Hello I’m Doctor_Rex I’m the OP of this post:
My Windows 10 install broke, but I’m hesitant to switch to Linux.
I’d like to start by thanking everybody who responded to my questions. Your answers have helped a lot when it came to my worries on switching to Linux.
I’ve taken in a lot of your recommendations: Fedora, Fedora Kinoite, Nobara, Bazzite Linux, VanillaOS,
I’ve decided on Fedora Kinoite, as it has everything I want from a distro.
It was very kind of you all to answer my questions but after making that post and reading your answers new questions propped up.
These questions are a little more opinionated than the last ones, and a little better thought out, but please take some time to answer them.
Questions:
- Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.
Are there any real noticeable advantages/improvements to using Wayland over Xorg.
- Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?
Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.
- What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
- Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?
Self explanatory.
- What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
I’m not referring to some skill but instead something pertaining to Linux itself. Feel free to skip this question.
I’ll be going to sleep soon, so apologies if I don’t reply but please take a moment answer any questions you think you can.
Thank You!
Edit: AUR = Arch Wiki. Fixed a typo
For a first dive into the Linux ecosystem, I recommend Xorg. I use Wayland myself (Hyprland), and that’s why I know that it’s simply not ready for general adoption. There are many features that are missing, won’t be implemented, or are done much differently compared to X. Some say Xorg is old and bloated - I say it’s a mature technology.
There are also some applications that need root privileges to work (Veyon Configurator is one that I struggled a lot with) and you have to do some weird
pkexechackery to launch them.Wayland’s development has more drama and bickering than an average sitcom - I recommend Brodie Robertson’s channel if you’re interested.
Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other. Unfortunately Steam and some other applications often produce graphical artifacts on Wayland+Nvidia.
Compared to Windows, it is insignificant. My work laptop is a Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint on just 4G RAM without issues.
Install the
tldrprogram. It’s a bit likemanbut lists practical examples of a command instead of a full documentation.Make use of your home directory. Most user applications will have a config file in several places - usually in
~/.config(user config) and/etc(systemwide config). You should only edit the systemwide config when it makes sense, and always prioritize the user config.A common practice is to have your
/homedirectory on a different partition, or a different physical device. If the system breaks or you decide to distrohop, you can unmount/disconnect/homeand only wipe the root partition while retaining your user files.I also recommend using
Timeshiftto back up your system. It’s even better if your root partition uses btrfs since it natively supports snapshots.I needed to leave the Windows ways behind me. On Windows, I had a hard drive mounted as F: and an external HDD mounted as H:. Moving to Linux (Manjaro at the time) was basically a snap decision since Windows had obliterated the boot partition during an update and then broke itself, and I
had no idea how to properly set up the filesystemdidn’t consider how I wanted to set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to/mnt/fand/mnt/hon a whim. It caused me many hours of headache later.I don’t know what you mean by Wayland not being ready for general adoption. I’ve been using it on Fedora for a year now with no issues whatsoever.
Might be a Hyprland issue instead of Wayland, as I remember from the time I tried out Hyprland.
Wayland itself has lots of missing features. There are applications that need absolute window positioning to move sub-windows together with the main window. It’s not an issue on Windows, Mac, or X11, but Wayland doesn’t have a protocol that would allow this (it’s still just a proposal, and there is A LOT of drama surrounding it). Wayland also doesn’t have color management, and support for drawing tablets is rudimentary, which is a deal-breaker for artists and designers. It doesn’t have a standardized way to capture windows either (for streaming or recording), which is why Hyprland’s maintainer made his own
xdg-desktop-portalimplementation with blackjack and hookers.Wayland is great for my use-cases, and I’m willing to work around its issues (mainly related to portals), but there are use-cases where it’s completely unusable. Nvidia support is also sketchy - lots of visual artifacts and flickering windows.
Games under X11 use DRI just like with Wayland. Beyond “create a window and handle resize events” they don’t really interact with X11 or your window manager.
We should expect similar performance and indeed that’s what we find:
https://www.phoronix.com/review/wayland-nv-amd-2023
Performance is not the only factor. Running a compositor on X11 introduces a significant input latency, but turning it off caused massive screen tearing on my 60Hz monitor (I guess it’s less of an issue with a higher refresh rate). I experienced it both with Picom (on Qtile and Awesome) and Kwin. I’ve had a far better experience on Sway, Hyprland, and Plasma-wayland.
We’re talking about gaming though?
Yes. Both screen tearing and input latency can ruin the experience. Please elaborate, I don’t know why you’re asking that question.
As somebody who games with X11 I’d love to know what “significant input latency” I’m supposed to be experiencing?
YMMV, I’m talking about what I experienced.
I was mainly playing Cyberpunk and FFXIV at the time. In both games, camera movement was sluggish with a compositor running. It took about a tenth of a second for the game to respond to both keypresses and mouse movements (I’m not counting gamepad inputs since bluetooth has its own latency). On the same computer, on the same 60Hz monitor, with the same GPU, using the same graphics settings, nothing like that happened with the compositor off, nor after switching to Wayland.
Not when you say “Wayland is better for gaming” you’re not. It may be - but it also may not be. It’s not clearly better and in some cases it may be clearly worse.