Boy who cried wolf in reverse? [LWN.net]

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 11, 2025 16:13 UTC (Wed) by mb (subscriber, #50428)
In reply to: Boy who cried wolf in reverse? by taladar
Parent article: Ubuntu 25.10 to drop support for GNOME on Xorg

Yes, sadly that is also my experience from the past decade. I tried to transition about 10 times during that time frame and it always resulted in either a right out crashing WM or a black screen or at best an unusable sluggish crashing and only partially working desktop (a couple of days ago with KDE).

Last time I tried was today with labwc.
How am I supposed to get from a black screen that only offers me an "exit" context menu to a primitive working desktop? You know, where I can actually do something.
Without reading tons of documentation and modifying configuration files, of course.
I have no idea. So I uninstalled it again. Ain't Nobody Got Time For That, I'm sorry.

I would *love* to use Wayland, but it simply doesn't work for me. For whatever reason. I don't know why.

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Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 7:43 UTC (Thu) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (13 responses)

Sounds like a labwc issue, not a Wayland one.

Users don’t „use Wayland“, they use a desktop environment with Wayland as the main display mechanism. From a user’s point of view, a GNOME / KDE Plasma session works mostly the same with Wayland as with X.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 17:15 UTC (Thu) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (12 responses)

> Sounds like a labwc issue, not a Wayland one.

That's exactly the attitude that is the problem here.
Since a decade I hear "Wayland is usable/stable/ready/etc...".
Of course the user expects that it would mean to actually be usable as a whole (Desktop daily work). That's the only sane thing to assume, right?

That's the same thing as saying: "Your room is ready. What? The staircase to your room is completely blocked? Well, that's a whole different story! I only said your *room* was ready."

For a user it doesn't make a difference.

And no, apparently it's not a labwc issue. It works as expected. labwc is *designed* to start up as user unfriendly as possible. For whatever weird reason. It's clearly documented here: https://labwc.github.io/getting-started.html
Sorry, this is not going to make users happy.

I tried *multiple* ways to use Wayland and so far *none* of it worked for me.
That's why Wayland as a whole doesn't work for me, yet.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 0:32 UTC (Fri) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (1 responses)

> And no, apparently it's not a labwc issue. It works as expected. labwc is *designed* to start up as user unfriendly as possible. For whatever weird reason. It's clearly documented here: https://labwc.github.io/getting-started.html

That confirms it’s a labwc issue which has nothing to do with Wayland vs X.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 5:43 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

Wow.... .

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 9:18 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (9 responses)

This is the same attitude as "Rust sucks - I tried to compile ripgrep for my machine with GCC-rs, and it didn't work at all. Clearly Rust is not ready to use in serious code".

Wayland is a protocol used to communicate between clients and servers. X11 is a protocol used to communicate between clients and servers. labwc is one implementation of a Wayland server; it's not the only one, and it's working as intended by the developers.

Other implementations of the Wayland protocol exist (I'm using KDE Plasma 6.3 as the server side here, with various clients such as Firefox, KMail and XWayland), and will have different issues.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:10 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (8 responses)

>Other implementations of the Wayland protocol exist

Did you actually read my post?
I tried lots of them.
So far, I found none that works properly.

>and will have different issues.

That's my point.
All of them have issues and none of them work as good as X11.
That's simply the reality that I face since a decade.
On lots of different machines, lots of different combinations of compositors and whatever.

Currently there is *no* way for me to use Wayland. And therefore the claims that Wayland was production ready that I hear since over a decade are just meaningless.

You may like it or not. But it is what it is.

That's obviously a *completely* different thing than "I don't like riprep, therefore Rust sucks".

Show me one compositor that just works (tm) like Xfce on X11 (and is not Gnome) and I will shut up.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:23 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> All of them have issues and none of them work as good as X11.

Exactly; for my use cases the Wayland compositor I'm using now works *better* than its X11 equivalent.

> Show me one compositor that just works (tm) like Xfce on X11 (and is not Gnome) and I will shut up.

Sounds like you want a specific desktop environment, not a "compositor" per se.

If the Xfce folks finish their nascent port to Wayland [1], you may get your wish. If not, you're free to ask for your money back.

[1] https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:31 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (6 responses)

Show me one Rust compiler that just works for compiling ripgrep such that it outperforms GNU grep (and is not rustc).

KDE Plasma 6.4 works just fine for me; I don't know what's different about your setup to mine that means that it doesn't work for you. But KDE Plasma 6.3 and 6.4 and GNOME 40 have all been fine as Wayland setups for me.

And no, it's not obviously different - you're excluding things that are known to work, and then saying that Wayland as a whole does not work because, when you exclude the implementations that work, the remaining implementations don't work.

When I put it like that, it's obvious why your statement is problematic - you're excluding implementations that are known to work well for other people, and saying that the protocol is not ready, because you as one person cannot make it work after you exclude the implementations that do work. But you get upset when I try to do the same with Rust.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:42 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (5 responses)

The only implementation I exclude is Gnome, because that is not acceptable for me regardless of X11 or Wayland.
Anything else is fine.

KDE, labwc and Xfce-Wayland don't work for me.
Please tell me. Which one should I test next?
I heard Wayland was ready for use. So which one is it that works? Is it really only Gnome?

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:45 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

Why doesn't KDE work for you? KDE Plasma 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2 had some bugs that affected me (but broadly worked for me, as long as I didn't trip up the bugs), but Plasma 6.4 just works, and works better than it does running over X11 to X.org as server.

And you still haven't answered my question; which Rust compiler produces production ready code, apart from rustc which doesn't work for me? Or are you saying that Rust isn't ready for production use, too?

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:48 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (3 responses)

>Why doesn't KDE work for you?

I don't know *why* it doesn't work.
But I tried it a couple of days ago and it did not work at all.
Crashes, not working buttons, hanging unresponsive UI, etc. It was completely unusable.

>And you still haven't answered my question

I have.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:49 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

I missed it - which Rust compiler did you say was production ready for arbitrary Rust code, apart from rustc, which I'm excluding for reasons that I won't discuss with you?

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 13:50 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

Okay. Let me press the mute button then.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 14:39 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Plasma/KDE/Wayland has a bunch of known annoyances. I haven't updated my system for a bit, but windows all centre on the screen at boot, it doeesn't remember properly what was/wasn't running, probably a few more. All papercuts that are anooying but not serious.

For me, everything seems to work "good enough", but I can understand people not being willing to put up with it. I like KDE, so I do.

Cheers,
Wol

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 12:25 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (7 responses)

> I would *love* to use Wayland, but it simply doesn't work for me. For whatever reason. I don't know why.

Computer programs can smell distrust and fear.. and will stop working when they do. People say that is crazy talk, but we all know deep down its true :)

[the above is meant in humour]

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 13:32 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (6 responses)

Maybe it's meant in humour, but it's real.

The other day, my brother-in-law said "Help please; my email's not working..."

I went over to my sister's house. Did not even touch his laptop. I just had to glare at it and the email started working again...

I bet many people who've given tech support have had similar experiences. 🙂

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 13:38 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> I bet many people who've given tech support have had similar experiences. 🙂

I've always heard it referred to as "the consultant effect"

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 16:54 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (2 responses)

A friend in college had the OPPOSITE effect. He would break things just by trying them, when they worked fine for everyone else.

And yes, his first job out of college was in QA...

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 20:10 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

I have that skill too... I am very good at breaking things, which is quite a useful thing in testing/QA.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 12, 2025 21:41 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

IBM allegedly had the "Black Team" - a collection of those sort of people.

Devel;opment teams used to quake in their boots when told their software was being paid a visit by these people.

Cheers,
Wol

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 13, 2025 17:21 UTC (Fri) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link] (1 responses)

There is a whole bogon source/sink pseudo-quantum-mechanics joke theory around this.

But I don't think anyone did a double-blind mass experiment to search for individuals that really experience significant more issues (or significant less issues) than the median... And I struggle to even come up with a remotely serious attempt at how would one even design such an experiment.

Boy who cried wolf in reverse?

Posted Jun 14, 2025 10:32 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I think this is partly to do with brain wiring.

If the programmer thinks one way, and the user thinks another, then the default expectations won't match. The user won't use the program the way the programmer thought they would. So the user is much more likely to tickle bugs. Throw in the sort of user who also thinks "what happens if I try THIS?" and they can be a nightmare for programmers as they break everything left right and centre.

As a textual person, not a visual, I don't like wysiwyg, and you've heard me wax lyrical about WP's "reveal codes". I hate Word (and by extension lowriter, sorry), because I simply cannot get my head round how it works, so as a result "nothing works" for me ...

Cheers,
Wol