For several years now, people have been saying I should move from X.org to Wayland. Every time I've tried just a wee bit, I've run into a problem and switched back. I've also failed to be convinced from the countless articles and blog posts I've read. X.org works fine for me and I've stuck with it and XFree86 before that, for more than 20 years.
Until now. Getting a new computer was an opportunity to do something radically different. Since Wayland has been default on Fedora and Ubuntu for many years now, I figured it had to be ready for prime time. Here are my notes as I try to get a working developer workstation set up.
Greenclip doesn't work under Wayland
Start Clipman:
exec wl-paste -w wl-paste -p >> ~/.clipboard-history
Then change ~/.config/i3/config:
bindsym $mod+Control+i exec tac ~/.clipboard-history | rofi -dmenu | wl-copy
clipman doesn't support images, though, might want to check out clipmon later.
rofi doesn't show all windows under Wayland
Sadly, rofi -show window that I've been using before, doesn't show
all windows under Wayland. On my system, it only shows some windows,
like Chrome. It doesn't show apps like Firefox, Emacs, Kitty.
$ sway --version
sway version 1.9
$ rofi -v
Version: 1.7.5
In ~/.config/i3/config, I set:
bindsym Control+Shift+o exec swayr switch-window
exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 RUST_LOG=swayr=debug swayrd > /tmp/swayrd.log 2>&1
IntelliJ IDEA doesn't work under Wayland
Starting it just shows a blank screen. It it was reported 2023-08-16 and they are working on a fix.
$ sway --version
sway version 1.9
$ pacman -Qi intellij-idea-community-edition | head -n 4
Name : intellij-idea-community-edition
Version : 4:2024.1.2-1
Description : IDE for Java, Groovy and other programming languages with advanced refactoring features
Architecture : x86_64
Summary
I've had it with Wayland/Sway. After a week of trying, I've ditched it and gone back to X.org/i3.
I've had problems with clip board managers (cannot copy pictures++), Teams in Firefox (cannot share screen, depends on "operating system settings", which doesn't resolve to anything on my machine). IntelliJ IDEA didn't work on Wayland (still open issue on github), and Signal regularly froze. As did QEMU running a graphical VM, just gave me a blank screen.
Good to be back on X.org. Everything works. Command line tools, GUI tools. Just works.
I will come back and try Wayland/Sway again in a couple of years time and see where the experience is at then. As for me, Wayland is not ready yet, 2024-06-07.
