another report. I use the Android emulator Genymotion to integrate the digital experience into Garuda so that I avoid using an annoying phone where possible, for usability reaons and because I don’t need to power a smartphone.
Okay, but Genymotion has not been working for a month and together with the customer service we found that Android emulators don’t start on X11 but on Wayland. The reason is the MESA package, which has an open bug.
This is unfortunate because Wayland has display/input glitches and works less well than X11.
I assume, there is no fix for it at the moment, but for your interest, glitches of Wayland I found are:
opening internet links doesn’t open the browser
enabling fcitx virtual keyboard makes some KDE applications crash (Settings or Konsole) on typing a key
Subwindows are maximized in Wayland but weren’t in X11 (I have configured that all windows open as maximized but maximizing subwindows indeed is less preferable)
some application symbols show a W instead of the actual symbol (such as bauh and Thunderbird). Definitely confusing and keyboard shortcuts such as Super+number won’t work for those.
Where do you click on links, that don’t open? In Konsole and some other places, you need to hold the Ctrl button (Strg for you) and then click.
About the subwindows: I always had this issue on X11, I didn’t even know that was fixed for some. I ended up centering it, and almost any window reminds his position as maximized, once I tell them once.
But I understand, why you would want that feature.
What you can do, is install one Wayland DE/WM next to the Plasma session.
Then you can simply go into the Plasma login screen, choose that one there, and use your Wayland apps that way.
Do you use fcitx5? And did you choose it in systemsettings > keyboard > virtual keyboard? A small popup tells you about this, when you install it.
yes, this is how my Garuda installation provides it, as a login screen option, and even though it’s not that inconvenient, it’s still kind of annoying but less than a shut down. On the other hand, a Wayland session could mess up a saved KDE Plasma Desktop session of X11 (it happened to me when I did switch via logout in the past). If I remember right, it had put applications from multiple Desktops into one.
WIth links I mean any kind of Desktop links (such as selecting a random soundtrack via my bash script, using xdg-open) or links such as from VSCode. These do not push the browser to the front. Technically, I was wrong to say, they wouldn’t open the browser, as it just happens in the background without any indication or sign.
After login, a notification tells me to go into the settings and enable that Fcitx option as virtual keyboard (and the next startup it told me, environment variables are not properly set for it). Maybe, it just means I don’t have the proper Fcitx version. It made no problems to switch back to disabled virtual keyboard.
My short experience with Wayland was not so good as the one of X11. Only that Android Emulators are not right now working on X11 but on Wayland. Makes me wonder, whether this could also affect Wine games.
Cheers.
Since Wayland is the chosen way forward, I would suggest you test and report findings to the various developer groups appropriate. That’s the only way it’s going to get better.
X11 has moved into maintenance mode and most development energy can and will be devoted to the Wayland side (in most things).
Totally approved of. Rational choice goes to Wayland, emotional choice still to X11.
Hm, various developer groups? I don’t know where I should report findings or check for reports. I am using the Plasma environment.
It is certainly hard to find a decent virtual keyboard to work with Wayland. The only one that I could get to work properly was Maliit keyboard, and it’s a joke. It doesn’t even have function keys or other important features. Sure Maliit can be made to work in Wayland, but it’s features are pathetic in comparison to Onboard (X11 only). If Wayland is supposedly the mainstream choice now, how can such an important feature be basically non-existent in Wayland.
A user wrote into the Gitlab that an environment variable can bypass the problem. I can start the genymotion hub, and successfully start emulators with it, by running the command from the command line: