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Alternatively, instead of reading a Phoronix article that has a couple of short snippets from a much longer blog post, you can read the original blog post yourself to see the full context.
Edit: Also, it is worth noting that the author of the original blog post had previously written another relatively recent post criticizing the way in which Wayland was developed, so it's not like they are refusing to see its problems.
Wayland has fixed so many head-scratching issues I would get running 6 monitors on 2 GPUs under X11. I'd often end up with missing monitors, placed in wrong spots that I'd have to rearrange every reboot until an update would come through that would fix it again for a few months, then all over again.
Since I moved to wayland, everything just works. When it doesn't, it's not a display server issue, it's something physical. I just had a couple monitors fail to show up and thought "oh hell, it's back to this, eh". But I open the tower, seat the offending GPU better, and everything comes up like normal, and all the screens are in the right position, it just remembers.
Anyone that thinks X11 is still superior probably runs on a laptop with a single screen.
man it crazy I switched to Wayland on my laptop and docking to 3 monitors just worked on Wayland and it would remember all my monitors settings
I hand like 2 or 3 scripts setup to try and manage that on x11
Every change will bring it's fair share of complainers, not much we can do about that. LILO to GRUB, SysV to systemd and now X11 to Wayland. No one is forcing your hand (unless you use a pre-packaged distro like Ubuntu/Fedora, in which case you go with whatever the distro provides), keep using X11 if you want stability, if you wanna dip your toes in bleeding-edge software and increase it's userbase to show hardware manufacturers that their drivers need to be updated (I'm looking at you, NVIDIA) then feel free to mess around.
Eventually the day will come when Wayland apps will simply not launch on X11 and you'll migrate too.
I'd say that's already becoming the case in a few places. Hyprland isn't just "Wayland good", it's "You should use Wayland good".
Yes, I know the devs behind it act like pissants. That's bad and I'm sorry for liking their software. I use Emacs too and RMS was kind of an asshole. Hell, I use Lemmy even though one of the devs has slighted me on more than one occasion.
Every change will bring it’s fair share of complainers
sometimes the complainers are right and sometimes they aren't
And when they're right, it's usually addressed. I say usually because GNOME exists.
AFAIK, Fedora is the only distro that's getting rid of X11 support, the other distros are still packaging it AFAIK.
after more than 25 years using linux I could not care less about those dramas, when my distro will drop xorg I'll switch and that's it. I've got way too much stuff to implement myself already, there is no time for that. I mean, I've even embraced systemd...
Most distros use Wayland now and you probably won't notice a difference.
I wish that was my experience, but Nvidia drivers on KDE Wayland have had a lot of oddities and issues that have caused me to go back to Xorg every time I've tried (12 times and counting). Wayland is a good move in the right direction, and I look forward to it, but it's still being implemented.
That's less about Wayland than it is about shortfalls in nVidia driver development. Exactly like Nate's example in the blog post.
Oh absolutely, this isn't to say "Wayland bad", it's just to say that a large number of people may not have a smooth transition, so it's hard to say "just do it"
Just don't buy nvidia (or stuff from any other company openly hostile towards their users)
A sizable percentage of Linux users own Nvidia cards and "just buy something else" is not realistic, for many reasons.
Wayland will eventually have to support Nvidia one way or another. If they're seriously considering not doing that I would not bet on its future.
Eventually people will have to get new hardware. That's the moment to avoid nVidia, that's how simple this can be.
Also, the problem is nVidia giving shitty Wayland support, not Wayland providing no nVidia support. It's nVidia who has to write the drivers since they themselves opted to keep their implementation details a secret. There's nothing the Wayland people can do except plea, beg and shame. If nVidia then decide not to care, then I say fuck them.
Oh boy, 102 comments. Knowing Phoronix, I bet those are a treat to read.
Reading angry boomer Linux comments is one of my most favorite hobbies
Anecdote, I know, but for my use cases, Wayland just isn't there yet- I wind up with far more random bugs and less battery life. I don't pretend to know why, I'm a pleb non-developer, but until that's resolved I'm still stuck on X. I'd love to use the new shiny thing of The Future™, but not at the cost of stability and usability.
I think that given how frequently this argument is brought up (and it is of course true about it not being completely there yet) so this is just my opinion on the situation (and I am not a dev so I am fine with being wrong and corrected). It is kind of needed for more projects/distros to start actively using it. As a lot of the stuff kind of needs the band-aid ripped off to start forcing it to get there faster at this point. Otherwise it just keeps being held back as people on the coding end of things will keep focusing on X11 issues instead of getting things ready for Wayland.
Kind of like the conundrum of mobile OSes that aren't Android or iOS. It is hard to get people/companies to even try the new OS because the lack of apps (specifically the most common ones used by the most people). But app devs don't want to spend time re-building or starting new apps for an OS that isn't being used (or on devices people are buying). So at a certain point it needs both sides to interact and make progress. The OS needs the apps more at this point, and getting feedback and data from those devs makes it known where things are and aren't working. But it is also true the devs for the apps might end up finding out the OS is actually easier to work with compared to what they have been doing/dealing with on Android/iOS.
Getting a replacement for X11 has been needed for a long time as the OSes and features keep needing something new to better work for how computers have advanced. And it isn't something that many devs would want to take on given how easy it is to just use what is already known. Since Wayland has finally gotten to the point it is now, it is time for more devs to start learning/moving to the new thing to get attention to the stuff that they need. The hardest part is this in between period for users as it can and will cause random issues (like the ones you have seen). Stability is important, but Linux is great because there will always be distros and projects that keeping the old thing running well is the main objective. So we are in some great times for the new to be pushed hard so it can become the stable future needed.
I don't see why we need convincing that Wayland's better. Most Linux users either use it currently or are possibly looking to switch in the future. The other people who are not are likely going to use X for eternity
It's super impressive to see Wayland having its big breakthrough moment. I remember reading about Wayland 10 years ago and worrying it was going to end up as a dead project.
Until my distro forces wayland on me I'll stick with xorg+XFCE. I've played with sway and hyprland but I need my application choices to actually work well. (no I'm not going to list them).
As for the cube desktop in the image: We had this with compiz and learnt then that this is pointless.
Why are we back there?
I love Wayland until I don't. I honestly don't think about it, it gets out of my way and my system is stable, until I go to use something like scrcpy that just doesn't work at all. Luckily, the amount of things that straight up don't work is shrinking.
Undoubtedly Wayland is the way forward and I think it's a good thing. However I wouldn't piss all over X because it served us well for many years. My LMDE 6 still runs X and probably will for the next 2 years at least because both the Mint Team and Debian team don't rush into things. They are taking it slow, testing Wayland to make sure no-one's system breaks when they switch to Wayland.
This is the best approach. Eventually it will all be Wayland but I never understood why this is such an issue. Like any tech it's progress, no need for heated debates. It's just a windowing system after all.