Cinnamon 6.0 for Linux Mint 21.3 to have 'experimental' Wayland support

This is cool, but hopefully it works well enough to actually use though. lol

I was considering switching to Kubuntu, but my audio with it has crackling. While in Linux Mint it just works straight away with no troubleshooting or fixes. It might not be a big deal to fix, but I'd rather use a distro that works better straight away (even with something small like that).

Nice, and Xfce will probably have support even sooner.

By the way -- I haven't looked yet, but if you want good entertainment, be sure to check out the phoronix forums w/ respect to this bit of news, if/when it shows up there. The wayland quarrels over there tend to be hilarious.

As you can see on the board many things are missing or broken but we’ve got a functional session with window, applications and workspace management. We’re able to log in, run most apps, manipulate windows, workspaces, nemo, the panel etc..

Still early (the Trello board identifies some significant missing features, like screen capture), but great news.

I wonder how they will implement screen capture permissions. Every compositor seems to do it differently. I like GNOME's implementation the most; loudly indicating when the screen is being captured in the top right.

This is very late and should already be hurried IMO. To put all possible resources to get Wayland's going fine on Linux Mint. Until it works, Linux Mint is certainly not an alternative to much more modern Ubuntu ecosystem by default..

I'm glad they aren't trying to push it as default until it is more mature. Projects always tend to do this on Linux and the users are expected to live through the buggy transition, I feel like we are always in constant beta.

Personally, I'm glad they are taking a more considered approach. Linux Mint has been my full-time desktop for years for work and personal use, and if it were ever to become unstable or difficult to manage due to Wayland, then that would create significant issues. Using Mint in critical environments that demand stability and privacy has always worked out incredibly well and has not let me down. Using distros that use Wayland in those environment risks too much for my clients and for myself. If I want to play around with them on a virtual machine, that's fine, but, for me, this approach is why Mint is the choice for my company and for my family.

Cheers!

Does that mean Wayland is now usable for every one? Is screen sharing/capture a thing now? Has Wayland finally stopped in their stupid way of making everyone recode the wheel and integrated some component in its default package?

edit : How about accessibility? Has there been something done about that?


Last edited by DerpFox on 1 Nov 2023 at 6:55 pm UTC

I wonder how they will implement screen capture permissions. Every compositor seems to do it differently. I like GNOME's implementation the most; loudly indicating when the screen is being captured in the top right.

this might prove useful:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/xwayland-video-bridge-created-to-improve-linux-screen-sharing/

This is very late and should already be hurried IMO. To put all possible resources to get Wayland's going fine on Linux Mint. Until it works, Linux Mint is certainly not an alternative to much more modern Ubuntu ecosystem by default..

They are an Ubuntu derivate, Cinnamon is a Gnome derivate, and Muffin is a Mutter derivate.

They waited for upstream to do enough work for things to look like they're working there.

Then recently they did a big Muffin rebase over a fresh version of Mutter, which captured most of the wayland work done there by Gnome devs (and severely reduced the amount of custom things done in Muffin differently from Mutter, making it easier to do new rebasing moves).

And then this announcement shows they got to work on Cinnamon.

And a comment on the announcement from a user says only a few X-apps need extra work making them run as expected u der wayland... like just four of them... the restis probably running over Xwayland, but if they do run fine that way that's enough to be a non-issue for their i initialmigration effort.

Then Clem replied noting that a lot of work left to do is on taskbar, menu, control panel, etc, which makes sense.

Anyway, as long as Ubuntu and Debian don't suddenly remove x.org from repos then Mint should be fine, but I agree this is high priority and have commented on their new article to that effect.


Ubuntu's modernity doesn't mean much for usual Mint users. Unless being on X.org becomes a tangible issue they'll wait around until the work is done and migration happens without pain, which is Mint's way of doing things.


Last edited by Marlock on 1 Nov 2023 at 9:52 pm UTC

Starting on Wayland is good, but judging by how long it took KDE Plasma to get to decent state, it will probably be a long road. Still nice to see some progress.

Starting on Wayland is good, but judging by how long it took KDE Plasma to get to decent state, it will probably be a long road. Still nice to see some progress.

Clem said something like 2 years somewhere on the post or the comments.


Last edited by Marlock on 2 Nov 2023 at 12:53 am UTC

Clem said something like 2 years somewhere on the post or the comments.

I think KDE developers underestimated it by a lot, so it likely means more.

I wonder how they will implement screen capture permissions. Every compositor seems to do it differently. I like GNOME's implementation the most; loudly indicating when the screen is being captured in the top right.

this might prove useful:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/xwayland-video-bridge-created-to-improve-linux-screen-sharing/

In my experience with Fedora KDE, it used to work sometimes with the videobridge, but with 39, video sharing works flawlessly on Wayland.

Clem said something like 2 years somewhere on the post or the comments.

I think KDE developers underestimated it by a lot, so it likely means more.

I mean, KDE and Gnome (mostly Gnome) were the torchbearers of Wayland, so a lot of things needed to be implemented for the first time or even necesitated a new Wayland extention. Now that that work is nearing the end, Linux Mint can piggy back of of a lot of work from Gnome (see Marlocks comment) and look at other programs as an example, so it should be way less work.

I mean, KDE and Gnome (mostly Gnome) were the torchbearers of Wayland, so a lot of things needed to be implemented for the first time or even necesitated a new Wayland extention. Now that that work is nearing the end, Linux Mint can piggy back of of a lot of work from Gnome (see Marlocks comment) and look at other programs as an example, so it should be way less work.

Exactly this. GNOME were around before per-window screen capture was viable on Wayland. KDE had to push for (with support from Valve) fractional scaling and tearing extensions. GNOME, KDE, and Valve are also making big developments in the realm of proofing out colour management and HDR on Wayland, as well as VRR.

Wayland today is much different than it was 2 or 3 years ago, and is continuing to get the extensions that once received vehement pushback (such as fractional scaling). The work that GNOME and KDE have done have, for the most part, matured Wayland to a point where other desktops can now comfortably see their future on Wayland. We also shouldn't forget the excellent Wayland compositors such as Hyprland which proofed out Wayland-only applications as viable, and less relevant for GTK/Qt-based desktops, wlroots which provides common code to develop a Wayland compositor from.

The point I'm making is, Wayland isn't as much of an unknown as it was 2 years ago, thanks to the work of many to bring it up to scratch where there is no longer need for private protocols, and work can now begin on porting desktops, because the trail has been blazed by others willing to spend the last 5+ years pushing for improvements to Wayland.

I must be living in 2026 by using Linux Mint KDE with Wayland, works really great.