by shevy-java | 2026-01-04 12:32:12+00:00
The article already begins with a wrong claim:

"Wayland is the successor to the X server "

Wayland is primarily a protocol, but most definitely not a "success" to
the xorg-server. This is why it does not have - and will never have - the
same feature set. So trying to sell it as "the new shiny thing" after almost
20 (!!!!!) years, is simply wrong. One should instead point out that wayland
is a separate way to handle a display server / graphics. There are different
trade-offs.

> but for the last 18 years (!), Wayland was never usable on my computers

I can relate to this a bit, but last year or perhaps even the year before,
I used wayland via plasma on manjaro. It had various issues, but it kind of
worked, even on nvidia (using the proprietary component; for some reason the
open-source variant nouveau works less-well on my current system). So I think
wayland was already usable even before 2025, even on problematic computer
systems.

> I don’t want to be stuck on deprecated software

I don't want to be stuck on software that insinuates it is the future when it
really is not.

> With nVidia graphics cards, which are the only cards that support my 8K monitor, Wayland would either not work at all or exhibit heavy graphics glitches and crashes.

I have a similar problem. Not with regards to a 8K monitor, but my ultra-widescreen
monitor also has tons of issues when it comes to nvidia. I am also getting kind of tired of nvidia refusing to fix issues. They are cheap, granted, but I'd love viable alternatives. It seems we have a virtual monopoly situation here. That's not good.

> So the pressure to switch to Wayland is mounting!

What pressure? I don't feel any pressure. Distributions that would only support
wayland I would not use anyway; I am not depending on that, though, as I compile everything from source using a set of ruby scripts. And that actually works, too.
(Bootstrapping via existing distributions is easier and faster though. As stated, trade-offs everywhere.)

> The reason behind this behavior is that wlroots does not support the TILE property (issue #1580 from 2019).

This has also been my impression. The wayland specific things such as wlroots, but also other things, just flat out suck. There are so many things that suck with this regard - and on top of that, barely any real choice on wayland. Wayland seems to have dumbed down the whole ecosystem. After 20 years, having such a situation is shameful. That's the future? I am terrified of that future.

> During 2025, I switched all my computers to NixOS. Its declarative approach is really nice for doing such tests, because you can reliably restore your system to an earlier version.

I don't use NixOS myself, but being able to have determined system states that work and are guaranteed to work, kind of extends the reproducible builds situation. It's quite cool. I think all systems should incorporate that approach. Imagine you'd no longer need StackOverflow because people in the NixOS sphere solved all those problems already and you could just jump from guaranteed snapshot to another one that is guaranteed to also work. That's kind of a cool idea.

The thing I dislike about NixOS the most is ... nix. But I guess that is hard to change now. Every good idea to be ruined via horrible jokes of an underperforming programming language ...

> So from my perspective, switching from this existing, flawlessly working stack (for me) to Sway only brings downsides.

I had a similar impression. I guess things will improve, but right now I feel as if I lose too much for "this is now the only future". And I don't trust the wayland-promo devs anymore either - too much promo, too few results. After 20 years guys ...