The biggest thing I can think of is that X11 is more flexible when it comes to specifying custom resolutions; which some people use to output 240p on CRT TVs for emulation. AFAIK, there is currently no real equivalent for xrandr on any Wayland compositor.
I’ve also noticed that Grsync’s password prompt is broken on Wayland. Thankfully, it has a feature that lets you preview the command it’s about to run, so that you can copy and paste it into a terminal.
Being a KDE user on EndeavourOS, I use Wayland everyday. I switched over a few years ago for Waydroid, but now X11 isn’t even an option for me with the current release of KDE.
Can Wayland do
ssh -X?There seems to be https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Waypipe which I’ve never used (unlike ssh -X which I once needed for a university course).
Talon Voice and other accessibility tools like cursorless. I am destroying my hands because I can’t do handless input on Wayland.
Support for stylus / pen writing on screen.
Automated window positioning through tools like wmctrl and xdotool. There are replacements on Wayland but they’re either missing features or are tied to a specific window manager.
I use Xfce, and I like writing bash scripts that can work anywhere.
In general, it’s things that Wayland chose not to do so as to have a better security model.
For instance multi window apps can’t tell the compositor where to put their windows such as snapping a window to another or following a window. Apps can’t read other windows. It’s a good thing for security but it breaks some older tools and workflows.
There’s others like multiple mouse cursors, registering global hotkeys, overscan correction etc but many of these things are being addressed and new standards are being drafted, it just takes time.
I moved to Wayland very early on and, honestly, I’ve not had any problems but I don’t have a complicated or special setup.
No global hotkeys is a dealbreaker for me, though.
Once you get used to using custom global hotkeys as part of your workflow, you can never go back.
It’s not about creating global hotkeys, it’s about registering them from a running program. There is nothing preventing you from creating a compositor-level keybinding, but an app cannot do that unless it figures out what compositor you are running and then handles the configuration for each and every compositor in existence.
Ah, okay then. Might be worth a try.
I wouldn’t worry about supporting every compositor in existence. Ideally, the Wayland spec would be unified, but it’s not.
I feel like if someone created a compositor with an extension for that feature, it’d eventually become popular enough that people would start implementing that extension in other compositors.
I wouldn’t want that. I’m fairly content with the fact that no random apps can grab my keystrokes unless that specific app is focused. From what I heard, for most people the only global keybind they want is muting their microphone. You can implement that yourself with absolutely no trouble, it will usually be the first example in the global keybinds configuration docs for pretty much any compositor. People who don’t want to deal with writing configs can use KDE where you have a GUI to configure the same thing.
It would be nice if end users had more choice in the matter. It’d be cool if someone made a Wayland compositor that allowed some of these features as an opt-in thing.
- Run Birdtray
- Not obnoxiously throw up W whenever it can’t find an icon for a program during alt tabbing
- Not need extra extra handholding to run games properly without diagonal tears
Legit the generic W icon is fucking terrible
does it need to be replaced by the WU TANG?
systray-x works very well as an alternative on Wayland!
input-remapper-gtkis a decidedly non-obvious way of rebinding mouse buttons.Of course,
xmodmapis also a decidedly non-obvious way …So, just discovering the joys of virtual monitors available in the kernel now. NAS now has and gives me sunshine. Bazzite lets you put your own monitors’ (ujust setup-sunshine - Configure Virtual Monitor) edid into initramfs so sunshine (and KDE remote access if you want laggy but cut and paste enabled) work without a monitor connection (or dongle), very cool. Just thought I should spread the news and this is vaguely associated.
Not really relevant to the X11 question, except that it provides a (superior) workaround for some issues…
To the actual question, xtool for automating UI stuff hasn’t been completely replicated, but given it’s an insecure horrible solution I’m OK. Also running a program through a remote connection on a beefier machine was useful at times, is there an equivalent other than remote access?
There are a few things that don’t work very well, mostly to do with multi window apps and how some older apps need to run through XWayland (which 99% of the time it works brilliantly! There are a couple weird issues, but most of those are easily fixable through some command argument before opening an app)
I an also running EndeavourOS (which is awesome!) with Niri + Noctalia (which also uses Wayland), and I have no issues :D
Switched my HTPC from a regular Debian desktop with X11 to Plasma Bigscreen (Fedora) with Wayland. Biggest frustration I have is Kodi can’t automatically adjust the TV’s fps, but besides that it’s been going smooth. Steam Link even works well for streaming games from my PC!
Vibe coded a Kodi addon that actually changes the fps, but if anyone knows an actual solution that’d probably be better.
Eyy, fellow EndeavorOS enjoyer! It’s been super solid since I installed it in like April of last year.
For me it’s Steam Remote Play. I can’t say Wayland is unable to do it, but it’s always been so problematic I switch back to x11.
I never cosidered if that was a problem i had last year when demoing remoteplay onto an apple tv.
Does gamescope run on Wayland? I’d have thought it would be great for this
Yes, gamescope is specifically built for Wayland.
I had never thought to check if Wayland was the issue there.
Correct me if this is no longer the case, but:
Starting an old game fullscreen and having the lower resolution fill the HD/4K or what have you display and not just display a small box at 1:1 ratio with black borders all around. (Might also be AMD-related, not sure? X can do it, though.)
Allow custom key maps with multiple level modifiers that are unconditionally accepted system-wide and not just in all applications except for that one that just won’t take that key combination.
Run the old login credentials stealers
AFAIK, there is currently no real equivalent for xrandr on any Wayland compositor.
Normally, you override the EDID rather than specifying modelines manually. Sway also has some limited custom resolution support, but it’s just resolution and refresh rate, and not precise timings. Apparently the DRM backend supports modelines
but that’s not really Wayland by my understanding, more like Steam’s gamescope mode.. Actually, the DRM backend is the default backend, so it should work. The other backends are used when sway is run inside another compositor.I’ve also noticed that Grsync’s password prompt is broken on Wayland.
Forcing XWayland may help here. Otherwise, I assume the application is run as root which generally causes some issues with Wayland but potentially can be made to work.
