This is cool, but half the software I need to use still doesn’t work on Wayland for some inexplicable reason.
I know this is the responsibility of the software maintainer to fix their compatibility, but as a business user I don’t have time to go around filing detailed bug reports and waiting for the next release when it’s fixed.
The solution for me is to switch back to X11 and move along, then in another year I try Wayland again after installing a new distro. After a few hours I find something that isn’t working on Wayland, rinse and repeat.
The thing is, volunteers work on what they want/specialize. Unless you are their boss and are paying them to work on something, you can't force their hand.
I truly do think this is a cool feature, but after seeing all the comments saying stuff like “now there’s ZERO excuse not to use Wayland!”, I felt like it was appropriate to share my perspective as a professional user who uses their computer a little differently than a FOSS enthusiast or hobbyist/casual user. I’m not getting paid to go around submitting bug reports and making PRs, so when things don’t “just work” it can be a big issue.
Felt. VR took priority over color management with ICC profiles & HDR which is more important for commercial & general entertainment applications. I've had to switch back to X11 too.
That something being probably Microsoft Teams piece of crap app or similar bullshit like Discord, all of which FOSS devs can’t do anything about even if they could. Or simply your system incompatibility like NVIDIA proprietary drivers.
If you expect everything to just work as if it was consumer OS that is fully supported by 3rd parties, Linux might not be the best choice for you in general.
I’m talking about FOSS software incompatibilities, I don’t have any expectation for mega corporate apps like Discord and Teams to adopt it. Those are a lost cause, I just use the browser versions and pray.
I truly do think this is a cool feature, but after seeing all the comments saying stuff like “now there’s ZERO excuse not to use Wayland!”, I felt like it was appropriate to share my perspective as a professional user who uses their computer a little differently than a FOSS enthusiast or hobbyist/casual user. I’m not getting paid to go around submitting bug reports and making PRs, so when things don’t “just work” it can be a big issue.
“Zero excuse” is a bit of a stretch, I aggree, but most things work really well now in my, and a lot others experience, at least recently. I also do my work full time on Linux, it’s mostly devops/sysadm work so a lot of what I use is terminal, web browser and well… Teams and Slack (the first one work well with an unofficial client, the latter got fixed recently), so it’s really not that hard to switch to Wayland. On my private machine I do mostly gaming, consuming content, some basic audio production and editing and there I rely a lot on X11 programs some running through Wine. They all work fine on Xwayland, recently even including HiDPI support (at least with simple one screen scenario). It’s really hard to find completely broken use case unless it’s something like automation scripts that move windows around, emit click or capture keyboard input globally and were designed strictly for X11. Oh, and apps that have multiple windows and request certain positioning - that is currently still missing and WIP.
On the other hand, the topic was originally about VR. While still kinda early, gimmicky and niche, it’s pretty cool modern tech. Good luck with that on X.
Even more common cases like high refresh rates with multi screen setups, VRR, all suck on X11 while working nicely on Wayland for some time now, at least with good drivers.