Hey Community,

Since I just read a post about the X11 vs. Wayland situation I’m questioning if I should stay on X11, or switch to Wayland. Regarding this decision, I’m asking you for your opinions plus please answer me a few questions. I will put further information about my systems at the bottom.

  • What are the advantages of Wayland? What are the disadvantages?
  • I do mostly music production, programming, browsing, etc, but occasionally I’m back into gaming (on the desktop). How’s performance there? Anything that might break?
  • what would be the best way to migrate?
  • why have/haven’t you made the switch?

Desktop: Ryzen 3100, 16 Gig Ram, Rx 570 Arch Linux with KDE 144 hz Freesync Monitor and 60hz shitty monitor

laptop: Thinkpad L540 (iirc), i3 4100, 8 GB Ram intel uhd630 gfx (iirc) Arch Linux with heavily customized i3-gaps

  • Knusper@feddit.deEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    I think, it needs to be said that it doesn’t have to be a hard switch. With KDE, you can just install the Wayland session and then when logging in for the first time after booting, you can select whether to start X11 or Wayland. To switch back and forth, you just need to log out and log back in.

    With i3, that isn’t as simple, since i3 doesn’t support Wayland. You’d need to install a WM which supports Wayland + customize it, to be able to switch back and forth.

    • s20
      2·
      1 year ago

      With i3, that isn’t as simple, since i3 doesn’t support Wayland. You’d need to install a WM which supports Wayland + customize it, to be able to switch back and forth.

      While it’s not as simple as KDE, switching from i3 isn’t that hard thanks to Sway. It’s a tiling window manager that’s intended to be used as a drop-in replacement for i3 on Wayland:

      https://swaywm.org/

      • michaelrose
        2·
        1 year ago

        Sway doesn’t have a functional Xwayland implementation insofar as it doesn’t handle mixed/high DPI

        • s20
          1·
          1 year ago

          Ah. I did not realize that. My bad.

        • Hexagon@feddit.it
          1·
          1 year ago

          What do you mean? I’m using it with a high DPI screen and I don’t see anything wrong, Xwailand clients may get a little blurred but that’s it

          • michaelrose
            1·
            1 year ago

            “A little blurred” You are probably one of the fellows who walks around with a phone with a spider web of cracks because it “still works”. Not sure why you imagine a blurry screen is a usable or acceptable thing. Excuse me while I return to using my 4k + 4k + 1080p 3 screen arrangement in which NONE of them are blurry and in which an app that is moved from a->b remains the same size because UI elements are scaled to the same identical size.

            • Hexagon@feddit.it
              1·
              1 year ago

              Honestly it happens with just a few apps, and I try to fix or replace them when I find the time. Also, I don’t think that’s specific to sway, that’s just the way xwayland works

              • michaelrose
                1·
                1 year ago

                Most people have more thinks to do than fix things that already work.