My blocker is the Window Shade button on Plasma.
It worked fine in Wayland under Plasma 5, but somewhere early in the 6 transition support was removed.
For anyone not aware it minimizes the window to its own titlebar. I find it faster and more intuitive than minimizing to a dock, and it’s easier to keep track of things when you can actually read the whole titlebar.
Scroll-wheel rolls up windows for me on XFCE (labwc). I can understand it that might not be what you’re looking for, though.
I think you can even make it a button in the title bar, like the minimize button. Or you should be able to bind a keyboard shortcut to it too.
oh you’re right, it’s gone now. i didn’t even notice
tbh i only remember it working for non-Plasma apps, weirdly enough. stuff like Dolphin or Konsole wouldn’t work with it, but non-Plasma apps (that got decorated with the Plasma titlebar) would support it. maybe that’s why they removed it?
Yeah that was the case right before it got removed, but in P5 and for the first couple point releases of P6 KDE apps were working with it
The older you get the more unnatural new tech feels
Wayland changes the core ideas behind the desktop
In the past this doesn’t belong to me. I was okay with both. But I recently noticed that it is possible to connect a USB-OS to any system. The resolution is always correct. Thanks to wayland.
I kinda like being able to watch a video on one screen and not having to make sure that there are no animations going on anywhere else or the video framerate drops like it’s 1996.
Might be worth looking into and reporting as a bug. I use wayland and very commonly watch a high quality video on one monitor and whole games on my other just fine.
Weirdly this happens on my work laptop (x11) but not any other Linux machine I’ve used including all the Wayland ones. I assume it’s due to video drivers.
What’s always funny to me when someome brings up missing features of Wayland is how, apparently, the missing features of X11 are getting pushed under the table or somehow also blamed on Wayland in some twisted way. Like, holy shit, compare the display settings of KDE on a modern display between Wayland and X11. My laptop didn’t even show a third of all options anymore.
Sure, it will be nice once Wayland can do a few things (better), the current development push surely helps. But it’s not like X11 can do everything either.
I can’t copy/paste from a terminal program to a GUI program under wayland without jumping through hoops and configuring every individual program to use some variant of a DE-specific utility that bypass wayland’s model to peek/poke into the clipboard.
That’s not a minor feature to me. And in my (and probably some other people) case, trading basic copy/paste for not-yet-implemented differential DPI scaling does not sound too great.
Some people are adamant to not switch, but I swear some people are so adamant to force everyone else to switch without even considering that their use case might not match other people use case, it’s infuriating. It’s not like me staying on X will degrade everyone else’s experience of the new shiniest thing.
Distribution moving to wayland might be good in the very long term, but for now, when you have a 3080Ti (a relatively recent card) and it breaks basic desktop composition when switching to wayland, telling people “just throw it out and buy another card instead of keeping your currently working system” is not going to help anyone.
Thats not entirely true.
wl-copyexists and I use it, but it’s not fully there yet. Things like slackadays/clipboard are still fucking around with weird Wayland issues.I’d like better clipboard support, but
alias c=wl-copyis good enough most of the time for me. And it works in neovim as well.Yeah, I know of such “solution”. But what is the point of forcing the change when it doesn’t bring me tangible benefits, brings significant downsides, and only some of these downsides have half-useful workarounds?
I have no problem with whether wayland existing or it becoming the new standard, but forcing people to move in these circumstances seems a bit silly, especially when some issues stem from people having hardware from one manufacturer that represents around 75% of general consumer systems (according to Steam survey, which might or might not be representative but sure brings a lot of people).
Thankfully, at least with the distributions I use, switching back and forth is trivial. But given the circumstances, I don’t really understand the extremely heavy push.
I don’t think anyone’s forcing anyone to do anything. But not a lot of people are stepping to to maintain X
While it’s certainly winded down over time, XOrg is still maintained. Last fix was released in september 2025. Is it enough? It never is. But that’s not really an argument to move from “working” to “not working as well” for now.
I thought most of the maintenance went towards Xwayland, though I don’t follow it that closely
It mostly did, yes. But when a big issue pops up, X still gets the occasional patch.
And, since this is a bit of a hot topic it seems, that sounds fair to me. X is the past, wayland is the future. I’m just annoyed at people glossing over the reasons not everyone can move on.
What are you talking about? You can copy-paste from Terminal programs to GUI programs and vice-versa like everywhere else (with the terminal of course needing CTRL + SHIFT + C / V, which as we know is historical to Unix terminals). I’m doing that for years, so does my family. It works just fine.
And bringing up Nvidia now really is bending down backwards to paint Wayland as bad while it’s painfully obvious it’s the driver’s fault. We all know the classic Nvidia driver sucks in more ways than one and loves to break, even Nvidia knows that and works on a replacement. That’s not Wayland’s fault.
What are you talking about? You can copy-paste from Terminal programs to GUI programs and vice-versa like everywhere else (with the terminal of course needing CTRL + SHIFT + C / V, which as we know is historical to Unix terminals). I’m doing that for years, so does my family. It works just fine.
I’m not talking about copy/pasting from the terminal emulator, thank you very much. Just run VIM and have it copy/paste from the global clipboard without setting up esoteric, sometimes DE-dependent stuff, and you’ll understand.
And bringing up Nvidia now really is bending down backwards to paint Wayland as bad while it’s painfully obvious it’s the driver’s fault.
Sure. I did not say it was wayland fault. Or anyone else, really. I explained why some people could not “just move on to wayland already you nincompoop” with very tangible issues that still prevent them from doing so. Who is at fault is of no consequence here. If I switch to wayland, I lose features, I have a broken desktop, and throwing away thousands of equipment because “it’s the future” does not sound that great. It’s just a matter of fact. Whether it’s wayland’s fault, plasma’s implementation’s fault, nvidia’s fault, or anyone else’s is irrelevant to the user experience here.
People can’t go “stop using X and use wayland”, and ignore raised issues by saying “no, that issue you’re having is not a big issue”, “that issue you’re having is not wayland’s fault”, “that issue you’re having does not concern most people”, etc. And reading replies in this thread, it seems people have a hard time imagining circumstances beyond their own.
I’ve used this neovim keybind for years:
vim.keymap.set({'n', 'x'}, 'gy', '"+y') -- copy vim.keymap.set({'n', 'x'}, 'gp', '"+p') -- pasteI was able to copy/paste between nvim and other applications on sway, Hyprland, Niri and KDE on Wayland.
The global clipboard register + should also work in modern regular vim afaik.
Yeah. “Feature parity or get out”, like dude we’re long past feature parity.
Wayland supports so much more stuff than X11 does, and what does X11 have that Wayland doesn’t? X forwarding? Just use a modern remote desktop solution, all X forwarding was doing in “modern” times (read: the 21st century) was streaming pixels anyway, just less efficiently than modern remote desktop.
I still use X forwarding.
It works just fine using xWayland, and X forwarding has always been so janky there is no chance to notice any difference caused from using xWayland instead of native.It will surely take many years and well established wayland native remote tunneling before anyone thinks of ditching xWayland.
Waypipe has worked very well for me.
I switched to Wayland. I think I have almost everything working except keepassxc’s global hotkey and autotype. Also certain apps like ardour, I have to manually break components off from the main window and move to different monitor to get the “multi monitor” functions going. This I know they have been trying for 2 years now, anyday now.
Multi window apps are still broken, and the wayland protocol guys have been dragging it for more than two years
Honestly which app do you use that makes use of multi window rendering?
The main one is KiCAD (electronics design).
They have a good article on the challenges they’re facing on Wayland, worth a read https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/
Hold on, so I can’t run Transmission that has the torrent list in one window and torrent details in another window? Only one single window per app? What insanity is this.
Every app I know opens a window for the preferences, how is this solved in Wayland? Even just the typical Explorer-style file manager requires multiple windows to function.
Oh multi-window works, it is mostly just that applications cannot geometrically position them themselves. There are other small issues, but thay is the main one I hear. It is a non-issue for things like settings and Transmission, since you just open another window and do not really care exactly where it os relative to the other ones. It often ends up being on top. For multi-window Gimp it is worse, as it is toolbars and modules, and the app wants to place them precisely relative to one another. This is currently not working in Wayland, but they create new extensions all the time so it is only a matter of time IMO.
Thanks for the explanation. As it happens, one of my irks about the Windows version of Transmission is that it doesn’t remember the position of the torrent-properties window. I want the list on the left, the details on the right — particularly since Transmission reuses the details window, essentially treating it as a pane. This worked splendidly on MacOS.
I don’t, but some people like multi window GIMP, and apparetnly several applications in the automotive (kiCAD for example) and scientific field
People who like multi window gimp must be a very special kind of nerd. I used it before single window mode was added, but when it was I never looked back. Positioning each subwindow in a way that didn’t suck was such an absolute pain
It’s not a pain if you use a tiling WM, and doesn’t KDE remember and restore window positions yet?
alias hc=herbstclient # GIMP # ensure there is a gimp tag hc add gimp hc load gimp ' (split horizontal:0.850000:0 (split horizontal:0.200000:1 (clients vertical:0) (clients grid:0)) (clients vertical:0)) ' # load predefined layout # center all other gimp windows on gimp tag hc rule class=Gimp tag=gimp index=01 pseudotile=on hc rule class=Gimp windowrole~'gimp-(image-window|toolbox|dock)' \ pseudotile=off hc rule class=Gimp windowrole=gimp-toolbox focus=off index=00 hc rule class=Gimp windowrole=gimp-dock focus=off index=1it’s not a pain
Here’s the dozen lines of config I had to write and tweak and debug to make it tolerable
Uh huh. You do you.
But that pain was once. And then you shoved that config into your dotfile svn and never did it again. Mine has followed me since like 2010.
(This is not me taking part in the wl/X11 argument. I am just one of those multi-window gimp nerds)
Yeah. “Feature parity or get out”, like dude we’re long past feature parity.
Ok, replace the xfce/KDE wm with something like i3 and then keybind all of the commands that aren’t wm specific through a global hotkey daemon like sxhkd.
I could never get it to work.
If you’re waiting on Wayland to reimplement the thing that made X11 a monolithic unmaintainable mess, you’ll be stuck on your rotting platform from the 80s for a while.
Having modular DEs is what:
made X11 a monolithic unmaintainable mess
?
https://lxqt-project.org/blog/2025/09/22/2-way-of-wayland/
https://lxqt-project.org/release/2025/11/05/release-lxqt-2-3-0/
I prefer Wayland over X11, but Cinnamon doesn’t support it yet as stable
It’s not a million miles away, but it’s still got some problems. The ‘extract archive’ functionality seems to do it for me; think it must be wanting to pop up a (nested?) file chooser, but causes a session crash.
Cinnamon legacy for getting work done, and KDE wayland for playing games, for me. Nice to go 100% cinnamon though, for sure.
Yeah I tried it for XFCE yesterday*, noticed a few things I wanted weren’t there (because XFWM isn’t ported over) and promptly switched back. Didn’t seem to me like it was more responsive or anything like that**.
But I am still using a 1050Ti, so who knows. That also kind of kills my interest in the idea even if I didn’t have fixed-if-you-use-this-specific-DE type issues. I also don’t really like the idea of CSD.
* after looking up that
labwcnot being installed was why the session wouldn’t launch before** entirely possible it is better in very specific scenarios, but the screen tearing that I see on X11 is diagonal (like the screen is 2 triangles, desynced) and honestly I don’t even know the exact game to test (as I don’t see tearing in videos or any other usage as far as I know)
I’ll switch when it fucking saves session data. It’s still not ready for mainstream.
It does have session restore (after crash)
Look, I primarily use e-waste for my computing. I’ll use whatever display server I want. You’ll pull X11 out of my cold, dead hands.
Same!
I have an ancient laptop from 2013, it needs ancient nvidia 600 series driver version 470 someshit. Wayland doesn’t support old stuff, and nuaveu drivers can’t compete, creating random distorted image on fullscreen or crashing non stop.
And on my PC I have to use VMware for work, Wayland doesn’t work well with fullscreen VMs, the keystroke capture thingamajig fucks shit off bad.
X11 works just fine in both my use cases.
The only thing keeping me off of Wayland is the fact that OBS window capture forces me to manually reselect every window every time.
for me its the god awful graphics when i go onto it. like everything seems blurry or streaky.
Weird, it doesn’t make me do that, I have it installed with the flatpak.
Same. Might be an issue with the legacy install method, the Flatpak OBS works like a charm.
I just don’t want to switch out my window manager and all the helper programs that make it work as a full desktop. Currently I just use LXQt+i3wm, and LXQt will take quite a while until it’s anywhere near feature parity with Wayland, and AFAIK i3wm doesn’t even have plans for a Wayland port (though I know that there’s decently similar tiling WMs for Wayland). I don’t think any of the oldschool low-resource-intensity desktop environments I’d consider using have a decently feature-complete Wayland port right now.
It’s possible that it’s not actually that much work to cobble together a new configuration with a Wayland-compatible tiling WM and a bunch of separate applications for screenshots, clipboard management etc., but I currently don’t care to find out.
Sway is build to he a drop in replacement for i3
Lemmy: “Switch to Linux!”
Me, in IT for 3 decades: “Fuck is Wayland?”
Comments: Clusterfuck of conflicting opinions.
Seriously, y’all are not moving me to switch daily drivers here. I run nothing but headless Linux servers, but for a desktop? Let me start a fight: Which distro?
Last job was at a software dev. One soul of 130 worked with Linux as his daily driver. One. And y’all expect non-technical people to run Linux?!
Also, and this guarantees downvotes, I don’t have the Windows issues you all tell me I have. Same install, years and years, multiple SSDs and PCs, no issues. I can hear you grinding your teeth, “NOAWW! You have problems! I INSIST your desktop fucks up all the time! I INSIST $MS crams unwanted updates up your ass!” Well, there is an update icon waiting on me. Not touching it ATM.
Only issue in recent memory is that it sometimes doesn’t wake properly. About once every 2 weeks I have to hold the power button for a few seconds, let off, hit it again, acheive desktop.
Not trusting the gang who talked me into Firefox last year. What a fucking mess of a browser. Was on Edge last week, without realizing it, everything was smooth as glass. Firefox fucks up the most basic spellcheck. Really?! Still have to swap over to watch YouTube without ads, how’s that for irony? Imagur is plain broken outside of Edge. I get weird graphic artifacts and issues on Firefox.
what’s broken on firefox?
Spellcheck crosses out even basic English, has me questioning myself! I’ve probably added 2,000 words to the dictionary, no improvement.
Weird graphic artifacts, non-stop, it’s blinking as I edit this post.
Sometimes the graphics go fuzzy and I have to reboot, not even restarting the video drivers works, no issue in Edge.
Imgur doesn’t load. I use the Imagus extension in both browsers, flawless in Edge, spotty in Firefox. (Yes, that’s on Imagus, probably not the browser.)
I can watch YouTube logged in on Edge with Ublock, no ads. Have to log out in Firefox. So if I see an interesting video here, I have to copy/paste to Edge.
Porn browsing? Straight to Edge. What six keys do I need to hit for private mode again? CTRL+SHIFT+N, as it ever was.
There’s more, but those issues are top of mind.
I could probably figure out these issues, point being, non-technical users would run away. Kinda like how lemmy is utterly broken for me. My brain just shunts off the annoyances, but I can’t expect anyone else to do so.
I can hardly sell Linux to Joe User, when not even technical people use it as a daily driver, was the point of my original comment.
non technical users don’t tend to experience these issues, since they don’t know enough about computers to get them messed up like yours
…Actually I largely agree, and I’m a CachyOS Linux acolyte.
I have my Windows partition stripped down to the bone. Not even Defender’s active, but once it’s like that it does just work for games, media and such. The partition is ancient.
…It would be hellishly inconvenient for dev stuff though. You are massively overselling Windows there.
Same with Firefox. I’ve had some weird issues with it on Linux and Windows, especially with hardware/graphics acceleration.
Me, in IT for 3 decades:
Well, there is an update icon waiting on me. Not touching it ATM.
Hum?
You have the same energy against Firefox as Linux users have against Windows. Meanwhile Firefox runs great for me. Used it for years. Never had the issues you described (on windows and on Linux; I use both btw.)
I use both btw
Woah. Sir, this is trademark infringement. You’re only allowed to use that phrase with Arch.
Well, my daily driver is actually running arch (btw) so I felt like I’m allowed to use that phrase ;)
Sir this is the nerd zone, and here you are complaining that there’s nerds in the nerd zone talking about nerd things.
I convinced many of average Joes and Marys to switch without issue, never have I had to bother tell them what a wayland or X11 is, I just put Linux Mint on their laptops, give them a few practical tips (stuff like “use the app store instead of scouring websites for your software”), things just work and they happily go do whatever they do with their PC.
Which distro?
Whichever one you prefer.
I don’t have the Windows issues you all tell me I have
Cool, /c/windows is over here you might probably enjoy it more than this place.
Are the Wayland devs going to rewrite my Awesome WM config and widgets to some equivalent window manager while preserving all the features I’ve implemented? If not why the fuck would I waste weeks of my time switching to a tool that does the exact same thing?
Funny, this is basically the exact thing I said about switching from Windows to Linux at one point. Of course not about Wayland and window managers, but about the customization I did and the need to port it over.
Those things couldn’t be more different. Or did you spend lots of time to make your Linux environment work exactly like your Windows did?
I have my environment set up exactly the way I want. Moving to Wayland you mean replicating all the keyboard shortcuts, all the scripting and automated actions and re-implementing all the custom widgets. Because they work the way I want them to work. From what I’ve checked Wayland doesn’t even have tools that can be extended as easily as my WM. I would have to use some less popular tools with little documentation or struggle writing things in C++. And if I did all this I would have a setup that works the exact same way but is on Wayland. What would I gain besides bragging rights?
Well that’s what I’m saying. I had Windows set up exactly like I like it. I disabled all telemetry, had custom hotkeys for everything, etc etc etc, everything worked exactly like I wanted.
There was just a little thing in the background that made it make sense to switch to Linux, Windows getting shittier, MS dropping support etc etc
In the end, of course it’s not exactly the same thing, but that’s what’s happening to x11 as well, it does get “shittier” (comparatively) as less development time is spent on it, it doesn’t get improved as much as Wayland, gets less support etc. So if you just use a scale of “good <> bad”, over time, x11 goes more towards bad and Wayland more towards good, same as Windows vs Linux.
And once there will be some things I want to do, that can’t be done on X11 but can be done on Wayland I will switch. For now there are no such things so switching is just a waste of time. It crazy how many people think everyone should be on Wayland only because it’s new. It’s the Labubu of software, really.
No, people have different needs. By all means, stay on x11. Just don’t pretend Wayland is a fad that’s going away in a couple years or that a re-architectured window manager for the 21st century has no value.
Well you are the maintainer of your WM config so it’s on you not the Devs of Wayland to migrate you.
And why would I do that? What am I going to gain exactly?
Maintained software.
So a badge of honor. Thanks, not interested.
I’ve gotta be honest, the desktop environment situation on Linux does not impress me.
I’m on Cosmic which is decent, but there are all sorts of silly oversights in KDE and gnome, and windows have weird mixes of styles and toolbar display modes.
Is great that Linux is modular, but seriously gtk vs QT vs whatever else needs a heavy duty cleanup.
I agree, however Windows and macOS are even worse in this regard IMO. Everything is just totally inconsistent and the window management features are very barebones. Using either one feels like going back 10 years or more.
The CSD trend might have some upsides but i find it mainly just makes apps ugly and any added functionality is almost always redundant.
Kvantum really helps make Plasma more consistent, not sure if there is a similar addon for GNOME
Gotta love that thing on Windows when you mouse up to hard top right and click to close the window. In some situations it’ll focus and close a random window behind the one you’re wanting to kill.
Up to macOS 26 (the latest OS with Liquid Glass) consistency was great. You’d have to go back to the PowerPC era or X11 integration to find issues. Now I have windows with different toolbar button sizes and corner radii and it’s stupid as hell.
I agree on window management tools, but I used third party ones on Mac for a decade and they worked okay. Obviously not as good as i3 type ones.
Apps should only use cad if they are really using the space like browsers with their tab bar. That gnome forces every app to provide them is really stupid.
macOS are even worse in this regard IMO. Everything is just totally inconsistent
Why do you mention macOS if you haven’t used it?
It’s fucking weird people have such strong opinions about issues like X11 and systemd. They’re meant to be working in the background away from the user, and that’s exactly how I treat them. Actually systemd still provides some functions a user might have to interact with manually, for X11 I’m just baffled.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission.
I’d have to change desktop environments, because my current one only has “experimental” support in the latest version, and my distro is years behind, anyway. Your choices are pretty much KDE, Gnome or building your own desktop with a standalone window manager, and I don’t like any of those options.
Fair, although I never understood why people choose Mint and so on.
Plasma is so configurable that you can just make it look and act like you want, right?
So I guess it’s getting the GNOME experience (everything is simple, no setup) but with a classic desktop paradigm?
I think the average user wouldn’t care, Linux just attracts nerds. And I think it’s totally fine and even good that people care how their computer works—it shows that users care about their software working for them, rather than just wanting to go along with whatever is given to them. I think a lot of the positions people take about these things are very silly, but I’d still prefer someone to have a silly opinion about X11/Wayland or pid 1 than to not have an opinion at all. It’s nice that users are being actively involved in deciding what they want their system to be; it’s a nice change from the average user who’s like “well microsoft is screenshotting my screen every 5 seconds and feeding it into copilot now, guess I’m going along with that”.
There are still existing issues with wayland that do not exist on X11. I’m talking, using last-gen consumer grade hardware that will break basic applications like, who knows, a web browser. Meanwhile the “upside” are extremely marginal to a lot of people. Different screen scaling isn’t implemented using proper DPI on most implementations, variable refresh rate is not something most people care about (I sure don’t care that my second monitor is capped at 120Hz instead of 144Hz because of my first monitor), etc.
So, yeah, for some people, it’s not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of having a stable, working system vs. a broken system where basic features are not a given.
If you took an uber and the car was a horse-driven carriage and your seat was a hole in a rotted plank, you’d complain.
I used to use some features that only worked on x11. Slowly I found alternatives or workarounds on wayland. So I understand the sentiment. Imagine you book an uber but it’s electric so they say you can’t book a ride that’s too long
I love your metaphor because it is exactly the kind of pedantry that is usually at play with X11 vs Wayland.
“I can’t take an electric uber because it has an effective range less than 400 miles!”
Who the fuck takes a uber to a destination over 4 hours away?
A normal person rents a car, takes a bus, catches a train or buys a plane ticket. Ain’t no one faring a uber for a long trip to another city. But that’s exactly the kind of complaints from people obsessively clinging to X11. They have a hyper specific use case or workflow that almost no one else uses.
Every single person has different problems and priorities, and until hyper specific use cases/workflows work on Wayland, many will stay on Xorg.
People who just complain and stay in some deprecated tech (instead of reporting bugs and working with the new way) will have a rude awakening when it’s just no longer supported.
I’m not saying everyone should be a early adopter, but this timeline was more than forgiving. People who did nothing but keep using the X11 GNOME session might run into Wayland session bugs now that they could have reported years ago.
Some may have bugs that fully break the session, and reporting bugs comes with a new problem: if you do, odds are someone will dismiss it, and/or tell you to fix it yourself.
I understand and agree. Anyone who has a super specific use case that means they still use X11, go ahead, no one is stopping them. But to complain or trash Wayland on that basis is asinine. Every single change in paradigm breaks someone’s workflow, that’s impossible to avoid. But the responsible thing to do is to adapt either with new tools and resources, or with a slight change in workflow. They act like people are taking away their toy, when in reality it is just adding to the pile of available toys. But they are upset because their toy is old and won’t get repaired anymore, while the new toy is slightly different but a bit easier to clean and repair, so they get upset at the other kids for playing with it. Ignoring that the new toy doesn’t make the old toy disappear.
The problem is many distros are going to stop shipping Xorg, because it is “not needed” anymore.
That’s where the adapt part comes in.
I had a friend who collected CRTs and VHS players right at the turn from DVD to bluray. He didn’t argue to kill LCDs, HD video or CDs. He didn’t wrote to Sony to complain that he couldn’t find VHS on Walmart anymore or that his hyper specific CC format didn’t work on DVD the exact same way it did on VHS. He accepted that tech culture shifted and that to keep his hobby up he had to take up a lot of the upfront work of maintaining old tech alive. He learned to repair old CRTs and VHSs and keeps them running for libraries. Even collaborating to digitize particularly niche historical content.
You should be able to compile it yourself though, even if upstream doesn’t provide it prepackaged
Or maybe they’re developers that are tired of the wheel being reimplemented?
Eg.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/wayland-screenshots/
In my eyes, it’s the same deal as conservatives coping with the changing world. There is a version where they just shut up and let the rest of the tech landscape improve while they happily stick to the X they know (X.org or even XLibre).
while they happily stick to the X they know
Getting left behind is the natural and inevitable consequence of obsolescence.
Huh, why do I hear someone shouting about Windows 11 requiring TPM?
Yes, the people who refuse to either upgrade to Win11-compatible hardware or move to an OS compatible with their existing hardware will eventually get left behind. Both in terms of security and compatibility. It’s happened many times, from the fall of AGP in favour of PCIE, to every time Intel inroduced a new CPU socket. X11 is the next.
Aren’t there still maintained window managers that support X11?
Bring in politics is a choice
You aren’t wrong though
Unless I’m terribly misunderstanding the word’s meaning (or anglophones once again redefined a word to reflect their current sensibilities), “conservative” doesn’t automatically imply politics, just that someone is resistant to new ideas. A person who only listens to music produced before the 20th century and goes into a rage when video game music composers are mentioned is a conservative, but not in terms of political views.
Gnome forced me onto Wayland a few weeks ago and I’ve been dealing with issues ever since. Some issues even affecting the most basic level tasks like typing text, imagine dealing with that in 2025. Following your analogy, if the Uber with the fancy new transmission came to a halt every kilometre, you’d care too.
Nvidia?
Not even, amd on both my laptop and desktop, but still lots of issues. None of them major, but it adds up.
I was an early adopter years back, so I reported bugs while I could still switch back when I needed to (which ended up being once to screen share with Zoom)
If you had done this, you wouldn’t be forced into a buggy environment now.
Same here. All amd. 13 year old cpu. Wayland has a ton of issues and 0 noticeable improvements for me.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission. But I care what MY CAR has! Especially since there isn’t a shop for my car and I have to do all my own maintenance. Like, init/systemd is a huge architectural change, it’s WEIRD to you that people who depend on their computer to perform whatever function gives their life meaning and viability want to have a functional grasp of their system? That’s a big change to absorb for essentially no practical benefit to the problem domain.
I found that systemd actually simplified all the things I was doing on sysvinit. BUT, I did hold out until Debian testing stopped supporting sysvinit, and I think waiting gave me a better experience.
With X11 -> Wayland, the main thing holding me back finding a tiling compositor that will work under Plasma and is packaged for Debian and the learning at least the basics. My XMonad configuration isn’t that special, but I’m really quite used to not having to re-arrange my own windows, and being able to move/resize/refocus all with the home row and modifier keys. So, I’m probably going to wait until Debian testing ships a Plasma that doesn’t support X11, and have to do some learning then.
If you only live in the GUI layer, you aren’t the driver. The implementation details are abstracted away from you. Your software are the real uber drivers, you’re just being driven around.

























