Preparing for KDE Plasma’s Last X11-Supported Release
33 points by raymii
33 points by raymii
I do hope people keep reporting any kind of pain points, especially accessibility related, like the one thread we had. Respectfully, of course. People tend to forget a lot of us are just volunteers and end up screaming at some of the devs, which helps nobody and can make some of the volunteers go "not worth it" and leave, and then nothing gets done. (Also I do not know really anything about Wayland/X11, I do not work on this area.)
Personal takes:
So far in my daily use over ~4 years, any issues I've had are gradually disappearing. Now I do not even have to think about X11/Wayland. Last time I tried X11 for development purposes, few months ago, I had so many weird issues, like windows flashing and going wherever they wanted, weird screen flickering because compositing was turned off and on. When I tried Linux Mint ~5 years ago, I could not run games really well due to not knowing X11 compositing is powerhungry as all hell, and kills the framerate completely in games. And Mint did not turn that off automatically. In Wayland it just works.
Sorry, but none of your "personal takes" sound like written in good faith. They look much more like propaganda.
TIL sharing personal experiences is propaganda. I hope I start getting checks from all the places I do propaganda for soon!
EDIT: also "every 5 years" this transition has been going on for over a decade
TIL sharing personal experiences is propaganda.
Not if it's genuine experience. Yes if it's masqueraded as such. "I am a dentist and I personaly use Colgate toothpaste, believe me."
https://lobste.rs/s/jy1xaa/preparing_for_kde_plasma_s_last_x11#c_3vo6vb
also "every 5 years" this transition has been going on for over a decade
I didn't say anything about 5 years being related to X11 vs Wayland.
Propaganda? Huh. This site keeps surprising me.
Why would I lie about that? Its exactly my experience: https://akselmo.dev/posts/i-gave-linux-gaming-a-go/
Our internal metrics within KDE show that over 95% of users of Plasma 6.6 are on Wayland, with a gradual increase every release
The self-fulfilling prophecy!
I tried something and Wayland didn't work, then I tried X and Plasma wouldn't work, so now I use xfce on X11 for that machine.
So I guess I'm not here to argue, but maybe it has worked for those 5% of users and it was not worth the effort for X of those 95%.
I would not be at all surprised if there is also a strong correlation between using Wayland and having telemetry enabled, whereas X11 users have it disabled to larger degree.
Either because of user choice or because that's how their IT did it.
I'm curious to know how they know what WM I'm using. I haven't agreed to send metrics. Can it be turned off?
It's opt-in afaik.
Yeah, the first run wizard asked permission for metrics and had couple options for how much data is sent. Defaulted to none.
edit: Should probably add that the way how it was done was nice: no bullshit, no weaseling, clear and informative, defaults to none. Actually asked for consent! This made me actually enable the metrics, it is the only time I have done it.
You can calm down:
Some software produced by the KDE Community may include telemetry components, which provides details on the device it's running on to us. Where this functionality exists, it will always operate on an opt-in basis and be disabled by default, with the ability to change your preferences at any time.
If you want to check whether it's turned on in Plasma for you, go to System Settings -> Security & Privacy -> User Feedback.
I would imagine that you would see in the stats if the overall users lost is exceeding newer ones. So it's certainly plausible that some of this shift is from newer uses using the distro defaults (now Wayland) and former users leaving, but the fact it works "well enough" for the people using the default to presumably not show an overall loss is probably still useful.
It can be useful, but there is something to be said about supporting the vocal minority.
They’d effectively be kicking the beehive if the new users are rarely power users who are passionate and knowledgeable. This is true of any product development with a tenured user base.
I also am not sure if they’ve shared data on how many users had previously opted in to telemetry in X11, but now use Wayland. To me that transition is far more important, and likely the only metric that matters when making this kind of change.
I wish Wayland had more flexibility for power-user flows — for example I couldn't replicate a macOS programme that draws a translucent blurred overlay over the screen because this is kind of access that Wayland just doesn't offer.
I personally enjoy having the freedom to do weird stuff and it's mildly sad that Wayland makes it hard-to-impossible to do that, especially interoperably with other desktop environments. (Some of my workarounds have involved copious KWin Rules which are, of course, not portable)
However with a 'regular user' hat on, I have to say that it's gotten smooth. Switching to Wayland made my multi-GPU laptop work properly by surprise (under X after hours of trying I couldn't manage get a setup with both internal and external displays working at the same time, as they live on different GPUs). It made mixed-DPI screen setups work properly. I have to admit it's been stable.
Though it did break the support for KeePassXC to autotype passwords and similar 'automation' functionality. I suppose I can't moan too much given I should be using browser integration properly. I also have struggled with the current state of screen recording software; my preferred tool is not compatible with Wayland and everything else has not quite hit the mark.
Finally, I have in the past used Caster for speech control and I suspect it is based on xdotool and thus will break.
The main thing blocking me from going full wayland is support for headless rdp.
KDE currently only supports rdp on existing sessions, not headless, which is currently a blocker for me and why I still use xrdp. Hopefully this gets addressed at some point!
I have Plasma on X11 on one machine and Plasma on Wayland on another, and I do not see much of a difference in everyday use.
Personally I think KDE has handled the transition better than GNOME. It's easy to get mad and pout, but the options are Wayland or maintaining X11 themselves, and the latter isn't realistic.