this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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On X11 and the Fascists Maggots (blogs.gnome.org)
submitted 2 days ago by Mihies@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev
129 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This is a truly WTF moment about messed up responses to X11 session removal in Gnome.

2 weeks ago I published a blogpost about the upcoming plans of GNOME 49 and the eventual removal of the X11 session. Since then, instead of looking at feedback, bugs and issues related to the topic, we all collectively had to deal with the following, and I am not exaggerating one bit:

  • Fascists and Nazis
  • Wild Conspiracy Theories that make Qanon jealous
  • “Concerned” Trolling about the Accessibility of the Wayland session
  • A culture war where Wayland is Gay, and X11 is the glorious past they stole from you

In my wildest dreams I could have never made this shit up. You all need mandatory supervised access to the Internet from now on.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I do think ditching X11 is still slightly premature. For all its more modern features, there's still a lot that Wayland either hasn't implemented yet or "can't do" because of its "security model."

[–] XenGi@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Can you name something that's missing? Because I can't think of anything relevant.

[–] American_Jesus@lemm.ee 1 points 16 hours ago

Use NVIDIA as primary GPU on laptops (not offload)
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-R575-Wayland-Plans

Currently you can only set NVIDIA to offload some of the rendering, but not as primary GPU like X11

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA_Optimus#Use_NVIDIA_graphics_only

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sure, Autokey doesn't work.

[–] XenGi@feddit.org 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

What's autokey?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

It's roughly equivalent to AutoHotKey on Windows. It's an application that can intercept key combos or even typed strings and...do basically anything. Let's say you type a certain phrase a lot, you could come up with an abbreviation so that when you type an abbreviation it deletes the abbreviation and inserts the big thing you type. Or maybe you want it to fire when you press ALT+ y. Or, maybe you want it to do something programmatic, like insert the date and time. Or do anything you can get Python to do.

This apparently does not work on Wayland systems, something about the way it accessed keystrokes in X11 isn't open in Wayland for security concerns.

[–] XenGi@feddit.org 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly that sounds like a security nightmare and its probably a good thing that doesn't work anymore.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

Honestly if pressing some buttons to get the computer to do something you programmed it to do is a "security nightmare" I think we should probably just give up, tear down the electric grid and go back to dying of smallpox at 17 like nature intended.

[–] hoppolito@mander.xyz 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know autokey, so I can't speak to whether they replace all its functionality but there are 'xdotool-like' programs for Wayland. So it is at least very possible to replace functionality like the latter you mentioned (press button/button combination -> do an action, like inserting date/start a program/do something programmatic). Some examples I know are:

[–] XenGi@feddit.org 1 points 19 hours ago

ydotool is a perfect replacement for dmenu based password managers.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I"ve been experimenting with both Cosmos and XFCE Wayland.

Color pickers, screenshot, and window recording/streaming all don't seem to work or require Wayland-only packages that are extremely primitive in features and use.

Alt+tabbing out of games, whether fullscreen or windowed, also doesn't seem to work.

Wallpapers and cursors installed to the standard location where the distro installs all of them don't seem to be usable. I have to manually copy them to somewhere in the home directory in order to use them.

Screensavers seem to be unusable except for one port of xscreensavers.

I know OpenSUSE plans to eliminate x11, so I'm trying to get used to Wayland, but I do hope it's more developed before I have to use it full time.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I"ve been experimenting with both Cosmos [I'm assuming you mean Cosmic, System76's upcoming DE?] and XFCE Wayland.

So the only Wayland implementations you've tried are ones in Alpha or Beta?

Tbh that seems like an unfair comparison. You're comparing alpha and beta software to production-ready software, and complaining about it not being as stable.

Wayland is a lot more mature on Gnome or Plasma. I started using Wayland on Gnome in 2019, and aside from when I briefly tested with an Nvidia card a number of years ago, the only issue I've ever had was screen sharing on discord, which was 'Discord are pathologically against updating their electron version' issue, not a Wayland issue.

[–] 90s_hacker@reddthat.com 7 points 1 day ago

tbf, aren't both of those still in early stages? I don't think I've had any issues with those on KDE wayland

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do we have a widely adopted aolution yet for screensharing, global shortcuts, and window position restoration?

[–] XenGi@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Screen sharing under gnome and KDE just works. Even in sway that's solved for quite a while now. I would call that widely adopted. I haven't encountered the other two as problems yet. Global shortcuts work in my sway session. I would expect nothing else from gnome and KDE. Window position restoration is also a standard feature in sway AFAIK. Not sure if gnome or KDE do it.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Perhaps I should take another look now that the ecosystem has had time to mature...