Mastodawn

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

i am starting to think that we actually really do need a specification that defines a baseline of wayland protocols to try to get close to application developer's expectations.
I also like, really would like to see more expectations set around "please stop saying 'we're not trying to be windows'". i gotta be honest i'm starting to realize this is kind of a really dismissive response that ignores the fact that we have a protocol here that we are trying to get people to use, and people aren't really going to use something they're literally not able to develop for :\.

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

People tell me this isn't an issue but then i see stuff like this:
https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/
that was posted -literally this month-. And it's frustrating because out of the issues listed there:
- cursor warping is and has been supported for a while across multiple compositors. It is "optional" as in "you probably won't have it on a car's in-vehicle-infotainment system.". like, the expectation is -really- not about compositors deciding not to implement it
- clipboard issues have been solved for ages now?? i literally remember which clipboard issue they're talking about because I had it on my own desktop lol

KiCad and Wayland Support

The KiCad development team frequently receives questions about our support for Wayland. Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are both planning to drop X11 support from their main desktop environments in the near future, we want to provide clear, transparent guidance to our users about the current state of Wayland support in KiCad. Current Status Is Functional but Degraded KiCad does run on Wayland systems, but with significant limitations and known issues that substantially degrade the user experience.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@Lyude This is the moment where companies usually rebrand their product and then everybody is happy after the rebranding, because "this is much better, we can figure out the remaining issues"

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

@karolherbst i genuinely think we need to sit down and have an actual "this is what you can expect from any wayland desktop compositor that's marked as being desktop compliant". like going into a lot of these points it's not particularly surprising that they're worried people won't have consistent support for them. we have this tiny barebones core wayland protocol and then basically whatever other protocols a compositor chooses to support and just this assumption that some optional protocols will always be supported without any clear indication to app developers

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@Lyude The issue is, that we don't want to enforce a trademark, and without that we have 0 leverage.

Like yes we could say "this and that is expected to be there", but if a desktop doesn't follow it, there is nothing we can do about it.

People talk about "spec body" and "you need a proper spec", but people forget those only work if you are actually willing to go to court over your trademark.

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

@karolherbst then we just have the spec and have desktops like kde implement it and leave people out who don't want to play ball until they realize that no one is writing applications for their desktop.
i don't feel like this is an issue we can ignore when a lot of these applications don't even have linux as a primary userbase. unless we're ok with wine becoming the most popular API for application development on linux :\

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

@karolherbst like, frankly, I do think having other compositors agree on a baseline would push things forward even if we have projects like gnome trying to avoid this. because at some point they'll still have to answer once most of their userbase is complaining that they can't even implement a basic standard everyone else agreed on. and if they don't, maybe at this point it's best we just leave them to their own devices until they can't ignore it anymore.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@Lyude Yeah.. it's a tough situation to be in.

The issue is, we are kinda one of the few FOSS projects who actually does something like that.

And we can't enforce anything. It's a social problem, and if desktops have different visions on what they want to achieve, then they'll just end up doing whatever they want anyway.

Like even the discussions around "veto"s. Not having them would change exactly nothing. And publicly shaming hasn't worked up until now either.

Lyude🌹#BLM Jun 22

@karolherbst it's less about enforcement and more about getting the compositors that want to play nice with eachother to just do so, and then just letting natural pressure from the userbase push other projects into starting to support it as well.
we can still say "this is what we define as Freedesktop's desktop compositor base". if kde, sway, whatever other compositors we get on board support it and projects like gnome don't, it's not that we need to force them into it. it's just we're not going to wait around

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@Lyude I think the biggest problem is, that people just hyperfocus on what gnome is or isn't doing.

Like why do people even care? I don't get it. Most of the rants really feel just like wanting to hate on the project for no reason besides hating on it.

People should just stop caring and do what they think is right. And if their app doesn't work on Gnome, then they can document it and just tell users to not use it on gnome and move on.

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude you have to support gnome as an application developer. it's not negotiable to stop supporting the majority of the linux desktop users. (this is one primary point of contention that continuously re-occurs, application developers *must* deal with the total madness version of conflicting everything. even just limiting to the major players of gnome/kde and maybe sway is a pretty big support matrix)

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @Lyude well yeah, but then you need to accept what they provide to you.

Like nobody can force them, and ranting about isn't helping either. And apparently shit-posting also doesn't. Big surprise.

If they are so important, then you kinda need to accept what they provide.

Like yes, in the ideal world every desktop would support the same set of APIs and everybody would be happy, but it's not the world we live in and I don't see how that's ever going to change.

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude i mean that's fine, but then you have to accept that people will be upset because wayland is breaking applications. i don't think it's reasonable to say only wayland developers get to rant (and rant they certainly do)

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @Lyude It's not helping regardless of who is doing the ranting.

And it's totally fine to be upset about it. I totally understand users being frustrated, because they only want things to work.

It's just we don't have billion of dollars we can just spend on making the Linux desktop awesome and polished and everything.

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude hmm, i would not say that money is the major blocker for any of the core pain-points for wayland. maybe accessibility, but otherwise it's mostly the impact of inflexibility around design decisions. (and the fundamental thing that it requires people to re-write their applications to varying degrees)

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude e.g. you could say that wayland would accept absolute pointer positioning protocols tomorrow and i'm pretty sure somebody would implement them, and one major sticking point would be gone. so i wouldn't say that is a funding or resources problem, except that if you want a perfect sphere that makes everyone happy, including people who fundamentally don't want to see the protocol, then you need infinite funding.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @Lyude yeah, but desktops can just implement it.

Like they could do so tomorrow. They don't need any permission from "wayland upstream".

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @Lyude Maybe there are other good reasons it hasn't happened yet.

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude i didn't say there weren't and a lot of these things might just be fundamentally bad ideas. but you gotta engage with the idea that people disagree, and a lot of those people that disagree are people writing applications for the platform? to me at least that's the core problem here.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @Lyude I think using the windows API for GUI applications is fine in principle. Like if app developers just want something that works, then they could just keep their windows apps and go for it.

Maybe the integration could be better, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work out as well as for games long-term.

However, I do understand that "native apps" are better and I think it's great there are app developers who care and it's a shame to demotivate them like this.

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@karolherbst @Lyude I'm not even talking about games, games have very low requirements from desktop environments. I mean stuff like KiCad or blender or firefox or etc

Matt Campbell Jun 22

@dotstdy @karolherbst @Lyude What requirements does Firefox (or any other browser) have that aren't met by all the popular compositors?

Josh Simmons Jun 22

@matt @karolherbst @Lyude https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621261#c72 was one I was pointed to recently from a firefox person. (and see for example of a joyful engagement with the desktop community... https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/1141#note_2380514)

1621261 - (wayland-pip) [Wayland] PIP video is not kept on foreground when switching tabs or windows (Workaround:right-click on PiP window and enable always-on-top)

NEW (nobody) in Core - Widget: Gtk. Last updated 2025-06-11.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@dotstdy @matt @Lyude Mhh maybe they don't know that Firefox uses it or something? Might be worth a discussion again... but yeah...

@karolherbst @dotstdy @matt @Lyude Makes you wonder about that "99% of users" figure.

karolherbst 🐧 🦀Jun 22

@pkhuong @dotstdy @matt @Lyude well it's not used yet...