works perfectly, even with legacy apps. Fractional scaling works great with native apps.

[–] exu@feditown.com 2 points 10 months ago

*every application using xWayland looks like crap.

Native Wayland apps work great with fractional scaling.

[–] TornadoRex@sh.itjust.works 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As someone who dabbles in Linux but is ultimately a regular people, what’s the advantage of this?

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A unified, bug-free, performant and featureful display stack to ensure people can use things like Variable refresh rate, which, iirc, is an impossibility on X11.

[–] TornadoRex@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That’s pretty awesome. I imagine this would be a huge advantage with the growth of Linux gaming too

[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I suppose the Steam Deck experience would be a bit worse if it wasn't running on Wayland 👍

[–] visor841@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

The games on Steam Deck are already running in Wayland using gamescope IIRC

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 4 points 10 months ago

Yeah, it could be and it will be

[–] CraigeryTheKid@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wait, what? I'm on PopOS, with Nvidia GPU, and my "g-sync" VRR works fine.

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

PopOS uses GNOME which hopefully uses Wayland

[–] CraigeryTheKid@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

I can confirm that PopOS 22.04 is definitely running on X. wayland is officially coming when Cosmic releases.

That said, I see that Wayland is "available" if I want to manually switch to it - but it is definitely disabled as a default (and current) setting.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is what wayland said every year lol.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

KDE 6 will have Wayland by default, on track to release Feb 2024.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago

Source?

We have been hearing about “The Year of the Linux Desktop” for 20 years I think and Linux has less than 5% share.

In contrast, I do not remember hearing “The Year of the Wayland Desktop” until recently. I have been hearing “Wayland is the future” forever but it has been correct the whole time.

By the time we enter 2025, I am not sure there will be a major desktop environment that does not support Wayland and many distros and DEs will be Wayland by default or even Wayland only. That is already happening. Valve may have ditched X by then and it feels like that is where most new Linux users are going to come from. It seems quite unlikely that Wayland market share on the Linux Desktop will be less than 75%.

I am not saying this is “The Year of the Wayland Desktop” but I would feel foolish publicly betting against it.

[–] azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

nobody would say that one year ago far as my memory goes, and it’s reasonable thing to say now. Personally I expected some break-throughs that have happened in 2023 to take much longer.

[–] java@beehaw.org -3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't understand this fetish. Every day I read about problems people have with Wayland, while I've been using X for the past 15 years without any issues.

[–] Loucypher@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wayland is better at segmenting each app. On X any app could potentially see/record what happen on the entire screen while on Wayland that requires you do manually grant the rights. Similar to how macOS is requesting you to give each app the possibility to record your screen or not.

[–] java@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's an improvement. But risk = impact * probability. Realistically, the probability of installing such an app from repos is virtually non-existent. My point is that Wayland comes with some improvements, but I've been seeing comments like the one I replied to for almost 15 years, as if Wayland will revolutionize Linux desktop. It won't. Probably most users won't see any difference, except for bugs caused by the migration.

[–] jw13@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

The probability of abuse is much higher with closed-source applications though. Almost all popular games are closed-source, and many are riddled with ads and spyware.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have been using X since 1992 with lots of issues. I do not understand the fetish with X11 and why people cling to it so tightly.

[–] java@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

If that was true, we would be on Wayland for years. But in reality, it proves minor improvements versus heavy investments to migrate from X. And that's why it's still a fetish and not a standard.