KDE Saw More Wayland Fixes This Week, Other Changes

[Charlie68]

I didn't say that Wayland shouldn't be used, but there are still problems for desktop use.

1) X11 on bare metal is lacking features required for proper HDR and Hidpi and security.
2) X11 server by x.org that is you default Linux x11 server for bare metal has not had a working maintainer for years.

Generally irrelevant in the desktop environment

Input issues are not a wayland problem at all. In fact wayland compositor should not be addressing input device problems.

It has nothing to do with Wayland is the usual shit talk, for which many users abandon Linux.
What does it mean ? It won't be a wayland problem, but in wayland I have to use libinput if I want to use my touchpad and it has a shit configuration. What do you think they will no longer use their touchpad or will they use Xorg where it works well?
But no problem, let's let Ubuntu switch to Wayland too, so maybe they'll fix something.
When it will be usable on my notebook I will use it, at the moment I am only using it on the desktop with Plasma and with the latest release it works fine, even if the Xorg experience is still the best.
In the history of Gnu / Linux we have seen projects that sambrava were finished, find new life, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone started working on Xork, perhaps with a fork. It is free software after all.

[kvuj]

While I prefer GNOME (and wayland), I wish nothing but success to all of the KDE devs and happiness for their users. We should all rejoice on great development such as what they've been doing recently.

The open source software world is too small to warrant hate based on preference.

[oiaohm]

Generally irrelevant in the desktop environment

The HDR and HiDPI issues with great percentage every year of laptops coming out with a HDR/HiDPI screen this is is is a growing issue for desktop environments. So that point is no irrelveant.
No upstream maintainer means if something changes in kernel that needs a X.org X11 server change for bare metal its not happening that could result in X11 server on bare metal not runable at all.

It won't be a wayland problem, but in wayland I have to use libinput if I want to use my touchpad and it has a shit configuration. What do you think they will no longer use their touchpad or will they use Xorg where it works well?

X.org X11 server has 3 drivers for touch pads one is libinput guess what libinput is the only one actively maintained. X11 configuration files allow X11 server todo somethings that you can do in libinput quirks but not all. There is very high odds that if wayland compositor is having touch pad issues that you will also have X11 server issues. The question is did you fix the X11 issues the right way if Wayland compositor input is not working most likely no you did not. Yes one of old drivers in X11 for touchpads Linux kernel developers want it stopped used so they can in fact remove security weakness from the Linux kernel.

The reality here touchpad problems going forwards even if X11 bare metal remains existing will be configure libinput right or have issues your choice.

[Charlie68]

The HDR and HiDPI issues with great percentage every year of laptops coming out with a HDR/HiDPI screen this is is is a growing issue for desktop environments. So that point is no irrelveant.
No upstream maintainer means if something changes in kernel that needs a X.org X11 server change for bare metal its not happening that could result in X11 server on bare metal not runable at all.

X.org X11 server has 3 drivers for touch pads one is libinput guess what libinput is the only one actively maintained. X11 configuration files allow X11 server todo somethings that you can do in libinput quirks but not all. There is very high odds that if wayland compositor is having touch pad issues that you will also have X11 server issues. The question is did you fix the X11 issues the right way if Wayland compositor input is not working most likely no you did not. Yes one of old drivers in X11 for touchpads Linux kernel developers want it stopped used so they can in fact remove security weakness from the Linux kernel.

The reality here touchpad problems going forwards even if X11 bare metal remains existing will be configure libinput right or have issues your choice.

You still don't want to understand, do you think that the average user might be interested in knowing technically how the touchpad is managed? Or do you think he just wants something that works well? libinput sucks on both Xorg and Wayland, but on Xorg you can use synaptics which works well, on Wayland it doesn't. I tried to ask if there were alternatives, but at the moment it seems not.
And if to push Wayland at all costs, you never have to mention the problems, this is a problem.
To say there are still problems to solve is not a crusade against Wayland!

[oiaohm]

You still don't want to understand, do you think that the average user might be interested in knowing technically how the touchpad is managed? Or do you think he just wants something that works well? libinput sucks on both Xorg and Wayland, but on Xorg you can use synaptics which works well, on Wayland it doesn't.!

The synaptics x.org driver is no longer has a maintainer and has not for 6 years now. It gets worse synaptics driver depends on a syscall the Linux kernel developers wish to remove due to having to allow a buffer overflow. Yes synaptics driver on freebsd has the same problem and freebsd developers want to kill that as well. So some point in the future the synaptics driver is going to stop working after a kernel update with a security update and a CVE number attached.

The average user does not need the problem lied to them. The issue with wayland compositor will be libinput. You average user for future proof touch input need libinput to work. Synaptics is nothing more than a breaking stop gap that in some point in future is going to stop working.

Blaming wayland for this hides from the average user how much trouble they are really in. Libinput not working right is not just a Wayland compositor problem its also a X.org bare metal problem that is dangerous to ignore as at some point in the future there will not be a work around on bare metal X11 server.

[Charlie68]

Well I don't think anyone is actively working on xf86-input-evdev and xf86-input-synaptics anymore. I am not sure about what other distributions are doing, but libinput (xf86-input-libinput) is what you might be encountering on X too. I know I have been using libinput with X for years. If synaptics works for you on X, that is great, but going forward, it probably will not support newer stuff, and it is probable that old bugs will not get fixed in it. (and it is not available with wayland compositors) So what oiaohm means is that libinput is supposed to be *the* input handler going forward, and thus where the work is required. Ideally it should 'just work' and not require fiddling (libpinput has a quirks database for handling problems), but it may be that wayland compositors will have to develop some gui means of tuning... certainly no one is expecting users to deal with a low level libinput interface. But these things require time, especially with all the other stuff going on in this transition phase.

I am not a developer, but I wonder how you can think that in an operating system a user cannot have full control of a device like the touchpad! I do not ask for the moon, I ask that surfing the net do not open dozens of tabs in my browser accidentally, for example.
I am for technological progress, I am not for staying on Xorg, but I will necessarily stay on the notebook until the problem is solved.

[Charlie68]

The synaptics x.org driver is no longer has a maintainer and has not for 6 years now. It gets worse synaptics driver depends on a syscall the Linux kernel developers wish to remove due to having to allow a buffer overflow. Yes synaptics driver on freebsd has the same problem and freebsd developers want to kill that as well. So some point in the future the synaptics driver is going to stop working after a kernel update with a security update and a CVE number attached.

The average user does not need the problem lied to them. The issue with wayland compositor will be libinput. You average user for future proof touch input need libinput to work. Synaptics is nothing more than a breaking stop gap that in some point in future is going to stop working.

Blaming wayland for this hides from the average user how much trouble they are really in. Libinput not working right is not just a Wayland compositor problem its also a X.org bare metal problem that is dangerous to ignore as at some point in the future there will not be a work around on bare metal X11 server.

If what works well is no longer maintained and what works poorly is maintained, we have a problem!
I am not blaming wayland for this, only those who have the holy war of wayland vs xorg in their head can think so. I was referring only to the user experience on wayland.

[oiaohm]

I am not a developer, but I wonder how you can think that in an operating system a user cannot have full control of a device like the touchpad! I do not ask for the moon, I ask that surfing the net do not open dozens of tabs in my browser accidentally, for example.
I am for technological progress, I am not for staying on Xorg, but I will necessarily stay on the notebook until the problem is solved.

The reality is there have been 2 different kernel ABI/API for touchpads and 3 drivers. evdev and libinput use the same interfaces with libinput using the most features. Synaptics driver uses a different kernel interface that turns out not be be sanely designed.

libinput using quirks do you have quite a bit of control over touchpad in fact the libinput quirks gives you more control to correct problems than the synaptics driver gives. This of course means if libinput wrong the result can be massively wrong way more than the issues synaptics driver will give because libinput does give you more control.

Yes using the synaptics driver is not really giving you full control over the device either.

Sometimes it pays to be careful what you ask for. People asked for more control than synaptics to the development making libinput and he gave exactly that.

[Charlie68]

The reality is there have been 2 different kernel ABI/API for touchpads and 3 drivers. evdev and libinput use the same interfaces with libinput using the most features. Synaptics driver uses a different kernel interface that turns out not be be sanely designed.

libinput using quirks do you have quite a bit of control over touchpad in fact the libinput quirks gives you more control to correct problems than the synaptics driver gives. This of course means if libinput wrong the result can be massively wrong way more than the issues synaptics driver will give because libinput does give you more control.

Yes using the synaptics driver is not really giving you full control over the device either.

Sometimes it pays to be careful what you ask for. People asked for more control than synaptics to the development making libinput and he gave exactly that.

Since you are so convinced, good luck, but I just point out that GUIs were born many years ago to make life easier for people. But that's okay ... when synaptics is no longer supported or when libinput is usable even by us humble users, I will change.

[oiaohm]

Since you are so convinced, good luck, but I just point out that GUIs were born many years ago to make life easier for people. But that's okay ... when synaptics is no longer supported or when libinput is usable even by us humble users, I will change.

You did not get what I meant by being careful what you ask for.
1) People ask for more control over a device this results in coding the GUI to give that more control is now more complex to make because you have more controls.
2) Working out where you should store all those extra options is another level of complexity this has changed 3 times in libinput history.
3) libinput is under active development so new features are being added.

Humble users like you need to be aware that synaptics
1) Has decent GUIs now because its development is dead and is really feature poor but when synaptics was under active development it was quite common to have no GUI like libinput now.
2) That at some point synaptics will no longer be usable. That will either because we move to wayland or the Linux/BSD kernel kill synaptics interface. So synaptics on borrowed time.

Maybe you want to be involved in the libinput process talking about what control features you want exposed and where. Maybe you want to do a quirk file for you device and submit it so out the box works decently with libinput. Remember the developer of libinput cannot own every version of a touch pad how can the libinput developer know that your model touchpad is problem if you don't report it.

Like it or not this libinput problem is not a wayland only problem. libinput problems is down road for the X11 server on bare metal for all those still using synaptics as well if X11 server on bare metal remains in use long enough. The work around of synaptics driver with x.org on bare metal is not a forever solution fixing libinput so your touchpad works right is the forever solution.