I’m a seasoned Linux user, but mostly for servers and services, not really for desktop use.

I’ve dabbled in some desktop distros on my personal rig a few times in the past, but ultimately due to specific games, I’ve gone back to Windows.

I recently installed Arch and KDE. Upon initial boot I noticed it was defaulted to Wayland. Every time I would try to log in it would just go to a black screen then cycle back to the login screen. Picking X11 would bring me to the desktop.

Basic Specs:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D
  • nVidia RTX 4090

I have been doing some reading into this and it looks like the issue is due to the proprietary nVidia drivers, but there are solutions to work around this.

I know nothing of Wayland other than its supposed to be more secure. My question is, is it worth the time/effort to get Wayland working? I primarily use my system for gaming. X11 seems to be working just fine for me right now.

Forgive me if I’m using some of the terminology wrong, still learning.

EDIT - Selling my gpu is not an option. I knew ahead of time that AMD has superior Linux support, but the 4090’s performance can’t be matched by anything AMD has. Maybe next upgrade I’ll go back to AMD if they have the top performer.

  • Ben
    4·
    1 year ago

    This is a sore point. I understand that Wayland is the future, just as people adopt laptops instead of desktop machines.

    Many years ago, I used Opera browser - I learned to close tabs using MOUSE gestures… so instead of clicking on a little 'x to close a tab, I could press the RMB and draw an L shape.

    With X11 (initially with the software Easy Gesture and later on with KDE’s own Custom Shortcuts) I was able to do the same thing - but for ALL desktop apps.

    So now, drawing an L does Ctrl+W - and I have dozens more gestures to do not only keyboard shortcuts, but also commands and scripts…

    So just putting it out there that X11 isn’t only for NVidia users or gamers…