X11 is already dead, and it will not become more or less usable it will always stay the way it's and wayland will get better. that's the difference and flatpak is just an option it doesn't try to replace what's already availible. spreading distrust and misinformation about these softwares doesn't help
People complaining about something opensource not doing what they want it to do: dudes/dudettes, if you want to maintain X11, go right ahead. Or if you want it maintained, pay somebody to do it. But stop this incessant whining about opensource devs choosing a direction you don't like and pretending it's the end of the world. This isn't some faceless, megacorp with closed-source shit you have no control over.
If all the people complaining about wayland either put their energy to positive stuff like making wayland better or making X11 better, this wouldn't be a problem.
There are pros and cons.
Total centralization of the Linux Eco system isn't good for anyone. But total fragmentation where there's a million different distros that can all do basically the same thing isn't good either.
Wayland and Flatpak are great projects though. Love seeing them get more adoption.
To devils advocate a little in general with this topic: For wider spread adoption, Linux kinda needs to adopt around more standards. If you put yourself in the shoes of the average windows or Mac (even iOS/Android) user; it's an overall standardized experience.
Linux now, is mostly a choice of DE and package manager. I still absolutely want distros like arch and Gentoo to still exists as they are.
Flatpak packages still suck at integration without breaking something in the core app. They're really great for bleeding edge and cross distro support tho.
Wayland still can't do all the cool tricks X11 can, so it's not like it's really being forced upon anyone beyond X11 losing on potential major updates which is unlikely.
DEs are willing to switch to Wayland given that it is either equal or superior to X11 which is still not the case for several scenarios and applications.
I suddenly have the urge to daily drive Hannah Montana Linux
Wayland is still too immature. I couldn't get it to work on my Kubuntu distro.
And then there's this list of problems with Wayland.
https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277
BEGIN RANT
"Move fast and break things" may be fine for software gurus who love to experiment and have no problem hitting their head against the wall every few days while believing in the promise of a free-to-fix future, but this isn't true for poor or busy people who are NOT middle class folks living in their own house in a suburb with a garage full of computer parts. There are single parents, caregivers with disabled and/or elderly, folks who need a reliable computer for their studies, and in general people who simply need something that JUST WORKS.
I'm a caregiver, and unfortunate I'm poor enough that I don't have money to buy a commercial OS. Heck, I wish Windows just worked instead of making old versions obsolete. I was perfectly fine with Windows 7 ten years ago until Microsoft started doing planned obsolescence bullshit with their forced updates. I had to switch to Linux because Windows became very unreliable and I needed a stable platform that wouldn't ruin my work.
(So if you're one of the persons who reply to "Help my Linux is having problems" with "well you should know Linux is like that, you should have thought it twice before switching", then you're part of the problem because that's a very, very shitty answer to give to a non technical end user with limited time and resources)
The year of the Linux desktop will never arrive if developers keep pushing incomplete and buggy software to the end users instead of actually fixing bugs and delivering their stuff ONLY when they're ready.
Wayland is NOT ready for the end user.
END RANT.
Honestly anything that doesn't get ported to wayland is probably old enough that it doesn't really make sense to use as your primary desktop anyway. The most niche DE I regularly use is NsCDE, but it's entirely FVWM scripts and FVWM is planning on adding wayland support. It'll be a little sad to lose things like Trinity, WindowMaker, and Afterstep, but they were never amazing anyway and either way I doubt X will actually be unusable for a long time still.
"reduces fragmentation" wtf lol. If it wasn't for flatpak making it easy to run proprietary / obscure apps on my weirdo little distro (Void Linux, one of the few remaining non-systemd distros) I would have switched to something mainstream like Debian long ago. People are gonna go with the distro that supports (i.e. has non-broken packages for) the apps they use. Having a cross-platform package manager makes it easier for small independent distros to exist and be useful, not harder.
EDIT: And while it's true that Wayland adoption kills obscure X11 window managers, Wayland adoption also spawns a wide range of obscure Wayland compositors. Think hyprland, wayfire... It's by far not all Gnome and KDE! If anything, we can expect more people making Wayland compositors as hobby projects, if Waylands claims about a simpler codebase are to be believed.
In conclusion: this is a stupid argument lmao
My problem with it is honestly just a personal thing...
My current laptop uses an Nvidia GPU.... i don't think i need to say more
Yes -flatpak. I'm not a big fan. It's nice though
I don't like flatpak any more because it makes restoring snapshots take forever.
Wayland has been great for several years now. Things change, especially technology.
I always found it so strange when the biggest tech nerds get upset about change.
Lol I'll care if I'm ever not able to build from source, which would mean I probably won't use that software, so I don't care.
