Wayland in Buster

[MadmanRB]

Indeed, it would be insane not to enable a x session

[dreamer]

Debian should consider what Ubuntu did, make an X fallback

Please read my last post in this thread.

The default is usually considered the stable option. Ubuntu 20.04 won't ship Wayland as default because of that. I think Wayland will be a mess. The smartphone desktop is here. I don't know how Chrome OS locks down the system, but it's a consumer platform. Linux is (still) a geek platform so I don't see the point of locking it down.

[KBD]

The default is usually considered the stable option. Ubuntu 20.04 won't ship Wayland as default because of that. I think Wayland will be a mess. The smartphone desktop is here. I don't know how Chrome OS locks down the system, but it's a consumer platform. Linux is (still) a geek platform so I don't see the point of locking it down.

Wow. I knew Ubuntu 18.04 skipped Wayland, but if 20.04 won't be using it either...that's not a good reflection on Debian. Debian is supposed to be the 'sane one' compared to Ubuntu :(

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I think Wayland will be a mess.

Have you actually tried it?

I've been testing Debian buster since the freeze started and Wayland seems absolutely fine to me, the only reason I've switched to X is because xterm won't load it's resources under Wayland and Firefox tears (slightly) with my Intel graphics.

[dreamer]

I think Wayland will be a mess.

Have you actually tried it?

I've been testing Debian buster since the freeze started and Wayland seems absolutely fine to me, the only reason I've switched to X is because xterm won't load it's resources under Wayland and Firefox tears (slightly) with my Intel graphics.

No, I haven't. I think Wayland will be a mess from an ecosystem perspective. Windows and macOS don't wreck their ecosystems like this. And a lot of software (most?) will not be ported to Wayland so you'll have to run XWayland anyway. And locking down the system is pointless when you are dealing with a hobby platform. If someone wants to make a commercial solution then there are other ways like Chrome OS (neither X.org nor Wayland) or simply the sysadmin can lock down the computers which is how it's often handled today both on Windows and Linux. Why would a display protocol handle system lock-down? That may be great for kiosk-mode or other limited applications, but not for a flexible environment such as a desktop OS.

I do think there are legit use-cases for Wayland, but not on the desktop where freedom and a bunch of different window managers and desktop environments have made Linux popular. Locking down a hobby platform to a greater extent than Windows and macOS doesn't make sense to me. I don't worry about it because X.org will be around for a long time. It's just that the Linux community will be split in half.

What are the users of antiX, MX Linux and Linux Mint supposed to do? Clement from Linux Mint stated that they may never adopt Wayland. That may change of course, but I think it's safe to say X.org will not go away anytime soon. Wayland is just another fracture in the Linux desktop ecosystem.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I don't see how the system is "locked down" if xwayland allows X-based applications to run.

Wayland is a big improvement over X:

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.htm ... ng_toc_j_6

And I can still run my dwm desktop in buster

[dreamer]

I don't see how the system is "locked down" if xwayland allows X-based applications to run.

If you keep using Wayland, you'll notice that there are limitations you don't have under X.org. Distros being somewhat dishonest try to inflict those limitations on X.org too. They tried to remove Synaptic from Debian until someone made it fail "better" (I don't think they actually made it work) under Gnome/Wayland. That being said it's always possible to adapt and for some the there may be more advantages than disadvantages to Wayland.

Wayland is a big improvement over X:
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.htm ... ng_toc_j_6

According to Wayland developers Wayland is the best thing since sliced bread. It's great they are happy with their creation.

And I can still run my dwm desktop in buster

Of course, as long as you keep using X.org and not Wayland you can run pretty much anything that has been created in the past 20 years.

PS Anyone should use whatever they like. My Wayland criticism is mostly written to balance the Wayland promotion by Wayland developers and big distros.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

If you keep using Wayland, you'll notice that there are limitations you don't have under X.org.

Yes, I have noticed a few things, that's why I'm using GNOME on X.

So there is no "lock in" because I can still do that, as you also point out.

They tried to remove Synaptic from Debian until someone made it fail "better" (I don't think they actually made it work) under Gnome/Wayland.

The Debian developers removed synaptic, not the Wayland developers

It was removed because it failed without an error message under Wayland, it was replaced because an error message was added.

It fails under Wayland because Wayland doesn't allow GUIs to run as root and instead insists that the interface runs with normal privileges and only the code that requires root privileges runs as such — this is a big improvement over X.

According to Wayland developers Wayland is the best thing since sliced bread. It's great they are happy with their creation.

My link listed the failings of X rather than the advantages of Wayland, please read it.

[AK-47]

No, I haven't. I think Wayland will be a mess from an ecosystem perspective. Windows and macOS don't wreck their ecosystems like this. And a lot of software (most?) will not be ported to Wayland so you'll have to run XWayland anyway. And locking down the system is pointless when you are dealing with a hobby platform.

I don't see how Wayland is "locking down the system" in any way. And if you compare the Linux ecosystem to Windows or MacOS, it's already a total wreckage. Both Windows and MacOS (and in fact every other OS out there) has one display system, one window manager, and one GUI toolkit that all applications have to use. Linux in its quest for freedom and infinite choice, have two display systems, 10 different window managers, and 10 different GUI toolkits. Focusing on the 10 different GUI toolkits, there are several different versions of GTK, there's Qt, etcetera.
Also, the people who started Wayland are also X developers, so that perceived biased of the Wayland developers probably isn't as bad as you think.

[dreamer]

I don't see how Wayland is "locking down the system" in any way.

If you use Wayland you'll get better answers than I can give you. You can think of "locking down" as "not compatible - has to be rewritten".