More KDE Plasma Wayland Fixes Land, Continued Improvements For Plasma 6

[schmidtbag]

If Wayland still needs so many fixes and after 20 years many users still prefer X11, can we call it a failure by design?

How did MS Windows and Apple manage to modernise there display server without the user noticing anything? Why doesn't GNU/Linux just use Android's display server? It seems to be working fine everywhere.

A few comments:
1. As has already been pointed out, KDE was already in not the best of shape when Wayland was being implemented. Of course Wayland wouldn't be stable if X11 wasn't either. That being said:
2. As far as I understand, unlike Windows or Mac OS, KDE doesn't have a constant cash flow. Not only has it been rather limited in resources, but it's often not the default choice of any popular distro. Meanwhile, ever notice how dramatically KDE has been improving ever since Valve got involved? Really shows how much of a difference it makes when you've got corporate backing.
3. I got the impression things like WDDM and Quartz were gradual evolutions; I'm not sure they ever had a complete breakage in functionality in the way Wayland did. In other words: the upgrades Windows and Mac underwent were more like swapping out a gasoline engine to a diesel engine - perhaps not a simple or quick change, but functionally not all that different. Meanwhile going from X11 to Wayland would be like swapping gasoline to electric - simple in principle, but the challenge is how they're so fundamentally different.
4. Android may be operated through a Linux host but I don't think Android itself is all that Linux compatible. To my understanding (and perhaps I'm wrong), Google didn't even use it themselves for ChromeOS, which is a lot closer to actual Linux.
5. Wayland hasn't been around for 20 years; I would say it wasn't really adopted until about 10 years ago. So, beyond the past decade, people preferred X11 because it was the only real option. Otherwise, you'd have to go back 30 years.
6. I know this is just anecdotal and should just be taken with a grain of salt: I've been using KDE+Wayland for years. I've had a pretty rock solid experience for almost 2 years now. Seems to me Wayland breaks with more complex configurations, or with oddly specific scenarios. With a single 1080p IPS display, Intel GPU, and nothing run in WINE, I've had a rather bulletproof experience.

[skeevy420]

Just last week, Ubuntu pushed an update to linux-firmware package that prevented my computer from booting. It took a while to find the problem that amdgpu firmware was not working with my RX 7900 XT. I just booted to recovery mode , switched to X11 and reverted the package. Actually, I also put a hold on that package now. But I didn't come here ranting about Plasma and Wayland and AMD and the weather. Everything is working again and I am back on Plasma and Wayland.

Well, you're acting like the past two years on KDE Wayland have been a perfect experience and it hasn't. I've used KDE for at least 13 years, have tried KDE Wayland sessions for over 10 years, used KDE Wayland on and off as my primary environment for the past four years, and only in the past half year has their Wayland session been something that I could use full time. I haven't switched to X.org since February. Even now, depending on what programs you use, you still have to do workarounds and, in my case, they're all program-specific Wayland issues or Wayland Protocol issues like HDR support; nothing that's actually specific to KDE itself.

That's not me trying to rant or complain about any of that, it's just how it is, or rather, how it's been for me. Maybe you've had a better experience than me due to the programs you use and workflow you have, but my experience wasn't the greatest until very recently.

I have to ask: How is Ubuntu messing up a firmware update supposed to be a KDE Wayland problem? Reading between the lines, that it was the firmware update that made a Wayland session not work? Seems like Ubuntu has poor update testing...

[mrg666]

Well, you're acting like the past two years on KDE Wayland have been a perfect experience and it hasn't. I've used KDE for at least 13 years, have tried KDE Wayland sessions for over 10 years, used KDE Wayland on and off as my primary environment for the past four years, and only in the past half year has their Wayland session been something that I could use full time. I haven't switched to X.org since February. Even now, depending on what programs you use, you still have to do workarounds and, in my case, they're all program-specific Wayland issues or Wayland Protocol issues like HDR support; nothing that's actually specific to KDE itself.

That's not me trying to rant or complain about any of that, it's just how it is, or rather, how it's been for me. Maybe you've had a better experience than me due to the programs you use and workflow you have, but my experience wasn't the greatest until very recently.

I have to ask: How is Ubuntu messing up a firmware update supposed to be a KDE Wayland problem? Reading between the lines, that it was the firmware update that made a Wayland session not work? Seems like Ubuntu has poor update testing...

Workarounds are necessary here and there on all computer systems. Especially, when you are using a free operating system, you don't have the right to rant. Either you fix it, find the workaround, or pay for something hoping it does not come with problems. Of course KDE is not perfect, nothing is, were you expecting so? What makes you think you will get perfection for free? Sorry I don't feel anything for your problems. I fixed mine and moved on. If you found a solution, post, otherwise carry your whining to anywhere you pay for. KDE works and I have been using it for decades too.

Did you see how I did in the post you quoted. Described to problem, warned the others, and gave the solution.

[fitzie]

Someone please check my python:

weight = float(input('How much does Wayland weigh?'))

if weight == duck:

print('Wayland is a witch, burn it.')

else:

print('Not sure if witch - throw Wayland in water to see if floats or drowns.')

print('Learn to swim, Wayland.')

IndentationError: unexpected indent

[caligula]

Plasma and Wayland and the same sentence...

Yes, tons of crash fixes for Plasma on Wayland. Totally unexpected.

[caligula]

In my personal usage, the only bug that annoys me in KDE+Wayland is a memory leak in the plasmashell process, related to Klipper. If it is configured to store more than 10 or 20 entries, it makes plasmashell to balloon until all your RAM is filled, freezing the system

Well, if you bought enough RAM and used ZRAM with a tight compressor setting, you might be able to use the system without freezes until the next Plasma update with tons of Wayland fixes.

[M@GOid]

Well, if you bought enough RAM and used ZRAM with a tight compressor setting, you might be able to use the system without freezes until the next Plasma update with tons of Wayland fixes.

I just kill the plasmashell process once or twice a day, no need to restart the system nor the applications. KDE then restarts it in a more palatable 180MB form instead of 12GB.

[Eumaios]

It's always a bit funny to see how people interpret normal code maintenance as evidence of critical bugginess. If I was writing a blog post of the fixes applied to software by Apple, Google, or Microsoft every week, it would be 100 times longer than this blog post. How do I know? I used to be an iOS build & integration engineer at Apple and got to see for myself just how many code fixes are required *daily* to keep everything working while stuff is being changed to support new features and UI changes. There's a reason these companies employ thousands of engineers.

The fact that we're making regular fixes to buggy code is a good thing, not a bad thing. The alternative isn't "software so good that it requires no bug fixes" but rather "software that bit-rots over time and stops working due to lack of maintenance".

I wish I could give Nate's comment 100 likes!

[geearf]

I wish I would switch to Wayland, but I enjoy session restore too much...

[Democrab]

If Wayland still needs so many fixes and after 20 years many users still prefer X11, can we call it a failure by design?

How did MS Windows and Apple manage to modernise there display server without the user noticing anything? Why doesn't GNU/Linux just use Android's display server? It seems to be working fine everywhere.

A) X11 still was getting many fixes very late into its life span. Probably still would if the developers were still actively working on it too.

B) Windows didn't modernise their display server without the users noticing anything. What do you think all the kerfuffle surrounding Windows Aero was during the time period when Vista was the newest Windows? Ubiquitous and crappy IGPUs couldn't properly run it, nVidia's GPU driver was insanely buggy and regularly caused BSODs for over a year, stuttering and lag problems even on high-end systems, etc. I also still regularly run into issues with my Triplehead setup under Windows whereas on Linux it's a much easier experience to set up.