Re: GNOME on Wayland current status

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

Hi Rutger,

Rutger Helling <rhelling@mykolab.com> writes:

> I've sent in a patch (#29943) that adds a small paragraph to the
> documentation about the current situation.
>
> I believe there was a plan to replace SLiM with GDM for the default
> login manager. Getting GDM to work properly should probably be the
> first step since it has great Wayland support. From what I know GDM can
> default to Wayland and falls back automatically to X11 if for some
> reason Wayland doesn't work.
>
> Alternatively we could switch to SDDM as the default for now, until GDM
> is ready.

I recently switched my x86_64 GuixSD laptop to use SDDM, so I could try
out GNOME on Wayland.  It mostly works, but there are still a few
problems:

* Even after logging in, SDDM is still visibly running within
  xorg-server on VT 7, while Wayland is running on VT 8.  If you switch
  back to VT 7, you can see the login screen still there, with the clock
  showing the time that you logged in instead of the current time.  I'm
  not sure if there are security implications to this, but it's
  certainly a waste of system resources.

* SDDM is based on Qt, so it substantially increases the closure size of
  the system, as well as memory usage since SDDM and Xorg-server
  continues to run in another VT during your entire session.

* The "Sound" panel of the GNOME settings is non-functional.  Whenever I
  try to change anything at all in that panel, it crashes.

* Startup notification for several GNOME programs is broken, e.g. GNOME
  Terminal, Files (Nautilus), Videos (Totem), and possibly other.  When
  I launch any of those programs, although the program immediately
  starts up, GNOME Shell doesn't seem to realize this, and for quite
  some time the spinner continues to indicate that the application is
  starting up, and it doesn't show up in the Alt-Tab application
  switcher.  If you switch to another application, you cannot switch
  back to it via Alt-Tab.

* As far as I know, we haven't yet themed SDDM to include our beautiful
  GuixSD login screen artwork.  It would be a shame to lose that by
  default.

On the other hand, I'm pleased to report that under Wayland, tearing no
longer occurs during video playback, scrolling, etc.

Anyway, it's very exciting to see progress on this, but I'm reluctant to
bring Qt into our default system closure, and furthermore I'd be
inclined to wait until more of the aforementioned problems are
addressed.

What do you think?

      Mark