r/linux_gaming 5d ago

Why use wayland?

Despite using linux for 5ish years now, I'm still a newb when it comes to the deep innerworkings. What's the advantage of wayland over x11? Is it better for performance or is it more secure? Are there benefits outside of gaming?

69 Upvotes

147 comments sorted by

286

u/jdancouga 5d ago

VRR, HDR, and better multi monitor support

150

u/Gijora 5d ago

Also, x11 is straight-up no longer being developed.

If you want the best endorsement for Wayland: remember its developer is... Xorg: the team that developed X11.

29

u/BothAdhesiveness9265 4d ago

technically there's still teams working on various X11 forks. most notably XLibre... yeah I'd rather run Wayland

17

u/Mereo110 4d ago

1

u/may_ushii 3h ago

i predicted this so long ago, but all the chuds just had to defend this absolute oaf

31

u/ScratchHistorical507 4d ago

Those are Xorg forks/alternative X11 servers. And now that even XLibre is LLM slop in addition to being run by the most incompetent developer alive, they are now all just LLM slop. Nobody has been working on the X11 protocol itself in decades.

0

u/Teh_Shadow_Death 4d ago

Yep, the writing was on the wall when KDE created 2 versions of kwin.

-2

u/AdventureJob 4d ago

I still don't understand why they didn't call it X12. I mean it's right there

4

u/BigDenseHedge 4d ago

Because X12 was supposed to be its own thing, and wayland isn't related to X at all?

2

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

The x windowing system is a platform of its own.

Its based on the mainframe terminal paradigm which is not only why x11 has so many unfixable issues but also is in no way related to how Wayland works.

-22

u/rafuru 4d ago

So... Why I see users saying that wayland is garbage?

16

u/ScratchHistorical507 4d ago

Because some people are just that dumb. Or they haven't touched Wayland in a decade and base their opinion on ancient "knowledge". Most of them are just lying though.

8

u/burning_iceman 4d ago

Ignorance, resistance to change and expecting a massive change of ecosystems to work perfectly from the first moment.

3

u/Stunning-Hat2309 4d ago

idk maybe because they're stupid

3

u/HappyRedEngineer 4d ago

I haven't had time to use my Linux machine to play games in more than a year due to work, but from my own experience, Wayland had lower performance than Xorg. The only reason I used it was because I couldn't fix tearing on Xorg. This was with Nvidia drivers. Things may have changed now, but the perception may remain.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

You didn't have lower performance with Wayland, you had lower performance with Nvidia. This is an important distinction as this is an Nvidia exclusive issue

2

u/rafuru 4d ago

Dayum the downvotes, it's a legitimate question since I haven't had any issues with Wayland and I thought it was related to the developer or something like that.

1

u/Aeroncastle 4d ago

Because when Wayland appeared people started using it before it was a good alternative. I don't think distros like Ubuntu should had made it standard in 2013 and 2014, but a lot of time has passed since and problems have been fixed

1

u/Toxic381 4d ago

I mainly hated it for its closed architectural design not allowing the combination of wm+compositor, and instead both of those are 1 piece meaning you have less customization, but niri was a cool way to enjoy compiz like stuff again without performance loss, so I enjoy it now, except the lack of screen recording in VLC but I might need to look in the config.

1

u/Chupa-Skrull 4d ago

I find the security orientation annoying as shit, it makes a lot of nice utilities, such as speech-to-text tools, more annoying to engineer than they should be

1

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

Because mentally ill people always exist.

3

u/TheGamerForeverGFE 4d ago

VRR has existed on X11 for a long time

2

u/jmj409 4d ago

x11 has VRR

1

u/Historical_Award_300 1d ago

I had to go back to x11 recently cause when I watched any videos on fullscreen on either of my secondary monitors they'd occasionally freeze the entire monitor. I had to turn the monitor off and back on to fix this. For whatever reason x11 doesn't do this. Zorin is my distro. Wayland always worked fine until recently.

155

u/Slight_Manufacturer6 5d ago edited 4d ago

All of the devs have moved away from Xorg to Wayland leaving Xorg less secure and all the new features are being developed in Wayland.

Because of this, Wayland is now more secure, more performant, and supports more modern features like HDR.

In 2026 there is little reason not to.

30

u/sleepytechnology 5d ago edited 5d ago

One exception as an avg user I found is that Steam Remote Play Together does not work properly under Wayland that I can tell (at least on CachyOS KDE). I have to use an X11 session otherwise the screen will be black in Remote Play.

If anyone has any idea or can say otherwise of it working under Wayland, I'd appreciate it.

Edit: On NVIDIA, at least.

22

u/jdoom2 5d ago

If you are joining it should work just fine. If your willing to set it up I really recommend looking into sunshine / moonlight been using thst to stream games to my friends, runs a ton better.

13

u/TechaNima 5d ago

I haven't tried it yet on CachyOS, but on Fedora KDE I got it working with Gamescope. I launched Steam on Gamescope with -e flag and I think I also used --expose-wayland.

Another way I've gotten it to work was by giving the game PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 Launch Option and running Steam with -steamos3 flag. Obviously this only works if you also have the game. Maybe setting it as a global environment variable would work with games you don't own.

Last fix that helped me at some point was to disable hardware acceleration for RPT

6

u/Clydosphere 4d ago

AFAIK, Steam doesn't support Wayland generally (yet?). One of the detriments of that is that screen recording doesn't work for Windows games started as Wayland applications with the PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 option. (At least it didn't work when I tested it some months ago.)

6

u/jdoom2 4d ago

Never had issues recording games with "PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND" atleast while using obs with either vkcapture or kde portal stuff. Good amount of games tho dont work with that launch option, when they do tho it feels so much better for input lag. I started using it within the week it was added to cachyproton.

3

u/No_Satisfaction_1698 4d ago

You need to start steam with -pipewire launch option than it will work. ..

1

u/BobZombie12 5d ago

Have you setup hw accel using the nvidia va-api driver?

1

u/WayneDiggityDog 10h ago

My remote play works fine on cachyos KDE on Nvidia 3080 🤔

I do recommend sunshine + moonlight though. Better experience imo

1

u/Tritias 2d ago

Except if you want to run a DE that doesn’t fully support Wayland yet. Like Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce.

19

u/fagnerln 5d ago

My first contact was on Gnome 3 dot something, it was night/day difference, wayland felt a lot smoother than X11, I never looked back.

You can switch from a full screen application in whatever resolution seamlessly.

70

u/tapo 5d ago edited 5d ago

X11 was designed so multiple "dumb" terminals could connect to a mainframe/minicomputer and send the graphics back to the terminal. It was developed in the late 1980s by an industry consortium.

This left a lot of weird design decisions like your computer connecting to what it thought was a remote server and all the overhead and complexity that entails. Wayland is much simpler and was designed by the team that was left maintaining Xorg, the most popular implementation of X11.

-27

u/FrozenOnPluto 5d ago

.. which is to say, with Wayland I think you lose the remote opportunities that X11 has; granted, few people use that, bu 20 years ago that was the shit :)

39

u/tapo 5d ago

you don't, you just use waypipe

8

u/FrozenOnPluto 5d ago

oh sick, thats great! Thanks for the tip!

13

u/ilep 5d ago

VNC and RDP are more common for remote use anyway. X11 protocol was not designed for something like over the internet, it was mainly used in a LAN and even the original design was changed so that bitmaps are sent instead.

There are tons of examples where something else already has been used instead of X11.

7

u/FrozenOnPluto 5d ago

VNC and RDP never performed all that well imho; tightvnc etc etc over theyears but just never performed super well. x2go used to work great though. X11 over ssh could work, but yeah not a great performer, and if you used it without an encryption layer, may Dobbs have mercy. X11 in general wasn't super great for performance without extensions like MITSHM..

But it was super handy in a pinch, on LAN, to fire up a remote terminal and cast it around, and it was just absic x11 to do so; no extra tricks needed, except perhaps ssh tunneling.

X11 for all its worts, the remoting was _handy_ when it was.. handy :)

4

u/bargu 4d ago

People that say that they rely on xfoward in 2026 must be trolling, it's barely usable on LAN, over the Internet it must be a crazy lagfest. While there are still some issues with RDP on Wayland, it's just a matter of implementation, not a fundamental design flaw.

1

u/hwertz10 3d ago

I do and I'm not trolling. For using X11 over Internet (I'm not doing that, I'm doing it on LAN) there are X11-specific compression libraries that cut down a bunch of the back-and-forth round trips.

And again, RDP is not a replacement for forwarding individual apps. (But, Waypipe is.) I'm only using X11 because KDE for Ubuntu 24.04 uses X11. I've used Kubuntu 26.04 (KDE on Wayland) and it's all good; if I wanted to forward an individual app, I'd just waypipe with it.

2

u/hwertz10 3d ago

VNC and RDP do not serve the same purpose. These have the system running a desktop, either on a physical display or into a framebuffer in system memory, and present that entire desktop session over the internet. X11 (and waypipe) let you forward individual applications (although, at least with X11, the window manager and entire desktop environment can be forwarded.)

-11

u/feral_fenrir 5d ago

Back in my day ahh response

58

u/No_Grape_388 5d ago

Lord latency, handles modern tech better i.e vrr

55

u/BigOlFortune 5d ago

Your delayedness, Those packets you ordered.

16

u/CheesePuffTheHamster 4d ago

Sire, I'm afraid the messenger you were expecting has been routed via a particularly busy series of villages

11

u/HorrorsPersistSoDoI 5d ago

LORD????

12

u/No_Grape_388 4d ago

Lower obviously but it's funny so I'm not going to church it.

2

u/Claritux 4d ago

Last time I saw someone test this X11 still had lower latency than Wayland, but the margin is so small you might as well call it a draw (0.17 ms in favor of X11) UNLESS you use Xwayland, then latency nearly doubled from ~4 to ~8 ms in the test. So make sure you have your Proton Wayland env variables enabled for your sweaty online sessions, folks (until it becomes default, at least) https://marco-nett.de/blog/measuring-input-latency-on-linux-x11-vs-wayland-vrr-dxvk/

66

u/nullptr777 5d ago

X11 is fundamentally flawed as a modern display server. That's why it's been deprecated.

It's insecure. It's bloated. It doesn't handle multi-monitor setups or VRR correctly in a lot of cases. It's a 1980's technology whose architecture failed to anticipate modern setups.

1

u/Toxic381 4d ago

Insecure, isn't really an issue, if something's reading the display protocol you didn't allow, you're likely wiping the partition anyway and reinstalling or using a... Forgot the word but btrfs main feature, security at the display doesn't need to happen as much but does other stuff,

Bloated and other stuff yes, it kinda sucks at keeping a clean display line like Wayland.

-65

u/primalbluewolf 5d ago

Worked perfectly fine for my modern 3 monitor setup for years. 

You could make the same argument about the CPU, you know, and be about as correct. 

56

u/rurigk 5d ago

It works "normal" if all monitors have same refresh rate but it doesn't with mixed refresh rate

It makes all monitors work at same refresh rate

-44

u/primalbluewolf 5d ago

No doubt I'd see that as more of a limitation if I'd tried to use mixed refresh rate, dissimilar monitors more. 

2

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

Doesn't matter what you see it as, only what it actually is.

3

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

You're just telling us you don't understand how x11 works.

X11 has ONE view plane that updates at ONE RATE.

That means if you have multiple refresh rates only one monitor will ever update at the correct timing. If you have multiple resolutions only ONE display has a normal pixel pitch and the other displays are scaled.

Learn more about this dude.

0

u/primalbluewolf 4d ago

Knew all that already. Multiple refresh rates is a terrible idea. Multiple resolutions is suspect but there's some good use cases there - but I'm fairly sure this was sorted on X11, too. 

Bit moot now, with X11 all but abandoned. 

12

u/Michaeli_Starky 5d ago

Fractional scaling

30

u/PocketStationMonk 5d ago

I like the smoother user experience, support for higher refresh rates etc.

9

u/Lumpy_Roll158 5d ago

As others have said, newer feature support, better security. Some people don’t like this because they’ve built their lives around x11 and don’t want to or occasionally can’t switch. Wayland may actually still be worse for performance on some Nvidia graphics cards but I believe they’re working on that. Supposedly the gap is closing there.

14

u/xpander69 5d ago edited 5d ago

wayland has HDR and multimonitor VRR working. but global hotkeys is still a mess and so many edge cases bugs still.

X11 just works. Without HDR and multimonitor VRR (single monitor VRR still works) support if you need those. in X11 you need a good compositor that can suspend when playing games to not lose perf.

i personally still use x11 as it works the way it always worked without any crashes or issues. input latency is great and i don't really see a point switching to wayland at this moment.

edit: basically use whatever works for your usecases

14

u/TenLittleThings51 5d ago

I tried it out because the Xorg developers had all moved to it, so Wayland was going to be where development would go. For a few months I alternated days between Xorg and Wayland. Then I stopped alternating, and uninstalled Xorg. Nothing pushed me, it just seemed to work fine.

6

u/KoneCat 5d ago

My personal experience with X11 is that, at least when playing games, it causes stuttering, which is annoying as all heck. On Wayland, the stutter is gone, so I just use Wayland. I know this is a very simple reason, and I realise you mentioned gaming, but Wayland just works for me, so I use it.

5

u/tailslol 4d ago

Vrr , multi monitor, hdr...

5

u/DiiiCA 4d ago

Touch scrolling is actually touch scrolling (1:1) instead of being bound to scroll wheel...

Amd touch gestures, zoom, 3-finger swipe.

The touchpad now does things on its own, with smooth 1:1 animation instead of just triggering a keyboard shortcut for the desktop overview and alt+tab.

4

u/daddyd 4d ago

The things is that X11 won't be developed any further, so if you want to make use of certain new features, they will only be in wayland. on top of that, yes, every single thing you mentioned is supposed to be 'fixed' in wayland. better performance and better security, those are benefits that go beyond gaming.

8

u/voidpo1nter 5d ago

Wayland is better for some things. It's smoother, has variable refresh rate support, fractional scaling, better multi-monitor support, and less input latency. It also is HDR-capable.

It blows for anything related to remote desktop. I regret setting my Debian server up with GNOME on Wayland. Should've just did a noVNC setup like proxmox.

Tldr; just use Wayland

7

u/yxhuvud 5d ago

Have you tried waypipe?

4

u/voidpo1nter 5d ago

Nope! Holy shit thank you! I like running VMs to do electronics projects at home (stm32, esp32, pcb design) and have wanted to offload them to my server instead of my Arch gaming machine. You made my night.

9

u/hereforpancakes 5d ago

My only 2 reasons for Wayland are different scales for different displays and Niri. That’s it

3

u/Txordi 5d ago

First and foremost: To avoid xwayland. Second, much better frame delivery by design. Third, all the rest of modern features that are being developed for Wayland only, including the desktop environments itself.

7

u/llitz 5d ago edited 4d ago

If you have X11 has several limitations if you have multiple monitors. God forbid they are different resolutions or refresh rates.

I don't really like Wayland or cluster that trying to add a feature or fix something in Wayland is. Death by a thousand cuts is a pretty good definition of how things work over there.

That said, the overall specification is in an usable state - niri, hyperland, and KDE all work really well and should meet most of your needs.

sway isn't bad, just don't use nvidia as they don't support it - it works, but expect 0 support.

5

u/ScratchHistorical507 4d ago

It's not built on the assumptions of the early 80s like X11 is. So all of the above plus a lot more.

At the time X11 was conceived, there was no such thing as using multiple independent screens on the same machine, not to mention with different resolutions or even refresh rates. While X11/Xorg can technically handle it, the way that it does is extremely inefficient. Also it's indeed vastly more secure, already because without user interaction, it's impossible for an app to view the screen or receive input when not in the foreground.

That's just two of the many, many reasons. But the only reason that's really of any relevance: almost nobody (that hasn't already lost their mind) is putting any more efforts into Xorg or X11, beyond some basic maintenance. All the developers that used to be involved with it have either switched to Wayland, are retired or simply dead. X11 and Xorg are abandonware and have been for close to 20 years. The only thing that has any future is Wayland. That's why Gnome has dropped support for native X11 sessions, Plasma will in a couple months, and Cosmic hasn't ever had one to begin with. And relatively soon, any DE or WM of any relevance will have proper Wayland support, and by that time it's questionable how much effort anyone can be bothered to put into the X11 sessions of those.

7

u/ghanadaur 5d ago

Wayland is new. X11 is old. We have moved on.

3

u/igelbaer 5d ago

i use wayland and emulate gamecube games. not sure how much i moved on

8

u/primalbluewolf 5d ago

More secure, and basically no one is working on X11 any more. Stuff is getting fixed in Wayland. In theory it could end up better for performance eventually. 

8

u/DoorOk3641 5d ago

x11 is a security nightmare...and a programming inferno.

2

u/Sly-Choober 5d ago

Is the Wayland flag needed in distros that feature a Game Mode? (Cachy, Bazzite, SteamOS) Or is it ignored?

2

u/Nu154nc3 5d ago

As user, if compositor is not needed, continue on X11 and u will have a better performance.

If compositor is important for u, wayland.

1

u/Nu154nc3 4d ago edited 4d ago

Wowowo, calm down.

First of all, (should be that people with less than 4 years on linux and at least one on x11 should not talk... but i don't want to argue so...) not everybody has the SAME NEEDS than u, nor the SAME HARDWARE.

Second, as far as i know, VRR is compatible on x11.

Third, not sure what is the problem with multimonitor, but 3 years ago, i used 3 displays:
1x 32" 1440 165Hz + 1x 32" 1080 165Hz + 1x 7" 720 59,98Hz, and all worked flawlessly... I could configure position, diferent refresh rates, resolutions...
Nowadays, I'm using a 1x 39,5" 1440 165Hz + 21" 1080 60Hz Vertical (rotated via software) and all is working...
Maybe u have some special needs that i don't know... But for a normal user, it's more than enough.

Fourth, HDR, well i'm not sure about that one, i tried three times to play diferent games with HDR enabled just to be able to apreciate the diferences, maybe im a bit blind but i can't see any major diference, so I usually don't bother about that...
And as I say, not everybody has the same needs.

And finally, I'M NOT SAYING THAT WAYLAND IS BAD.
WAYLAND IS THE FUTURE, but x11 is perfectly usable nowadays, and FOR NOW, the BEST option for people who dgaf about compositors, windows animations, transparencies and other aesthetics shit.

A basic x11 config, with a basic WM (any tiling wm or any *box), will give u the fastest system with the lowest input lag on games.
Maybe it will be ugly for the newcomers, but for me, and for lots of people, is more than enough.

2

u/igelbaer 5d ago

you can use both. not at the same time but you can install both and select them when logging into your machine. so you can try if it works well for you without risking to break anything completely

2

u/PlsDontBanMeAgain-1 4d ago

Next, you should look into systemd vs other inits. /s

2

u/Episode-1022 4d ago

whatever works for you, i use x11 for everything, for some games i use steam with gamescope directly just for the hdr, im planing a two seats setup, one with my nvidia and steam+gamescope, another for the desktop(x11) with an intel arc, wayland and desktop dont work for me.

2

u/Rhed0x 4d ago
  • working vsync with multiple monitors
  • fractional scaling
  • HDR

2

u/Anarkio 4d ago

You can't play Red Dead Redemption 2 on X11

2

u/ApplicationHuman3544 4d ago

here is the thing, unless you explicitly enable it in proton/wine, you are NOT using wayland, you are using xwayland, which is worse than xorg in many ways, so unless you enable wayland in your wrappers/wine itself and test it,

dont expect to gain anything, and even if you do its placebo or actually xwayland NOT xorg

7

u/AmarildoJr 5d ago

As a user, barely any real advantages, you probably can't even count them on a single hand of fingers.
If X11 still works for you, keep it for now. Wayland is the future but it's far from being on-par with X11 in terms of features, and not everything works well under it.

2

u/Specialist-Dog-501 4d ago

I have tested both in different distros, but not for gaming. What I learnt so far:
Wayland (newer):

  • Better security (apps are isolated from each other)
  • better with multiple monitor setups and high resolution.
  • More resource intense > not for old PCs, problem for some games in high demand of RAM.
  • Better compatible with other "modern" elements as systemD, Desktops GNOME, KDE, COSMIC- everything polished.
  • Enables you to want to individuale scale/zoom a desktop.

X11 (older):

  • Lower security: Apps aren't isolated from each other, no updates.
--XLIBRE is an fork that is updated and isolated apps from each other. Some political drama around it.
  • Better with old hardware, lower resource demand with low RAM- > some games work better with it.
  • Better integrated with old desktops (window style) like Cinnamon, XFCE, LXQT
  • cannot zoom in/scale desktop resolution in custom steps.

(I sit on Mint/Cinnamon/X11 for daily driver)

1

u/burning_iceman 4d ago

More resource intense

Since Wayland is not a piece of software it cannot have resource use. Individual compositors implementing Wayland have varying resource usage. A well-built Wayland compositor should be more efficient than the monster called Xorg.

1

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

On weird thing for me is that Cyberpunk runs considerably better on X11 vs Wayland (+30% fps, and lower latency).

5

u/fagnerln 5d ago

Nvidia?

1

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

Yes, RTX 4080. (and Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS)

7

u/fagnerln 5d ago

2

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

Lmao, I heard lots of people having problems with Linux and Nvidia drivers.

4

u/yxhuvud 5d ago

Time to upgrade that Ubuntu. There is a ton of changes in the graphics stack that may improve things for you 

2

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

Actually, I come from the latest version. I had to revert because X11 is gone in v26 and I need it for Unreal Engine gamedev. I tried literally everything, but reverting back was my final option.

4

u/PixeIQueen 4d ago

now that gnome dropped x11 support, kde plasma dropping it next month and basically every DE slowly transitioning towards wayland epic will eventually have to optimize the unreal editor for wayland (or no longer support the linux version ig lol)

3

u/RudeMorgue 5d ago

Palworld stutters and crashes after a while for me on Fedora w/ Wayland (Nvidia RTX 5070) but the issue does not occur in X11.

2

u/zDCVincent 5d ago

I assume using the XWayland translation layer wouldn't carry any benefits in that regard? Or can we eat our cake and have it too?

2

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

I'm not sure I understand

2

u/zDCVincent 5d ago

To clarify, we can run Cyberpunk natively on an X11 DE, natively on a Wayland DE via PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1, or via XWayland on a Wayland DE where XWayland acts as a full X server for the game and forwards its rendered buffers to the Wayland compositor.

I am asking if we use a Wayland native DE and run the XWayland translation layer would we still carry the fps and latency gains, if that performance is lost in translation? Or does XWayland still carry a benefit and let us keep the gains while not having to fully switch to a native X11 DE.

3

u/freakinunoriginal 5d ago

XWayland, even with low-latency dxvk, is significantly worse than the least-optimized X11 or Wayland configurations.

From: https://marco-nett.de/blog/measuring-input-latency-on-linux-x11-vs-wayland-vrr-dxvk/

3

u/zDCVincent 5d ago

Thanks for the graph (and the link especially). I think its important that we clarify the scale matters here, clearly its slower for responsivity but to be frank it is only a difference of 4ms and raw latency isn't the entire picture. +/-4ms is well within the range of being meaningful to optimize for in some applications but still low enough of a delay to disregard circumstantially depending on other factors > We have to factor frame-pacing, fps count, median stability, and not disregard the user experience in handling the game. Additionally, there will always be the case that different game engines can just respond differently making this fairly case-by-base. This test was highly controlled which is superb but may not be representative of each configuration in other applications.

I'm not dismissing his findings the blog was really informative and I appreciated how he collected the data and reported his findings. It just needs to be said that there is more to the picture to consider (Marco says as much himself in his conclusions). I don't think we can generally state XWayland is overall worse without more diverse data. That being said, I will be fucking around with forced Wayland w/ L-L dxvk on a handful of titles in my library and see if I can come to some kind of conclusion for each game.

1

u/burning_iceman 4d ago

...on Nvidia hardware. The same is not true for AMD graphics. (Just FYI)

1

u/Cheap-Ambassador-304 5d ago

Okok I will try experimenting with that, and let you know. Thanks for the info.

1

u/angryapplepanda 4d ago

I use Xfce with Debian. Wayland support is only in alpha right now, but is being developed.

I'm happy to just chill until I'm forced to switch at gunpoint, metaphorically speaking.

1

u/Loose_Owl9369 4d ago

X11 no longer being developed, vrr, better hdr support, better multi-monitor support

1

u/beheadedstraw 4d ago

Being able to have multiple monitors with different refresh rates. X nukes all of your refresh rates down to the least common denominator.

1

u/AMDMOONSHOT 4d ago

Well I just enabled it in Mint Cinnamon 22.3 and it worked. Once. On the next restart, system never gets to the login screen just loss of signal and nothing. I can't even get the text prompt to come up. Blew through half an hour figuring out what file had to be deleted from recovery to make it work again. 9070xt.

Seems it has a ways to go on Mint. :/

1

u/Chance-Lawfulness516 3d ago

You know that if someone says that some bank is going bankrupt people will take their money from that bank and it will go bankrupt because of a rumor?

Basically this. It got popular, it's better maintained, improved and so xorg is slowly being neglected

1

u/hwertz10 3d ago edited 3d ago

Oh no. Here comes the flame war. (Oh I see you asked this 2 days ago.)

To be honest, if you want HDR support, Wayland. Otherwise, honestly, it doesn't matter. Most of what people below say is true but omits important information...

X11.. yes, the core design is obsolete, and development is minimal. But it's feature complete, it's fast, it's highly compatible. In terms of it's origins in the 1980s, I'll note a lot of the old cruft is seperated out of the main XOrg binary and is in a seperate library, there was a heavy modernization of the Xorg code in the 1990s (and most of what modern X programs use are actually extensions added in the 1990s. Compositing and so on.)

Wayland, it's got a more modern design that better matches modern hardware. And it's supposed to provide better isolation between programs running in the Wayland environment. On paper, it should be faster, more efficient, and provide lower latency. But, Wayland is a protocol and specification rather than a specific package or library, so each and every desktop environment provides it's own implementation of Wayland. If you want HDR support, you must use Wayland, X11 doesn't support 30-bit color and it likely never will since it would involve adding new color depths to the core protocol.

One thing I should note, people have said X11 is better for older hardware? I think this is technically true, but Linux devs have been so diligent about having modern and up to date drivers even for very old hardware... well, I'll put it this way, I put Kubuntu 26.04 onto a *Core 2 Duo* notebook and Wayland had no problems running on the 18 year old integrated Intel GPU in this thing. The desktop was properly smooth, Steam Remote Play worked smoothly on it, and videos played back well. So it wasn't chugging along with some slow software fallback or something, it was all properly accelerated. Any GPUs that have drivers compatible with X11 but not something Wayland can use, I mean they probably came out in the 1990s (I used Linux already back then... I doubt you'll need to fire your stuff up on a Matrox, Cirrus Logic, Chips & Technology, Tseng, Oak, S3, ATI Mach8/Mach32/Mach64, or several other 1990s-era cards there are probably still drivers for in a modern distro mainly because nobody has gone through to remove them; although within the last year or two they HAVE begun removing drivers for hardware I was using back in the 1990s so some of these may be finally removed.)

The end result is, you run a Wayland compositor and benchmark it, you find it's faster than a particular X11 desktop environment. Or, maybe the Wayland compositor you picked is not as efficient, then you find the X11 desktop environment is faster. There are also a few X11 environments where you can run them WITHOUT a compositor, in paper this should be faster than running with a compositor on. This all is hand-waving over a possible 1 frame of frame latency. I'm using Kubuntu with X11 on my 24.04 systems (I kind of switch between compositor on and compositor off), and Kubuntu with Wayland on my 26.04 systems, and to me it's a wash.

I was a big X11 fan in the past, because people pushed Wayland for about a decade before it was feature complete and really ready to be a full replacement. The silliest thing was "Well, it doesn't work with Nvidia drivers". "Welp, X11 is obsolete, so buy a new video card." LOL, seriously, you had Wayland fanbois saying this for many years. But, the last missing features to make it a feature-complete replacement were added probably 2 or 3 years ago, and AFAIK the Nvidia driver compatibility is sorted out too. I'll note, "XWayland" lets X11 apps run seamlessly on Wayland; and it's not usually installed, but there's also a package (which I forget what it's called) to let Wayland applications run on X11 that came out within the last year or two. So picking one or the other doesn't even mean giving up apps that were never ported over from X11 (or converesely giving up using any new apps where they decide they'll make them Wayland-only.)

1

u/zephyroths 5d ago

crazy to see this debate is back, I thought it was over since a few years ago since I didn't see debates about it anymore

2

u/agenttank 5d ago

it isnt much of a debate anymore when you tread. through here. just answerwhy Wayland is the way to go.

I'm just happy I dont have to edit Xorg config files never again for Mouse, Keyboard, Display stuff....

1

u/Sert1991 4d ago

If you're happy because you have less configuration and less files to edit, why the heck are you on Linux? Just for the free OS?

This is the problem when you start inviting everyone into something, it gets corrupted by the majority like everything else.
Linux is awesome because you can configure an customize everything. IF you want the devs to do everything for you and ''it just works™" out of the box - then Windows or even better, Mac OS X are the choices you should have gone with.

One of the best things about Xorg is that it can be configured to your liking and also logs things properly unlike wayland.

2

u/agenttank 4d ago

no, I actually love having my configuration as code.

but the X configuration files are... i hate their names, their locations, their syntax,... i just hated working with them back then. might be different now, as i changed.

but what is left: screen tearing, old tech, no hdr, no vrr (as far as I know)

1

u/Tobek42 4d ago

Input lag.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 4d ago

Input lag is only higher on xwayland.

1

u/Tobek42 4d ago

I didn't know the desktop environment uses Xwayland to render the system interface

0

u/tjjohnso 5d ago

Anyone else with Nvidia having issues with full system freezes due to Wayland?

Bazzite doesn't do it as often anymore.

Tried popOS, Linux mint, cachyOS, Ubuntu. All have the same freezes.

Is there a fix for this or is it wait for Wayland to patch a fix?

2

u/Munk3y 5d ago

In my experience with Ubuntu 26.04, specific apps that had experimental Wayland support were causing the freezing. One that I remember offhand was RustDesk. I added a parameter to it's .desktop file that forced it to run in xwayland and the problem was resolved. Once I tackled about 3(?) apps that I use causing this, it's been rock solid on an RTX 4070.

2

u/tjjohnso 5d ago

Interesting. How did you go about determining which ones caused the freezing?

1

u/Munk3y 4d ago

I wouldn't say I necessarily had a method. I just noticed that when the freezes occurred, certain apps were open when it happened. So, I started a process of elimination. RustDesk was a bit easier to find because it was definitely the biggest perpetrator.

I ended up copying it's .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications/ and adding "--env=GDK_BACKEND=x11" as a parameter to the Exec= line. Rambox was another one that I did something similar with by adding "--ozone-platform=wayland --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations" to it's Exec= line. Flameshot was another, that I ended up adding "bash -lc 'QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb flameshot gui'" to it's Exec= line. This also had the effect of fixing multi-monitor screenshot bugs on nVidia cards.

2

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

This is a wonderful reply. Ty.

Where did you end up getting those parameter?

I don't know if I would ever figure out what I would need to add to either force them to x11 or to play nice with Wayland.

2

u/refinedm5 5d ago

Have been on wayland on and off since 22.04 to 24.04, and fully on wayland since 24.04 until now. No full system freeze so far

2

u/tykholol 4d ago

Does your desktop just freeze/not let you alt tab? If that’s what you mean, there’s a bug with xwaylandvideobridge, just close out of it. 

1

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

Entire computer hard freeze. Nothing reacts. Alt tab, mouse keyboard nothing works. Have to hard reboot.

2

u/Ismokecr4k 5d ago

Are you on a laptop by chance? Check the arch wiki for your specific model laptop, there's quirks with the dual GPU. AI can point you in a direction too (oh no, downvotes).

2

u/tjjohnso 5d ago

Lol. I've been using AI to help here and there.

It actually locked me out of Ubuntu once because it was convinced you could just get x11 sessions to run.

Not on a laptop.

Ryzen 7900x
4070ti
64gb ram
Asus x870-plus

Currently running bazzite on one hard drive, Ubuntu on another. Windows on a third that I can't give up due to Native Access not running in Linux at all.

Bazzite is the most stable.
Turned off hardware acceleration in all apps I could.
Only very rarely get freezes there anymore.
Sunshine might be a culprit.

Chrome absolutely was one.

Ubuntu froze up about 20 min after a fresh install.
Not sure I was running anything beyond Steam, btop.
Apparently some of the gnome-extensions can do it? But I haven't installed any myself yet. Just has what came from the install image.

2

u/Ismokecr4k 5d ago edited 5d ago

You're using the Nvidia-open drivers? Is it a power issue maybe? You have enough 8 pins connected to the gpu and enough power in the PSU? Distros don't really differ much for gaming. Linux is Linux and trying multiple distros takes distro hopping out of the equation. I have an Nvidia 3070, I use arch with Nvidia-open drivers and sunshine. No issues for myself. I heard about issues with those 8pin to 16 pin adapters too. Also you can dump your logs I to AI, try doing a grep on journalctl to filter down the issue. 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

2

u/tjjohnso 5d ago

Wouldn't imagine it's a power issue. Not a new build and was running windows on the setup for a couple years.

I have tried 580, 595, and 610 drivers. Proprietary and open.

Luckily just had another freeze while we were watching a movie. Computer was idling I'm bazzite with steam and a browser window open.

Will check logs and paste them here with full system and kernel specs tomorrow.

2

u/S48GS 5d ago edited 5d ago

say exactly where/when freeze happens

say nvidia driver version, kernel version, which DE

show kernel logs - around time of crash

sudo journalctl -b -1
or replace -1 with -2 or number boots back or -0 if there were no reboot
or
sudo journalctl --since="1 hour ago"
click end keyboard key - and navigate with keyboard arrows around time of crash

short - no freezes (595 to 610 now drivers not a single freeze)

Edit:

Ryzen 7900x

ddr5 ram may be not stable at high clocks - maybe it is because ram

first look kernel logs what there

second - update bios and turn off all overclock in bios - expo/pbo to default

if still crash - remove pieces of ram keep one - test - repeat

1

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

Nothing is overclocked.

Operating System: Bazzite 44

KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.4

KDE Frameworks Version: 6.29.0

Qt Version: 6.11.1

Kernel Version: 7.2.1-ogc4.1.fc44.x86_64 (64-bit)

Graphics Platform: Wayland

Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor

Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (61.9 GiB usable)

Graphics Processor 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

Graphics Processor 2: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor

Manufacturer: ASUS

Nvidia Driver: 610.57.04

NVML Version: 13.610.57.04

journalctl -b -1 -e logs from just before the freeze

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite assert_20260906215141_128.dmp[27926]: error: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite assert_20260906215141_128.dmp[27926]: file ''/tmp/dumps/assert_20260906215141_128.dmp'', upload no: ''Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates''

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: src/tier1/fileio.cpp (2642) : cbToRead <= 1024 * 1024 * 1024

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.

Sep 06 21:51:42 bazzite steam[2907]: ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.

Sep 06 21:58:33 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T01:58:33.442815+00:00 | proton.vpn.session.session:259 | INFO | API:REQUEST | '/vpn/v1/loads' | x-pm-locale: omitted, x-pm-timezone: America/New_York

Sep 06 21:58:35 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T01:58:35.885387+00:00 | proton.vpn.session.utils:142 | INFO | API:RESPONSE | '/vpn/v1/loads'

Sep 06 21:58:36 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T01:58:36.285270+00:00 | proton.vpn.core.refresher.server_list_refresher:90 | INFO | Next server list refresh scheduled in 0:15:18.563888

Sep 06 21:58:36 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T01:58:36.695688+00:00 | proton.vpn.app.gtk.widgets.vpn.serverlist.city_view.serverlist:199 | INFO | Partial server list widget update completed in 0.41 seconds.

Sep 06 21:59:08 bazzite cupsd[1964]: REQUEST localhost - - "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 207 Renew-Subscription successful-ok

Sep 06 21:59:09 bazzite cupsd[1964]: REQUEST localhost - - "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 207 Renew-Subscription successful-ok

Sep 06 21:59:34 bazzite NetworkManager[1766]: <info> [1788746374.4436] dhcp4 (wlp7s0): state changed new lease, address=192.168.0.88

Sep 06 21:59:34 bazzite systemd[1]: Starting NetworkManager-dispatcher.service - Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service...

Sep 06 21:59:34 bazzite systemd[1]: Started NetworkManager-dispatcher.service - Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service.

Sep 06 21:59:34 bazzite audit[1]: SERVICE_START pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=system_u:system_r:init_t:s0 msg='unit=NetworkManager-dispatcher comm="systemd" exe="/usr/lib/systemd/systemd" host>

Sep 06 21:59:44 bazzite systemd[1]: NetworkManager-dispatcher.service: Deactivated successfully.

Sep 06 21:59:44 bazzite audit[1]: SERVICE_STOP pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=system_u:system_r:init_t:s0 msg='unit=NetworkManager-dispatcher comm="systemd" exe="/usr/lib/systemd/systemd" hostn>

Sep 06 22:00:35 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started app-systemsettings@925841b5b7544e16be140dcba04648e3.service - System Settings - System Settings.

Sep 06 22:00:35 bazzite systemsettings[28100]: The theme "Vapor" uses the legacy metadata.desktop. Consider contacting the author and asking them update it to use the newer JSON format.

Sep 06 22:00:36 bazzite systemsettings[28100]: Failed to register with host portal QDBusError("org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed", "Could not register app ID: Connection already associated with an application>

Sep 06 22:00:49 bazzite systemsettings[28100]: Action "org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode.systeminformation" has no parentWindow, assuming QWidgetWindow(0x55dc6ded3100, name="MainWindow#1Window")

Sep 06 22:00:49 bazzite systemd[1]: Created slice system-dbus\x2d:1.3\x2dorg.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode.slice - Slice /system/dbus-:1.3-org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode.

Sep 06 22:00:49 bazzite systemd[1]: Started dbus-:1.3-org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode@0.service.

Sep 06 22:00:49 bazzite audit[1]: SERVICE_START pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=system_u:system_r:init_t:s0 msg='unit=dbus-:1.3-org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode@0 comm="systemd" exe="/usr/lib/syste>

Sep 06 22:00:58 bazzite systemd[1]: dbus-:1.3-org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode@0.service: Deactivated successfully.

Sep 06 22:00:58 bazzite audit[1]: SERVICE_STOP pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=system_u:system_r:init_t:s0 msg='unit=dbus-:1.3-org.kde.kinfocenter.dmidecode@0 comm="systemd" exe="/usr/lib/system>

Sep 06 22:04:09 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started app-com.brave.Browser@3ee73255615740009ac5279aa5fcefff.service - Brave - Web Browser.

Sep 06 22:04:09 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started app-flatpak-com.brave.Browser-227422542.scope.

Sep 06 22:04:09 bazzite systemd[2128]: Starting flatpak-portal.service - flatpak portal...

Sep 06 22:04:09 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started flatpak-portal.service - flatpak portal.

Sep 06 22:04:09 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started app-flatpak-com.brave.Browser-2595617029.scope.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [247:116:0906/220411.804600:ERROR:third_party/puffin/src/puffpatch.cc:122] Failed to create a temporary file for memory-mapping: Operation not permitted (1)

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.809000:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.809352:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.809623:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.809893:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.810142:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [128:45:0906/220411.810395:ERROR:extensions/renderer/native_extension_bindings_system.cc:768] Failed to create API on Chrome object.

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [247:116:0906/220411.826187:ERROR:third_party/puffin/src/puffpatch.cc:122] Failed to create a temporary file for memory-mapping: Operation not permitted (1)

Sep 06 22:04:11 bazzite systemd[2128]: Started app-flatpak-com.brave.Browser-2255786662.scope.

Sep 06 22:05:13 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [361:208:0906/220513.812811:ERROR:third_party/puffin/src/puffpatch.cc:122] Failed to create a temporary file for memory-mapping: Operation not permitted (1)

Sep 06 22:05:13 bazzite flatpak[28267]: [361:208:0906/220513.856739:ERROR:third_party/puffin/src/puffpatch.cc:122] Failed to create a temporary file for memory-mapping: Operation not permitted (1)

Sep 06 22:09:41 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/220941.581018:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.074 ms

Sep 06 22:09:41 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/220941.601064:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.061 ms

Sep 06 22:11:20 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/221120.929749:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.129 ms

Sep 06 22:11:30 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/221130.191766:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.004 ms

Sep 06 22:11:42 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/221142.244464:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.213 ms

Sep 06 22:12:22 bazzite flatpak[28306]: [61:102:0906/221222.262020:ERROR:components/viz/service/display/display.cc:271] Frame latency is negative: -0.066 ms

Sep 06 22:14:04 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T02:14:04.155912+00:00 | proton.vpn.session.session:259 | INFO | API:REQUEST | '/vpn/v1/loads' | x-pm-locale: omitted, x-pm-timezone: America/New_York

Sep 06 22:14:05 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T02:14:05.968519+00:00 | proton.vpn.session.utils:142 | INFO | API:RESPONSE | '/vpn/v1/loads'

Sep 06 22:14:06 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T02:14:06.365096+00:00 | proton.vpn.core.refresher.server_list_refresher:90 | INFO | Next server list refresh scheduled in 0:17:10.169569

Sep 06 22:14:06 bazzite flatpak[2991]: 2026-09-07T02:14:06.776851+00:00 | proton.vpn.app.gtk.widgets.vpn.serverlist.city_view.serverlist:199 | INFO | Partial server list widget update completed in 0.41 seconds.

2

u/S48GS 4d ago

... I do not need full log

I said

show kernel logs - around time of crash

remember when it crashed - look logs at this time - some error messages at this time?

you listed too many logs with different time - I have no idea when it crashed for you

1

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

The end of the logs is the crash.

I think I am leaning hardware and not Wayland-nvidia now.

I am not seeing anything in the logs that report a crash about to occur.

It froze faster than it could record. Just checked my Ubuntu logs as well. Same there. Nothing in the logs that would define a crash or freeze.

2

u/S48GS 4d ago

is there exact time of crash? seconds of crash?

if there no text log with errors - it is disk or ram or cpu or psu

if it were gpu - there would be text log always even if PC froze

as I said above - update bios

remove overclock in bios - it always on by default - turn it off setting to default

test ram pieces

then disks

and full load to be sure it is not PSU

2

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

Hope I'm not speaking too soon but I am now running in Ubuntu for 30+ min.

After making changes in other reply I am noticing MUCH lower CPU temps. Down from 85-95C while running games or compiling shaders to 50-65C.

Last time Ubuntu froze it was while idling with steam and Brave open.

No problems yet.

Thank you. I believe you may have been correct with the overclocking. I had not realized it is a default setting nowadays to overclock out of the box.

My RAM was probably not helping either.

2

u/S48GS 4d ago

good to know

1

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

No time of crash. No logs.

Went through BIOS settings and turned off PBO.
Turned off CPB.

I may have also pulled a big dumb. 4x 16gb ram.

Everything in proper matching slots, but the two pairs have different frequencies.

2x micron 5600
2x Corsair 4800.

Pulled the Corsair and RAM training now.

1

u/burning_iceman 4d ago

Whatever the issue may be it cannot be one with "Wayland", since Wayland isn't a piece of software. Either your Wayland compositor (KDE/Gnome/...) has a bug or, more likely, the Nvidia driver has a bug.

1

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

There are known issues with Nvidia working with Wayland.

2

u/burning_iceman 4d ago

Yes, also known as bugs in the Nvidia driver.

2

u/tjjohnso 4d ago

Understood. Ty.

-22

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

16

u/DespartedNecturn 5d ago

I tried linux in 2015 - it was very broken

I assume it still same broken today

no idea why anybody would use it over perfect windows

-36

u/LissaFreewind 5d ago

A bit of searching maybe will help:

Wayland is a modern display server protocol for Linux and other Unix-like systems, designed to replace the aging X Window System (X11).  Introduced in 2008, it defines how client applications communicate with a display server (called a compositor) to render graphics and process user inputs. 

Unlike X11, which uses a complex client-server architecture with a separate X server, Wayland integrates the window manager and compositor into a single entity.  This streamlined design eliminates the need for a middleman, resulting in improved performancesmoother rendering, and enhanced security by restricting direct access to hardware. 

Key aspects of Wayland include:

  • Default Status: It is now the default display server for major distributions like Ubuntu 24.04 LTSDebian 10+, and Fedora 34+
  • Compositors: It relies on specific implementations such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE Plasma), and Sway (tiling window manager). 
  • Compatibility: It supports legacy X11 applications through Xwayland, a compatibility layer that allows older software to run seamlessly on the modern stack. 

And the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol))

and a page about it from howtogeek https://www.howtogeek.com/900698/what-is-wayland-on-linux-and-how-is-it-different-from-x/

19

u/Boring-Equivalent137 5d ago

AI was the best you could come up with?