I’m a seasoned Linux user, but mostly for servers and services, not really for desktop use.

I’ve dabbled in some desktop distros on my personal rig a few times in the past, but ultimately due to specific games, I’ve gone back to Windows.

I recently installed Arch and KDE. Upon initial boot I noticed it was defaulted to Wayland. Every time I would try to log in it would just go to a black screen then cycle back to the login screen. Picking X11 would bring me to the desktop.

Basic Specs:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D
  • nVidia RTX 4090

I have been doing some reading into this and it looks like the issue is due to the proprietary nVidia drivers, but there are solutions to work around this.

I know nothing of Wayland other than its supposed to be more secure. My question is, is it worth the time/effort to get Wayland working? I primarily use my system for gaming. X11 seems to be working just fine for me right now.

Forgive me if I’m using some of the terminology wrong, still learning.

EDIT - Selling my gpu is not an option. I knew ahead of time that AMD has superior Linux support, but the 4090’s performance can’t be matched by anything AMD has. Maybe next upgrade I’ll go back to AMD if they have the top performer.

  • heartlessevil@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    X11 is deprecated, it’s been removed from RHEL, and hasn’t had dedicated maintainers for years. You might as well switch to Wayland (and xwayland if needed) now, it’s not really the case that you have an option.

        • sin_free_for_00_days@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh, I’ve followed this stuff for years and years. I’ve been using Linux pretty much exclusively for a quarter of a century. People love to harp on the security issues, but from what I’ve seen that’s pretty much theoretical. The only real compelling argument is that developers are leaning toward Wayland, so that’s the way it will go. I’m sure some day I’ll go to update and it’ll be time to make that change.

          I’m not a developer. I wasn’t super happy with the change to systemd, but it’s not like I was the one that had to deal with the init v issues, so when it changed, I went along. I’m sure the same will happen with Wayland. The last time I tried it, a lot of my decades of cruft didn’t work, shortcuts and workflow issues. Sure, I should probably clean up all that crap anyway, but like I said, it’ll happen when it happens. Until then, I’m completely happy with X11.

  • A Cat@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Has this place officially become a true Linux community? Did we just have the first X vs Wayland thread?!

    That said, I use Wayland on all my machines, but I don’t have Nvidia hardware. I suggest just using X11 until Nvidia manages to do the needful. Personally I enjoy using wayland, things run so smoothly, I have zero issues with games and the only application I used that broke was Barrier, but I just used it for my Steam Deck and that problem is solved with SSH.

  • TheTrueLinuxDev@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Just a head up to be careful with 7900 XTX if you do plan on getting an AMD GPU like other people on here are suggesting.

    When I purchased 7900 XTX, AMD doesn’t offer me any way to control the fan speed on 7900 XTX and it always get stuck on 5% speed. I literally tried everything from using hwmon mode setting to manual (it stuck on auto and refuse to switch to manual), literally modifying the AMD GPU driver in kernel to forcibly set the manual mode for fan speed, it doesn’t work and instead it locks up the Kernel, and tried literally every application that exists for setting fan speed on 7900 XTX.

    I tried to contact the manufacturer to refund me, they refused to pay me back in full and want me to reduce what I get back, I paid $1000 for it, they want me to pay $100 shipping and to only be qualified to receive $400 from them. I ended up keeping the 7900 XTX and basically went nuclear on fixing the GPU. This was literally within 1 week of receiving the GPU mind you. AMD is ranked far below Nvidia after my absurdly negative experience with them and I would rather go with Intel than AMD at this point and that is saying a lot, because it’s not only my GPU that is a problem, but it also with their software and driver like ROCm that NEVER worked, ever.

    I created a plastic strap via 3D printing on top of the GPU and create a negative pressure fan to cool it down, it can stay under 50 degree Fahrenheit at 100% utilization.

  • atomkarinca@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Void Linux user here. nVidia’s Wayland support was shit a couple of months ago but it has been pretty good for a few months now. And they’re really focusing on Wayland with each update. Sway is weird with nVidia, which they state openly. I have RTX 3060Ti and I’m using Wayfire. Steam is working pretty smoothly and I haven’t had any problems gaming, so far (no AAA games, mind you, just CSGO, Hollow Knight, Subnautica etc.).

  • UrbenLegend@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I would double check if you have options nvidia_drm modeset=1 in your modprobe.d. This is necessary for Wayland. I can login to KDE Wayland just fine with my 3090, but I still stick with X11 for now because of VRR and overall better input latency. The input latency issue isn’t an Nvidia specific thing, although Nvidia does perform worse with Wayland than AMD in some cases.

    And while you’re at it add options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1 so that your GPU saves video memory when your system suspends.

  • randy@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    In your situation, I would say to stick with X11. I’m still using X11 for gaming, but Wayland for most other things. Maybe try Wayland again in a few years. And when it’s time to buy new hardware, maybe avoid Nvidia.

    If you want to have another go at getting it working, check out what the Arch wiki says for KDE:

    If you are an NVIDIA user with the proprietary nvidia driver, also enable the DRM kernel mode setting. If that does not work, too, check the instructions on the KDE wiki.

    As for the question of security, I want to emphasize that X11 is not increasing your risk of getting hacked. If one of your applications is compromised, then X11 acts as one method by which an attacker could further their attack or extract information, but other methods would usually be easier for an attacker. You could use flatpaks or firejail to mitigate those other methods, but only after you’ve done that would Wayland provide a meaningful security benefit.

  • ForynGilnith@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I had many issues running Arch+Wayland+nvidia because, as a long-time i3 user, I figured that migrating to Sway would be the best choice based on so many people in the community talking about it. I tried moving over several times, every few months to see if the experience had improved but each time I got frustrated with how terrible and buggy the environment was.

    Trying out Hyprland was a complete game-changer. I’ve been running it full-time for about 2 months and it’s completely stable, supports everything I need to run, and is more efficient: the battery on my laptop lasts about 30% longer compared to my i3/picom/X11 setup.

    So yeah, I highly recommend Hyprland if you’ve tried sway in the past and didn’t get anywhere with it.

  • Scraft161@iusearchlinux.fyi
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    NVIDIA has been shit on wayland for a while now, wayland is coming along nicely though and there’s already quite a bit happening in terms of expensions; but unless you need wayland for something there’s no real need for it (and you can get wayland apps working on X11 just fine). The big thing right now is that we’re in a transition period where we need to go from one ecosystem with tons of well used extensions (like xinput) to one where these extensions are still being developed.

    What I’d say is that if you just stick to Gnome or KDE you won’t have to worry about which one you’re using yet, and if you have problems with wayland just stick to X11 until those get resolved. I’m in a similar ballpark where I’m still on X as I am waiting for several parts of the wayland ecosystem to mature (mainly nvidia support specifically for certain laptop configurations and tiling WMs (yes there’s options, but I have multiple problems with most of them))

  • RandomDude@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Little late to the party, but I’ll chime in. I have a 3080, and for the most part, Wayland works, but there are a few problems that keep me from using it as a daily driver. G-Sync doesn’t work at all, and when I put my PC to sleep, upon wake I end up needing to do a full reboot because of severe graphical issues. When it is running though, it’s pretty smooth, with only a few graphical issues here and there. I still daily drive X11 though until the major bugs are fixed.

  • Notmythrowaway6991@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    On my personal machine I run sway, at work I have to use Windows so I use i3 in a virtualbox vm. Sway/Wayland had performance and graphical issues for me

  • Choctaw@lemmy.radio
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    X11 is the old standard, and Wayland is the newer, simpler and more secure standard though still being developed. But desktop environment support is still being perfected as well as applications needing to be written for it. There is an X11 to Wayland driver for things that don’t support it directly. Eventually, Wayland will be what we all use and distributions will move to support it by default as some do now. I’ve ran a couple Wayland distros in VMWare Player that worked pretty well, Fedora and OpenSUSE. But for now, I’d say stick with X11 and wait for Wayland to mature unless you want to submit bug reports and help with development.

    Good overview even though a little dated: https://linuxiac.com/xorg-x11-wayland-linux-display-servers-and-protocols-explained/

  • Ministar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    I am on Fedora KDE and run Wayland with Nvidia without any major problems daily. But if you have problems, i would rather just wait, especially if X11 is working for you. Nvidia should start fixing the wayland issues soon.

    • phil_m@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I really hope they’ll fix it soon, I want to use wayland for years already, but there are still a lot of small issues, so that I have always gone back to X11 (like weird glitches, or no support for gammastep etc.)

  • iloverocks@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    If gaming is your focus I would suggestedtio stick to x11 for some time. If you want to try an arch based distro I would suggested to stick with archo orendeveross. Thy are for the normal userwazy easier then pure arch.I