Xorg – Wayland Transition Thoughts…

By Mark RabideauDistro Respins & Customization, Knowledgebase, tutorials, Wayland

Revisions:
Initial Draft: 13 Dec 2023
Revised Draft: 14 Dec 2023

This document is yet another one of those I plan to update periodically. We’ll see how that goes.

Merchants Hotel ~1925 Wayland Iowa
Merchants Hotel ~1925 Wayland Iowa

As has become evident from other recent posts I have made here, I am attempting to ‘tough my way through’ a transition from Xorg to Wayland (not the town in Southeastern Iowa). What I can say, unequivocally, is that there is no single, simple, straightforward transition. This is especially true for those of us who like to run multiple desktop configurations. For those happy to work in a more homogeneous setup such as running gnome, kde, or xfce, the challenges will not be as great as they are for folks who run using dwm (to dwl), openbox (to labwc or waybox), and i3wm (to swaywm) on Debian.

In the future, the following issues will need to be addressed ‘permanently’, in one manner or another. For now however, here are some of Wayland’s problem ‘children’ along with some simple, reasonably safe ‘fixes’ for major problems.

By way of full disclosure, I am working primarily on Debian. There are a host of mainline distros I do NOT work on. Therefore, my observations are incomplete and may miss important information that you, on your environment, need. Please, remember to to search the web for further information…

Luckily, I have found a pretty decent solution for those x11 applications requiring root privileges to perform (read these applications normally need polkit to run). The following applications seem to work well and safely when invoked via terminal using “sudo -E”. The “sudo -E “applications I have currently identified (and use regularly) include:

  • synaptic
  • thunar (as root)
  • nemo (as root)
  • pcmanfm (as root)
  • gparted

Here are a few additional items that my research indicates are currently “less” solvable, perhaps even insoluble absent drastic change.

There is no single Wayland-wide method for addressing the identification of active running applications and their respective Desktop/ Workspace. What that means is that just because you can accomplish this on SwayWM does not mean you can solve the same problem, the same way with labwc or River or hyprland or…. (that’s the bad news). The better news is that there are numerous tools that are able to provide partial solutions, such as the following incomplete list:

  • swaymsg (Sway specific)
  • Waybar (best on Sway)
  • swfbar (best on Sway and hyprland)
  • yatbfw (labwc and others?)

A corollary to the above is that waybar, swfbar, yatbfw do not run offering the same features and in the same manner on different Compositors (Desktops). Some run quite well on one or more compositors others may be all but Compositor specific. The same applies for other tools like swaymsg. It is frustratingly variable. Be advised.

Here are tools/ approaches you can use to identify and then address those on your installation(s). For those without solutions, simply be advised the difficulties ‘may be there’ and could cause trouble.

Obviously, I will never identify all the Wayland/ x.org compatibility difficulties/ problems.

How to determine whether an application is running using Wayland (native) or via ‘compatibility mode’ using xwayland, etc.

Background information (some recent articles comparing x11 and Wayland)

The links below are not overly ‘shrill’. Be careful because some information on this topic can become reminiscent of systemd vitriol.

Window Decorations (Borders)

Many (most?) compositors attempt to tell windows not to draw their own decorations and this works for many (most?) applications, but the protocols for doing so are not yet standard or universally supported. As you would expect some windows still draw their own. For now, there’s probably nothing you can do about this ‘problem’, but (for you optimists out there) this is likely to improve in the future, or maybe not.

Lastly, it is worth noting that not all Wayland Compositors (Desktop Systems) operate equally well on all distros. If you are an intrepid Wayland adventurer, the best distros (those offering the broadest number of Wayland Compositors- Desktops) seem to be Arch and Void. Debian/ Ubuntu offer among the fewest.

Compositor (Desktop) Dev-teams

The stability, consistency, and robustness of Compositor development/ support teams is hugely ‘variable’. Be advised that many ‘other’ teams either have evaporated into the ‘ether’ or are operating on a shoe-string. Still other teams are robust (even ‘huge’) and appear to be relatively ‘resource rich’.

Going forward into the future, be prepared for the Wayland world’s many shifts, successes, and failures .

Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
  • It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
  • When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
  • If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
  • My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!

Image Credits:

Xorg: User:Sven, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
Wayland: Kristian Høgsberg, Intel Corporation, Benjamin Franzke, Collabora, Ltd., Red Hat, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons