this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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I am pretty new to Linux and have mostly been using Ubuntu. The few times I have read about Wayland, it was mostly Ubuntu users blamimg it for things not working. Can you tell me why you are looking forward to using it?
The most basic and obvious thing is that external monitors with different DPIs than the laptop screen will finally work correctly.
It supports things like multiple screens with different DPIs and refresh rates which X11 supports badly, if they work at all.
Wayland still has some use cases that the devs are chasing down and Nvidia were dragged into things kicking and screaming, but it's mostly complete now.
Here's the basic rundown: Most if not all desktop environments for Linux have used a component called X11, which is the window manager. X11 is exceptionally old; it's been around since the 1980's. Computer display technology - and what we expect computer displays to do - has changed drastically since X11's creation. X11 is old and busted, there's stuff it just outright can't do that we're beginning to expect computers to do. But, because it has been around for so long, a lot of software is written with X11 in mind, sometimes software that isn't actively developed anymore.
If X11 is old and busted, Wayland is the new hotness. Wayland has been in development for approximately ten years now; when I started getting into Linux in early 2014 I heard whispers that there were a couple projects working to replace X11, Canonical was working on their thing, Mir, and there's this other thing called Wayland.
Wayland is actually out and in service, and it can do some cool things, but also it breaks a lot of things, especially for users of Nvidia GPUs if my understanding is correct. We're still not at a point where we can kick X11 in the head and standardize the whole Linux world on Wayland yet.
Cinnamon - Mint's signature DE - hasn't even begun to try to switch over to Wayland. I'm a Cinnamon user, I'm extremely still using X11, I don't even know if I've ever run Wayland on my current hardware, so I don't have much practical experience with it.
𝔚𝔞𝔶𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡 ℑ𝔰 𝔒𝔲𝔯 𝔏𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔖𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔬𝔯 𝔄𝔫𝔡 ℑ𝔱𝔰 ℭ𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔚𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔐𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔈𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔶𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔄𝔩𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱
Personally, I'd like to use Gamescope for my games. In addition to super low latency it has a number of nice features like being able to force games into borderless fullscreen and therefore be easily minimized, being able to use FSR to upscale any game, setting a framerate limiter, etc
It's modern and faster, has more features, and supports X11 apps. If your hardware is friendly with it, it's pretty much a straight upgrade. Problem is not all hardware supports is well.