this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
128 points (85.2% liked)
Linux
48770 readers
936 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wayland's major "technical merits", as far as I can tell, are a lack of screen tearing, slightly faster rendering under some circumstances and better handling of touchscreens. That's it. If you don't have a touchscreen and aren't a gamer (few non-gamers care all that much about tearing or about framerates above 60Hz), Wayland has no real advantages to the user that I'm aware of.
X is network-transparent, more widely compatible, and arguably more extensible. Most users don't care about those things either.
Wayland has an advantage in attracting developers because it has less accumulated technical debt and general code cruft. That doesn't make it better for users, though. Most Wayland evangelists I run into seem to be devs who are more interested in the design of the graphics stack than whether it makes a difference in the real world.
So, as with so many things, "merit" is in the eye of the beholder. People should use what works for them.
Also better isolation of applications and better support for multiple screens.
I'll give you the multiple screens (not a use case I have myself, so I don't pay attention to support quality). Isolation of applications is another thing that most users don't really care that much about, I would say.
users shouldn't have to care about security. it should be the baseline.
It's legitimately important if you want to be able to pull random software from places and not have your system compromised, a la smartphone OSes.
It's not the whole story -- things still aren't entirely sandboxed aside from that -- but without it, the GUI is a big security hole.
You never care about security until you get your credentials stolen
And don't forget 1:1 gestures and the Crash-Resilient Wayland Compositing that keep the application alive even tho the "compositor" crash, so it does restart without any data loss.
Edit: forgot to mention the lockscreen protocol, because on xorg if the lockscreen crash then you view the desktop and you have the device unlocked!
Let's not forget HiDPI. Everything with a HiDPI display is borderline unusable on Linux with X.Org.