Will REAPER become a native Wayland application?

[wastee]

More and more Linux distributions, desktop environments (DE), and window managers (WM) are transitioning to Wayland or including it in their roadmaps, such as KDE Plasma 6 and XFCE.

In my opinion, if REAPER were to become a native Wayland application, it would offer several benefits:

• Smoother GUI control: Xwayland applications can sometimes exhibit lag.
• No more blurriness in REAPER when using fractional scaling. Fractional scaling in Xwayland REAPER can result in excessive blurriness.
• WINE VST plugins could also run on Wayland once it fully supports Wayland.

X11 is gradually becoming obsolete with reduced maintenance, while Wayland is the present and future.

So, what are your thoughts, both users and developers?

[krahosk]

I think it's inevitable that distros drop X11 support in favor of Wayland.
KDE Plasma 6 which will be out in January will move to Wayland. So the two favorite desktops, with Gnome, are on board with Wayland. Only a matter of time till X11 becomes deprecated.



And this news yesterday:


Written by Michael Larabel in Fedora on 19 September 2023 at 06:21 AM EDT. 69 Comments

In addition to Fedora 40 planning to ship KDE Plasma 6.0 and without any X11 session support, Fedora stakeholders are also looking at shipping GNOME for the Fedora Workstation 40 release without any X11 session support.

Fedora developers are discussing dropping the X11 session for GNOME, in addition to the already laid out plans for shipping KDE Plasma 6.0 as Wayland only.

As part of the proposal for dropping the GNOME X11 session:

"Wayland has been our default session for a long time and has matured considerably. At the same time, the X11 session isn't getting the testing it needs, and is an additional resource burden."

[ForrestH]

That's the down side of Linux: the programmers prefer to work on the Cool New Thing (that doesn't work) rather than do maintenance on the Old Boring Thing (that does work) until the Old Thing dies and everyone is forced onto the new, nonfunctional technology, until many years later it becomes the Old Boring Thing and the cycle repeats.


"It's all in Philip K. Dick, all in Philip K. Dick: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"

[/AND/]

Originally Posted by ForrestH

That's the down side of Linux: the programmers prefer to work on the Cool New Thing (that doesn't work) rather than do maintenance on the Old Boring Thing (that does work) until the Old Thing dies and everyone is forced onto the new, nonfunctional technology, until many years later it becomes the Old Boring Thing and the cycle repeats.


"It's all in Philip K. Dick, all in Philip K. Dick: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"

Xorg had no updates for more than a decade now and is ill adapted for modern computing. Almost all modern usage is the result of someone hacking it to be able to do what's been doing. This is the reason why there were no upgrades whatsoever, because any change would've produced millions of broken systems.

The problem was that Xorg is a monolith, and as monoliths go, it's all or nothing for developers. Wayland on the other hand is modular, way safer*, and currently equally performant. There are few things to iron out and develop, but aside from that, works great.

I'd really want for developers and distro maintainers to move to the 'Shiny new (and a lot better) thing' than be stuck in the past because of 'legacy' and whatnot. Include PipeWire here as well. And I don't consider this a downside, on the contrary - we have to move forward in order to make Linux more capable, accessible and appealing for larger number of people while keeping its key virtues intact (e.g. being FOSS etc.).


* - I myself had my lockscreen completely sidestepped more than a few times because Xorg broke and lost control of it, giving me (and anyone) complete UI access to the system. Wayland can't do that by design.

[Justin]

Problem is that all plug-ins use X11 for their windows, it will be a long and difficult transition.

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by Justin

Problem is that all plug-ins use X11 for their windows, it will be a long and difficult transition.

Not a problem for me. REAPER works reliably. All my native Linux plugins work. All my bridged Windows plugins work, and Wayland isn't going to make me write better music, so I think of it the same way as I see the shiny "newer is better" PipeWire thing.

[wastee]

Originally Posted by Justin

Problem is that all plug-ins use X11 for their windows, it will be a long and difficult transition.

Yes. Many developers and users are satisfied with X11, not only in the audio world. There's no reason for me to switch to Wayland at the moment.

Originally Posted by krahosk

I think it's inevitable that distros drop X11 support in favor of Wayland.

And this news yesterday:

In addition to Fedora 40 planning to ship KDE Plasma 6.0 and without any X11 session support, Fedora stakeholders are also looking at shipping GNOME for the Fedora Workstation 40 release without any X11 session support.

Fedora developers are discussing dropping the X11 session for GNOME, in addition to the already laid out plans for shipping KDE Plasma 6.0 as Wayland only.

As part of the proposal for dropping the GNOME X11 session:

"Wayland has been our default session for a long time and has matured considerably. At the same time, the X11 session isn't getting the testing it needs, and is an additional resource burden."

However, I've recently come across similar news. I sense more and more changes in the "higher level" (DE/WM).

Originally Posted by ForrestH

That's the down side of Linux: the programmers prefer to work on the Cool New Thing (that doesn't work) rather than do maintenance on the Old Boring Thing (that does work) until the Old Thing dies and everyone is forced onto the new, nonfunctional technology, until many years later it becomes the Old Boring Thing and the cycle repeats.

DE/WMs seem to want to transition to Wayland in new versions. This is causing me some concern. Will we be stuck in a split desktop experience in the future if we continue using old X11 plugins or apps?

[/AND/]

Originally Posted by wastee

Will we be stuck in a split desktop experience in the future if we continue using old X11 plugins or apps?

Your X11 apps will continue working because Wayland has XWayland bridge.

[XoechZ]

Wayland is a pain in the a**, especially if you use a Nvidia GPU.

[s wave]

Agreed ~ set up works great now!

[audiojunkie]

Originally Posted by /AND/

Your X11 apps will continue working because Wayland has XWayland bridge.

This ^^

I think we won't have to worry about x11 apps and plugins for a very long time. At least as long as Wayland provides the XWayland compatibility layer.

[subsound]

Originally Posted by Justin

Problem is that all plug-ins use X11 for their windows, it will be a long and difficult transition.

FYI - heads up that the Presonus Studio One Linux beta announced a few days ago requires Wayland, for what it's worth. Will be interesting to see how that impacts plugin developers going forward.

https://www.presonussoftware.com/en_...-6-5-for-linux

From the above blog post:

"Third-party plug-ins need to be adjusted for displaying a custom GUI in Studio One under Wayland. We've updated the PreSonus Plug-in Extensions with new APIs for developers to accomplish that in two different ways..."

Anyway, many thanks, Justin, for supporting Linux, really makes a big difference. Hats off to you!

[krahosk]

Since Fedora and now Ubuntu will be dropping X11 in their next release, development for Wayland will go on the fast lane; there will be a much greater user base to report bugs and developers won't have the choice to correct them.

The only disadvantage to Wayland is the effort to adapt... and the time it takes.

[ForrestH]

¹

[/AND/]

Originally Posted by Justin

Problem is that all plug-ins use X11 for their windows, it will be a long and difficult transition.

Justin, a question: what is the problem with this, actually? If, for example, Reaper was 'converted' to using Wayland by default, do plugin windows stop working or would they be rendered through XWayland without dealbreaking issues?

BTW Reaper works great as it is now. I don't see any issue whatsoever unless Wayland stops supporting XWayland, which I don't think will ever happen.



P.S. I am still vouching for that vectorial UI/UX revamp - and maybe porting to Wayland is the moment in time to do it

[SmajjL]

I just tried REAPER 7 on Ubuntu (GNOME) 23.10 and for the first time, TAL Sampler was resizeable without drama on Wayland and, speaking of drama, windows does not seem to wanna crawl out of the screen and chase me anymore, but my REAPER-time is early, so far so happy though

-- - -- - --

The next day: Kubuntu 23.10 (Wayland) does show some undesireable "cool" effects

[alextone]

Originally Posted by XoechZ

Wayland is a pain in the a**, especially if you use a Nvidia GPU.

That's not Wayland's fault though. Intel and AMD agreed a common protocol, and the mesa drivers have been upgraded to function properly as "native" Wayland.

Nvidia didn't want to play nicely with the adults, and built their own Wayland protocol. So the Wayland devs, and anyone who writes graphics drivers, has to work with two protocols, not one, if they want to accommodate Nvidia's digital petulance.

Wayland still has a way to go, although it's come far already, but this one is Nvidia's responsibility.

[SmajjL]

I'm on All AMD i left out.. but i tried GNOME because it seems to be ahead in the Wayland department and REAPER works fine there, so i was thinking or wondering, noone have said that future Wayland will Stop all Xapp from working have they?
It is more a choice thing for the user if the insist all Wayland or not, i dunno.
But maby REAPER does not havto if they don't want. hmm

[DuX]

Great things are happening in the Linux land with Wayland and Pipewire, but I'll be on the fence for the time being and leave the implementation decisions in Debian distro's maintenance team's capable hands.

I'm sure it will be great once it's ripe for general usage. It seems the time is pretty neigh, judging by Larabel's post.

OK d=

[Kott]

you just can't draw a X11 window from inside the Wayland window/app
perhaps it's feasible but I don't know what a weird way it should be

[DuX]

Originally Posted by Kott

you just can't draw a X11 window from inside the Wayland window/app
perhaps it's feasible but I don't know what a weird way it should be

There's Xwayland compatibility layer... but you know compatibility layers, they can be considered just a temporary solution, and they're usually full of bugs.

Today I found out that Debian 12 Bookworm actually uses Wayland and Xwayland by default, but since I've been upgrading my Debian since Jessie, it still uses X11 windowing system. Thankfully.

If Debian maintainers feel this way, it could speed up things considerably.

However, I'm so impressed by how this Debian works now, I'm simply refusing to think about any changes. Everything works so fast and smooth.

But we all know what happens when things work fast and smooth... programmers say "we won't allow that to happen! we need bugs and sluggishness back!".

[audiojunkie]

XWayland is the full version of X11 running under Wayland.