For me, it’s that everything feels just slightly smoother, applications open somewhat quicker and typing feels more ‘direct’ (less latency).
Certainly nothing revolutionary for now, so if you actually have to jump through many hoops, I wouldn’t bother.
My distro pre-installs a Wayland session for my DE, so to switch, I just have to log out, select the other session and log back in.
Yeah easy switching back and forth makes the transition smooth. I use Wayland 99% of the time, but if I happen to run into problems I can just logout and start X.
Good point. I’ve certainly had my moments where some application behaved slightly differently and it annoyed me, so I simply went back to X11 until that was fixed or I had a workaround or didn’t need to use that application anymore.
It looks like I would have to jump through hoops whereas x11 just works.
If you have to jump through hoops I probably wouldn’t bother. Most distros are shipping it by default so I would just wait until that happens.
Some benefits that I can think of off the top of my head:
Top quality high and mixed resolution support.
Tear free rendering and capturing.
(Small) improved performance.
Games are much better behaved. I can reliably window, maximize and full-screen them. They also never mess with the display resolution.
Seems to have less windows (especially hover tool tips) just hanging around. I guess the compositor can close these at the right time under Wayland.
Proper secure screen locking. (I think GNOME + GDM can do something safe on X but most display managers + lock screens can’t cooperate well enough to manage this.)
Honestly it is nothing major (except the mixed dpi stuff) but a nice step up. And if the X devs say that X is unmaintainable and this is going to lead to many improvements and be able to be maintained for the next age of displays on Linux I’m happy to make the switch now that it is the default and I am not aware of any problems for my workflow.
I use I3wm and don’t play games on my gnu/linux computers so for now I think I’ll stick with it but it seems sway would be the way to go for me if I was ready.
Maybe that’s a stupid question (some might say there’s no such thing), but why would I run Wayland?
It looks like I would have to jump through hoops whereas x11 just works. I’m not being sarcastic or ironical, just genuinely wondering.
One of the many benefits is reduced latency.
For me, it’s that everything feels just slightly smoother, applications open somewhat quicker and typing feels more ‘direct’ (less latency).
Certainly nothing revolutionary for now, so if you actually have to jump through many hoops, I wouldn’t bother.
My distro pre-installs a Wayland session for my DE, so to switch, I just have to log out, select the other session and log back in.
Yeah easy switching back and forth makes the transition smooth. I use Wayland 99% of the time, but if I happen to run into problems I can just logout and start X.
Good point. I’ve certainly had my moments where some application behaved slightly differently and it annoyed me, so I simply went back to X11 until that was fixed or I had a workaround or didn’t need to use that application anymore.
If you have to jump through hoops I probably wouldn’t bother. Most distros are shipping it by default so I would just wait until that happens.
Some benefits that I can think of off the top of my head:
Honestly it is nothing major (except the mixed dpi stuff) but a nice step up. And if the X devs say that X is unmaintainable and this is going to lead to many improvements and be able to be maintained for the next age of displays on Linux I’m happy to make the switch now that it is the default and I am not aware of any problems for my workflow.
Thanks for those answers.
I use I3wm and don’t play games on my gnu/linux computers so for now I think I’ll stick with it but it seems sway would be the way to go for me if I was ready.
It red Wayland is an improvement on security. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol) https://www.secjuice.com/wayland-vs-xorg/ Wayland allows application isolation. Keystrokes are not shared among all applications.