I really hope wayland doesn't become to x11 what IPV6 is to ipv4.
Because after so many years, a lot of the ecosystem hasn't moved, or is even not compatible with it. Good multi display support is missing, and some games don't render well.
I want it to succeed, and the project has been progressing non-stop, but it does show how much time and energy such an endeavor takes. I was expecting to be able to use it for years and years.
See also: BTRFS
> but it does show how much time and energy such an endeavor takes.
The reason it takes so much time is not that is requires a lot of "energy" or that the problem in general is particular hard to solve. Wayland is fundamentally flawed at the concept level and the only way for it to get to a usable state is to turn it essentially into another X. Combine this with general stubbornness of all involved parties and the extreme hesitancy to standardize essential things you get a recipe for disaster.
What is flawed?
The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve.
In a x11 world, the assumption is that everything that a user runs is fully trusted, any software has access all the inputs, all the audio, everything that is displayed without any restriction. This wasn't a problem 30 years ago, but is quite a blocker for modern approach to security with granular permissions.
The architecture of x11 itself does not fit a modern graphical stack, some problem cannot be solved properly like monitors with different framerates, fractional scaling etc...
Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing to address those issues. This impact the whole desktop ecosystem, it's a massive effort.
Wayland will replace X though indeed (coupled with other things) that's the intent.
> The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve.
What problems are those exactly? It's my impression that Wayland (the protocol) just creates problems without solving any.
> Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing
Yes. The anti-user anti-general-purpose-computing anti-freedom efforts. Trying to create a world where device owners may use their devices only for a set of approved actions such as browsing Instagram and Tiktok. When someone speaks against it, they are attacked with FUD, and "security" is called upon. Does that remind you of anything?
Some relevant past comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753902
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758783
None of those comments have an actual example. I still have no idea what you complain about, there's really not much difference between using gnome on wayland and gnome on X11 or Sway and I3. In the wayland counterparts though some of the security problems at the core of x11 have been addressed, and input and display just works better. There's no-one forcing you to do anything or forbiding you to do anything.
> there's really not much difference between using gnome on wayland and gnome on X11
Yes, looking just at big DEs there's not much difference. Consider, however, the problems Wayland causes for the ecosystem. Take screen grabbing programs or input event interceptors like xdotool. There's simply no way to implement one of those strictly on Wayland. Each Wayland compositor must be targeted separately instead.
This is discussed in some of the threads I linked to, BTW.
The portal for xdg-desktop takes care of the implementation and is the responsibility of the compositor.
It's already used by Flameshot for example.
There is several xdottool equivalent as well: https://github.com/atx/wtype https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool
This one is specific to wlroot based compositor: https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl