Re: [Plasma] X11 Support
Lorenzo Sutton <[email protected]> Mon, 1 Dec 2025 19:25:39 +0100
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.kde.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------ZhFetVWyLAvc9GbGo0a7TD50 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear KDE community, On 27/11/2025 15:43, Valder N. wrote: > Good afternoon, dear developers of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment. > > Could you please clarify the situation with the news > <https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-future/> > about discontinuing support for the X11 protocol in favor of > supporting only the Wayland protocol starting with version 6.8? > > I hope you understand that even according to the data provided in the > article, X11-session is used by 30% of active users. In reality, this > number is significantly higher, and to verify this, you can refer to > the statistics on the use and downloads of individual software > packages in the repositories of active distributions. However, even > 30% (!) should be more than enough to justify the need to continue > supporting this protocol. > > Perhaps in the future (but apparently not soon!), Wayland will replace > X11, but this should be done in an evolutionary manner, rather than by > cutting off support for what currently works and provides the best > performance. > > In particular, in tests on virtual machines, the use of the Wayland > protocol leads to increased RAM consumption, as well as memory leaks > over time. This is not observed in X11 sessions. The “speed” of the > working environment and its “responsiveness” in X11-session is also > clearly noticeable. > > In this regard, we kindly request that the entire community that > regularly uses the KDE Plasma desktop and regularly uses X11-session > continue to support X11-session and not follow the path of GNOME. > > I sincerely hope for your conscientiousness and responsiveness. > I second this request. Keep also into account that quite a few applications are effectively using Xwayland with mixed results. I'm not sure where the statistics and 'hard data' come from "The vast majority of our users are already using the Wayland session [...]" or "Will X11 applications still work? Outside of rare special cases, yes, they will still work using the Xwayland compatibility layer [...]" and hope, agreeing with the OP, that some deeper analysis and consideration besides the announcement be made towards the user and developer communities, in particular developers who don't have the same. In particular, as a long time user/supporter/contributor to Linux Audio/Music Applications, many of these are struggling or at least facing quite massive efforts needed to in moving to Wayland; many of these are community-driven and smaller (often 'one-person') projects and rely on specific features or toolkits still interlinked with X11; in some ceses these are rather complex software By nature) with limited resources compared to the 'major' Linux projects (e.g. [1][2][3][4][5]). Some (especially libraries/toolkits) are working on Wayland support but it might take them time and effort... more time than the drop time. So, to second the request in the previous message, I hope X11 will be supported for additional time and facilitate the transition which at one point will happen. This is not an 'anti-wayland' stance, it's more of an attention on 'wider community inclusiveness' when transitioning towards something so ingrained in the Linux ecosystem. Maybe KDE could take an active role in possibly supporting non-KDE developers / communities in the transition beyond just dropping X11? Lorenzo [1] https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg2067327.html [2] https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-mixbus-wayland-native-any-time-soon/89542/2 [3] https://sourceforge.net/p/qmidiarp/mailman/message/59205269/ [4] https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/issues/1250 [5] https://github.com/lv2/lv2/issues/70 --------------ZhFetVWyLAvc9GbGo0a7TD50 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> </head> <body> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear KDE community,</div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 27/11/2025 15:43, Valder N. wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CAN5ocpA2tjm0rbinr6WDAMgR-iwF=RBGrO4acMUfNWoFfmBJKA@mail.gmail.com"> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <div dir="ltr"> <div>Good afternoon, dear developers of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment.<br> </div> <div><br> </div> <div>Could you please clarify the situation with the news <<a href="https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-future/" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-future/</a>> about discontinuing support for the X11 protocol in favor of supporting only the Wayland protocol starting with version 6.8?<br> </div> <div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br> </span></div> <div>I hope you understand that even according to the data provided in the article, X11-session is used by 30% of active users. In reality, this number is significantly higher, and to verify this, you can refer to the statistics on the use and downloads of individual software packages in the repositories of active distributions. However, even 30% (!) should be more than enough to justify the need to continue supporting this protocol.<br> <br> Perhaps in the future (but apparently not soon!), Wayland will replace X11, but this should be done in an evolutionary manner, rather than by cutting off support for what currently works and provides the best performance.<br> </div> <div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br> </span></div> <div>In particular, in tests on virtual machines, the use of the Wayland protocol leads to increased RAM consumption, as well as memory leaks over time. This is not observed in X11 sessions. The “speed” of the working environment and its “responsiveness” in X11-session is also clearly noticeable.<br> </div> <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div>In this regard, we kindly request that the entire community that regularly uses the KDE Plasma desktop and regularly uses X11-session continue to support X11-session and not follow the path of GNOME.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>I sincerely hope for your conscientiousness and responsiveness.</div> <div><br> </div> </div> </blockquote> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">I second this request. </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">Keep also into account that quite a few applications are effectively using Xwayland with mixed results. </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">I'm not sure where the statistics and 'hard data' come from "The vast majority of our users are already using the Wayland session [...]" or "Will X11 applications still work? Outside of rare special cases, yes, they will still work using the Xwayland compatibility layer [...]" and hope, agreeing with the OP, that some deeper analysis and consideration besides the announcement be made towards the user and developer communities, in particular developers who don't have the same.</div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">In particular, as a long time user/supporter/contributor to Linux Audio/Music Applications, many of these are struggling or at least facing quite massive efforts needed to in moving to Wayland; many of these are community-driven and smaller (often 'one-person') projects and rely on specific features or toolkits still interlinked with X11; in some ceses these are rather complex software By nature) with limited resources compared to the 'major' Linux projects (e.g. [1][2][3][4][5]). Some (especially libraries/toolkits) are working on Wayland support but it might take them time and effort... more time than the drop time.</div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">So, to second the request in the previous message, I hope X11 will be supported for additional time and facilitate the transition which at one point will happen. </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">This is not an 'anti-wayland' stance, it's more of an attention on 'wider community inclusiveness' when transitioning towards something so ingrained in the Linux ecosystem. Maybe KDE could take an active role in possibly supporting non-KDE developers / communities in the transition beyond just dropping X11?</div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">Lorenzo</div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br> </div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg2067327.html">https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg2067327.html</a></div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">[2] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-mixbus-wayland-native-any-time-soon/89542/2">https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-mixbus-wayland-native-any-time-soon/89542/2</a></div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">[3] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/qmidiarp/mailman/message/59205269/">https://sourceforge.net/p/qmidiarp/mailman/message/59205269/</a></div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">[4] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/issues/1250">https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/issues/1250</a></div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">[5] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/lv2/lv2/issues/70">https://github.com/lv2/lv2/issues/70</a></div> </body> </html> --------------ZhFetVWyLAvc9GbGo0a7TD50--