cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/5946015

Guardrails have been in place where the Firefox browser has enabled Wayland by default (when running on recent GTK versions) but as of today that code has been removed…

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
    27·
    1 year ago

    It’s not clear to me after reading the article. Maybe I’m out of the loop but…

    What’s Wayland? And why is this significant?

    • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
      23·
      1 year ago

      Wayland is a “display server,” which basically means it manages the way GUIs show on the screen. X (most recently X11/Xorg) was the standard for over 30 years, but it was designed for computers 30 years ago. Modern concepts like scaling and high refresh rate displays need extensions to it, but it’s really complicated and hard to work with, so a lot of improvements that need to be made can’t be made. It’s also fundamentally insecure, as every window has access to both the contents and the input of any other window. Wayland is a modern replacement that focuses on security and expandability, and basically everything is working on switching to it. There are growing pains, but it’s constantly improving, and most distros use it by default now.

    • seang96@spgrn.com
      12·
      1 year ago

      There are 2 display servers for Linux. X11, which is really old and doesn’t support newer things such as HDR and the “new” kid on the hlock, Wayland. KDE, Gnome and such that make the UI you interact with on Linux utilize X11 or Wayland to render everything on the screens.

      Edit correction by LinuxSBC x2

      • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
        8·
        1 year ago

        Display servers, not window managers. Window managers are built on top of X11 or Wayland.

        • seang96@spgrn.com
          3·
          1 year ago

          Appreciate the correction. Honestly haven’t delved with desktop Linux much though I plan on swapping from Windows again. Know things over the years, but miss the mark on some things. I corrected my original comment for accuracy.

          • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
            4·
            1 year ago

            Thanks, though your correction is also incorrect. Display managers, like SDDM, GDM, or LightDM, are the login screen. They’re called “display managers” for historical reasons, but they also run on top of the display server.

            • seang96@spgrn.com
              1·
              1 year ago

              Aw shucks thought I put server not manager lol.

              Anecdotally, this thread reminded me of a time I circumvented my high schools filtering via using X11 to display Firefox on their Macs from a laptop I was using as a server haha.

      • riquisimo@beehaw.org
        6·
        1 year ago

        Hey that explanation helps. Thanks.

        It sounds like Wayland is the new thing and it’s been around long enough that everyone plays well with it, so it’s going to be the default moving forward.

        • seang96@spgrn.com
          7·
          1 year ago

          Yeah it’s been getting there over the years. This stuff takes time to replace since it’s huge and important to get it right. For reference, the initial release was 15 years ago for Wayland.