[gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Daniel Frey]

Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?

I did a switchover to systemd/wayland some time ago and it seemed to 
solve some problems I had.

The problem is it also came with so many more issues than it fixed:

1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it 
appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will 
start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and a 
blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.

2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do 
have a discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I switched 
to nouveau and it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in X11.

I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.

3. I sleep/resume a lot, wayland seems to be quite buggy on resume. As 
in, the other three issues listed here are far more likely to occur 
after a sleep/resume, but they do happen even after rebooting and being 
on the PC most of the day.

4. This is the big one, the panel in KDE hangs intermittently. The clock 
will freeze and the entire panel is unresponsive (but weirdly enough, 
KDE doesn't realize it's not responding.) I've tried killing and 
restarting the process and that doesn't always fix it either as it 
becomes disconnected with any open processes and it's not possible to 
resolve. Either have to logout or reboot.

I've switched back to X11 for now and have been using it for over a 
week. I managed to figure out how to set up multimonitor for now (both 
on the KDE desktop and in SDDM) and I haven't had any of these issues. 
For the record, I typically use the computer a few times a day during 
the week and sleep/resume, and longer on weekends.

After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these issues 
go away... which got me wondering if someone else has experienced any of 
these.

I have done hardware tests (load testing, RAM tests, etc) - all are clear.

-Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Waldo Lemmer]

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On Mon, Aug 5, 2024, 18:31 Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do
> have a discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I switched
> to nouveau and it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in X11.
>
> I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.


After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these issues
> go away... which got me wondering if someone else has experienced any of
> these.


I don't have a Gentoo system with an Nvidia GPU, but I have the same issue
on my Ubuntu machine with its 1650 Super.

The "About" page in GNOME's settings application shows that the GNOME shell
is using software rendering even though it's listed in the output of
`nvidia-smi`. Firefox doesn't use hardware acceleration unless I force it
to using settings in about:config, though scrolling is still laggy after
that.

I just conceded and switched back to X11. Everything's been running super
smoothly since.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Wols Lists]

On 05/08/2024 17:30, Daniel Frey wrote:
> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it 
> appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will 
> start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and a 
> blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.

Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if 
you're running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that 
sddm will work.

Daft, I know, but that seems to be the way things are at the moment ...

Cheers,Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Daniel Frey]

On 8/5/24 09:58, Wols Lists wrote:
> On 05/08/2024 17:30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it 
>> appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will 
>> start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and 
>> a blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.
> 
> Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if 
> you're running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that 
> sddm will work.
> 
> Daft, I know, but that seems to be the way things are at the moment ...
> 
> Cheers,Wol
> 

I even tried enabling wayland for sddm (which is apparently 
experimental) but it didn't help either.

Both X11 and wayland appear to be installed.

I just find it odd that a lot of DEs (and distros) are defaulting to 
wayland when it's horribly broken.

Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Daniel Frey]

On 8/5/24 09:42, Waldo Lemmer wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 5, 2024, 18:31 Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com 
> <mailto:djqfrey@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do
>     have a discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I switched
>     to nouveau and it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in X11.
> 
>     I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.
> 
> 
>     After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these
>     issues
>     go away... which got me wondering if someone else has experienced
>     any of
>     these.
> 
> 
> I don't have a Gentoo system with an Nvidia GPU, but I have the same 
> issue on my Ubuntu machine with its 1650 Super.
> 
> The "About" page in GNOME's settings application shows that the GNOME 
> shell is using software rendering even though it's listed in the output 
> of `nvidia-smi`. Firefox doesn't use hardware acceleration unless I 
> force it to using settings in about:config, though scrolling is still 
> laggy after that.
> 
> I just conceded and switched back to X11. Everything's been running 
> super smoothly since.

I'm glad I'm not the only one having problems. It does make me wonder 
though if the discrete video card (nvidia) is the cause of some/most of 
these problems.

They don't happen in X11 though.

Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Dale]

Daniel Frey wrote:
> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>
> I did a switchover to systemd/wayland some time ago and it seemed to
> solve some problems I had.
>
> The problem is it also came with so many more issues than it fixed:
>
> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it
> appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will
> start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and
> a blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.
>
> 2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do
> have a discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I
> switched to nouveau and it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in
> X11.
>
> I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.
>
> 3. I sleep/resume a lot, wayland seems to be quite buggy on resume. As
> in, the other three issues listed here are far more likely to occur
> after a sleep/resume, but they do happen even after rebooting and
> being on the PC most of the day.
>
> 4. This is the big one, the panel in KDE hangs intermittently. The
> clock will freeze and the entire panel is unresponsive (but weirdly
> enough, KDE doesn't realize it's not responding.) I've tried killing
> and restarting the process and that doesn't always fix it either as it
> becomes disconnected with any open processes and it's not possible to
> resolve. Either have to logout or reboot.
>
> I've switched back to X11 for now and have been using it for over a
> week. I managed to figure out how to set up multimonitor for now (both
> on the KDE desktop and in SDDM) and I haven't had any of these issues.
> For the record, I typically use the computer a few times a day during
> the week and sleep/resume, and longer on weekends.
>
> After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these
> issues go away... which got me wondering if someone else has
> experienced any of these.
>
> I have done hardware tests (load testing, RAM tests, etc) - all are
> clear.
>
> -Dan
>
>


On number 4.  I use X11 and see that sometimes too.  I saw it a LOT on
my old rig Fireball.  I have seen it a couple times on my new rig to tho
but it is shorter for sure.  On my old rig, it would freeze when I would
plug in one of my external hard drives into a eSATA port.  Also, that
would also freeze my network as well.  Sometimes I would have to restart
LVM to get it to go back to normal.  It was only one external drive that
did that.  Restarting LVM always fixed it.  Sometimes it would do it for
reasons I can't figure out.  Sometimes the freeze would only be for a
couple seconds but on occasion it would freeze for 30 seconds or
longer.  During that time, I'd have to use the CTRL F* keys to switch
desktops. 

I tried Wayland a couple times during the testing of the new rig.  It
had some good points but some things didn't work right still.  I don't
see me switching anytime soon.  I didn't play with it much tho, mostly
hoping that wonky monitor would work better.  That said, I'm sure it is
some complicated programming.  It has to work with any number of video
cards, all sorts of programs, input devices and other things I haven't
thought of.  If it has enough people working on it, I'm sure one day all
the bugs will get worked out and we will all switch and fall in love
with the thing.  Just might not be tomorrow.  ROFL 

So, the freeze/delay may be Wayland, it may not.  On my old rig, it was
pretty annoying.  Besides the age of my old rig, it was one of the
larger reasons I wanted a newer rig.  The whole plasma thing was getting
slow. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[J. Aho]

On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?

There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

My SailfishOS based phone uses wayland and on that it's been working 
fine, on my desktop with a nVidia RTX I haven't managed to even login 
into a wayland session, but on my laptop with i915 it works fine most of 
the time and it leave me think that the developers behind wayland are 
mainly using intel graphics cards and then blame the graphics driver 
when things don't work on other hardware.

I would say for general use wayland ain't up for it's task, if you have 
the right hardware and you mainly use the browser, then it works.


-- 
  //Aho

Re: [Possible phishing attempt] Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[byte.size226]

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On 05/08/2024 23:56, Daniel Frey wrote:
> I'm glad I'm not the only one having problems. It does make me wonder
> though if the discrete video card (nvidia) is the cause of some/most of
> these problems.
> 

If I were to 'guess', I think it's the Nvidia drivers and less to do 
with Wayland implementation.

I have an Nvidia RTX 20-series and Wayland sessions generally exhibit 
mostly the same issues as yours - flickering and/or 
freezing/unresponsive panels, random KDE crashes, and general 
instability. Sleep simply doesn't work at all properly with a wayland 
session and my PC freezes, requiring a reboot. Mind you, this is a 
modern system with an X670E chipset, but certainly not modern enough to 
still have launch issues.

It's the same with both the proprietary Nvidia driver and the new 1st 
party open-source driver that comes with the 555-series drivers. I've 
not tried nouveau - it's on my list, but I sometimes need CUDA so not 
yet sure how this is going to wor
k out without a driver swap.

> They don't happen in X11 though.

Same here. X11 is mostly stable for nvidia except for suspend/resume 
which can often not suspend at all, requiring multiple attempts, or 
borking up the screen resolution.

I say 'guess' above in quotes because Nvidia have notoriously bad 
drivers for Linux and Wayland support has been pretty non-existent _and_ 
I've been using Wayland as a daily driver with AMD (current laptop) and 
Intel GPUs (previous laptop) for about 2 years without any major issues 
outside of minor known KDE bugs which have got hoovered over time with 
updates. Furthermore, on my workstation (with the Nvidia GPU) all 
problems, Wayland and the X11 sleep issue , essentially disappear as 
soon as I wire things up to the onboard built-in Ryzen GPU and switch to 
the "amdgpu" driver and Wayland is rock solid - no sleep/resume issues 
either.

So... yes, in my experience Nvidia is just crap on Linux and, frankly, 
given where they 
seem to be headed wrt their business priorities, I 
don't see this getting any better any time soon. I think my next GPU 
upgrade, whenever that may be, will be an AMD.

I'm curious to see how KDE 6 will behave once stabilised. It's supposed 
to have further Wayland improvements, but I'm not holding my breath as I 
don't think it's necessarily KDE's problem.

- Victor

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 6 August 2024 09:29:15 BST byte.size226@simplelogin.com wrote:
> On 05/08/2024 23:56, Daniel Frey wrote:
> > I'm glad I'm not the only one having problems. It does make me wonder
> > though if the discrete video card (nvidia) is the cause of some/most of
> > these problems.
> 
> If I were to 'guess', I think it's the Nvidia drivers and less to do
> with Wayland implementation.
> 
> I have an Nvidia RTX 20-series and Wayland sessions generally exhibit
> mostly the same issues as yours - flickering and/or
> freezing/unresponsive panels, random KDE crashes, and general
> instability. Sleep simply doesn't work at all properly with a wayland
> session and my PC freezes, requiring a reboot. Mind you, this is a
> modern system with an X670E chipset, but certainly not modern enough to
> still have launch issues.
> 
> It's the same with both the proprietary Nvidia driver and the new 1st
> party open-source driver that comes with the 555-series drivers. I've
> not tried nouveau - it's on my list, but I sometimes need CUDA so not
> yet sure how this is going to wor
> k out without a driver swap.
> 
> > They don't happen in X11 though.
> 
> Same here. X11 is mostly stable for nvidia except for suspend/resume
> which can often not suspend at all, requiring multiple attempts, or
> borking up the screen resolution.
> 
> I say 'guess' above in quotes because Nvidia have notoriously bad
> drivers for Linux and Wayland support has been pretty non-existent _and_
> I've been using Wayland as a daily driver with AMD (current laptop) and
> Intel GPUs (previous laptop) for about 2 years without any major issues
> outside of minor known KDE bugs which have got hoovered over time with
> updates.

On various laptops and desktops of up to 15+ years old Wayland works here for 
some years now.  They all have integrated and/or discrete radeon/AMD graphics.  

All PCs boot/suspend/wake up reliably.  Bar the quite rare crash of kwin, 
which takes down Plasma but not any of the open application windows on it, I 
have not experienced any problems for quite a few years now. From what I 
recall X11 used to have more crashes, than what I am experiencing on Wayland.

Besides Plasma I've also tried Enlightenment DE and it also mostly worked with 
Wayland.

There is also an old 2008 laptop with Intel CPU and intel graphics which will 
not work fully with Wayland.  It launches a desktop session fine, but some 
application windows (e.g. Firefox) will not respond to mouse clicks.  It may 
be a matter of missing gtk packages/configuration, but I have not looked into 
it further.


> Furthermore, on my workstation (with the Nvidia GPU) all
> problems, Wayland and the X11 sleep issue , essentially disappear as
> soon as I wire things up to the onboard built-in Ryzen GPU and switch to
> the "amdgpu" driver and Wayland is rock solid - no sleep/resume issues
> either.
> 
> So... yes, in my experience Nvidia is just crap on Linux and, frankly,
> given where they
> seem to be headed wrt their business priorities, I
> don't see this getting any better any time soon. I think my next GPU
> upgrade, whenever that may be, will be an AMD.
> 
> I'm curious to see how KDE 6 will behave once stabilised. It's supposed
> to have further Wayland improvements, but I'm not holding my breath as I
> don't think it's necessarily KDE's problem.
> 
> - Victor


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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Michael]

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On Monday, 5 August 2024 17:30:56 BST Daniel Frey wrote:
> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
> 
> I did a switchover to systemd/wayland some time ago and it seemed to
> solve some problems I had.
> 
> The problem is it also came with so many more issues than it fixed:
> 
> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it
> appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will
> start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and a
> blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.

I've come across such symptoms on more recent SDDM versions.  SDDM would not 
launch, or would not launch fully on boot.  Nothing meaningful in the logs.  
Strangely, it would start fine if I were to restart display-manager, but never 
on boot.  This would only happen only on a ryzen PC, but not on other older 
and slower PCs.

After a lot of testing I discovered the faster ryzen would finish starting all 
the openrc services including display-manager, *before* haveged had a chance 
to generate enough entropy.  Hence SDDM failed to start.  I have no TPM chip 
on this MoBo, so I don't know if it would help accelerate haveged or not.

The solution was to add in /etc/rc.conf:

rc_display_manager_after="local"

to allow enough time for entropy generation by haveged before SDDM tries to 
launch.


> 2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do
> have a discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I switched
> to nouveau and it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in X11.
> 
> I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.

From what has already been posted this seems like a Nvidia driver issue.  
Graphics acceleration works fine on AMD (both integrated and discrete 
graphics) with amdgpu or radeon drivers, depending on the age of the graphics 
cards.


> 3. I sleep/resume a lot, wayland seems to be quite buggy on resume. As
> in, the other three issues listed here are far more likely to occur
> after a sleep/resume, but they do happen even after rebooting and being
> on the PC most of the day.

There was a glitch a few months ago affecting one PC with an AMD APU here and 
a dual-monitor setup.  The PC would sleep/resume OK, but some time later it 
would crash kwin if firefox was used heavily and was being dragged between the 
two monitors.  Evidently a graphics driver issue on this integrated graphics 
PC.  Following some recent xorg/mesa updates and enabling hardware 
acceleration on firefox has fixed this.  All other AMD graphics systems have 
always been able to sleep/resume reliably.

Again on this PC only, changing from the desktop to a console with Ctrl+Alt+F1 
and back again would arrive at a distorted/full of tearing desktop.  This may 
not happen the first time, but always happens after a couple of attempts.  The 
workaround is to switch first to the VT where the SDDM was launched from and 
then to the VT where the desktop is running.


> 4. This is the big one, the panel in KDE hangs intermittently. The clock
> will freeze and the entire panel is unresponsive (but weirdly enough,
> KDE doesn't realize it's not responding.) I've tried killing and
> restarting the process and that doesn't always fix it either as it
> becomes disconnected with any open processes and it's not possible to
> resolve. Either have to logout or reboot.

Sounds like a kwin crash, which brings Plasma down.  It can happen, although 
quite rare here.  Check your ~/.local/share/sddm/wayland-session.log and or 
syslog.  I haven't found a fix, perhaps restarting kwin could/would do it?  I 
prefer to shut down the individual application windows still running and then 
restart display manager to get a new, clean, Plasma session, without anything 
hanging in the background.


> I've switched back to X11 for now and have been using it for over a
> week. I managed to figure out how to set up multimonitor for now (both
> on the KDE desktop and in SDDM) and I haven't had any of these issues.
> For the record, I typically use the computer a few times a day during
> the week and sleep/resume, and longer on weekends.
> 
> After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these issues
> go away... which got me wondering if someone else has experienced any of
> these.
> 
> I have done hardware tests (load testing, RAM tests, etc) - all are clear.
> 
> -Dan

I think your issues are caused by how well your graphics can work with 
Wayland.  I have no experience with Nvidia to know if this is fixable through 
some configuration tweaks.  Given the direction of travel is toward Wayland, I 
would think Nvidia will eventually adjust their code to make it work with 
Wayland, or nouveau may get there first.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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"J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:

> On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>
> There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
> https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people
fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib,
Portals, Pipewire) on everyone".

but, each "point" it makes can individually be debunked also.  I'm not
very interested in doing that beyond oneliners though (which is
apparently enough for the author of the original post).

- Wayland is broken by design - X is and has been for decades.
  - A crash in the window manager takes down all running applications -
    a crash in X takes down all running applications.  only the label of
    what crashed differs
  - You cannot do a lot of things that you can do in Xorg by design -
    irrefutable as it is not specific enough (but, it is true that a lot
    of hacks X allows aren't permitted in wayland)
  - There is not one /usr/bin/wayland display server application that is
    desktop environment agnostic and is used by everyone (unlike with
    Xorg) - correct, this is also true of X WMs, and though people
    pretend all X desktops worked the same, anyone who has used a Java
    program, for instance, knows this is false
  the following point is the same

- Wayland breaks screen recording applications - this is false, either
  1) screen recording works via portals, or 2) screen recording works
  via xwaylandvideobridge

- Wayland breaks screen sharing applications - same as above

- Wayland breaks automation software - see libei, I also have remote
  input working via kde connect, which relies on the same mechanisms
  automation would rely on

- Wayland breaks Gnome-Global-AppMenu (global menus for Gnome) -
  possibly, I don't know, I don't use GNOME or global menus

- Wayland broke global menus with KDE platformplugin - just tried krita,
  seems to works fine

- Wayland breaks global menus with non-KDE Qt platformplugins - tried
  qtdesigner, seems to work fine

- Wayland breaks AppImages that don't ship a special Wayland Qt plugin -
  I'm not sure what was anticipated - shipping outdated libraries will
  invariably break.  note that Qt also doesn't work on X if you delete
  the XCB plugin.

- Wayland breaks Redshift - this is true, but redshift isn't that
  special - I have redshift functionality in KDE, I had it in Sway, I
  know for a fact it's there in GNOME, just the redshift program is
  broken

- Wayland breaks global hotkeys - they never worked, and continue not
  to, the reasoning for not allowing the hack X allows is quite good,
  see
  https://drewdevault.com/2019/02/10/Wayland-misconceptions-debunked.html

- Wayland does not work for Xfce? -
  https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap

- Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD - I've seen and worked
  on hobby OSes that implement Wayland just fine.  obviously, porting is
  required (and it was required for X, eg OpenBSD still has homebrew X),
  but AFAIK freebsd runs wayland, and I know at least of one wayland
  desktop supports freebsd.  it is ironic to bring up bsd when one of
  the arguments is "everyone has to reimplement basic functionality"
  given BSD kernel diversity, though

- Wayland complicates server-side window decorations - CSD seems logical
  to me, at least in large part, so I'm not sure this actually matters.
  however, I know that SSD support exists.

- Wayland breaks windows rasing/activating themselves - good!  this is
  popup prevention, and doesn't actually impede *any* valid activation
  (window alerts still work, fresh apps windows will still come into
  focus, so do popups, etc, just fine)

- Wayland breaks RescueTime - yes, because it relies on clients spying
  on eachother

- Wayland breaks window managers - I'm not sure what they mean here

- Wayland requires JWM, TWM, XDM, IceWM,... to reimplement Xorg-like
  functionality - libraries exist.  note that WMs aren't no work either.
  anyone who has written one will be able to tell you that there are a
  lot of workarounds to implement to get WMs to work fine.

- Wayland breaks _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR protocol - unsure, really,
  literally never had to do that.  i'll trust the electron devs on it
  not existing though

- Wayland breaks NoMachine NX - I'm not sure what this program is
  either, it seems to be remote desktop, and according to the linked
  post it works now?  /me shrugs - wayvnc exists anyway (for wlroots,
  IIRC KDE implements RDP)

- Wayland breaks xclip - I was able to edit my clipboard with it, so I
  don't know what they mean.  xwayland certainly forwards the clipboard

- Wayland breaks SUDO_ASKPASS - what?

- Wayland breaks X11 atoms - cars break horse saddles

- Wayland breaks games - i played elden ring earlier today.  there's
  this myth of forced double buffering on wayland that I presume is
  related, I'm not sure where it stems from but it's quite untrue.  even
  adaptive sync on my freesync display worked fine.  I do not know the
  intricacies of display syncing but I am 100% certain that double
  buffering is not forced

- Wayland breaks xdotool - correct, actually; and unsurprisingly,
  similarly to rescuetime, xdotool relied on protocol flaws to work,
  libei exists to replace it

- Wayland breaks xkill - not really surprising, again, since it exploits
  flaws in X.  ISTR hitting a button accidentally that gave me a 'kill
  window' in my plasma wayland session, though, so I'm sure similar
  functionality exists

- Wayland breaks screensavers - ironically, those never worked on X, but
  do on wayland, because the compositor can actually redirect keys
  properly rather than trying to patchwork around X

- Wayland breaks setting the window position - yes, intentionally,
  wayland is declarative wrt window positioning (you might notice that
  if you right click, the popup position is as you'd expect - this is
  because the client tells the compositor where /relative to a surface/
  it wants some other surface to appear, rather than a global position).

- Wayland breaks color mangement - did this ever work on X?  unsure,
  but I know HDR was being worked on recently.  my display is a regular
  RGB 24-bit display so I do not know how well it works.

- Wayland breaks DRM leasing - decently sure this was implemented in
  wlroots, kde and gnome some years back, but I don't have the hardware
  to test.

  > "not all" highlights one of the fundamental problems with Wayland -
  > there is fragmentation

  not all X servers implement <XYZ>, not all X WMs implement <ABC>
  (e.g. again dwm doesn't implement EWMH).  this isn't new

- Wayland breaks In-home Streaming - I'm not sure what this means, but
  they cite steam remote play (together), a feature that I used on kde
  wayland, so there's that

- Wayland breaks NetWM - so do X WMs (dwm for instance)

- Wayland breaks window icons - this is true actually, I found it
  surprising but not particularly important since you can still have
  functional window icons (and I see a window icon on the very window
  I'm typing this in) by providing a desktop file

- Wayland breaks drag and drop - I'm really not sure what to say here -
  I've used that feature.

- Wayland breaks ./windowmanager --replace - X lacks --replace, but kwin
  and probably others don't

- Wayland breaks Xpra - probably true but I never used Xpra so I can't
  be sure

what these kinds of posts omit is that X is fundamentally broken and
misfit to modern systems.  the code is also unmaintained and not the
greatest.  the creation of wayland wasn't accidental, nor was it some
ploy to undermine the desktop, nor ...

there's a new graphics stack because the old one didn't work, and I'm
not sure where this kind of response to it comes from - it seems similar
to the systemd debacle.  see also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ (by a former X developer,
so, someone with qualifications)

what these posts /also/ lack is enthusiastic contributors who'll
actually pick up the mantle of maintaining and improving X.

I have been using wayland for probably four or so years now, and I've
only so far missed a standard for global shortcuts (note, a _standard
for it_, not a hack-job allowing clients to listen to keystrokes
globally and react to them, leading to weird conflicts and fragmented
configuration; something integrated into desktops, that's not a job of
individual clients to implement, so, really, I'm missing that in X also).

> My SailfishOS based phone uses wayland and on that it's been working fine, on
> my desktop with a nVidia RTX I haven't managed to even login into a wayland
> session,

hmm, on my 1050Ti PC I run kde plasma just fine.  I don't know anyone
with an RTX card to ask them if it works for them, though - but it could
be some misconfiguration (you need some USE flags on the nvidia drivers
IIRC, and some compositors, like sway, require an extra flag).

> but on my laptop with i915 it works fine most of the time and it leave
> me think that the developers behind wayland are mainly using intel
> graphics cards and then blame the graphics driver when things don't
> work on other hardware.

not really - all the drivers in mesa are supported by most developers,
and frequently tested.  I actively use NVidia, AMD and Intel cards, and
out of those, NVidia is the only one with occasional bugs (which are, no
doubt, in the driver..)

> I would say for general use wayland ain't up for it's task, if you have the
> right hardware and you mainly use the browser, then it works.

i don't have the right hardware (proprietary nvidia card as i
mentioned), nor do i primarily use the browser (i work a lot of gtk and
qt programs, and I know wine also works fine, probably through
xwayland), so I have to disagree.

have a lovely day
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Michael]

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On Monday, 5 August 2024 23:56:02 BST Daniel Frey wrote:
> On 8/5/24 09:58, Wols Lists wrote:
> > On 05/08/2024 17:30, Daniel Frey wrote:
> >> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it
> >> appears to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will
> >> start the new VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and
> >> a blinking cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.
> > 
> > Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if
> > you're running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that
> > sddm will work.
> > 
> > Daft, I know, but that seems to be the way things are at the moment ...
> > 
> > Cheers,Wol
> 
> I even tried enabling wayland for sddm (which is apparently
> experimental) but it didn't help either.
> 
> Both X11 and wayland appear to be installed.

I have not been able to make SDDM to launch rootless, either with x11-user, or 
wayland (configured to use kwin).  On both of these two settings SDDM tries to 
launch on VT1 instead of VT7, which is occupied by the boot process agetty and 
consequently blocks SDDM from starting:

 (EE) HELPER: Failed to take control of "/dev/tty1" ("root"): Operation not 
permitted

I see there's a fix for this:
 
https://github.com/sddm/sddm/pull/1896

but I don't think it has arrived in portage yet, or if it has it still won't 
work here on stable Plasma on openrc and no plymouth.

> I just find it odd that a lot of DEs (and distros) are defaulting to
> wayland when it's horribly broken.
> 
> Dan


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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com> writes:

> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>
> I did a switchover to systemd/wayland some time ago and it seemed to solve some
> problems I had.
>
> The problem is it also came with so many more issues than it fixed:
>
> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it appears to
> start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will start the new VT
> and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and a blinking cursor. This
> didn't happen when using X11.

hmm, please check journalctl / the wayland session log.  I've never seen
that and it more likely than not indicates KWin or SDDM crashing.

> 2. Sometimes video hardware acceleration just doesn't work. Now I do have a
> discrete nVidia card with the proprietary driver, but I switched to nouveau and
> it didn't work either. Again, not an issue in X11.
>
> I have a nVidia RTX 3070 Ti.

I'd expect the proprietary driver to work better.  what kind of hardware
acceleration do you mean however?  3D acceleration always worked for me
but I don't recall if I tried video acceleration

> 3. I sleep/resume a lot, wayland seems to be quite buggy on resume. As in, the
> other three issues listed here are far more likely to occur after a
> sleep/resume, but they do happen even after rebooting and being on the PC most
> of the day.

this is IIRC a bug in nvidia drivers, I've had it happen on my desktop
PC (1050Ti), but never on my AMDGPU desktop or Intel laptop.

> 4. This is the big one, the panel in KDE hangs intermittently. The clock will
> freeze and the entire panel is unresponsive (but weirdly enough, KDE doesn't
> realize it's not responding.) I've tried killing and restarting the process and
> that doesn't always fix it either as it becomes disconnected with any open
> processes and it's not possible to resolve. Either have to logout or reboot.

'plasmashell --replace' always fixed this on my nvidia machine.  I've
never been able to reproduce it off of it.  decently sure that's
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469016 though (check, please, and
let the devs know if it isn't)

> I've switched back to X11 for now and have been using it for over a week. I
> managed to figure out how to set up multimonitor for now (both on the KDE
> desktop and in SDDM) and I haven't had any of these issues. For the record, I
> typically use the computer a few times a day during the week and sleep/resume,
> and longer on weekends.
>
> After much googling and experimenting, I can't seem to make these issues go
> away... which got me wondering if someone else has experienced any of these.
>
> I have done hardware tests (load testing, RAM tests, etc) - all are clear.

it is unlikely to be a hw fault - nvidia drivers are quite bad,
especially at wayland, since nvidia mostly cares about compute on linux.

on nvidia hw, using X is often the better choice unfortunately.

hope that helps, have a lovely day.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> writes:

> On 05/08/2024 17:30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>> 1. Logins don't work reliably. I use KDE/SDDM and when logging in it appears
>> to start on a new VT and sometime it doesn't start. Or it will start the new
>> VT and fail to switch to it, leaving a text console and a blinking
>> cursor. This didn't happen when using X11.
>
> Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if you're
> running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that sddm will
> work.
>
> Daft, I know, but that seems to be the way things are at the moment ...

there's a draft somewhere that changes that dep, but upstream support is
experiemntal so it isn't in-tree yet.  hopefully SDDM comes under the
KDE umbrella and maintenance picks up, though.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Daniel Frey]

On 8/6/24 06:56, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:
> 
> - Wayland breaks screensavers - ironically, those never worked on X, but
>    do on wayland, because the compositor can actually redirect keys
>    properly rather than trying to patchwork around X

I actually forgot about this one - the screensaver was crashing all the 
time causing me to use loginctl to unlock the session.

That hasn't happened even once in the last 8 days since using X11.

Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Arsen.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 15:56:40 +0200, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:

> > On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
> >> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?

> > There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
> > https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

> it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
> for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
> SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people
> fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib,
> Portals, Pipewire) on everyone".

> but, each "point" it makes can individually be debunked also.  I'm not
> very interested in doing that beyond oneliners though (which is
> apparently enough for the author of the original post).

I'm interested in one of the points you address in particular, namely:

[ .... ]

> - Wayland breaks setting the window position - yes, intentionally,
>   wayland is declarative wrt window positioning (you might notice that
>   if you right click, the popup position is as you'd expect - this is
>   because the client tells the compositor where /relative to a surface/
>   it wants some other surface to appear, rather than a global position).

This has caused problems for Emacs, though I can't remember exactly how,
so I'm guessing.  On restarting a saved Emacs session, it's necessary to
have the windows the same size, in the same place they were on saving
the session.  This would appear to be difficult in Wayland.

You say "yes, intentionally, wayland is declarative wrt window
positioning".  What does that mean when you replace abstract words like
"declarative" with concrete sentences?  What is declaring what to what
else in this context, and what does that have to do with not being able
to position windows?

Later on, you say "where /relative to a surface/".  I think "surface" is
a word with particular meaning in Wayland, and using it in a Gentoo list
without explanation is less than helpful.  What does "surface" mean in
this context?  Is the entire screen such a "surface"?

So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
am I missing?

[ .... ]

> have a lovely day
> -- 
> Arsen Arsenović

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[J. Aho]

On 06/08/2024 15.56, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:
> 
>> On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>>> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>>
>> There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
>> https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277
> 
> it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
> for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
> SESSION

It's quite possible as I didn't really read the beginning of the page, 
just saw some stuff mentioned that I had seen on other places.

> - Wayland breaks screen recording applications - this is false, either
>    1) screen recording works via portals, or 2) screen recording works
>    via xwaylandvideobridge

I think there was some merit to that claim some years ago, I'm not into 
screen recording so not sure.


> - Wayland complicates server-side window decorations - CSD seems logical
>    to me, at least in large part, so I'm not sure this actually matters.
>    however, I know that SSD support exists.

I have to say I'm quite anti-CSD myself, much for the lack of having 
close on left side and minimize/maximize on the right side of the window 
but also the horror of everyone want to make their own look on the CSD 
which makes everything to look like microsoft-windows where even 
microsoft's own application uses different look.

I don't see the CSD as a specific wayland issue, it has the same issue 
in X11 too.



> - Wayland breaks window managers - I'm not sure what they mean here

I guess that could be related to X11 window managers that do not support 
wayland, but it's like a qt3 application don't run on a system with only 
qt6 libraries.


> there's a new graphics stack because the old one didn't work, and I'm
> not sure where this kind of response to it comes from - it seems similar
> to the systemd debacle.  see also
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ (by a former X developer,
> so, someone with qualifications)
> 
> what these posts /also/ lack is enthusiastic contributors who'll
> actually pick up the mantle of maintaining and improving X.

Sure it's far easier to say what "you" think don't work than code.
There was a X11 variant where they had stripped away loads of support 
for old stuff, just don't remember the name (most variants of X11 had 
been forgotten), and they had some improvements too, but if you don't 
get picked up by a major distribution, you will definitely have a lot 
harder to break thru to the masses.


> I have been using wayland for probably four or so years now, and I've
> only so far missed a standard for global shortcuts (note, a _standard
> for it_, not a hack-job allowing clients to listen to keystrokes
> globally and react to them, leading to weird conflicts and fragmented
> configuration; something integrated into desktops, that's not a job of
> individual clients to implement, so, really, I'm missing that in X also).

Just make a patch and submit it ;)


>> My SailfishOS based phone uses wayland and on that it's been working fine, on
>> my desktop with a nVidia RTX I haven't managed to even login into a wayland
>> session,
> 
> hmm, on my 1050Ti PC I run kde plasma just fine.  I don't know anyone
> with an RTX card to ask them if it works for them, though - but it could
> be some misconfiguration (you need some USE flags on the nvidia drivers
> IIRC, and some compositors, like sway, require an extra flag).

I have been using KDE since Havoc called me a troll for pointing out 
that you can't have configuration options that has the exact same name 
but does different things.
I have rebuilt the whole system, I have tried with other distros, the 
same result, I do not get wayland to work on the nVidia, not sure how 
many different howto's I have tried to follow, but on the laptop not 
much of an issue at all but as I pointed out it's an intel GPU. And my 
old mobile it works fine too.

-- 
  //Aho

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com> writes:

> On 8/6/24 06:56, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:
>> - Wayland breaks screensavers - ironically, those never worked on X, but
>>    do on wayland, because the compositor can actually redirect keys
>>    properly rather than trying to patchwork around X
>
> I actually forgot about this one - the screensaver was crashing all the time
> causing me to use loginctl to unlock the session.
>
> That hasn't happened even once in the last 8 days since using X11.

Possibly https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=489072 or
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=489180 (so, a nasty coincidence).

> Dan

-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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"J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:

> On 06/08/2024 15.56, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:
>> 
>>> On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>>>> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>>>
>>> There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
>>> https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277
>> it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
>> for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
>> SESSION
>
> It's quite possible as I didn't really read the beginning of the page, just saw
> some stuff mentioned that I had seen on other places.
>
>> - Wayland breaks screen recording applications - this is false, either
>>    1) screen recording works via portals, or 2) screen recording works
>>    via xwaylandvideobridge
>
> I think there was some merit to that claim some years ago, I'm not into screen
> recording so not sure.

While xwaylandvideobridge is a relatively new innovation, portals
aren't, and the post would appear to be receiving updates, so the
omission is strange.

>> - Wayland complicates server-side window decorations - CSD seems logical
>>    to me, at least in large part, so I'm not sure this actually matters.
>>    however, I know that SSD support exists.
>
> I have to say I'm quite anti-CSD myself, much for the lack of having close on
> left side and minimize/maximize on the right side of the window but also the
> horror of everyone want to make their own look on the CSD which makes
> everything to look like microsoft-windows where even microsoft's own
> application uses different look.
>
> I don't see the CSD as a specific wayland issue, it has the same issue in X11
> too.

Yes, this is also one of my reasons for preferring SSD (which KDE does I
believe).

>> - Wayland breaks window managers - I'm not sure what they mean here
>
> I guess that could be related to X11 window managers that do not support
> wayland, but it's like a qt3 application don't run on a system with only qt6
> libraries.

Possibly.

>
>> there's a new graphics stack because the old one didn't work, and I'm
>> not sure where this kind of response to it comes from - it seems similar
>> to the systemd debacle.  see also
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ (by a former X developer,
>> so, someone with qualifications)
>> what these posts /also/ lack is enthusiastic contributors who'll
>> actually pick up the mantle of maintaining and improving X.
>
> Sure it's far easier to say what "you" think don't work than code.
> There was a X11 variant where they had stripped away loads of support for old
> stuff, just don't remember the name (most variants of X11 had been forgotten),
> and they had some improvements too, but if you don't get picked up by a major
> distribution, you will definitely have a lot harder to break thru to the
> masses.

That's indeed the case, XDG and freedesktop and the X consortium being
behind Wayland certainly helped adoption.

>> I have been using wayland for probably four or so years now, and I've
>> only so far missed a standard for global shortcuts (note, a _standard
>> for it_, not a hack-job allowing clients to listen to keystrokes
>> globally and react to them, leading to weird conflicts and fragmented
>> configuration; something integrated into desktops, that's not a job of
>> individual clients to implement, so, really, I'm missing that in X also).
>
> Just make a patch and submit it ;)

I was actually in the process of doing that when I discovered a portal
one did exist already;
https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.GlobalShortcuts.html

IDR what the status of adoption was at the time, but I left it at that
for developers to pick up at their own pace.

>>> My SailfishOS based phone uses wayland and on that it's been working fine, on
>>> my desktop with a nVidia RTX I haven't managed to even login into a wayland
>>> session,
>> hmm, on my 1050Ti PC I run kde plasma just fine.  I don't know anyone
>> with an RTX card to ask them if it works for them, though - but it could
>> be some misconfiguration (you need some USE flags on the nvidia drivers
>> IIRC, and some compositors, like sway, require an extra flag).
>
> I have been using KDE since Havoc called me a troll for pointing out that you
> can't have configuration options that has the exact same name but does
> different things.
> I have rebuilt the whole system, I have tried with other distros, the same
> result, I do not get wayland to work on the nVidia, not sure how many different
> howto's I have tried to follow, but on the laptop not much of an issue at all
> but as I pointed out it's an intel GPU. And my old mobile it works fine too.

That's quite unfortunate - I don't have lots of Nvidia hardware or
expertise to help with that, my apologies.  I've only tested on the
dinky 1050Ti I have, and I've been using it for Wayland since Nvidia
added GBM support to their beta driver (it was /very/ awful back then),
so, not a lot of variety.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Wol]

On 06/08/2024 19:31, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
> their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
> again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
> am I missing?

That - unlike X - is because windows cannot say where they are going to 
go. They can *ask* where they want to go, which isn't the same thing.

Iirc, X behaves like Windows, which means applications can *seize* 
focus, which drives me up the wall on occasion at work. I'll have an 
Excel macro running, which takes maybe 3 or 4 minutes. So I go into 
let's say Slack. Excel triggers something (google drive?) which grabs 
focus and disappears, so all of a sudden I *think* I'm gaily typing into 
Slack. But focus has been stolen and I'm typing into a vacuum - 
EXTREMELY frustrating, especially as I don't actually know what's going on.

In Wayland, you can't steal focus. But as a side effect, it's Wayland 
that controls the window, not the application. So Wayland is more 
secure, but that comes with unavoidable side effects that you don't like...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Arsen Arsenović]

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hi Alan,

thank you for maintaining CC mode :-)  it is endlessly useful in my
day-to-day.

to preface, I'm not a wayland protocol expert; I've had to debug clients
and servers a few times, view communications between clients and servers
some others, experimented with some patches, but I haven't written a
significant amount of code with it, and am mostly an end user happy to
see an end to flickering, window tearing, weird keyboard grabs, ...

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hello, Arsen.
>
> On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 15:56:40 +0200, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:
>
>> > On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
>> >> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?
>
>> > There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
>> > https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277
>
>> it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
>> for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
>> SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people
>> fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib,
>> Portals, Pipewire) on everyone".
>
>> but, each "point" it makes can individually be debunked also.  I'm not
>> very interested in doing that beyond oneliners though (which is
>> apparently enough for the author of the original post).
>
> I'm interested in one of the points you address in particular, namely:
>
> [ .... ]
>
>> - Wayland breaks setting the window position - yes, intentionally,
>>   wayland is declarative wrt window positioning (you might notice that
>>   if you right click, the popup position is as you'd expect - this is
>>   because the client tells the compositor where /relative to a surface/
>>   it wants some other surface to appear, rather than a global position).
>
> This has caused problems for Emacs, though I can't remember exactly how,
> so I'm guessing.  On restarting a saved Emacs session, it's necessary to
> have the windows the same size, in the same place they were on saving
> the session.  This would appear to be difficult in Wayland.

yes, indeed, your memory serves right.  that has been brought up on
emacs-devel (in fact, I have some of those threads saved so that I can
go back when I get some hacking time).  in truth, I think the
implementation in Emacs likely won't be (fully) reusable, since wayland
will likely never let clients self-position like Emacs wants to.

it has been said to me that a complete Emacs port 'requires' arbitrary
positioning and cursor reading (IIRC, probably other stuff I'm
forgetting).  I'm afraid that's likely not to happen (but I'm not too
sad about losing that functionality either).

> You say "yes, intentionally, wayland is declarative wrt window
> positioning".  What does that mean when you replace abstract words like
> "declarative" with concrete sentences?  What is declaring what to what
> else in this context, and what does that have to do with not being able
> to position windows?

well, it means that there will be a long and arduous process of
standardization and development to most things people conventionally use
these 'hacks' in X for, including this one:

  https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/18

I haven't read the full proposed protocol, but I suspect it is the right
one here.

the disadvantage of this approach is that it's slow as molasses, the
advantage is that there will be a descriptive way to do something with
no room for 'whoops, forgot this workaround' or 'huh, forgot that
property', etc, and slightly different behaviour from program to
program.

> Later on, you say "where /relative to a surface/".  I think "surface" is
> a word with particular meaning in Wayland, and using it in a Gentoo list
> without explanation is less than helpful.  What does "surface" mean in
> this context?  Is the entire screen such a "surface"?

well, the term is somewhat abstract because it is an abstraction :-)

a surface is a rectangle of a program with some pixels on it that can
receive events and stuff (so, a window of some kind).  a toplevel
surface is what we conventionally think of as proper windows (like the
one I'm typing this email in, which Emacs calls a frame); a popup
surface is for, well, popups (C-<right click> menu for instance).

respectively, they are defined as:

  https://wayland.app/protocols/wayland#wl_surface
  https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-shell#xdg_toplevel
  https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-shell#xdg_popup
  
the interface responsible for positioning popups is:
  
  https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-shell#xdg_positioner

the latter allows the client to tell the server where to put a new
surface compared to the current one.  this information is later passed
to the server with a request to create a popup surface.

> So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
> their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
> again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
> am I missing?

well, more like a todo or wip (which, yes, I'm aware is a frequently
cited criticism, but I promise it's not as bad as it seems - as
mentioned, I very rarely run into real limitations).  wayland is
extensible, so even though it is seeing relatively wide adoption, it
also sees active development.

(joke) but surely this is entirely unnecessary, because who ever closes
emacs?  :)

have a lovely evening
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Wol]

On 06/08/2024 22:40, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> That's indeed the case, XDG and freedesktop and the X consortium being
> behind Wayland certainly helped adoption.

Well, Wayland is - effectively - X13.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Matt Jolly]

Hi,

On 6/8/24 02:58, Wols Lists wrote:

 > Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if 
you're running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that 
sddm will work.


That's not quite correct; it's been possible to run SDDM directly as a
Wayland session for quite a while. I have several machines that use
`kwin_wayland`: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SDDM#Kwin

Since Plasma 6 I haven't noticed any issues, it used to be a _little_
weird for Plasma 5 if you (e.g.) logged out.

Cheers,

Matt

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Michael]

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On Wednesday, 7 August 2024 10:04:28 BST Matt Jolly wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 6/8/24 02:58, Wols Lists wrote:
>  > Last I investigated, sddm had a *hard* dependency on X11. So even if
> 
> you're running a Wayland system (like I am) you need X installed so that
> sddm will work.
> 
> 
> That's not quite correct; it's been possible to run SDDM directly as a
> Wayland session for quite a while. I have several machines that use
> `kwin_wayland`: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SDDM#Kwin
> 
> Since Plasma 6 I haven't noticed any issues, it used to be a _little_
> weird for Plasma 5 if you (e.g.) logged out.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Matt

Is this on an openrc or systemd installation?  Does SDDM launch on VT1?


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Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Wol.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 23:08:42 +0100, Wol wrote:
> On 06/08/2024 19:31, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
> > their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
> > again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
> > am I missing?

> That - unlike X - is because windows cannot say where they are going to 
> go. They can *ask* where they want to go, which isn't the same thing.

How does it differ in practice?  Under what circumstances would a
request to display a window at a particular place result in it being
displayed somewhere else?

> Iirc, X behaves like Windows, which means applications can *seize* 
> focus, which drives me up the wall on occasion at work. I'll have an 
> Excel macro running, which takes maybe 3 or 4 minutes. So I go into 
> let's say Slack. Excel triggers something (google drive?) which grabs 
> focus and disappears, so all of a sudden I *think* I'm gaily typing into 
> Slack. But focus has been stolen and I'm typing into a vacuum - 
> EXTREMELY frustrating, especially as I don't actually know what's going on.

I don't understand what these issues with focus have to do with
positioning a window.  Though I can appreciate them causing problems.
There would appear to be a clash between Wayland running within a
GNU/Linux running as a Windows subsystem, and the Windows itself -
presumably Windows allows a Windows application to steal focus from a
Wayland application in this situation.

> In Wayland, you can't steal focus. But as a side effect, it's Wayland 
> that controls the window, not the application. So Wayland is more 
> secure, but that comes with unavoidable side effects that you don't like...

How does Wayland controling the Window lead to an application program's
inability to position it?  I can't see the connection.

Just as a bit of context; I've not yet tried Wayland, and for most of my
work (including Emacs) use a Linux console.

> Cheers,
> Wol

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Wol]

On 07/08/2024 14:53, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Wol.
> 
> On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 23:08:42 +0100, Wol wrote:
>> On 06/08/2024 19:31, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>> So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
>>> their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
>>> again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
>>> am I missing?
> 
>> That - unlike X - is because windows cannot say where they are going to
>> go. They can *ask* where they want to go, which isn't the same thing.
> 
> How does it differ in practice?  Under what circumstances would a
> request to display a window at a particular place result in it being
> displayed somewhere else?

It probably doesn't make much difference most of the time. Where it 
particularly makes a difference is, I believe, modal windows, and 
windows which demand to be placed "on top".

In Windows or X, a window which demands to be placed on top of 
everything else will get what it asks for. And it doesn't give a monkeys 
about what the user is actually doing at the time.

With Wayland, if the user says "I want this window on top", then the 
application can't over-ride it - Wayland will force it to pop-under.
> 
>> Iirc, X behaves like Windows, which means applications can *seize*
>> focus, which drives me up the wall on occasion at work. I'll have an
>> Excel macro running, which takes maybe 3 or 4 minutes. So I go into
>> let's say Slack. Excel triggers something (google drive?) which grabs
>> focus and disappears, so all of a sudden I *think* I'm gaily typing into
>> Slack. But focus has been stolen and I'm typing into a vacuum -
>> EXTREMELY frustrating, especially as I don't actually know what's going on.
> 
> I don't understand what these issues with focus have to do with
> positioning a window.  Though I can appreciate them causing problems.
> There would appear to be a clash between Wayland running within a
> GNU/Linux running as a Windows subsystem, and the Windows itself -
> presumably Windows allows a Windows application to steal focus from a
> Wayland application in this situation.
> 
>> In Wayland, you can't steal focus. But as a side effect, it's Wayland
>> that controls the window, not the application. So Wayland is more
>> secure, but that comes with unavoidable side effects that you don't like...
> 
> How does Wayland controling the Window lead to an application program's
> inability to position it?  I can't see the connection.

Because Wayland (or rather the user, through Wayland) DICTATES what the 
application is allowed to do.

In practice it may not make much difference. But the user CAN tell 
Wayland "this space is reserved for AppA", and if AppB comes along and 
says "I want to put my window over AppA", Wayland will tell it to bugger 
off.

It's basically Wayland's security stance - if I the user *think* I am 
interacting with AppA, Wayland blocks AppB from taking over and tricking 
me into eg leaking my password. All you need is an app with a hidden 
window that seizes focus when it sees a password pop-up appear, and your 
secrets are leaked ...
> 
> Just as a bit of context; I've not yet tried Wayland, and for most of my
> work (including Emacs) use a Linux console.
> 
I've tried to switch to Wayland, but as you can tell I haven't 
necessarily managed it...

Cheers,
Wol