HACKER Q&A
📣 sosodev

Are You Using Wayland?


I've recently been on a quest to find my ideal Linux desktop setup. I'm running kernel 6.4.3, the latest stable version of KDE plasma, and the latest stable version of mesa. Yet it still seems like Wayland just isn't practical. I regularly run into bugs or incompatibilities that just don't happen with X11.


  👤 bravetraveler Accepted Answer ✓
Yep, have been for at least three years with Sway. Maybe one or two before that with GNOME before the keyboard bug bit me

These are the only X things I still use (via XWayland):

    ~ $ xlsclients
    outerheaven  das-keyboard-q
    outerheaven  steam
    ~ $ 
Most things do Wayland natively, not requiring much hassle.

The exception tends to be Chromium or Electron based things. Depending on what release they based on, they may need arguments to encourage Wayland use.

Usually --ozone-platform-hint=wayland suffices, though I recommend research of your own. ie: the WaylandWindowDecorations feature

Games benefit from gamescope: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope

Screen sharing has been relegated to my browsers because they know how to work with pipewire/xdg-desktop-portal... while the misc. telecom clients lag by a decade

As for why? It feels much more polished once setup.

Mixed refresh rates work properly, for example. I have two 144Hz and one 160Hz display - logs are legible as they fly by at full speed


👤 hollerith
Have been using Wayland for the last 2.5 years on Fedora with Gnome. I like it very much.

I'm using it with Intel integrated graphics.


👤 ttctciyf
Happy with Xorg, plan to continue using it as long as possible. Will switch to slackware to avoid Wayland. May switch earlier to dump systemd. And get xv back[1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36716090


👤 q0uaur
Running Sway on Arch Linux, pretty happy with it but it did take a while to set everything up.

My biggest advice: Look into software that supports wayland natively. Xwayland still has plenty of issues, but apps built with Wayland in mind (or at least using frameworks that support it) work flawlessly.

Yes if you've been using your tools for years it might not be worth it (yet). But since I chose to build a completely new system the way I want it, it's been worth putting effort into researching tools that work better - for example terminal emulators, Kitty had some weird issues for me so i switched to Foot and it's great for what i need it to do. Electron apps were still hit or miss last i checked, so I try to find non-Electron alternatives (usually way better for resource usage too) or at least find apps that use up-to-date electron that works on wayland without having to figure out which of 5 flags or config files you need to fiddle with.

Also, at least Sway did not work well on Nvidia last i tried, period. You can get it to work but weird issues will always pop up - i don't use my gaming pc much anymore anway and on a mini-pc with amdgpu (integrated in cpu) it works flawlessly.


👤 smoldesu
I've been using KDE's Wayland session for ~6 months now. Things have gotten really good with Kwin, and the last major bugs I experienced have been ironed out. It's usable for work, gaming and web browsing without any crashes. At this point I think X11 is quickly becoming the less-stable option.

I'm on NixOS with both Nvidia and Intel hardware. Both run extremely well with modern KDE.


👤 snvzz
I try it once every year, usually near the start of the year.

Years ago, things were very broken. I lasted minutes, then hours.

This year I finally lasted days, but went back to Xorg due to degraded performance (latency related)

I typically test Plasma (KDE) and Sway.

Next year might be it.


👤 mergy
Yes - Debian 12.1 as my daily driver since June 2023. Going great!

👤 filereaper
Yes, Wayland with KDE on Fedora 37, daily drive it.

Mostly stable, with minior issues. Responsiveness of Wayland is much better than X11.

Zoom screensaring doesn't work with the native client. I usually join using the web client where screensaring works. Usually I join via both, the native client handles video and virtual backgrounds better. None of this is Wayland/KDEs fault and is on Zoom still not supporting Wayland correctly.


👤 jeppesen-io
Yep, for a few years on Gnome/NixOS. Primarily I use Zoom/Slack/Firefox/Kitty/Steam. As far as I recall, it all runs without issue

What are your issues?


👤 AlexITC
Last year I tried but switched to Xorg, screen sharing neither xbindkeys worked with Wayland, I wrote a bit about that at https://wiringbits.net/accessibility/2022/12/05/macos-like-p...

👤 ensocode
Not yet. Was thinking of it several times. But with a special monitor setup and the knowledge of the x cmd tools I am a bit afraid that it would be a waste of time. Maybe dropping systemd would be more important to me. By the way, does displaylink work with wayland properly?

👤 washadjeffmad
Whenever I upgrade Fedora, I switch to Wayland until something breaks, and then I WaylandEnable=false.

It's because of this that Fedora isn't my daily driver. I keep it largely because updates usually eventually fix what breaks, so it's been consistent over many upgrades.


👤 jimmytucson
I just enabled it after upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 last weekend. The 3-finger swipe gestures are nice. I think it crashed Online Accounts though. I put up with the inconvenience and file bug reports to help make the software better.

👤 Am4TIfIsER0ppos
On my laptop yes because I don't need wine there. It does prevent me from using Barrier to have remote control from my desktop. It is fine but gets little use so I can't say much about it.

👤 DaanDL
I'm forced to use it, because of my WQHD Thinkpad display which requires fractional scaling.

👤 Blackstrat
I’ve been running Wayland/Gnome on Opensuse with Nvidia graphics for several months. I’ve seen no problems and better performance overall.

👤 marssaxman
I have no idea whether the distribution I am running uses Wayland. What might one do to find out?

👤 kevinherron
Yes, with Fedora 37 and now 38, GNOME, on my desktop.

The only issue I have is that I prefer KDE but this just seems to work.


👤 hulitu
> Ask HN: Are You Using Wayland?

No. Why would i ? I run X clients.


👤 reactor
Yes, on Ubuntu 22.04, pretty stable.

👤 mdwalters
yes