After more than forty years, everyone knows that it’s time to retire the X Window System – X11 for short – on account of it being old and decrepit. Or at least that’s what t…
Fedora even switched to Wayland by default in 2016 (at least for the GNOME release). I don’t know what they were thinking. 8 to 9 years before they were already using Wayland… and it still have some “problems”. Can’t imagine what you were going through. :D
But compared to Fedora, Ubuntu only did change temporarily to Wayland right? I mean it was not an LTS version. I installed LTS 18.04 and don’t remember anything like that by default.
Fedora 42 even eliminated X11 as an option (I think they’re reversing that stance now, though), which made it unusable on my (now dead) Nvidia laptop with dual monitors. I thought they really jumped the gun on that one.
I ended up jumping to AMD graphics so I wouldn’t have any problems with Wayland, but then discovered there’s a nasty bug that causes frequent system freezes on AMD systems. Thankfully I was on Debian, so I could easily switch back to X11. Things have been stable now, but I just feel like I can’t win with Wayland 😅
Wayland does seem to work well with Intel graphics, at least.
Fedora 42 even eliminated X11 as an option (I think they’re reversing that stance now, though),
This is one of the big problems Wayland and its proponents tended to have and still have in general:
They insist on selling vaporware. Or on doing the Ubuntu thing where they just push dev onto production for the users to become unpaid tester workforce. And then they have the gall to complain that people notice things don’t work.
Curiously enough, I don’t recall pulseaudio (another member of this “nu-linux” / Microsoft™ Linux trend) was like this. Sure, Fedora packaged it horribly, but I don’t recall it having been pushed as a default to prod when it was unusable.
I do think there’s a balance to be struck where at some point, a larger swath of people need to use that software even if it’s not 100% ready, as then it creates more ‘pressure’ to actually address those final roadblocks. Wayland did seem to improve at a faster rate since it was introduced by default on some distros.
And at least in the Linux world, we have many options to avoid being on that bleeding edge. I’m pretty happy just sticking with Debian as opposed to getting the new stuff, and while I was annoyed I couldn’t use my preferred DE on Fedora, I’ve learned that Debian is actually pretty slick in its own way, which removed the slight sense of FOMO I once had.
My girlfriend decided to make a switch to Linux, and I installed Fedora 42.
It immediately broke her workflow as one of her work apps (Omnissa Horizon, previously known as VMware Horizon) explicitly refused to work with Wayland, stating it will only work with X11.
Yes, they are reverting back. Fedora users always live on the edge. They are basically (but not quite right) “always” the first accepting a new technology. Not even Archlinux does that. Arch users obviously live on the edge too, but for other reasons. :D
But wasn’t Fedora not going to discontinue X11 support only for GNOME version? I thought other spins are still allowed to support it, but doesn’t matter anymore, because they reverting this idea back. I think. But why didn’t you switch to another distribution, instead buying new hardware, if that was the only problem?
From what I recall when trying it, I don’t think KDE had X11 as an option either, which is my preferred DE. The other spins did retain X11 though.
My laptop with Nvidia graphics became unstable due to faulty hardware, so I used the opportunity to switch to an AMD desktop to hopefully have longer term reliability. I would’ve stuck with the laptop and just used Linux Mint, had it not failed.
Fedora even switched to Wayland by default in 2016 (at least for the GNOME release). I don’t know what they were thinking. 8 to 9 years before they were already using Wayland… and it still have some “problems”. Can’t imagine what you were going through. :D
But compared to Fedora, Ubuntu only did change temporarily to Wayland right? I mean it was not an LTS version. I installed LTS 18.04 and don’t remember anything like that by default.
It was actually fine (ish)
The basics worked and you could switch back if you wanted to
Fedora 42 even eliminated X11 as an option (I think they’re reversing that stance now, though), which made it unusable on my (now dead) Nvidia laptop with dual monitors. I thought they really jumped the gun on that one.
I ended up jumping to AMD graphics so I wouldn’t have any problems with Wayland, but then discovered there’s a nasty bug that causes frequent system freezes on AMD systems. Thankfully I was on Debian, so I could easily switch back to X11. Things have been stable now, but I just feel like I can’t win with Wayland 😅
Wayland does seem to work well with Intel graphics, at least.
This is one of the big problems Wayland and its proponents tended to have and still have in general:
They insist on selling vaporware. Or on doing the Ubuntu thing where they just push dev onto production for the users to become unpaid tester workforce. And then they have the gall to complain that people notice things don’t work.
Curiously enough, I don’t recall pulseaudio (another member of this “nu-linux” / Microsoft™ Linux trend) was like this. Sure, Fedora packaged it horribly, but I don’t recall it having been pushed as a default to prod when it was unusable.
Or I am lucky to not have noticed. Oh well.
I do think there’s a balance to be struck where at some point, a larger swath of people need to use that software even if it’s not 100% ready, as then it creates more ‘pressure’ to actually address those final roadblocks. Wayland did seem to improve at a faster rate since it was introduced by default on some distros.
And at least in the Linux world, we have many options to avoid being on that bleeding edge. I’m pretty happy just sticking with Debian as opposed to getting the new stuff, and while I was annoyed I couldn’t use my preferred DE on Fedora, I’ve learned that Debian is actually pretty slick in its own way, which removed the slight sense of FOMO I once had.
My girlfriend decided to make a switch to Linux, and I installed Fedora 42.
It immediately broke her workflow as one of her work apps (Omnissa Horizon, previously known as VMware Horizon) explicitly refused to work with Wayland, stating it will only work with X11.
Had to switch to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
heh https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/13319
tbf this is not fault of wayland but gnome deciding to make GTK4 use vulkan by default on wayland.
Yes, they are reverting back. Fedora users always live on the edge. They are basically (but not quite right) “always” the first accepting a new technology. Not even Archlinux does that. Arch users obviously live on the edge too, but for other reasons. :D
But wasn’t Fedora not going to discontinue X11 support only for GNOME version? I thought other spins are still allowed to support it, but doesn’t matter anymore, because they reverting this idea back. I think. But why didn’t you switch to another distribution, instead buying new hardware, if that was the only problem?
Fedora 42 KDE does not have X11, either.
From what I recall when trying it, I don’t think KDE had X11 as an option either, which is my preferred DE. The other spins did retain X11 though.
My laptop with Nvidia graphics became unstable due to faulty hardware, so I used the opportunity to switch to an AMD desktop to hopefully have longer term reliability. I would’ve stuck with the laptop and just used Linux Mint, had it not failed.
Yeah Ubuntu backed out with the next major release. Probably because of user complaints.