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Is there any issue with switching frequently between Wayland and X11?

I can't imagine there is but I'm wondering if I am missing something. I use GeForce Now and unfortunately it does not work in Plasma Wayland (issues with input redirection). Is there any problem with logging into an X11 session whenever I want to use that but using Wayland generally?

18 comments
  • I had issues with Freesync, if I opened an X11 session at launch then it worked with only one screen connected, but it was reliable and didn't need any further tinkering.

    If I launched Wayland first and then switched to X11, my screen's refresh rate would get locked on a random value. I'd have to either cycle compositing on/off, or enable the TearFree flag in xrandr.

    In the end Wayland gaming got improved on Plasma 6 so I no longer use X11

  • I doubt it'll do anything, or at worse something that can be easily fixed by resetting a config file somewhere. It's much less weird than even switching between Gnome and KDE.

    For the most part, only KWin and KScreen and maybe Plasma Shell might care but I'd expect nothing worse than a panel going to the wrong monitor.

    For your input redirection, have you tried running it in gamescope or a rootful xwayland? Not sure gamescope has much special sauce since it's based on wlroots and also runs xwayland, but they may have extra hacks for input grabbing.

  • @raptir from my experience there are differences caused by software you use. A few months back I had to switch to Xorg to share desktops with Zoom, which I have to use for work. The other difference I realized are more settings when using two monitors with different resolutions (which I still wouldn't recommend to anybody)

18 comments