How is Wayland “ready” when critical things like idk, non QT apps quiting when the compositor crashes (and thus losing progress!) are called a “non showstopper”
@klangcola I'm not commenting on whether ot should be a show stopper or not. Just that it will eventually come also for non-Qt apps with MRs from KDE contributors to other projects.
its not listed as one is the weird thing, because it totally should be
imagine drawing and suddenly your compositor crashes leading to your program to crash and you to lose hours of progress, but other QT programs are fine
should’ve used krita because that’s QT except you cant replicate your workflow in that program because it misses features (and also you dont like it)
This is a real scenario I would have to worry about. That’s a showstopper for me
@Zamundaaa@mnglw xorg Apps don't crash when the compositor crashes, you can just switch out compositors/window managers. But xorg Apps crash when the xserver is crashing
A huge issue I see is that it feels like Dolphin has memory issues at the moment. I get permanent background crashes for no specific reason (already reported).
And rewriting apps in Rust is not existent for Qt, as it uses C++ a lot as far as I understood.
I dont like the design of GTK, even though its more modern in a way, but there are already lots of GTK apps in Rust.
Somehow I think KDE is a bit doomed here. Its Qt or a complete rewrite which will not happen.
Do you know more about this? A big part also is that I often hear young Devs dont learn C and C++ anymore, but maybe prefer Rust if any low level language.
I love KDEs features, and I am very excited for Plasma 6, which will hopefully be a lot more stable and cleaned up!
I’m all for some good old Rust evangelism, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that KDE is "doomed"in the absence of a migration path to Rust, and it’s not obvious to me that moving to Rust is somehow a necessity for the long-term viability of a project.
To your point about young devs and C/C++, afaik C is still pretty standard curriculum for CS degrees at most colleges and universities. C++ maybe not so much, but I would argue that it actually has a shallower learning curve than Rust. IMO the STL is a lot easier to get a grasp on as a newer developer than Rust’s borrow checker or lifetime system.
IMO the STL is a lot easier to get a grasp on as a newer developer than Rust’s borrow checker or lifetime system.
I actually feel like Rust’s borrow checker is more difficult to learn for experienced devs. We’ve got a trainee in Rust and for her, it’s just a normal thing that variable slots hold ownership and can lend it and get it back. She does sometimes still struggle with when to clone and when to borrow, but she’s getting there.
As for the lifetime system, no one on our team really gets that one. 🙃
But (that’s because) you rarely need it.
no more frames within frames! Instead Breeze-themed apps adopt the clean design of modern Kirigami apps, with views separated from one another with single-pixel lines!
Does this talk about that little blue square that is inside of dolphin where the folders reside?
I would agree with that decision - Dolphin handles tabs very well and if the need ever arises for something like split view, I just hit ctrl + T. Feels more natural to me.
The double-click speed setting returns, and now lives on System Settings’ General Behavior page. Before you ask why it’s not on the mouse Page, it’s because it affects touchpads too and that has its own page, and duplicating the setting on both pages seemed messy and ugly
As long as the value is synced, I can’t imagine how it would be bad to have in both pages; especially since that’s where a user would expect to see it.
There’s nothing wrong with multiple ways to find a common setting
I think the best solution is to have a… Link? To the general setting.
Having duplicated settings across multiple settings page is something that I think is an issue. Cause it isn’t obvious to the user if the setting is actually shared between the two pages or if it has two different options with the same name. It also doubles cognitive load to the user, as if they have a Touchpad and Mouse they need to remember both pages have the same setting.
A link is more of a way for the designers to tell the user “Hey, we know what you are trying to find, but it is in another place”
Great news regarding the reorganisation of System Settings. I am skeptical about the sorting however? Why put “Internet” first and “Appearance” so low? Seems to me the later is often the first thing people look for in Settings (and thus often first, or near the top, in most settings).
It might also just be what people are familiar with on other systems. On iOS, macOS, Android and windows, the wifi settings are usually at the top. So it makes sense for KDE to do the same.
My impression was that it was more common to have stuff like “Appearance” first, but you seem to tbe right. At least on my Android phone, network is the first item indeed. I guess I’m getting old!
Haha, I guess Wifi just requires you to go into the settings more often than something like appearance, which you usually set, and then rarely come back to.
The reason I’m speaking up is that I am sick and tired of people buying nvidia and then bitching that it doesn’t work. Not people who already had nvidia hardware or received it secondhand. People who keep buying nvidia laptops and cards and bitching that it doesn’t work all the time, especially with the transition to Wayland.
I stated the reason that this is the case, confirmed by the leader of the kernel, and you’re turning it into “I don’t care what Linus thinks.” It’s not elitism. The fact is that nvidia doesn’t care about Linux as much as Intel and AMD do. That’s just facts. And there’s no hope of this ever changing unless Linux users start boycotting nvidia.
Why do you care so much about those people? Why not just let them live with the consequences of their own actions?
As a Linux user, you will never be able to boycott Nvidia. Linux users make up about 3% of computer users. It won’t matter to Nvidia if 3% of anything boycott their products.
I’ve used Linux long enough to know that refusing to be complacent can lead to positive change. I’ve seen it firsthand.
We didn’t always have such good hardware support on Linux. People refused to accept crappy binary blobs and ndiswrapper for other things, and won. Having the attitude that you don’t want to listen to Linus because you love nvidia so much doesn’t help.
Okay. I’d like to know how a boycott will lead to positive change.
According to Steam’s latest hardware survey in August, Linux systems make up 1.82% of all hardware. I’d prefer to use this over the StatCounter statistic, since Steam’s survey data more accurately represents Nvidia’s target demographic for their graphics cards.
Let’s say all Linux users start boycotting Nvidia. I will assume that 60% of them are already on AMD cards since as you’ve described, they have better Linux support.
So the remaining 40% of those 1.82% (approx. 0.73%) can now start boycotting Nvidia and lose them additional sales.
So of the 98.9% of the gamer demographic (100% - AMD Linux users) that Nvidia could market to, they would lose 0.73 / 98.9 = approx. 0.7% of their sales.
How can a boycott that lowers their sales by up to 0.7% at best improve hardware support? I get that each individual person will be improving their own situation by switching to a card with better support, but I don’t understand how it will incentivize Nvidia to improve their Linux support.
I’ve been using Linux since 2004. Back then, it didn’t even have nearly the marketshare it does today, and Android didn’t exist, but boycotts and protests have worked anyway. Many times. Even nvidia themselves changed their tune with their motherboard chipset drivers.
By your logic, all these hardware manufacturers should just give up and refuse to support Linux at all. It sounds like that’s what you are advocating for.
You said that Linux users should boycott Nvidia. I’m asking you how that will incentivize Nvidia to improve their Linux support. Can you answer that question or can you not?
I’ve said numerous times that this has worked multiple times in the last 20 years I’ve dabbled with Linux. You refuse to listen and throw numbers and “I don’t care what Linus thinks” at me. I’m done here.
Again, you’re not the target of my comments. I’m talking about people who continue to buy nvidia after switching to Linux, and then bitching that it doesn’t work, especially with Wayland.
System76 is a Linux-first hardware OEM, but not open source first. Nvidia’s GPUs using proprietary drivers function almost as well as AMD’s open source drivers and have the added functionality with NVENC and Cuda. It really depends on your use case.
The problem is that those drivers are awful if you plan to keep your computer for more than a year or two. Most Linux-first OEMs are shipping Nvidia, not just System76. I’ve had two computers I got secondhand with Nvidia GPUs, and that damn GPU was the bane of my existence, and from what I’m seeing, that situation hasn’t changed for the better at all.
Ideally, I would love to see things change, but it definitely seems like the majority of Linux users and OEMs are still using Nvidia GPUs, so Nvidia has no incentive to change.
If you can avoid buying Nvidia I’m in favor of it. AMD’s all around a more supportive company when it comes to Linux and Open Source. But some people are stuck relying on Nvidia for their hardware.
Wayland works fine on Nvidia. And as long as NVidia is coddled with Xorg the longer they’ll not bother with Wayland. About time they got their act together
One problem that has long plagued X11 is that any app can snoop on any other app, including things like keystrokes and displayed information, even from within containers like Flatpak. (This is understandable, since it was designed at a time when spyware was rare, so there was no need for isolation more fine-grained than the user level.)
IIRC, Wayland didn’t address that problem in its early days, but in these modern times of surveillance capitalism, I suspect it has been getting more attention. It would be nice to see it solved.
The risk existed but did it plague X11? I never heard about any app logging keystrokes and sending theme somewhere. Where there any attacks using this? I don’t think normal uses had to worry about it.
Yes, and it still does. Practically every X11 installation is vulnerable.
(If you’re nitpicking my use of the word plagued, though, note that I am talking about the vulnerability, not the exploit.)
I never heard about any app logging keystrokes and sending theme somewhere.
That’s because of a variety of external factors, including:
X11 desktops aren’t common enough to be priority malware targets, yet.
People who run only open-source software typically get it from trustworthy channels, like their OS distro’s package repository.
Devices likely to attract malware, such as game consoles and mobile phones, have avoided X11. (Android phones and Steam Deck are examples.) This is no accident; lack of app isolation was a factor in that decision.
I don’t think normal uses had to worry about it.
We’ve been lucky so far, in that our circumstances have kept us mostly safe. However: Linux malware is on the rise. Commercial games, both on their own and through anti-cheat systems, are making opaque software more common on our desktops. Flathub is working on paid apps, which could likewise create malware opportunities that weren’t there before. The Epic Game Store has already been caught collecting data from other apps, so the intent is clearly present already.
It’s generally just a matter of time before exploitable systems become exploited systems. We would do well to close the door on unauthorized key logging, clipboard snooping, screen scraping, and input injection.
And all the arguments are like this. “It’s good to use it”, “it has features”, “it’s better code”. But it’s never “it has essential features that people need”. Because it doesn’t. If it did people would use it.
You have misunderstood me. I don’t use or promote Wayland, mainly for the very reasons you just listed. But I do recognize that it has the potential to solve real problems that are deeply embedded in X11. If/when it gets there, and fixes various deficiencies that it has today, I expect I will have a good reason to switch.
But it’s never “it has essential features that people need”. Because it doesn’t. If it did people would use it.
Actually, I believe it does have such features for people with certain hardware setups. I just don’t happen to have such a setup.
It does for me. For some reason my touchpad has really high scroll sensitivity with libinput. It’s borderline unusable. The only desktop environment that exposes the ability to change this sensitivity is plasma Wayland. AFAIK there’s technical reasons it can’t be done on xorg without hacky workarounds. This is the killer feature for me.
In addition both plasma and gnome only have 1:1 touchpad gestures on their Wayland sessions. Obviously I could use third party tools for trackpad gestures under x11 but those aren’t 1:1.
Also while I’m aware that fractional scaling on Wayland is a mess and hacky but I still find the fractional scaling implementation on KDE Wayland to be the best, followed by KDE on xorg. I need fractional scaling for things to be appropriate sizes on my laptop screen.
For my desktop I still use x11 because of nvidia but I would definitely benefit from the multi monitor improvements under Wayland since I have two monitors of differing refresh rates and it causes issues.
Nope, I also use it for many of these things. They’re not alone by a long shot.
If you want to continue to use X11, you are free to simply not update your machine any further. It’s unlikely you value security, so this shouldn’t be an issue for you.
mixed DPI scaling (can drag a window from a 1x screen to a 1.75x screen and have it look correct on both at the same time, even when halfway across each)
Mixed refresh rate (my center monitor is higher refresh rate than my side monitors, X11 just baselines all monitors to the lowest common denominator).
Mixed variable refresh rate (center monitor is VRR capable, side monitors are not).
HDR support soon (already exists in GameScope).
Mixed HDR/SDR output across monitors
Performance:
Lower resources
Smoother operation (can be felt in mouse cursor movements, window drags, composited animations, etc)
Better VR headset isolation compared to X11 (allows the headset to run separately and not interrupt regular monitor layout, and also lets it run freely at the correct refresh rate)
Other:
Better security between apps (yes I actually use this and count it as a feature)
App video isolation leads to pipe wire functionality, which is a bonus and makes OBS work better overall
I know for a fact I’m forgetting something because this list was longer the last time I wrote it out, but I think you get the point.
Maybe a while ago that was true. But there’s so much cool stuff that KDE devs are spearheading with Wayland.
For example, You’ll be able to reboot the window server without ending your session and losing your app state! They’ve demonstrated being able to swap between GNOME, KDE, Sway, and other WMs without logging out or crashing apps. This could also be used for swapping active GPU configurations without relogging, which would make Gaming laptops way less shitty to use.
Wayland can also store window state to disk, which isn’t possible on X11. Another useful feature that could allow for more fluid hibernate and reboot behaviour.
Touchpad gestures! You need a lot of dev effort to get them working on X11 but on Wayland it’s very fluid.
Wayland is also partly why there’s been new effort to standardise the desktop experience on Linux with stuff like XDG.
For the end user, X11 is fine. You don’t need to particularly care how your windows are drawn. As an app or desktop dev you’ll be way more empowered to build a next generation desktop experience with Wayland, in a way that X11 just wasn’t able to support because of its underlying design.
But that’s also why the change can’t come from begging end users to migrate: we have to rely on distros dropping support for X and making Wayland the default.
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