What’s the difference for a real user between using X11 or Wayland nowdays? I haven’t found anything useful on the internet, so I’m asking you. Internet articles on the topic (and about WMs too) seem to be advertising slop since they explain anything but the real things. Also, if anyone used the XLibre fork, I would love to hear about your experience with it.
My Xpenguin won’t work in Wayland 😢
There are still things that work on X11 that don’t work on Wayland but Wayland has more security, more features and is actually being developed now.
Pick your distros default, if something graphical doesn’t work switching might do the trick.
Common issues with wayland are mostly related to screen sharing or lower level thingies like programmatically pressing the mouse.
Common issues with X11 is VRR, HDR, fractional scaling and multi monitor configuration.
Multiple screens and clipboard changes. Wayland has a lot more security built in. Keeps applications from seeing what other applications are doing.
Scaling issues, again multi monitor.
The ones that affect me: Remmina RDP sessions using muliple monitors. I have to launch it with
GDK_BACKEND=x11 remminaLibreoffice displays terrible on any screen that is a different resolution than the one orginally launched.
It too can be forced to use x11 as a backend.
And so through the xwayland tools it really has been fairly painless even with these issues.
I still struggle with running GUI programs as root and cutting & pasting between windows in Wayland. Those are the big things holding me back from switching completely.
So you literally can not copy+paste something between different apps?
The difference is that some things work on one and some things don’t work on the other.
For example: the literal whole way you’ve ever been able to use a computer will only work on x11. That’s because x11 comes directly from the lineage of human computer interface that you’re used to. Everything just works. Unless…
Counter example: new stuff is phasing out (or has already phased out) x11 support! Kde and gnome for example, are Wayland only in the most recent builds. That doesn’t mean your rich copying and accessibility tools still work. They just didn’t implement those parts.
If you believe that open source is an impenetrable monolith that cannot be changed then you’d better get on the Wayland ship now and figure out how to deal with its shortcomings before you’re left behind.
If you believe that open source projects can respond to their users and improve, stick with x11. It works and someone will support it.
I knew GNOME dropped support for x11 only but never heard of KDE doing the same. But that was expectable anyway
If you use a laptop with high dpi and a docking station with a screen with another resolution. Wayland is able to hotplug you running session.
Security
When you use X11, you allow any program running on your computer to access anything on your screen and clipboard, collect your keystrokes and type. It’s trivial to implement a keylogger, for example. Do not buy into the whole “no viruses on Linux” thing, it’s not true and likely to become even less and less true, as desktop Linux is becoming popular.
Wayland at least tries to put some barriers in place against this.
X11 is still server-first and needs workarounds to run locally (like startx, sx), while Wayland can just be run. Unlike X, it isolates every processes access to other windows, but with slow adoption of protocols for things like screen-sharing, video conferences, accessibility tools. The tooling is not yet there imo.
That’s the main difference nowadays. Some people have issues with tearing or wrong-monitor with either of them.
Honestly, Wayland vs. X (and Flatpak) fit this perfectly:
X11 is dead don’t bother with it. The same people who wrote X11 are working on Wayland because X11 became to here maintain.
X11 is still being actively maintained. It isn’t an install risk or anything like that. It isn’t going to add any shiny new features, but not everyone needs shiny new features. (That being said, if Wayland works for you, go ahead and use it. Just don’t spread FUD, please.)
I wish the distributed computing utopia where we would send X windows over the network came true, but unfortunately it didn’t, and the whole X11 paradigm is inadequate for the modern tech reality
As some general advice: If you don’t know the specifics, just go with your Linux distribution’s defaults. They probably have this figured out for you. Wayland is the more modern approach. We had a long transitioning period and some things didn’t work for a while or were missing. I’d say it’s ready by now. And if your distro maintainers also think it’s time to supersede the old X server, it probably is.
We had a long transitioning period and some things didn’t work for a while or were missing. I’d say it’s ready by now.
Do things like xdotool and xinput still work?
Uinput and libinput are the proper tools and they both work.
Also, the keyboard configuration is done with xkb
There’s ydotool
The x is the clue in those programs. They are tools to interact with x11. There will be tools to interact with Wayland, or there will be hacks to get x programs to sort of work with Wayland.
There will be tools to interact with Wayland
I don’t really like the hypothetical sound of this.
xdotool is essential for keeping some of my basic hardware usable.
(Yeah … more and more, I think I’m going to be a very late adopter of Wayland. I was planning on Debian Stable for my next install anyway…)
Yeah, I mean x11 isn’t Wayland. They aren’t the same. Changing from x11 to Wayland will require change in multiple ways, but I believe once you have worked through the change, you won’t see much difference in day to day usage. But the beauty of Linux is you have the choice. You can use x11 if you prefer. Just be aware the majority are moving to Wayland, so x11 will get less development and Wayland more, and I imagine there will be a point in the distant future where x11 will be a lot of effort to run.
Which is on Wayland
What? Last I heard, Debian Stable was one of the last few holdouts that hadn’t gone Wayland yet.
According to https://wiki.debian.org/Xorg/ Wayland is the default since 10
xdotool is essential for keeping some of my basic hardware usable.
That’s a good sign that you may not want to upgrade to Wayland on that hardware.
Nope. But you can find ydotool 🙄
Wayland is more secure than x11 by design and more concise in scope. Notably it supports contemporary display technologies like display independent scaling, VRR, colour space (HDR) and several others.
Wayland is made by the x11 people.
I don’t think for tue average user it really matters much. If you’ve got multiple screens of different sizes or refresh rates, Wayland is the way to go. If you’ve got multiple identical screens that you want to treat as a single big screen, X11 is perfect for that.
I recently switched and I’m happy with how it runs. Even on Nvidia.
X11 has many features and some it will never have. Wayland has less features and it has compatibility issues for the ones it has. But if you need 4K or touchscreen then Wayland is the way to go. Default choice should probably be Wayland unless it doesn’t support that one thing you care about.
By real user, do you mean a nontechnical user? If that’s the case, the display server isn’t a choice to be made by such user, but by the distro maintainers. Most people won’t notice the difference, because it’s mostly stuff that happens under the hood.
Every time I setup my desktop up for Wayland I always go back to X11, I find Wayland sluggish compared to X11 and don’t have the time nor energy to troubleshoot applications that had no issues working on X11.
I did not have any problems with Wayland for 6 months on Arch (personal PC for hobby projects and gaming). I also don’t want to troubleshoot, it just works. Most applications are installed via flatpak.
also don’t want to troubleshoot, it just works. Most applications are installed via flatpak.
I’m not surprised Flatpaks work with Wayland without issue, however Flatpaks containerize the application which is something I don’t want to do for everything I download as it adds extra overhead for something that could’ve just been built and installed as a native package (.deb, .rpm).
To each their own though.
Yes. This is still an important point, you make!
Wayland has been the default for awhile, but open source software is maintained by volunteers.
Until each specific package has been updated by the original developers, it may not work well on Wayland.
So, for now, there’s also a trade-off:
- Love running brand new shiny software, better use Wayland. Wayland has been the usual default for awhile, so new code is unlikely to get tested for speed and smoothness on X11.
- Have a whole set of preferred older good enough software that hasn’t been updated lately? Consider using X11 for a bit longer until someone who loves those tools updates them.
