Comment by ☕️ tenno-seremel
Re: "Linux geminauts, what display server protocol do you use?"
I use X11 because Debian 13 with KDE Wayland is superslow on my nvidia GPU (GeForce GTX 1660 Ti). I might choose something different when I’ll upgrade, but with current prices I have no idea when that will be.
Feb 01 · 3 months ago
Poll Results
1. X11
███████████████▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 61%
2. Wayland
█████████▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 36%
3. Other (please specify)
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 2%
4. None (terminal only)
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 2%
61 votes were cast.
20 Later Comments ↓
An interesting survey. I love reading about topics I don't know about.
I use Wayland on Fedora 43 Workstation. It works for me and it's what I learned to use many years ago. However, I don't like the idea of killing x11: the health of Linux comes from its diversity and should be preserved.
👻 darkghost · Feb 01 at 12:08:
x11 has fun features. Did you know you can run x11 programs from an ssh session? ssh -X username and yes I've done this with things as bloated as Firefox. It's a tad slow but totally possible at least as of the last time I tried it. There isn't yet a Wayland equivalent I'm aware of.
☯️ leoperbo · Feb 01 at 16:07:
Voted Wayland cause it has been my way to go the last year on my main laptop. But I still use X11 on other machines, like this iMac from 2011, where I'm writing right now (Elive Linux).
The X11 client/server separation --although I am always confused about who the client is -- is an amazing feature. You can actually run thr UI on a different machine.
It is old and many features are obsolete. We could just ignore or remove them instead of forcing a whole new obsolete and inferior system inspired by a vintage Windows OLE. You know, cutting edge Object Oriented marshalling system with XML and a few 2012 innovations.
I use a bit of both. I run Sway (wlroots) on my main laptop, while my old Acer uses LXQt (Xorg). Meanwhile, my Raspberry Pi will soon be running E6 (Xenocara).
My ThinkPad T400 currently runs Xfce (Xorg), but I plan to try Xfwl as soon as it's available on Salix (a Slackware-based distro that happens to be available on gemini).
My phone and tablet, of course, use SurfaceFlinger; but that's neither here nor there.
I have also been considering giving XLibre a try, just to see what the craic is.
X11 and i3. I still have software where wayland has issues (+ bugs in wayland compositors). Biggest problem for me last year was hiDPI on my laptop with X11 (but wayland has complementary problems). What really sucks the patience out of me in both X11 and Wayland is that both can do hiDPI w/ multiple screens (in different ways) but the UX to set it up is terrible.
👻 darkghost · Feb 03 at 12:26:
+1 on hiDPI issues. KDE on x11 has handled it the most gracefully for me.
instead of forcing a whole new obsolete and inferior system inspired by a vintage Windows OLE.
@stack, can you tell more about it? i also have heard wayland has design similarities to windows but never really understood.
also we have framebuffer and kms, why not draw on them if xorg is not desirable.
I am hardly an authority, but I think at the core there is the desire to integrate tighter with GPUs and the kernel and facilitate 'compositing', whatever that may be. When I ask, the only response I get is "you know, transparent terminal windows and rounded corners and such". But frankly I don't really care and will use X11 for as long as Lunduke is alive to plug it. Or I'll probably drop dead first.
👻 darkghost · Feb 04 at 10:01:
I've had rounded corners and transparent terminals since 2005 on X11. Other claims are better performance by eliminating the X server, but real world tests still don't prove that out so far. Another is reduced attack surface, but swapping old code for new isn't always more secure. Another claim is that there is a lot of built in stuff, like multimonitor and touch that require extensions on X11. Meanwhile you can't do remote desktop on Wayland but don't worry that's coming soon as an extension. One perhaps nice feature of wayland is frame perfect synchronization. If you've ever used the X Intel driver on modernish hardware, watching videos is a choice of crappy frame rate or crazy video tearing.
☯️ leoperbo · Feb 04 at 15:26:
@darkghost: Meanwhile you can't do remote desktop on Wayland but don't worry that's coming soon as an extension.
I can do remote desktop on Wayland, no extension install required, and multimonitor support is better than X11 nowadays (my use cases). I was a Wayland detractor when I used Ubuntu derivatives, since one year ago, when I switched to Fedora, their implementation worked flawlessly, don't know if is a distro or a time issue.
Evidence of I was a Wayland detractor xD:
— Meme about Wayland shared on my gemlog
X11 + i3, I've try kde plasma with wayland but it is slow on my machine (ThinkCentre M72e).
🛞 MaAkThRsYoOySrHtKaAm · Feb 09 at 11:07:
x11 is nice. On an old laptopI can run just six processes: login, bash, startx, xinit, Xorg, openbox. That's enough for a very lightweight desktop environment. From there I can launch Steam with max resources available. Best to get better hardware though. Running over ssh is great for something like a pi.
i wote above, but i want to stress again, not only via x ssh forwarding.
i can draw a window on other computer's screen by using DISPLAY=other_computer_ip:0.
so someone may use gimp that runs on my computer but draws on theirs.
i am currently using X11 on void linux with the i3 window manager
🐧 the_mantelman · Feb 24 at 01:14:
Both Wayland and X11, depending on my mood
by the way, probono, the author of appimage and maker of a freebsd based os with macos like interface, published
@norayr, reading that was so weird. It was like I'd written that.
But better researched.
I use X11 still, mainly because I just encounter less jank on it.
I concur with other commenters that the fact X11 was designed for networked use is better. It's cool to be able to run an app externally and just have it integrate directly with the host environment.
Original Post
Linux geminauts, what display server protocol do you use? — i was curious earlier today so i figured i'd ask