Wayland-only Gnome (continuation of proposal discussion)

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Hi! Regular user here.

While I’m generally okay with getting rid of X11, as Wayland and XWayland generally does everything I need now and has fewer bugs and issues, there’s still one issue I’m having that is forcing me to switch to X11 once in a while. I thought I’d mention it here. I can move it elsewhere if asked.

Some or all OpenGL-reliant applications seem to simply not run for me if it has to use XWayland (at least I believe these apps use XWayland, hard to say when one of them don’t launch). If the app allows me to choose OpenGL as the backend, the GPU is not listed for OpenGL.

I’m running an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti (and formerly an RTX 2070 Super) with the proprietary driver version 570.144 on Fedora 42. I’ve had this issue for at least the last year or so. I’ve tried reinstalling the drivers (though, not the full system as it sounds like a hassle) to no avail.

The apps/games that gives me this behaviour are sm64coopdx (Mario 64 decompiled) and Dolphin (Gamecube emulator). sm64coodx shows this popup when I launch it

FATAL ERROR: OpenGL 2.1+ is required. Reported version: 0.0
FATAL ERROR: OpenGL 2.1+ is required. Reported version: 0.0679×513 7.7 KB

It logs this in the console

./sm64coopdx: /lib64/libcurl.so.4: no version information available (required by ./sm64coopdx)
Saving configuration to 'sm64config-backup.txt'

(zenity:169444): Gtk-WARNING **: 17:26:17.299: Unknown key gtk-modules in /home/nina/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini

(zenity:169444): Adwaita-WARNING **: 17:26:17.326: Using GtkSettings:gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme with libadwaita is unsupported. Please use AdwStyleManager:color-scheme instead.
FATAL ERROR:
OpenGL 2.1+ is required.
Reported version: 0.0

Dolphin simply does not report an “adapter” for OpenGL, but does for Vulkan.

I have encountered it with other things as well, but currently I don’t remember what specifically.

I don’t know what’s going on here. My friend also has a similar setup to me but does not have this issue. This is the only remaining thing I have to switch to X11 to do.

If this can be resolved, I’m in favour of this proposal as a regular user. I’ve not had to switch to X11 in a year now for reasons aside from this.

Edit: For the record, I’ve looked up the error messages and I cannot find anything relevant about this. Makes me wonder if I’m alone in this? Do I just have to do a clean install of my system to fix it? I’d rather not as I’d likely have to do a lot of work to setup my system again how I want it. And I don’t want to take the risk of data loss.

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Just to make sure - this does NOT affect Xwayland availability, right?? Right?

I’m in favor of removing Xwayland too because it is unsafe, but this needs a little time to migrate out of.

I have one problem, though. I booted an old monitor on an old PC with Fedora 40, and I couldn’t get the native monitor resolution on Wayland. I could only add it using xrandr, therefore I have to use Gnome on Xorg on that PC. How come native Wayland won’t support adding custom resolutions? Is that a limitation? Seems like Gnome on Xorg is the only solution in cases like this.

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I see some warnings about parsing config files in your user profile. Have you tried creating a new clean user account?

Also, there are some environment variables that might work around some issues, depending on your system and what exactly is going wrong (e.g. MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE).

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Would the video=… kernel parameter be sufficient to work around that problem?

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This has zero impact on Xwayland and X11 application support in Wayland environments.

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Zero impact IRT Xwayland support.

For better or worse, lots of projects will continue to require X11 protocols for most likely longer than the actuarial tables suggest I will live (some have indicated they just do not have the resources to migrate, some are openly hostile to wayland, some are waiting for features/capabilities to become available in wayland, and some have not really formally addressed the issue at all).

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I gave it a try, but it didn’t seem to do anything. I suppose it only works if you’re using the Mesa drivers? I’m using the proprietary Nvidia drivers

Also, as for user profile, no I haven’t made a new one. At that point I’d just reinstall the system to clean up any potential issues that a fresh install would fix. I looked into the settings file and it doesn’t seem like it does any harm. I suppose if all it is is deprecated, as long as I have whatever replacement, these don’t hurt to keep around in the case an app do read these and use them in some way (I could be wrong about that though)

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This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3408 for voting.

To find out more, please visit our Changes Policy documentation.

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Reply to: Issue #3408: Change: Wayland-only GNOME - fesco - Pagure.io.

The reason I support disabling X11 is that we are known as a bleeding-edge distribution, so it’s appropriate for us to do bleeding-edge things among the many available distributions. We don’t have to pretend we’re the only distro in the world — users who choose Fedora should be prepared to accept bleeding-edge changes; otherwise, they can always choose a more conservative distribution. By disabling X11, we can also help upstream discover issues earlier, which benefits the entire desktop environment community, not just our own distribution.

In other words: we are like a testing branch, and we should serve that testing purpose — and testing is always ahead of time.

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Will GNOME Flashback session (GNOME with Metacity and gnome-panel) continue to work after this change?

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I feel like I’m missing where the benefit is to end-users?

Xorg still has it’s use. And it still works. What’s the rush to remove it before it can even be claimed to be broken by something? Someone might be encouraged to fix bugs if it’s at least provided.

If Wayland dev was going to get any faster, it probably would have peaked when it was made a default years ago. Xorg’s still used by people today for a reason, vs tolerating the default :stuck_out_tongue:

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For users of all distributions: once X11 is disabled, there will be fewer bugs caused by the absence of X11. As I said, we’re more like a testing branch.

We must make two things clear:

  1. X11 is going to be disabled upstream soon — in other words, we are likely just six months to a year ahead.
  2. Other distributions will inevitably disable X11 as well.

So you can use those “conservative” distributions — I expect they’ll keep providing X11 for another 10 years. Fedora is not the only distribution in the world.

As for me, I’ve had enough of the chaos caused by the transition from X11 to Wayland.

This is not the place to debate whether X11 or Wayland is better.

To summarize: what I support is this earlier deprecation, not the question of whether to deprecate — because X11 will be deprecated eventually, and that is irreversible.

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haha, “This is not the place to debate whether X11 or Wayland is better” That is rich. You advovate removing X11, but whether Wayland is better is irrelevant? I have no intention to degrade my work environment by submitting myself to the limitations of Wayland, and I think it is absurd that you are proposing to hijack the Fedora project based on your whims.

I have no objection to removing the GNOME X11 session since I am not using the GNOME session. But Fedora is a lot bigger than the GNOME spin, even if the GNOME spin is the default spin.

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I never said it was “irrelevant” — I have no idea where you got that from. What I said was simply that “this is not the appropriate place.”

Am I the king of Fedora? Do I have the authority to decide everything about Fedora? Just because I expressed my opinion, that counts as hijacking the project? Then by that logic, aren’t you hijacking it too?

What I support is the removal of GNOME X11 only, not other desktop environments. The fact that I’m discussing it here should make that clear. Don’t you know how to read things in context?

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X11 was deprecated by RHEL two years ago, and that is the stable release. It only makes sense to start removing it from Fedora at this stage, or rather it’s inevitable. There seems to be no broad support for it going forward.

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Ok, but what you wrote is that you wanted to remove X11 altogether. I am glad that you misspoke.

1 Like
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Not sure. That’s up to GNOME Flashback to figure out. It may still work with reduced functionality, but they probably need to start figuring out whether to move to Wayland or shut down upstream.

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Who is upstream? If Fedora, the leading-edge distro somehow isn’t the model of upstream for other projects (that benefit from Fedora’s bundling) to be following, what’s going on :stuck_out_tongue:

If it’s GNOME: They’re only as-useful as there are mainstream distros shipping it. What is their rush to be dropping Xorg when they don’t even maintain an OS for other realistic people to be using?

If it’s any other DE: Same thing; the top DEs can’t provide their own mainstream OS, but can dictate an experience (that for me was questionable 8+ years) that other OSs have to follow?

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I did not misspeak. Disabling GNOME X11 is part of the broader process of disabling all X11, including Xwayland. And fully disabling X11 is a long-term final goal. However, in this thread, I am only supporting the removal of GNOME X11. When the time comes and there’s a proposal to disable all of X11, I will support that as well.

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By “upstream,” I mean GNOME.

Well then, you can use a Linux system without a desktop environment — that way they won’t be able to dictate your experience. (But I’d guess that the developers of those command-line tools would, in your terms, end up being the ones “dictating the user experience” all over again.)

To be blunt, developers inherently have the power to dictate the user experience. That’s their right. If you’re not satisfied, you’re free to create your own distribution, your own userspace toolchain, your own desktop environment. But sooner or later, you’ll become exactly what you once opposed — because that’s simply how this world works.