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I guess it depends on the user, but Wayland is not the same shit for me. The level of jank and screen tearing in X is unacceptable.

I think it’s amusing that that opinion is so common given how bad X is. Mac OS X was developed in the nineties and has a jank-free hardware-accelerated compositor. Windows vista also had one, as well as every windows version after that.

I am certain that I’m not the only end user who notices the difference between smooth animations on those other OSs and what you see on X.

Wayland may be incomplete but it’s obvious that it solves some of these issues.




X is very smooth for me. No tearing or other issues.

It's usually a driver configuration issue if you have tearing.


That is bad news, I do not want screen tearing and I have zero interest in ever fixing driver configurations.


Most people don’t care about animation, but getting their work done. Still, I’m rooting for W.


Scrolling, moving/resizing windows, switching windows/tabs.

None of these need to be animated and even if they are not animated they can be disconcertingly janky under X. Tearing is even worse/more obvious if screens are rotated into a portrait orientation.


I have two 4k monitors with Intel gfx one in portrait, and have no issues unless I run vlc full screen and there is a lot of movement in the scene. The other 99% of the time it just isn’t a problem. I’m only reminded it exists in threads like this.


> Most people don’t care about animation

Then why does every popular desktop/mobile OS/app have UI animations?


Because those are technical gimmicks and nerds are very susceptible to fall for gimmicks. Users? They care about consistency and predictable interfaces that don't change every week. They couldn't care less if a toolkit looks dated. Motif, CDE, Plastique, XP-Style, Aqua, Quartz, Material, it all looks the same to them. Tearing? Users don't see it, because they don't have the fine tuned sensibilities to what technology should do, and how it actually behaves.

Playing a movie produces moving pictures on a monitor? Great!

Tearing? Without telling them, they'll hardly ever notice it.


Mobile has way more of what you call "Users" than what you call "nerds" and they all absolutely love fluid animated UIs and spend literally hours a day swiping away at them.

Users might not consciously call out screen tearing but they absolutely can tell when something runs smoothly. Just look at the reviews for iPhone vs Android devices in the early days when Android felt more like X11 with jank, frame drops and redraw glitches.

Then look how much time and money year on year Google spent fighting that jank. Money well spent.


> Just look at the reviews for iPhone vs Android devices in the early days when Android felt more like X11 with jank, frame drops and redraw glitches.

And the irony is, that early iOS used animations to hide latencies when changing application state. These animations were the cause, why it was considered so smooth.


Yeah. IMO once you see screen-tearing you cannot unsee it.

Then having a tear-free desktop is going to be something you strive for.

I upgraded every part of my setup which I needed to, just in order to be able to run Wayland (via sway), and I have to say I absolutely think it's worth it.




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