So Long Again, Wayland, You Were Almost There

Originally published at my blog: So Long Again, Wayland, You Were Almost There

Background

I’m running Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS on my main desktop machine.

I switched from Windows 10 (after 28 years of using Windows exclusively) and I’m quite happy on Ubuntu.

I use my Ubuntu machine to :

1. Remote into Win10 work machines (I use Remmina (Remmina remote desktop client – Remmina[^]) & it is far better than Windows RDP)
2. Run VirtualBox which hosts my Win10 machine for rare instances when I need to do something Windows-based

The Bug That Drove Me Crazy: Stutter-typing

A few months ago a bug arose in an uknown-to-me package named Mutter which caused the Linux terminal to stutter when you’re typing.

At times, because I type so fast, the terminal would drop letters and I’d have to back up and retype my command. Oh it was agonizing — and it was subtle because I kept thinking, “maybe it is fixed…can’t tell…” then the stuttering!! Oy!

Special Set Of Hardware & Software Causes the Problem
A user had to be running Ubuntu 22.04 and have the following:

• Mutter: 46.0
• Present in XOrg (aka X11): Yes
• Graphics: NVIDIA 550.67

I have an NVIDIA 1660 installed on my machine and I was still on X11.

Suggested Fixes

The suggested fixes were not great and one of them was ridiculous. The ridiculous one was “update to Ubuntu 24.04” which is kind of a major change. I was against it so I suffered through.

I Noticed Wayland

But, then, on Jun 07, 2024 I finally had enough because the terminal slowness was just driving me crazy.

I read over the solution posted at AskUbuntu (https://askubuntu.com/questions/1509058/input-delay-on-terminal-ubuntu-22-04-4/1516935#1516935)[https://askubuntu.com/questions/1509058/input-delay-on-terminal-ubuntu-22-04-4/1516935#1516935] and I noticed that it said:

• Present in XOrg: Yes
• Present in Wayland: No

“Ok, that sinks it”, I thought. “I’m moving to Wayland.”

Let’s Move To Wayland
But, you may ask, why weren’t you already on Wayland?

That’s a great question. It’s becuase when I upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04 and tried Wayland I had two major issues:

When connecting to remote Win10 boxes using Remmina I couldn’t ALT-TAB through processes (Why doesn’t Remmina handle sending Alt-Tab to remote computer on 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish?)
The Android emulator wouldn’t start under Wayland (Why won’t my Android emulator start on Ubuntu 22.04?)
So I figured I’d switch over to Wayland and try those two things and if they worked I’d stay on Wayland.

Tried It & Both Were Resolved

I switched over to Wayland — the new system makes it very easy to do so — both of those issues were resolved.

“That’s great”, I thought. “I guess I’m a Wayland user now.” But, unfortunately, it was too fast.

Why I Left Wayland Again

Today, I needed to share my screen in MS Teams but when I went to the area where the functionality should be in my Linux MS Teams installation, I could not find the Share Screen functionality.

MS Teams: No Share Screen Functionality

I couldn’t figure it out at first and then it dawned on me, “I wonder if this is because of Wayland!?!”

NOTE: This is the MS Teams Linux installation (a .deb pkg) which Microsoft has basically hidden now. But you can still get it at: (https://mirror.slackware.hr/sources/teams/teams_1.5.00.23861_amd64.deb)[https://mirror.slackware.hr/sources/teams/teams_1.5.00.23861_amd64.deb]

I logged out, hit the gear icon and started Ubuntu 22.04.4 without Wayland (running X11 again).

I started up MS Teams and started a call with one of my Team members and discovered that I do have the Share Screen functionality again.

This may very well be a bug in MS Teams, however, I need that functionality so I’ll be running X11 until it is resolved.

I was happy to finally be on Wayland, but unfortuantely it wasn’t meant to be. X11 is running great and the Mutter bug is resolved (sooooo glad) so all is good again. Too bad I had to say bye to Wayland though.

What’s Your Experience On Wayland or X11?

Which one are you running: Wayland or X11?

What is your experience with Wayland?

• Are your apps working properly?
• Leave a comment and let me know.