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by napkin 779 days ago
The argument that it is ‘screwing desktop Linux’s progress’ doesn’t hold well in light of the success of the Steam deck- selling to millions- and running a Wayland compositor. Which ‘non-wayland’ efforts have been thwarted, that had any such numbers?
2 comments
ndiddy 778 days ago
Wayland works well on the Steam Deck because Valve controls the whole system. Because they have their own Wayland compositor (Gamescope), they're able to implement protocols to work around issues in Wayland without being delayed by the bureaucratic process of getting them approved. Here's an SDL pull request where a graphics developer at Valve discusses how two protocols necessary for good GPU performance haven't been added to Wayland yet so Valve added equivalent protocols to Gamescope as a workaround: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/9345

One thing to note is that the Steam Deck only uses Wayland for its fullscreen gaming mode. When you exit to its desktop mode (meant for running non-Steam software), it switches to X11.

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abhinavk 778 days ago
The default will change to Wayland soon because Steam Deck runs Plasma. Plasma 6 defaults to a wayland session.
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AshamedCaptain 779 days ago
But the Steam Deck is hardly desktop Linux. The users there usually wouldn't care less that you can't use it for desktop-y things (like taking screenshots...).

E.g. Linux mobile devices also usually "successfully" utilized Wayland, but failed big time in market share against whatever Android uses. The only thing this may prove is that Android is more popular.

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napkin 778 days ago
Sure, you wouldn’t call the Steam Deck a Desktop. However as you pick apart its software stack, you’d be hard pressed to find a few parts that don’t also benefit the Desktop usecase. Valve delivered a device that mostly just works for gaming, and the improvements they’ve invested in also benefit Desktop users. I don’t own a Steam Deck, but I am a decades-long Linux desktop user, and Valve‘s success thrills me.

Btw I take screenshots often w gnome+wayland, it just works so I don’t even know how it’s implemented. Not sure if you were making a Wayland jab.

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