I really think the modern Linux Desktop, no matter of distribution has gone backwards since the adoption of Wayland and retiring X11. From changes of workflow elements like windowing behaviors and configuration, to mouse and touchscreen profiles that are not adopted. So if you have custom or specialized hardware or even legacy hardware like touch pads on laptops they may not work or require special accommodations for them to work. As a user of Linux since 1998 I seen it grow in good directions overall, but it seems like wayland is not refined enough to replace x11 in my opinion.
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The same kernel drivers and libinput are used by both xorg and wayland.
touch pads should have equal support in both environments.
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Yeah, I get where youâre coming from. . . but I think youâre attributing the pain to the wrong layer.
Wayland itself isnât really the thing changing your workflow. Itâs just a protocol. The behavior youâre noticing window rules, input quirks, missing features thatâs coming from the compositor, like Mutter or KWin. Under X11, all that stuff was kind of a free-for-all; under Wayland, itâs intentionally centralized.
And yeah, that does feel like a step backwards at first especially if youâre used to bending the system with tools like xdotool or custom scripts. But a lot of that âfreedomâ in X11 was basically undefined behavior that just happened to work. It wasnât stable, and it definitely wasnât secure.
I think that criticism is a bit more fair but even there, itâs not really Wayland vs X11. Most modern systems use libinput for input either way. So if a touchpad or tablet behaves weirdly, itâs usually a driver or compositor issue, not the protocol itself. That said, yeah edge cases and niche hardware have definitely lagged behind.
Iâd frame it less as âLinux desktops went backwardsâ and more as âthe architecture changed, and weâre still in the transition.â X11 had 30+ years to accumulate features and hacks. Wayland is forcing everything to be done more cleanly but that also means some things have to be rebuilt properly instead of just carried over.
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X11 goes back to the MIT Project Athena that started in 1983, definitely 40+ years.
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Some input devices work like serial devices where you had to send initialization to them since they do not have firmware that auto initialize. A lot of those mass produced touch pads donât have firmware and they basically a serial mouse. Xorgâs problem with some mouse devices it treated all of them like a serial mouse so a firmware base mouse would get timing errors since it would ignore the system clock sent to the device and just send data independently based on its hardware clock.
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Edge cases, niche hardware, and accumulated hacks all contribute to a maintenance and security âmission impossibleâ. Wayland does break things like communication between windows that some legacy applications used but are too risky for the modern threat environment. Many of the people with deep knowledge of Xorg are retiring, moving up to management, etc. With AI capturing a lot of talent, Xorg just wonât get enough attention to be suitable forbmainstream Linux distros.
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Iâd like to link a video from a conference where some of the X11 developers were at, where they literally stated that at the time ( some 5yrs ago ) there were only 12 people who had deep knowledge of the then X11.
Sometimes youâll hear comments like âWe should get X12 instead of Waylandâ not knowing the same people who work on Wayland are the people who worked on X11*.* This move is 15yrs in the making, the biggest issue was not getting XDG_Desktop_Portal fleshed out sooner and the Compositors sorted out sooner.
all of this could have been avoided, but thereâs alway been some resistance on this front.
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Well said, this is the most important piece of background that people miss.
There is almost no one willing to work on the Xorg code base beyond critical security fixes and keeping Xwayland working.
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There is no security fixes needed in xorg.
The only thing I see it as is a justification for rust being implemented. Which has quite a few zero day bugs in that and one can program unsafe code like in any language.
Who told you that? Alan Coopersmith released an Xorg update with security fixes recently. Alan is one of the few people who knows the Xorg code base deeply.
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Do you have something more specific real-world you experienced?
I never ran into those two being a problem (windows still did as-expected; device profiles I did GNOME with gsettings, no reset no problem cross-device, but only really disabled mouse acceleration/flat and some touchpad tap settings)
I hear no mentions of latency and suspect itâs higher Wayland vs using specific DDX on Xorg (intel, evdev, synaptics).
I prioritize stuff like no Vsync, screen tearing and flat mouse accel for a low-latency experience everywhere, so anything extra in-between drivers and rendering doesnât benefit (needs to feel good before looking good with HDR)
I can add more specific complaints. I like to use my desktop with 4 to 5 windows open, mostly bash terminals. Typically I will copy/paste text from one window to another using the mouse. At times, I may open gedit in a window (from the cli), or ssh to another machine and run vi there. Copy/paste with mouse is no longer stable (or usable), Even grabbing a window by the title bar to move it fails mostly. Iâve tried every suggestion friends or AI could offer. Only when I drop back to x11 do things work reliably. And that is no longer an option with Gnome so Iâve had to move to Cinnamon (which is ok, but after 10 years of Gnome itâs a challenge). So, trying to find where the problem was, I tried something called weston in place of mutter on Gnome. That seemed to work pretty well, but then it broke other things⌠But it led me to believe the issue wasnât really a Wayland problem, but as mentioned above, a compositor problem, or a series of such issues. But for me, Iâm trying to get work done everyday, and on a very basic system (basic keyboard/mouse) with no âextraâ hardware, Fedora/Gnome is no longer usable. â>Oh, I should add, this behavior happens across all systems I have, that is, close to a dozenâall with the exact copy/paste an windowing problems.
Cannot replicate.
Iâm using KDE but itâs still running on Wayland. Right now I have 9 windows open, 4 of which are CLI, 2 of which are SSHâd into remote machines. No issues in copy/pasting from anywhere to anywhere. In fact, I wrote this in Obsidian, copied it into vim and then yanked it back out of vim into this Zen browser window⌠Seems to work just fine Iâm afraid.
I would suspect a problem with the mouse hardware.
Can you try another mouse?
Please re-read my comments. This is not one machine but upwards of 12 that all behave in the same pattern. Co-workers have the same issues. (Hadâmost have moved back to x11).
Oh, that is very strange!
What are you doing that other people are not doing?
I have never experiences the issues your describe on KDE Wayland.
I run lots of terminals and copy-n-paste all the time between them and apps all the time.
Dunno, Iâve only tried with Gnome, but itâs pretty consistent here.
tks
As Iâve mentioned, I only tried with Gnome, but since around Fedora 41 itâs been getting worse each upgrade. Iâve tried format/install as well rather than upgrade. Mostly I work with network devices over a wide network, hence the multiple terminals with copy/paste between them. A coworker was convinced it was his mouse so purchased new, but no change. The behaviour is insidious too. Highlight with mouse in preparation to copy, but as soon as the button is released, highlight goes awayâbut not all the time, just when you really need it. And in bash cli sessions, highlighting from the bottom up works better than from top down, go figure. Fails about 70% of the time if I had to guess. Grabbing a window title bar to drag it mostly goes full screen so you have to try 3 or 4 times to move it instead. Inside gedit, shift/insert shift/delete works well, as does cntrl-c, cntr-v, but you canât count on the mouse to highlight copy. My use case is mostly grabbing text displayed in gedit (or now xed) and pasting them into terminal sessions on other machines. Paste (cntl-v or mouse paste) never fails, it is just getting the text into the buffer thatâs problematic. That coupled with the weirdness with moving windows around has made Fedora/Gnome unusable for me.
It would be interesting (and save your hairline) to try an installation with a different desktop like Cosmic or KDE and see if the same issue persists. If it does, itâs Wayland, if not, itâs Gnome.
I know where my money would be going.
Iâm the same, except using zsh in one (Gnome) Terminal session with multiple tabs, and emacs shell windows for heavier tasks on multiple systems without the sort of issues you mention. I have 3 systems running Fedora in different locations, so usually have ssh sessions on the ones Iâm not sitting at. Have you checked the memory status while using multiple terminals?
Are all these machines the same hardware? If so you will have a better chance of solving your issues by creating a new topic and including the inxi -Fzxx output (as pre-formatted web-discoverable text). With 12 machines in use, do you have a spare available for experimentation?
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