I’m a seasoned Linux user, but mostly for servers and services, not really for desktop use.
I’ve dabbled in some desktop distros on my personal rig a few times in the past, but ultimately due to specific games, I’ve gone back to Windows.
I recently installed Arch and KDE. Upon initial boot I noticed it was defaulted to Wayland. Every time I would try to log in it would just go to a black screen then cycle back to the login screen. Picking X11 would bring me to the desktop.
Basic Specs:
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D
- nVidia RTX 4090
I have been doing some reading into this and it looks like the issue is due to the proprietary nVidia drivers, but there are solutions to work around this.
I know nothing of Wayland other than its supposed to be more secure. My question is, is it worth the time/effort to get Wayland working? I primarily use my system for gaming. X11 seems to be working just fine for me right now.
Forgive me if I’m using some of the terminology wrong, still learning.
EDIT - Selling my gpu is not an option. I knew ahead of time that AMD has superior Linux support, but the 4090’s performance can’t be matched by anything AMD has. Maybe next upgrade I’ll go back to AMD if they have the top performer.
X11 is deprecated, it’s been removed from RHEL, and hasn’t had dedicated maintainers for years. You might as well switch to Wayland (and xwayland if needed) now, it’s not really the case that you have an option.
Still no issues on Debian.
I imagine you’re talking about stability issues and not the numerous security flaws with X11 that are baked in to the protocol. Wayland is an improvement for many reasons, not just stability and the fact that it is actively developed unlike X11.
Some reading:
Oh, I’ve followed this stuff for years and years. I’ve been using Linux pretty much exclusively for a quarter of a century. People love to harp on the security issues, but from what I’ve seen that’s pretty much theoretical. The only real compelling argument is that developers are leaning toward Wayland, so that’s the way it will go. I’m sure some day I’ll go to update and it’ll be time to make that change.
I’m not a developer. I wasn’t super happy with the change to systemd, but it’s not like I was the one that had to deal with the init v issues, so when it changed, I went along. I’m sure the same will happen with Wayland. The last time I tried it, a lot of my decades of cruft didn’t work, shortcuts and workflow issues. Sure, I should probably clean up all that crap anyway, but like I said, it’ll happen when it happens. Until then, I’m completely happy with X11.
I had many issues running Arch+Wayland+nvidia because, as a long-time i3 user, I figured that migrating to Sway would be the best choice based on so many people in the community talking about it. I tried moving over several times, every few months to see if the experience had improved but each time I got frustrated with how terrible and buggy the environment was.
Trying out Hyprland was a complete game-changer. I’ve been running it full-time for about 2 months and it’s completely stable, supports everything I need to run, and is more efficient: the battery on my laptop lasts about 30% longer compared to my i3/picom/X11 setup.
So yeah, I highly recommend Hyprland if you’ve tried sway in the past and didn’t get anywhere with it.
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Has this place officially become a true Linux community? Did we just have the first X vs Wayland thread?!
That said, I use Wayland on all my machines, but I don’t have Nvidia hardware. I suggest just using X11 until Nvidia manages to do the needful. Personally I enjoy using wayland, things run so smoothly, I have zero issues with games and the only application I used that broke was Barrier, but I just used it for my Steam Deck and that problem is solved with SSH.
In your situation, I would say to stick with X11. I’m still using X11 for gaming, but Wayland for most other things. Maybe try Wayland again in a few years. And when it’s time to buy new hardware, maybe avoid Nvidia.
If you want to have another go at getting it working, check out what the Arch wiki says for KDE:
If you are an NVIDIA user with the proprietary nvidia driver, also enable the DRM kernel mode setting. If that does not work, too, check the instructions on the KDE wiki.
As for the question of security, I want to emphasize that X11 is not increasing your risk of getting hacked. If one of your applications is compromised, then X11 acts as one method by which an attacker could further their attack or extract information, but other methods would usually be easier for an attacker. You could use flatpaks or firejail to mitigate those other methods, but only after you’ve done that would Wayland provide a meaningful security benefit.
Little late to the party, but I’ll chime in. I have a 3080, and for the most part, Wayland works, but there are a few problems that keep me from using it as a daily driver. G-Sync doesn’t work at all, and when I put my PC to sleep, upon wake I end up needing to do a full reboot because of severe graphical issues. When it is running though, it’s pretty smooth, with only a few graphical issues here and there. I still daily drive X11 though until the major bugs are fixed.
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