I haven't used Linux desktop in 6 years but I remember when Wayland was new and started replacing X about 15 years ago and these were common complaints... I hope this is a joke and still isn't the case!
kiwijamo 4 hours ago [-]
I've been using Wayland for some years (at least since Debian switched to it as their default) and not had any issues with it. I think complaints were more common about X, and Wayland has resolved a lot of it for the average user. For example my switch to Wayland was the first time I had 100% working video playback on Intel iGPUs without tinkering with conf files. I appreciate there are still some edge cases where X11 is still better -- but I think for 95-99% of users Wayland has just worked.
uecker 3 hours ago [-]
Is is a regular occurrence that students in my lab that use or switch to Wayland still run into problems. Switching back to X11 reliably works as a fix. The sad thing is that there is also no apparent advantage to Wayland, it is just pushed down to us via distributions.
redeeman 2 hours ago [-]
I guess things like HDR support, high bitdepth, per-screen refreshrate/scaling, and all those things are just "no apparant advantage" to you.
Thats okay, just understand that it DOES matter to some people.
what also matters is the actual developers doing the work, which GREATLY prefer wayland
uecker 1 hours ago [-]
It might matter to some but not to many, and in practice the pain imposed on many others could have been avoided by simply improving X. That developers already like to rewrite things is well known, but nobody should pay for this.
redeeman 38 minutes ago [-]
a great many people use external displays.
besides, even without using that, for the vast vast majority of users, there is no pain, they dont even realized they've switched to wayland, their distributions simply did it.
and people ARE paying a price staying with xorg, theres a reason projects like KDE are very happy about the change.
uecker 27 minutes ago [-]
Well, I can only report from my experience and this is the pain I still see with Wayland but not really with X. If KDE wants to hurt some of their users, this is their decision.
ben-schaaf 10 hours ago [-]
Significantly less so than before, but it's unfortunately still the case. It's also just now getting features that people have been asking for for over a decade, and of course due to the nature of Wayland the implementations of these features are sporadic and inconsistent.
amlib 10 hours ago [-]
I think the main difference is that there aren't really any deal-breaker kind of bugs any more, and as far as features there are none missing that users care about compared to X11. It's mostly just annoying bugs and the usual "third party" (including KDE) apps looking off in GNOME because the devs can't reach an agreement on some things, users be dammed.
ryukoposting 10 hours ago [-]
It's not. Wayland has really gotten its shit together in the last 5-ish years. A lot of the desktop ecosystem has matured in the last few years, actually.
I maintain that the Linux desktop in 2021 was actually less usable than it was in 2016. But things have really turned around since then.
avadodin 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not particularly fond of X11 but barely working in 2026 is hardly an endorsement of the whole project.
A good replacement of X11 would have had a well designed local mode that abstracted modern hardware in all configurations and an actually good network protocol.
We're left with a barely-working local mode with awful X11 stuck on top.
And we've moved to it for purely political reasons.
ryukoposting 7 minutes ago [-]
I'd say Wayland was "barely" working in 2021. When I say it works, I mean it works. Screen sharing (finally) works, remote desktop works, ICC profiles, etc etc.
I, for one, like Wayland's design. The problem was that it was incomplete and the implementations were buggy. Well, now the protocol is feature-complete and the implementations are solid.
lunar_rover 10 hours ago [-]
Wayland is a bunch of amateurs trying to be strict and secure and the end result is everyone opening their own security holes to make it usable. It's working now, mostly.
KDE got some kind of video bridge recently which is an insane workaround for something that should've just worked.
imtringued 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I get your complaint?
You're worried that capturing Wayland screens from X11 applications requires additional software?
How is that a real complaint? The only way this would be possible without additional software is if Wayland itself was just another X11 Version, if Wayland was X12 which is X11 but with protocol changes that break backwards compatibility, you would run into exactly the same problem.
Your standard for something being insane is that it is not 100% identical to X11.
exidex 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure why people praise Minecraft for this. This is huge feat of Wayland, and was possible because devs took time to consider use cases outside of current norm, and why it took so long to migrate the ecosystem. People liked to bitch about the "Gnome blocking/not implementing essential protocols" part, but even that partially made this possible
6 hours ago [-]
mandarax8 6 hours ago [-]
Is there any reason that you couldn't implement this on Xorg?
serf 6 hours ago [-]
absolutely not.
a very near example would be immersed vr which is compatible with xorg and does essentially the same thing (2d windows pasted all over a 3d world), although not integrated into minecraft. also since their solution isn't wayland-centric it has ports to osx and windows.
>If you're reading this, you're likely in the same boat as me. You've discovered that Immersed can create virtual monitors for Windows and Mac, but on Linux, this feature is marked as "unsupported" on X11. This means you can't create virtual monitors directly through the Immersed agent. For now, the known workaround is to manually set up virtual monitors. If you use Wayland, now immersed offer support for native virtual displays on the Immersed agent on gnome Wayland. You can access this options in Immersed client menu -> Setting -> Configure virtual displays. Other Wayland DE/Compositors are not supported, but there are ways to create virtual monitors manually as we do on X11, please check the linux-help channel in the Discord server for more info.
Basically immersed vr doesn't support X11 windows, it only supports X11 screens, which means you would have to create a new screen manually for each window.
DarkmSparks 6 hours ago [-]
xserver only takes about 10 lines of code, that doesnt sound as impressive as 8,000
schobi 6 hours ago [-]
I'm impressed by the coding skill to achieve a seamless integration and "usability".
But other than a demo "because we can" I'm confused on what this could ever be useful for. AR/VR prototyping? Virtual showroom?
Or maybe for an online presentation? Stream a video of playing Minecraft and get fancy slide transitions?
"let's go to the next slide" and "now we enter dangerous territory".. "over here I can show you how this program looks like in real life"
nkrisc 4 hours ago [-]
This is a “because I can” type of project.
dm319 6 hours ago [-]
Could have an office Minecraft world with a seminar room instead of Teams?
sandruso 15 hours ago [-]
Minecraft is becoming DOOM in terms of crazy technical feats.
I love it.
lloeki 5 hours ago [-]
Interestingly they're opposites really, people try to run DOOM on anything, while they try to run anything in Minecraft.
Becoming? crazy stuff has been done in Minecraft for the longest time. Someone built a functional CPU and computer in Minecraft in 2010.
avaer 15 hours ago [-]
I agree: running simulated computers inside of Minecraft is a significantly more impressive technical feat than bolting on display surfaces to planes with a mod.
There's a big difference between something being compiled to run inside of Minecraft, versus running a sidecar that streams back a display. It's the difference between compiling and running on your machine, and streaming back a cloud machine using RDP.
Not like this makes a difference to users, who don't know how any of this works. But we are on Hacker News...
flexagoon 14 hours ago [-]
Just because someone has done a more impressive project in Minecraft doesn't mean this one isn't interesting
mcv 3 hours ago [-]
People not only built a functional computer in Minecraft, people have run Minecraft on that functional computer in Minecraft. Extremely slowly, obviously, but it did technically work.
amarant 10 hours ago [-]
Now if only someone could make doom run on Minecraft, that would be the ultimate flex.
xerox13ster 8 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure this has been accomplished on redstone. It was definitely a demake and sped up >10000x not realtime but I believe it was done.
inciampati 15 hours ago [-]
Finally, I can escape to paradise and work remote.
jwlake 15 hours ago [-]
If its not written with blocks its not real.
tines 15 hours ago [-]
"In Minecraft" doesn't mean what it used to. When somebody wrote an 8-bit CPU literally "in Minecraft" it used to be badass. Now it's just a game addon.
rcxdude 15 hours ago [-]
There are multiple ways that something can be "in minecraft"
jwlake 14 hours ago [-]
It was more fun when people implemented gates. :)
creatonez 8 hours ago [-]
Can't they just compete in separate categories? People have been making high-level computer mods years before even ComputerCraft, RedPower, or OpenComputers existed. And people will continue to make pure-redstone computers far into the future. Neither category is replacing the other :)
fluffybucktsnek 15 hours ago [-]
You speak as if this isn't neat in its own way.
analogpixel 14 hours ago [-]
Is Minecraft dethroning Emacs as the new weird OS that can do everything but probably shouldn't? Can I check my email in minecraft yet?
ltheanine 13 hours ago [-]
With this compositor I’d think it could do anything at this point.
wild_egg 13 hours ago [-]
For the real emacs experience you could use this mod to render an IDE in Minecraft editing the mod that renders the IDE.
analogpixel 13 hours ago [-]
emaception.....
arikrahman 13 hours ago [-]
Emacs can do everything and probably should though
mghackerlady 4 hours ago [-]
If it handles text, it is in the realm of things you can reasonably prefer to do in emacs
exallotriote 6 hours ago [-]
you can open the web browser in that mod, so yes you can
samtheDamned 15 hours ago [-]
I wonder how this would pair with a VR mod. It doesn't seem like Vivecraft supports the version this was posted for at the moment, but if they had the ability to play nice that seems like it would would be a fun way to experience software.
avaer 15 hours ago [-]
There are already VR overlay applications that do this on top of any game, not just Minecraft.
Philpax 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, but part of the fun is doing it in Minecraft and using Minecraft's language for it (e.g. putting windows in your inventory, pulling them out of chests, etc)
a_t48 14 hours ago [-]
A friend sent this to me yesterday - I was very disappointed that the video didn't show off Minecraft in Minecraft.
itsmeadarsh 6 hours ago [-]
It is minecraft, even if you open Minecraft it will not work.
Link to source: https://github.com/EVV1E/waylandcraft
Jokes aside, I've grown to love "XYZ in Minecraft". It's like a newer (still 2011 was a long time ago!) version of "Doom on XYZ".
https://anvil.fangorn.io/fangorn/huorn-minecraft
Thats okay, just understand that it DOES matter to some people.
what also matters is the actual developers doing the work, which GREATLY prefer wayland
besides, even without using that, for the vast vast majority of users, there is no pain, they dont even realized they've switched to wayland, their distributions simply did it.
and people ARE paying a price staying with xorg, theres a reason projects like KDE are very happy about the change.
I maintain that the Linux desktop in 2021 was actually less usable than it was in 2016. But things have really turned around since then.
A good replacement of X11 would have had a well designed local mode that abstracted modern hardware in all configurations and an actually good network protocol.
We're left with a barely-working local mode with awful X11 stuck on top.
And we've moved to it for purely political reasons.
I, for one, like Wayland's design. The problem was that it was incomplete and the implementations were buggy. Well, now the protocol is feature-complete and the implementations are solid.
KDE got some kind of video bridge recently which is an insane workaround for something that should've just worked.
You're worried that capturing Wayland screens from X11 applications requires additional software?
How is that a real complaint? The only way this would be possible without additional software is if Wayland itself was just another X11 Version, if Wayland was X12 which is X11 but with protocol changes that break backwards compatibility, you would run into exactly the same problem.
Your standard for something being insane is that it is not 100% identical to X11.
a very near example would be immersed vr which is compatible with xorg and does essentially the same thing (2d windows pasted all over a 3d world), although not integrated into minecraft. also since their solution isn't wayland-centric it has ports to osx and windows.
wayland deserves credit but not for this concept.
>If you're reading this, you're likely in the same boat as me. You've discovered that Immersed can create virtual monitors for Windows and Mac, but on Linux, this feature is marked as "unsupported" on X11. This means you can't create virtual monitors directly through the Immersed agent. For now, the known workaround is to manually set up virtual monitors. If you use Wayland, now immersed offer support for native virtual displays on the Immersed agent on gnome Wayland. You can access this options in Immersed client menu -> Setting -> Configure virtual displays. Other Wayland DE/Compositors are not supported, but there are ways to create virtual monitors manually as we do on X11, please check the linux-help channel in the Discord server for more info.
Basically immersed vr doesn't support X11 windows, it only supports X11 screens, which means you would have to create a new screen manually for each window.
But other than a demo "because we can" I'm confused on what this could ever be useful for. AR/VR prototyping? Virtual showroom?
Or maybe for an online presentation? Stream a video of playing Minecraft and get fancy slide transitions? "let's go to the next slide" and "now we enter dangerous territory".. "over here I can show you how this program looks like in real life"
I love it.
This is closer to PSDoom:
https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html
There's a big difference between something being compiled to run inside of Minecraft, versus running a sidecar that streams back a display. It's the difference between compiling and running on your machine, and streaming back a cloud machine using RDP.
Not like this makes a difference to users, who don't know how any of this works. But we are on Hacker News...