New Features Approved For Fedora 40, Renewed Debate Over Dropping KDE X11 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Features Approved For Fedora 40, Renewed Debate Over Dropping KDE X11 Support

This week the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) signed off on some new features coming for Fedora 40 this April...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Approved-January-F40

[skeevy420]

That guy Sergio took being upset and cranked it up to my level of stupidity:

In fact, it is something I've been thinking about, IMHO, downstream shouldn't decide when software is deprecated or not like KDE and Red HAt did , it's weird to me [1], although in RHEL we could have the packages via EPEL, I think, and RHEL 10 is only in a year and a half

Distributions and software organizations shouldn't decide when they want to depreciate the software they distribute and create. KDE doesn't get to decide how they'll proceed with KDE and Red Hat can't pick and choose what software they'll support and how they'll support it

[andyprough]

I tried both KDE and Gnome Wayland sessions this past month. Some observations:

Screen recording -
Gnome screenshot tool did not work to record video - garbled output
simplescreenrecorder did not record video at all
OBS - recorded, but sound and video were noticeably off by a half-second or so
Tried a couple of others that were advertised to work with Wayland, one was called 'kooha' and one was called something like 'blue-recorder' or something - neither one of them recorded video and audio appropriately

Remote meetings (Zoom, Jitsi, etc) - basically worked for the most part, but screen sharing didn't work well if at all, and sometimes audio was garbled

Most everything else worked OK.

===================================

I screen record at least once a week and do remote meetings almost daily, so without these working more flawlessly the Wayland sessions still aren't ready for full-time usage. Getting rid of the X11 sessions would require the installation of additional X11-capable desktop environments, and logging in and out of different desktop environments throughout the day.

We're getting close, but not there yet.

[mrg666]

They can make the Xorg packages optional and count the number of downloads. Based on that count, they can gauge the interest and make a decision in the next release to keep optional or stop distributing the Xorg packages. In the mean time, building kwin-x11 is not a big deal. I think many of those who complain that Wayland does not have the same set of capabilities of X11 do not really need those capabilities. I bet the number of people downloading X11 will be small. But it why remove something people say they want. I don't see the security reason either, there were a couple of security fixes recently. I am wishing Ubuntu does the same to offer X11 optional. A stock install Ubuntu 24.04 daily does not even run Xorg at all in a GNOME session.

[rhavenn]

I tried both KDE and Gnome Wayland sessions this past month. Some observations:

Screen recording -
Gnome screenshot tool did not work to record video - garbled output
simplescreenrecorder did not record video at all
OBS - recorded, but sound and video were noticeably off by a half-second or so
Tried a couple of others that were advertised to work with Wayland, one was called 'kooha' and one was called something like 'blue-recorder' or something - neither one of them recorded video and audio appropriately

Remote meetings (Zoom, Jitsi, etc) - basically worked for the most part, but screen sharing didn't work well if at all, and sometimes audio was garbled

Most everything else worked OK.

===================================

I screen record at least once a week and do remote meetings almost daily, so without these working more flawlessly the Wayland sessions still aren't ready for full-time usage. Getting rid of the X11 sessions would require the installation of additional X11-capable desktop environments, and logging in and out of different desktop environments throughout the day.

We're getting close, but not there yet.

I've been running Fedora 39 KDE in Wayland since it released. 99% of my time is in konsole, Visual Studio Code or browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge for Linux) and it works. I get plasmashell crapping out occasionally. HDMI monitors won't sleep (KDE bug that's supposedly fixed in 6), but DP sleep fine. I can do screen shares via Teams and Teams video and audio work just fine, etc... and spectacle works fine for screenshots. I've never tried to capture a video of desktop.

[mrg666]

I've been running Fedora 39 KDE in Wayland since it released. 99% of my time is in konsole, Visual Studio Code or browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge for Linux) and it works. I get plasmashell crapping out occasionally. HDMI monitors won't sleep (KDE bug that's supposedly fixed in 6), but DP sleep fine. I can do screen shares via Teams and Teams video and audio work just fine, etc... and spectacle works fine for screenshots. I've never tried to capture a video of desktop.

Both sleep and video capture are working for me with KDE 5.27.10 on Ubuntu 23.10, 2 Intel Dell and 1 Lenovo AMD laptops. For the sleep function, it is important that you update all firmware of the laptop (EFI, thunderbolt, TPM, etc.) to the latest. If you miss thunderbolt, for example, sleep may not work.

[andyprough]

video capture are working for me with KDE 5.27.10 on Ubuntu 23.10

Are you doing screen recording? If so, what program are you using?

[ehansin]

I have been running Fedora lately and very happy with it. For a clean install I just download the Everthing ISO and choose the default Workstation option. I had this thing where I wanted to go minimalist, played with Arch for a bit (quite a bit, on and off) and also minimal Fedora installs, but then I spend all my time fiddling (which is a great way to learn btw!) and not focusing on other things I'd like to do. With this I get Gnome for when I want more of a DE experience, along with all the necessary "plumbing" that also gets tied into any Wayland-only window managers I install and play around with. And GDM of course where I can launch whatever I want (and I assume GDM is what starts a lot of that "plumbing" at boot, outside of what the core/minimal OS starts.)

Regarding ISO size, I say "CDs, huh?" I use Ventoy now on a USB stick, add and remove ISO images at will

And since I am cleaning up a bunch of grammar, I will add that I like the idea of having X11 (not counting Xwayland) available external in something like a Copr where the Fedora people can track downloads/usage (as mentioned), etc. I know there are differences of opinion, but seems like a nice step-wise fashion to work towards whatever the end goal (yes, we know.)

[Brittle2]

I tried both KDE and Gnome Wayland sessions this past month. Some observations:

Screen recording -
Gnome screenshot tool did not work to record video - garbled output
simplescreenrecorder did not record video at all
OBS - recorded, but sound and video were noticeably off by a half-second or so
Tried a couple of others that were advertised to work with Wayland, one was called 'kooha' and one was called something like 'blue-recorder' or something - neither one of them recorded video and audio appropriately

Remote meetings (Zoom, Jitsi, etc) - basically worked for the most part, but screen sharing didn't work well if at all, and sometimes audio was garbled

Most everything else worked OK.

===================================

I screen record at least once a week and do remote meetings almost daily, so without these working more flawlessly the Wayland sessions still aren't ready for full-time usage. Getting rid of the X11 sessions would require the installation of additional X11-capable desktop environments, and logging in and out of different desktop environments throughout the day.

We're getting close, but not there yet.

that's were the problem is, zoom not gonna support sh*t if they aren't forced to, we already have the portal fixed and working, look at nv*dia they only started fixing their years old bugs when RHEL deprecated xorg

[sophisticles]

Considering Fedora, along with Ubuntu, Mint and MX Linux, is the premiere distro, they should make sure that whatever they release will be 100% stable and bug free.

If they do not think this is possible with Wayland, then they need to stick with X11.

But they have to pick a lane, stop being wishy-washy,