Nobody has ever said that, but it’s been almost 15 years of development now and it’s still barely usable. The Linux graphics stack is in a state. If for whatever reason you can’t use X11, due to some mysterious bug in kwin say, the Linux desktop is effectively unusable for some at this point.
I gamed on Linux for 2 years. Gave up a few wild ago. It’s getting there, but it’s very broken. PCSX 2 devs are right, unfortunately.
I still use Steam Deck though. Valve’s got their own little garden now that actually works well.
I’ve been using PipeWire for a long time. It doesn’t require Wayland and isn’t actually part of the display stack, but is rather a media streaming engine. Of course it is a critical missing component of Wayland also, which is why it goes well with Wayland.
PipeWire does have problems with crackling audio after resuming from sleep though. I don’t know if the Steam Deck uses PipeWire but it has this problem, too, sometimes.
Anyway, I’ve been through the whole thing before and I’m weary of repeating myself unfortunately. But it’s things like broken cursors that don’t work or can’t be enabled for no apparent reason, broken desktop effects, broken docks, panels, VRR (when moving said software cursor), broken GPU power management, broken scaling, blurry text, and on and on it goes. I’m just sick of it, I’m sorry.
PipeWire does have problems with crackling audio after resuming from sleep though
Or just crackling audio in games in general. It breaks from one update to the next, fixes itself and then it’s back again. Been stable for a few weeks now thankfully… Hope I didn’t just jinx it.
That really strongly depends on your hardware. My hardware straight up doesn’t work on X11 due to lag spike problems, but wayland works pretty well. It can do everything I need it to, and for whatever it can’t do xwayland is always there. Wayland devs absolutely need to actually implement basic display server features present on every OS ever that they refuse to acknowledge, and gnome devs need to actually get their heads out of their asses and cooperate on making wayland function consistently accross DEs, but wayland is far from bad. It’s pretty good actually if it works on your hardware, and is able to do some things that X11 is incapable of, like mixed refresh rate and multi-monitor VRR which are pretty important if you play games.
“barely usable” is just not even remotely correct. the main remaining hardware where wayland doesn’t work is older nvidia cards, and thats not really the wayland devs fault. every system ive used wayland on has worked fine. Wayland’s improving fast, but I will agree that if the wayland devs want people to actually switch over, they need to find ways to implement things like basic keylogging and screen recording permission management, because saying “just let the desktop environment deal with that” is clearly not going to work.
It doesn’t work well on NVIDIA RTX 3080 or AMD 7900 XT. It works okay on my Intel laptop until I connect an external display, at which point it breaks totally. I replied to another who replied to this post.
Wayland is bad. Wayland is VERY bad, in fact. It is by far the worst display technology of any major platform. It’s worse than Windows and worse than OS X by a mile. It may beat X11 but it’s a close run. I’m sure as more effort is put into Wayland and less into X11 and the committees decide to start being practical things will improve, but right now it’s an impossible choice for me.
As an end user, I don’t really care whose fault it is. I just have a broken desktop, that’s all it is to me.
It doesn’t work well on NVIDIA RTX 3080 or AMD 7900 XT
that is quite strange, not sure whats up with that.
Wayland is bad. Wayland is VERY bad, in fact. It is by far the worst display technology of any major platform.
You are correct, and X11 is pretty much neck to neck with it assuming they both work in how bad it is, but to be fair, X11 is a display server from the 80s that had no business making it this long without a properly functional competitor, and wayland, while it has been developed for 15 years, is still relatively young compared to other OSes.
However what you say is true, none of that matters because why it’s the case makes no difference to an end user. Linux just has clearly inferior display solutions to any other mainstream OS i’ve seen. Only way I can possibly see that’s going to change is if wayland is able to take over, and if maybe, just maybe enough people involved with it can actually realize that maybe their display server should have basic features that have existed since the 90s. I understand they have a philosophy, but its practically the same philosophy as the macOS display server and they figured out how to make things functional without compromising their philosophy like 5 years ago. Even if all that does happen though, that’s a ways off. Hopefully some day linux can have an actual fully featured display server, although i acknowledge thats no easy feat.
Well, the macOS display server just had the right technologies put into it at a very early age. It’s based on work from Adobe and movie studios, and as a consequence it has scaling and colour management which is to die for.
Wayland started from such a different approach. They started not with a look to the future, but with a look to disconnect from the past with no regard for the future. They were more worried about removing old things like hardware sprites and built in fonts than they were worried about proper display scaling and things like that.
I mean it looks like it’s gonna get there. They’re approaching these things. Steam Deck has amazing HDR from everything I hear. But the day this is fixed is not today, and I can’t use it anymore. :(
yeah, it’s a shame the way the Wayland devs approached it in the beginning. I wish I hadn’t been spoiled by linux desktop environments because it would be significantly easier to just go back to windows and get properly functional display software. I really want to because I screen share a lot and that’s a massive inconvenience on wayland, or just on linux in general, but then I have to give up the desktop environment I’ve gotten used to.
who on earth has ever said wayland is perfect or feature complete lmao
Nobody has ever said that, but it’s been almost 15 years of development now and it’s still barely usable. The Linux graphics stack is in a state. If for whatever reason you can’t use X11, due to some mysterious bug in kwin say, the Linux desktop is effectively unusable for some at this point.
I gamed on Linux for 2 years. Gave up a few wild ago. It’s getting there, but it’s very broken. PCSX 2 devs are right, unfortunately.
I still use Steam Deck though. Valve’s got their own little garden now that actually works well.
How is it breaking further? I’d argue quite the opposite with the adoption of pipewire, for example.
I’ve been using PipeWire for a long time. It doesn’t require Wayland and isn’t actually part of the display stack, but is rather a media streaming engine. Of course it is a critical missing component of Wayland also, which is why it goes well with Wayland.
PipeWire does have problems with crackling audio after resuming from sleep though. I don’t know if the Steam Deck uses PipeWire but it has this problem, too, sometimes.
Anyway, I’ve been through the whole thing before and I’m weary of repeating myself unfortunately. But it’s things like broken cursors that don’t work or can’t be enabled for no apparent reason, broken desktop effects, broken docks, panels, VRR (when moving said software cursor), broken GPU power management, broken scaling, blurry text, and on and on it goes. I’m just sick of it, I’m sorry.
Or just crackling audio in games in general. It breaks from one update to the next, fixes itself and then it’s back again. Been stable for a few weeks now thankfully… Hope I didn’t just jinx it.
That really strongly depends on your hardware. My hardware straight up doesn’t work on X11 due to lag spike problems, but wayland works pretty well. It can do everything I need it to, and for whatever it can’t do xwayland is always there. Wayland devs absolutely need to actually implement basic display server features present on every OS ever that they refuse to acknowledge, and gnome devs need to actually get their heads out of their asses and cooperate on making wayland function consistently accross DEs, but wayland is far from bad. It’s pretty good actually if it works on your hardware, and is able to do some things that X11 is incapable of, like mixed refresh rate and multi-monitor VRR which are pretty important if you play games.
“barely usable” is just not even remotely correct. the main remaining hardware where wayland doesn’t work is older nvidia cards, and thats not really the wayland devs fault. every system ive used wayland on has worked fine. Wayland’s improving fast, but I will agree that if the wayland devs want people to actually switch over, they need to find ways to implement things like basic keylogging and screen recording permission management, because saying “just let the desktop environment deal with that” is clearly not going to work.
It doesn’t work well on NVIDIA RTX 3080 or AMD 7900 XT. It works okay on my Intel laptop until I connect an external display, at which point it breaks totally. I replied to another who replied to this post.
Wayland is bad. Wayland is VERY bad, in fact. It is by far the worst display technology of any major platform. It’s worse than Windows and worse than OS X by a mile. It may beat X11 but it’s a close run. I’m sure as more effort is put into Wayland and less into X11 and the committees decide to start being practical things will improve, but right now it’s an impossible choice for me.
As an end user, I don’t really care whose fault it is. I just have a broken desktop, that’s all it is to me.
that is quite strange, not sure whats up with that.
You are correct, and X11 is pretty much neck to neck with it assuming they both work in how bad it is, but to be fair, X11 is a display server from the 80s that had no business making it this long without a properly functional competitor, and wayland, while it has been developed for 15 years, is still relatively young compared to other OSes.
However what you say is true, none of that matters because why it’s the case makes no difference to an end user. Linux just has clearly inferior display solutions to any other mainstream OS i’ve seen. Only way I can possibly see that’s going to change is if wayland is able to take over, and if maybe, just maybe enough people involved with it can actually realize that maybe their display server should have basic features that have existed since the 90s. I understand they have a philosophy, but its practically the same philosophy as the macOS display server and they figured out how to make things functional without compromising their philosophy like 5 years ago. Even if all that does happen though, that’s a ways off. Hopefully some day linux can have an actual fully featured display server, although i acknowledge thats no easy feat.
Well, the macOS display server just had the right technologies put into it at a very early age. It’s based on work from Adobe and movie studios, and as a consequence it has scaling and colour management which is to die for.
Wayland started from such a different approach. They started not with a look to the future, but with a look to disconnect from the past with no regard for the future. They were more worried about removing old things like hardware sprites and built in fonts than they were worried about proper display scaling and things like that.
I mean it looks like it’s gonna get there. They’re approaching these things. Steam Deck has amazing HDR from everything I hear. But the day this is fixed is not today, and I can’t use it anymore. :(
yeah, it’s a shame the way the Wayland devs approached it in the beginning. I wish I hadn’t been spoiled by linux desktop environments because it would be significantly easier to just go back to windows and get properly functional display software. I really want to because I screen share a lot and that’s a massive inconvenience on wayland, or just on linux in general, but then I have to give up the desktop environment I’ve gotten used to.