Are there any Wayland users here? If so, what issues have you experienced with using Wayland?
I can’t use it yet - 'cause I need Symless Synergy KVM… And allegedly Wayland compatible version of Synergy (3) is still a “release candidate” - so I’m still using Synergy 1.14.6 “stable”… I’m not going to try it till Synergy 3 is beyond “release candidate”…
To Wayland or Not
TLDR; If you have nvidia, the short answer: NOT.
Otherwise it depends… 
Yes
Depends on graphics hardware, wayland implementation.
On a laptop with integrated intel graphics it works.
On a desktop with nvidia graphics it’s a different story:
with Gnome (43) it mostly works, however there are some setup tricks to make it start at all.
Sometimes a window is not resizable, sometimes the window frame gets resized, but the content stays…
Browser (Chromium or Firefox) has glitches, flickering content, as the mouse moves above the browser window, transparent web content on the upper third of the browser window (I mean the browser window is rendered correctly, the content on the lower 2/3 of the window is rendered correctly, but the upper 1/3 of the window is transparent, the desktop, or open windows below the browser shines through).
Restarting the browser temporarily fixes that.
With KDE it sucks even more.
Needless to say, that using X11 everything is fine.
With AMD graphics KDE works as expected, no such problems.
I did not test Gnome with Radeon, but I think it should just work.
The benefit of wayland for me is much faster working with screen.
There’s a problem with Davinci Resolve on Linux, that when using multiple monitors, it’s screen update is maxed somewhere at 40fps or so, which is OK until I don’t need 50…60P for example. On wayland I do not experience this limit.
When streaming with OBS, using X11 the avarege time spent on a frame is about 15…26ms on laptop, depending on the scene. The same is 3…7ms on wayland.
LMDE has an updated Cinnamon version having initial wayland support.
It still in a very early stage.
There are some known limitations on wayland, like night colors of KDE, which don’t work…
So if you have a non-nvidia graphics, you may try wayland.
If you have nvidia, forget KDE, you may give it try with Gnome.
(I can’t stand Gnome, so my only option currently for using wayland is with KDE).
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Some distros come with a Login Manager that allows choice of X11 or Wayland.
That way you could try Wayland , and have an escape if there are issues in your situation.
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I use Ubuntu 24.04 on my laptop, but it does have integrated Intel graphics in addition to available Nvidia graphics. Some of my apps are not yet compatible so I do use an X11 session when needed. I should check how many apps that includes.
I have a tower that would be similar. I’m not sure off the top of my head if I’m using Wayland or X11 there. I think Plank does not work under Wayland yet and so I likely do not use it. At least not 100% of the time.
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That’s a different story again, in that case you use the intel graphics in general.
You need to run a program “prime render offload” way to use the nvidia really.
My Dell G3 is similar, intel graphics in the i5 8300H, and a GTX1050 as an additional graphics. On this laptop I can use KDE+wayland without problems so far. (I run very few programs on the nvidia, and those are specifically started with prime render offload)
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That is the case, I saw wayland in the login menu. Last time I tried, way back .Black Screen of Death
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Wayland is not necessarily the future of Linux GUI’s.
Read this from one developer who thinks it has serious design issues
https://dudemanguy.github.io/blog/posts/2022-06-10-wayland-xorg/wayland-xorg.html
and
The best link I can find on the status if Wayland in 2024
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Well, thanks @nevj for the 2024 article. If you listen to a lot of conversation on forums, you find it pretty much split down the middle with those who favor Wayland spouting about the insecurities in X11 and those who favor X11 saying basically what the author said: after all this time, it is still not better than X11.
I was beginning to panic that they might get rid of X. But I think it’s safe to say “I don’t think so.”
Thanks,
Sheila
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That is good news. Why fix it if it aint broken
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I just got an email today because I’m a licensed Synergy Pro user… Announcing Release of 1.18… They’ve been spouting about supporting Wayland for the last few Synergy 1.x versions…
So I thought I’d give it a try…
Because my login manager is broken (Pop!_OS 22.04) - I had to drop out of X… Back to the TTY…
Then I tried this : “dbus-run-session -- gnome-shell --display-server --wayland”…
And it loaded my gnome desktop - but - stuff was broken - i.e. it didn’t know how I wanted my monitors arranged - and - worst of all - it didn’t run or load my Gnome Keyring - so I was using “vanilla” versions of Chrome and Brave… Then I fired up Synergy 1.18 server - and - I saw my Mac get a prompt about a new TLS cert from Synergy - so I accepted it.
But - I still couldn’t drive either of my Macs from Synergy server running on Pop!_OS with Wayland… It might have been some other issue - but I wasn’t prepared to trial it any further…
So - I rebooted…
Fired up “X” (ran “startx” in TTY after I logged in).
And - my Gnome Keyring loaded - but - all my Brave saved stuff was broken - including my Cookie to login here to It’sFoss…
So - yeah - nah - won’t be trying Wayland again any time soon…
Unless someone knows a better way to fire up a Wayland session (with gnome) from TTY. Tried a few other session startup suggestions and nothing happened at all… That “dbus-run-session” was the only one that got any kind of result. But even so - if Synergy server can’t drive my MacBooks then it’s “no deal”…
Update : Wayland = NOT
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Try googling this
how to start wayland from console
The google AI overview seems to suggest that you need to
start a compositor thing called Weston
I seem to remember doing this somewhere… not with gnome present, but in a system with only a console.
I think what you are experiencing is lack of an upgrade path from X to Wayland.
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that’s EXACTLY 100% what I googled (apologies if I sound disrespectful - but I’ve been googling shit for a quarter of a century)…
None of the results merged with what I needed (most of them resulted in zip) - partially broken Gnome desktop in Pop!_OS 22…
Was the only one that got some sort of result… but it was less than satisfactory… Synergy KVM server “ran” and clients got prompts for new TLS cert - but that was redundant 'cause I still couldn’t drive my MacOS clients from my Pop!_OS desktop “Synergy Server”…
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Great minds think alike. No offense.
I think you want something that does not exist.
Killing X and starting Wayland may break any running app that interacts with X
What the Login Manager does is slightly different… it starts X or Wayland first, then the apps and the DE that depend on X or Wayland. The order matters.
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No - when I tried starting gnome with wayland - X was no running… i.e. I didn’t “kill” anything - I just let them die naturally 
i.e. I exited my gnome session back to the TTY and my shell…
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OK, that should be the same as going back to the login manager. Maybe better.
So what you are looking for is a version of startx for Wayland.
I will look in Chimera, which defaults to Wayland… see what it uses to start Wayland
I dont see why Gnome is involved? You start X before you start Gnome, and I presume the same applies to Wayland.
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I’m not going to bother following up on this - the point of the exercise was to see if Synergy KVM server could control client machines - and it couldn’t…
I may have to end up doing some distrohopping on this desktop machine to find something that allows me to easily switch between Xorg and wayland… Pretty sure Ubuntu 24.04 still has that option - but quite a few distros are going 100% Wayland with no option to switch back to legacy Xorg - Pop!_OS 24.04 “Cosmic” is one - it’s still in alpha - but I reckon I’ll probably drop Pop! as my distro of choice - probably switch back to Ubuntu LTS (e.g. 24.04).
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We can still have a look at Chimera. My Chimera is Plasma, not Gnome. It defaults to Wayland but offers a choice of Wayland or X11
Here is what is running if I choose Wayland
You can see the startup files are specific for plasma with wayland or X11.
/bin/startplasma-wayland is an executable… not a script
So that is not very helpful… sorry not helpful.
The services running are
No mention of Wayland? I expected something like an Xserver . Does Wayland not have a daemon?
It appears not
Those are the dinit service files. There is no wayland?
If it were X11 I think there would be entries for the Xserver…No, I checked and I am wrong… why are there no daemons for either X11 or Wayland?
In X11, there is a program /usr/libexec/Xorg running in background, but it is not a daemon. I assume that is the Xserver.
In Wayland there are two background processes
So Xorg is still running under Wayland, but there is also a process Xwayland. Neither of these is a daemon… they are not listed as services.
I do not understand why the Xserver is not a daemon?
Have a look at /bin/start* in Pop!OS. You may find a start program for Gnome-Wayland.
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