GNOME X.Org vs. Wayland Performance + Power Usage On Fedora 32 With AMD Renoir Laptop

[Volta]

X11 and Wayland aren't comparable. Wayland has a tiny niche scope and only serves as a small component as part of a much larger X11 implementation. Think of it as more a replacement for DirectFB than anything large scale.

It replaces the most broken X11 part - its core. It's not a part of X11 implementation. There were a lot of efforts made to escape from X11 hell.

[Volta]

Ah, you didn't tell me it had to with workspaces. I only use one workspace. Next time you're trying to put the blame on something, be more specific from the get-go.

On Gnome workspaces are something usual.

[Vistaus]

Some examples?

He doesn't have any true examples. He's a Wayland troll, so we should stop feeding him.

[blacknova]

On Gnome workspaces are something usual.

Maybe but they behave quite strange with multi-monitor configs. So I usualy don't use them. Most annoying thing is switching workspace with multiple monitors - mutter switches workspance on one minotor only, and I'm not sure at all how to make it to switch both monitors at once or just switch it on second monitor as necessary.

And this have nothing to do with either X11 or Wayland, since it behave the same on both.

[Volta]

He doesn't have any true examples. He's a Wayland troll, so we should stop feeding him.

I gave you example. There's also video acceleration in Firefox on Wayland and you're aware of it. However, it seems you're just a moron. Btw. it's enough to check where 'X' development is now going. However, I won't waste my time on you.

[tomas]

This is not that relevant and also not technically true: Weston is the same age as Wayland.

Weston was never meant as a fully featured compositor. It is a reference implementation of a wayland compositor.

I thought all that matters is if can replace X while also offering roughly the same experience. And by "replace" I mean work where X already works.

Yes, and that is currently happening. Although it will not support every feature of X. For example, the feauture to allow any X application to grab all keystrokes, tamper with other apps windows, steal the contents of copy/paste buffers, inject keystrokes into other windows etc, will not be supported.

Yeah, well, broad support and "phones" just goes to show how much you have to stretch to make your argument. Wayland is used in Jolla and they no longer make phones.

Not that it matters much, but the operating system SailfishOS, which the jolla phone uses, is still developed and has regular releases. It can be installed on existing Android phones. Also the Librem 5 phone will use Wayland. But yes, all of these are small players. Another big player using wayland though is Google through its support of Android apps on ChromeOS. That is also based on Wayland. The point is, wayland is here to stay and it will replace X11, simply due to the fact that upstream (gnome, KDE etc) wants that to happen and are actively working in that direction.

First of all, Wayland (or X) are not part of an operating system. They're just user-space applications (technically, Wayland implementations are).

You don't have to lecture me on the definition of operating systems. I have a masters degree in computer science and have worked for more than 20 years as a professional programmer. I have written a small but simple operating system as part of my operating system course at University. I know perfectly well what the difference is between kernel space and user space. I also happen to know that in the broader sense, the term "Operating system" is often meant denote more than strictly "the kernel".

Second of all, implementing for the second time is the easiest task in the programming world. But instead of working X's kinks out, Wayland set out to replace a de-facto standard with a generic specification that everyone is now required to implement. That's not going to work out fine, no matter what you're replacing. Just for fun, imagine if instead of being a concrete implementation, systemd was a spec and every distro had to implement it (and that right there is a real complex part of the operating system).

I agree that it would be preferable if the different wayland compositors could share more code through a library. I know of wlroots of course, but it's currently only used by Sway and some other minor compositors, not by the two major ones Mutter and Kwin.

[Volta]

And this have nothing to do with either X11 or Wayland, since it behave the same on both.

But the issue I described is related to X11.

[skeevy420]

Really? Can you explain what/which is it?

In lieu of change, devoutly religious people will defend the way it was regardless of any evidence presented and drastic worldly changes can be required for devoutly religious people to accept change; like Catholics and the flat Earth and Earth being the center of the universe and how we're STILL working on that.... It's been over 400 years and we're still trying to "prove" a spherical Earth.

X11 supporters can be seen in the same light in regards to moving over to Wayland or accepting Wayland as the way forward. It took them all those years to get their religion where is is now and someone wants to come in and replace that with something new??? Yeah, the Roman's never really made it past Hadrian's Wall so some still believed in the old gods and held out, but eventually, a millennium later, Rome's priests did make their way into Scotland and Ireland and the last of the holdouts were converted into believers of the new god.

We still celebrate Christmas in December because of pegan ritual holdouts. Our days of the week, except one, are all named after Norse gods. The one day is Saturn. Saturn's Day. Saturday. So even 2000 years after the Romans invaded England and started pushing Christianity on everyone, our days of the week are still holdouts from the old gods. Just some more examples of how religious people are resistant of change and that sometimes an XWinterSolstice is necessary so you bring in enough of the old gods to get people STFU about it all. Are you still getting high and boning in the dead of Winter? Yes. Then STFU. XWinterSolstice is code for Xmas for those who can't keep up.

That said, a lot of us are fully aware that Wayland isn't 100% ready for every use-case and that it also took X11 many, many, many years to get where it is to cover all these varied use-cases. The people expecting Wayland to get to where X11 is overnight has always been, to me at least, a laughable stance. These days, though, Wayland is ready for most use-cases so people against it have to dig for very specific bugs and examples to point out why Wayland is wrong or bad or not the way forward. We could all scour GNOME & KDE bug trackers and point out random X11 bugs and spew the same fud to push an anti-X11 agenda.

That's another way they're alike -- they both tend to spew fud to push their agenda.

Anyways, that's the joke/explanation. It helps to be able to see things a bit abstract to get comments like that and this.

[brent]

I don't think people in favor of X11 are religious, for the most part. They just want something that works reliably, supports their use-cases and is customizable.

Wayland is unfortunately still kind of a white elephant. Designed to be elegant and small, with embedded systems in mind... and entirely ignoring what desktop environments need. I use Wayland on a desktop system every day, but damn, it's still extremely rough around the edges in quite obvious ways, and many features are missing completely (e.g. color management). After such a long time of development, that is definitely not a good sign.

I don't think a new protocol or display server can fix it, though. The failure of Wayland isn't so much a technical problem as it is a structural problem of the Linux development community.

[CochainComplex]

Mistakes like what? To X11 fanboys: can you explain why 30 years later I still can't use alt+Tab with Quake live in Steam? Under Wayland it works just fine.

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