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Raspberry Pi OS, elementary OS Will Default to Wayland (elementary.io) 75

Recently the Register pointed out that the new (Debian-based) Raspberry Pi OS 5.0 has "a completely new Wayland desktop environment replacing PIXEL, the older desktop based on LXDE and X.org, augmented with Mutter in its previous release."

And when elementary OS 8 finally arrives, "the development team plans to finally shift to the Wayland display server by default," reports Linux magazine (adding "If you'd like to get early access to daily builds, you can do so by becoming an elementary OS sponsor on GitHub.")

"This is a transition that we have been planning and working towards for several years," writes CEO/co-founder Danielle foré, "and we're finally in the home stretch... Wayland will bring us improved performance, better app security, and opens the doors to support more complex display setups like mixed DPI multi-monitor setups." There are other things that we're experimenting with, like the possibility of an immutable OS, and there are more mundane things that will certainly happen like shipping Pipewire. You'll also see on the project board that we're looking to replace the onscreen keyboard and it's time to re-evaluate some things like SystemD Boot. You can expect lots more little features to be detailed over the coming months.
Meanwhile, Linux Mint is getting "experimental" Wayland support next month. And also in December, firefox will let Wayland support be enabled by default.

And last month the Register noted a merge request for GNOME to remove the gnome-xorg.desktop file. "To put this in context, the fedora project is considering a comparable change: removing or hiding the GNOME on X.org session from the login menu, which is already the plan for the fedora KDE spin when it moves to KDE version 6, which is still in development."
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Raspberry Pi OS, elementary OS Will Default to Wayland

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    WTf is wayland?

    • It manages the windows and their rendering and it uses a client server architecture. It's controversial because x11 is old, mostly works mostly sorta, if you stay within the comfort zone (don't care about a compositor that destroys gaming performance, don't use multi-monitors with different refresh rates and variable sync, and so on). Wayland is the future but it has been playing catch up for a very long time.

      X11's codebase is just oh my gosh its just... exactly what you'd expect from a window manager from

      • At some point in my brain I thought this question was WHY Wayland. Oh how I wish I could edit on ./ when I haven't had my coffee

      • by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        Man I feel old. It seems like just a few years ago you had to make your own config file to get X to work at all and it had to be specific to your monitor. X itself had no window manager and linux installed in runlevel 3 cli-only. I remember playing with a lot of window managers including CDE, AfterStep (a NeXT clone), and this guy named rasterman had a windows manager that supported different skins until he got stolen away to develop GNOME. I eveb paid for a livensed copy of Accelerated X just to cut down o
      • Re:WTf is wayland? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @09:50AM (#64016097) Homepage

        Are you sure you know what you are talking about?

        It manages the windows and their rendering and it uses a client server architecture. It's controversial because x11 is old, mostly works mostly sorta, if you stay within the comfort zone (don't care about a compositor that destroys gaming performance, don't use multi-monitors with different refresh rates and variable sync, and so on).

        I have 4 monitors with different refresh rates and sync connected to my desktop X server. I can post my xorg.conf file if you wish.

        Wayland is the future but it has been playing catch up for a very long time.

        X11's codebase is just oh my gosh its just... exactly what you'd expect from a window manager from the 1980's. It was always cool to play pranks on friends by opening terminals to their x server, and this is still a flippin' cool feature of X11, and wayland lacks it. A lot of people don't like that.

        That's this idiots understanding

        It was fun indeed back in 1990 but all distros using X don't allow that anymore. You even need to give permissions to a user on the same machine (I run stuff as different users) to access the X display. Example: xhost +SI:localuser:other_user

        Hopefully, Wayland developers didn't create it starting with the same knowledge you seem to have about X in the first place. Maybe they should have contributed to maintaining X instead.

        I also run programs on other computers displaying to my desktop X server with sound. Best way to do that is over ssh using compression, like this:
        ssh -C -Y host

        I also run remote XVNC servers in datacenters and access them with ssh tunnelling with compression enabled:
        ssh -C -L:5901:127.0.0.1:5901 remote_host

        As far as I can tell Wayland seems like a step backward to me and reminds me of a MS-Windows display.

        • I can post my xorg.conf file if you wish.

          The problem in a nutshell really. X works when you figure out some complex config. Great for a server, not at all suitable for a modern desktop OS where I don't expect any configuration, I expect it to detect and magically work. (and no your config isn't working ideally for all 4 monitors, fundamentally the driver support is lacking, you cannot have gsync on multimonitor configurations, it flat out is not supported by the nvidia driver under X regardless of how fancy your config gets)

          Hopefully, Wayland developers didn't create it starting with the same knowledge you seem to have about X in the first place. Maybe they should have contributed to maintaining X instead.

          Wayland is developed by

          • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

            And yes I have a multi-monitor setup with X here. It was a fUCKING PAIN IN THE ARSE to get working, and it soured me on X.org forever more.

            Just use MS-Windows, who has time to lose with pesky and silly Linux? Can you imagine all the changes we still *need* to make to Linux so it's just like Windows? I wouldn't waste my precious time at it!

            • Just use MS-Windows,

              I don't *use* any OS. I use applications. Some of them run on Windows, some on Linux, some on Mac. I have all 3 systems at home.

              Can you imagine all the changes we still *need* to make to Linux so it's just like Windows?

              The goal is not to make Linux Windows. It's to make Linux functional. Can you imagine how retarded (in the literal dictionary definition of the word) your computer would be if development in Linux stopped in the 90s? No thanks.

              Computers are better and more functional than ever thanks to ongoing development and thanks to ignoring grumpy old men who are upset someone moved their chee

              • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

                There is no system in the world that is perfect and shouldn't be developed further. And even if there was, that system would not be perfect 10 years from now and therefore should continue being developed further.

                Exactly what I was saying about X in a post above! "Developing further" doesn't mean replacing your car wheels with square ones! It means enhancing X but strangely enough, they are strong tendencies nowadays to re-invent everything, to trash all efforts that have been put into getting us where we are and to replace what we already have and use with sub-par solutions.

      • don't care about a compositor that destroys gaming performance

        When I took my machine (this current one in fact) from Windows to Linux the performance stayed broadly the same. Compatibility suffered obviously, but some games actually give better frame rates on Linux with the same or even higher settings, while only a few were slower. So no, I don't care about a thing that doesn't exist.

        don't use multi-monitors with different refresh rates and variable sync

        This is a real problem. I'm just still not convinced that Wayland is the right way to get it. If they had designed in the network transparency from the start then there would probably be

        • Re:WTf is wayland? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:05AM (#64016243) Journal

          there are a lot of flaws in X. The problem is Wayland fixed roughly none of them.

          It also introduced a bunch more, by declaring almost everything "out of scope" so now critical parts are left to a mishmash of third party libraries and are still hashing out which are going to become dominant and do a defacto part of Wayland.

          The basics like automation and screen capture are still a crapshoot in 2023.

          As far as I can tell it's a pet project from Red hat/GNOME elevated to the level of system infrastructure through sheer weight of funding.

          It's pretty sad that so much effort has gone into something which yields no improvement. Apparently I won't get tearing any more which is interesting since I already don't get it on X.

    • by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      Wayland is an extendable display server protocol. It does not aim to offer the exact same functionality as X11, but rather reduce the feature set to reflect how modern applications use X11 nowadays.
      • Re: WTf is wayland? (Score:5, Informative)

        by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @09:36AM (#64016075)

        And in doing so, has been pissing off a lot of professional Linux users who have, for *decades*, built systems and workflows predicated on being able to display application windows from networked servers onto remote workstations.

        I'll note that while they greybeards have been doing their thing for close to 40 years now, the pissing off has been going on for a while too. This whole Wayland experiment is entering its second decade of sticking its fingers in its ears and going lalalalala.

        • And in doing so, has been pissing off a lot of professional Linux users who have, for *decades*, built systems and workflows predicated on being able to display application windows from networked servers onto remote workstations.

          I'll note that while they greybeards have been doing their thing for close to 40 years now, the pissing off has been going on for a while too. This whole Wayland experiment is entering its second decade of sticking its fingers in its ears and going lalalalala.

          I wish I had mod points. Spot on.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

          And in doing so, has been pissing off a lot of professional Linux users who have, for *decades*, built systems and workflows predicated on being able to display application windows from networked servers onto remote workstations.

          If there is a cohort of professional users who have use cases you describe then they are free to use a distribution and window system that suits their needs. That is the amazing wonder of open source and the biggest benefit Linux brings to the computing world.

          We do not subscribe to tyranny of the minority here, any professional user who thinks they should have a say on what software is developed for other people can fuck all the way off.

          • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:46AM (#64016287)

            Six of one half a dozen of the other.

            In practice it's looking like the newfangled stuff is looking to displace and deprecate the old stuff to the detriment of people who use it.

            If it had incorporated some mechanisms to replicate the functionality "the minority" (probably a large minority of people who work on system software) use, there wouldn't be any complaints.

          • Re: WTf is wayland? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @03:07PM (#64016599) Homepage

            If there is a cohort of professional users who have use cases you describe then they are free to use a distribution and window system that suits their needs. That is the amazing wonder of open source and the biggest benefit Linux brings to the computing world.

            Unfortunately, all the people who designed truly tested things that work and are stable eventually pass away and are replaced my young dudes which many nowadays think they are smarter than anybody who existed before them. Those dudes who think they are so smart have a negative impact on the ecosystem and other young dudes which wouldn't have cared are influenced by them. How many distros are left without systemd?

            • The main people behind Wayland are the main people who were behind X for a long time. They got tired of X and wanted to do something else so they said X couldn't be saved, but then they said X wouldn't be saved by them which is at least honest.

        • by Lycestra ( 16353 )

          waypipe is great. Xwayland is also ok.

          • And if and when it becomes as seamless asDISPLAY=remotebox:0.0 /path/to/program or ssh -CY user@box /path/to/program I'm reasonably confident that most complaints will stop and the few that remain will be bitching about having to change shell scripts and such that ran fine for decades to keep working instead of bitching that shell scripts and such that ran fine for decades won't work anymore period.

      • Quite right, but today's mantra is: if it ain't broke we'd better fix that :(
    • Here's the take of a (mostly) Linux noob:
      It's a feature with lots of potential which was adopted too quickly, too soon.
      Very recently, I wanted to test something on a spare RPi I had, so I got the latest image, etched it on an SD Card and went on to use it. Turned out the OS (which came with Wayland as default) did not support RealVNC due to incompatibility. I spent one hour figuring this out, because it's not apparent and counterintuitive (why am I getting a weird error when enabling VNC via raspi-config?).

      • Thanks for reporting that issue with RealVNC. I was going to try the new OS but now I'll wait a few months.

      • 99.999% of pi work is via putty so for the majority of work cases other than kids room computers, why use the platform as a desktop except for the most entry level of entry level into the concept of a desktop. I am not going to use 30 cents worth of GPU when I have 80000 cents worth of GPU on another platform.

        The beigest screen I use on pi is index card sized and touch capable for some sort of controler to IOTs. More than that is an exercise in 3rd world frustration.
        • Nice of you to generalize that way.
          My use case was around a Pi Camera and an USB webcam, I wanted to use the Pi as streaming source for surveillance in my workshop. Testing the resolutions and framerates via various software required displaying the images locally in the UI.
          After testing was done, there was no need for the UI any more, but those initial couple hours of testing were important.

          But that is even beside the point. All we need to look at is whether that functionality existed before (it did) and wh

    • WTf is wayland?

      A reflection of the fact that you do not belong on Slashdot given the several hundreds of articles about Wayland that have come up on this site. Please go to a site more suited to your interests.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @10:38AM (#64016183)

    They sold out, not just literally but figuratively. Why did they increase the price to $80? That makes it inaccessible to a lot of things. The whole mission they sold us was cheap ubiquitous computing. They should have stuck to the $35 somehow or actually tried to reduce the price even more. Instead they got greedy. Screw 'em.

    • Not to mention you need a hat to use the PCIE functionality which raises the effective price even more, they should have put one of the mini connectors on the bottom of the board. Preferably Mini-PCIE I suppose, which you can adapt to M.2 easily and cheaply.

    • It's called inflation. Get used to it.

      I can't see a movie for a dollar or eat a nice dinner out for 2 with drinks for $20 anymore, either.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The price is one thing but not the most important. They completely alienated their customer base that built the company in to what it is.

      Also, they're jackasses. Nothing about the Pi is open-source other than some of the software it runs. It depends heavily on custom binaries for the proprietary chipsets.

      They also do stuff like take an off-the-shelf part and tweak it so that you can't replace and fix the device if that part breaks (buy a new Pi is their "solution"). And they do other tweaks like set the inp

      • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Not ubtil arm is replaced by high volume low wattage RISCV solutions, until that happens we unfortunately need AR
        • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          ARM dammit I failed to notice rhe missing M, come on Slashdor it's 2023 edit is not rocket surgery
        • by caseih ( 160668 )

          Except that RISC V is no better. RISC V chips and sbcs are just as closed source as any arm device. We'll still need dealing with binary blobs and proprietary GPUs. There only difference with arm is the licensing cost.

  • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:33AM (#64016273)

    Year of the Linux Desktop Wars

  • Screw this (Score:5, Informative)

    by dynamo ( 6127 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @04:02PM (#64016663) Journal

    Nothing can ever replace x11 that doesnâ(TM)t allow for opening UIs on remote machines. VERY OfTEN linux machines are running remotely, it is insane to think a local only desktop is an acceptable replacement for a desktop that can run interfaces locally OR remotely. WTf Wayland developers? Get that feature out and then your product is worth having a look at.

    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      And this is especially important on Pis.

      fortunately, however, your concerns are fairly groundless. Even while using Wayland, X11 apps are supported transparently using Xwayland. As long as your DISPLAY variable is set (which it is with Gnome and KDE on Wayland at least), you can ssh to another host and run remote X11 apps all you want. At least for now, GTK and Qt both support X11 as a backend alongside Wayland. So it just works. I expect the X11 backends to be around for years yet.

      In the future, Waypip

  • by LVSlushdat ( 854194 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @06:37PM (#64016897)

    Was setting up Ubuntu 22.04 on a new laptop the other day. The user that will get this machine needs a good screen capture app, and since I use and love Shutter, I installed it. Since I wanted to show the user the specs of the system he was getting, so I fired up shutter and *tried* to do a screencap of the Ubuntu "about" screen. Everything in Shutter was greyed out.. And SURE ENOUGH, the f'ing system was running Wayland.. After switching back to Xorg, Shutter then worked as it should... Until/Unless Wayland starts working with screencap stuff, it ISN'T READY fOR PRIME TIME!!!!!!!!!!

    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      Yes any X app that expects to take a screen capture isn't going to work when running under Xwayland on Wayland. No surprise there. But of course to users it's not readily apparent which apps are wayland and which are X still.

      Wayland screen capture support has to come from the compositor, and to my knowledge it works now on both KDE and Gnome and can work through pipewire as a video source. OBS Studio can now capture the screen after you grant permission for it to do so. from what I can tell Shutter doe

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