KDE - Wayland vs X11

[George at Clug]

Hi,


After being a long time XFCE users, on some computers I have been
installing KDE (on Bookworm) for people. Particularly people who had
previously been using Windows.


I don't have  a lot of experience with KDE. I am finding it a very
visually pleasing and easy to use GUI that has some nice mature
programs. For example Kdenlive, KPatience.


When installing KDE for people, I have been leaving Wayland as the
compositor, believing that X11 was no longer supported. However
recently I tested X11 and found the experience was much better.


For example:


1) In Virt-Manager in X11 I can select "Resize to VM" and it works,
where as in Wayland the resize does not happen.


2) In Chromium, if I do screen sharing in Jitsi, the Wayland
experience there are a number of times I have to select what I want to
share, but with X11 I can just select the item I want to share once.


3) Now I can run Steam games, OBS Studio, and Virt-Manager natively,
without Xwayland being used.


4) KDE using X11 works well on my PCs with Nvidia cards.



5) I also wonder if using X11 will mean that Firefox does not lock up
the whole computer when a certain (yet to be identified) ad is present
in a web page.


I want to ask if anyone knows is there any downsides to using using
KDE with X11 and not with Wayland?

It would be nice to be able to use X11 until finally Wayland has
sorted out the various issues that have yet to be resolved,
application maintainers have all produced a Wayland version of their
software, and Nvidia and Wayland are happily working well together.
(hopefully this will be in the near future)



At this point of time my KDE with X11 experience is better than my KDE
with Wayland experience. However I am concerned that at some point,
somewhere, X11 will not be supported, sadly.



George.


 

[Dan Ritter]

Post by George at Clug
When installing KDE for people, I have been leaving Wayland as the
compositor, believing that X11 was no longer supported. However
recently I tested X11 and found the experience was much better.

This is not unusual. Wayland is young and immature.

Wayland has been in the process of replacing X11 for 15 years
now. When X was 15 years old, the X.org domain name was created,
and it wasn't for five more years that the X.org Foundation came
into being.

Post by George at Clug
At this point of time my KDE with X11 experience is better than my KDE
with Wayland experience. However I am concerned that at some point,
somewhere, X11 will not be supported, sadly.

You can be concerned, but I recommend not worrying about it
much.

It is unlikely that X will be actually abandoned until all of
these problems with Wayland are solved.

(There is always somebody who pops up and claims that they have
never had a problem with Wayland, or any such problems no longer
exist. That's their subjective experience, and they are entitled
to be happy about Wayland, but they are not entitled to tell you
that your experience is invalid.)

-dsr-

[Nicolas George]

Post by Dan Ritter
It is unlikely that X will be actually abandoned until all of
these problems with Wayland are solved.

oneko and xeyes do not work properly with Wayland, that is definitely a
deal breaker.

Regards,

[Erwan David]

Post by Nicolas George

Post by Dan Ritter
It is unlikely that X will be actually abandoned until all of
these problems with Wayland are solved.

oneko and xeyes do not work properly with Wayland, that is definitely a
deal breaker.
Regards,

I cannot say if it is wayland or plasma5, but
1) plasma does not start non wayland apps (emacs, firefox,
thunderbird) at statrtup. Considering my problems with emacs ans
ssh-agent, for this I would look to a startup ordering mess (apps
being started before xwayland).

2) I lose some shortcuts, because under wayland, I cannot have a
difference bewteen keys on the keypad, and keys on the main keyboard.

Due to this (and especially point 1) I stopped using wayland with
plasma. But I'll try again when plasma6 arrives in testing

However, with plasma5 wayland support is still incomplete, and X11
support won't disappear soon

[George at Clug]

Post by Nicolas George

Post by Dan Ritter
It is unlikely that X will be actually abandoned until all of
these problems with Wayland are solved.

oneko and xeyes do not work properly with Wayland, that is definitely a
deal breaker.

Thanks for making me smile !

George.

Post by Nicolas George
Regards,
--
Nicolas George

[George at Clug]

Dan,

Thank you for your reply.

George

Post by Dan Ritter

Post by George at Clug
When installing KDE for people, I have been leaving Wayland as the
compositor, believing that X11 was no longer supported. However
recently I tested X11 and found the experience was much better.

This is not unusual. Wayland is young and immature.
Wayland has been in the process of replacing X11 for 15 years
now. When X was 15 years old, the X.org domain name was created,
and it wasn't for five more years that the X.org Foundation came
into being.

Post by George at Clug
At this point of time my KDE with X11 experience is better than my

KDE

Post by Dan Ritter

Post by George at Clug
with Wayland experience. However I am concerned that at some

point,

Post by Dan Ritter

Post by George at Clug
somewhere, X11 will not be supported, sadly.

You can be concerned, but I recommend not worrying about it
much.
It is unlikely that X will be actually abandoned until all of
these problems with Wayland are solved.
(There is always somebody who pops up and claims that they have
never had a problem with Wayland, or any such problems no longer
exist. That's their subjective experience, and they are entitled
to be happy about Wayland, but they are not entitled to tell you
that your experience is invalid.)
-dsr-