Fedora Workstation 41 will drop GNOME X.Org session as fallback option

So basically games that are using Proton/WINE won't work at all with Fedora 41?

Why? Playing Doom Eternal and Death Stranding here on my desktop which has been on Wayland for literally years now without any issues. It's an AMD card with Mesa drivers, though.

So basically games that are using Proton/WINE won't work at all with Fedora 41?

No. Proton/Wine works just fine, also currently, using XWayland on a Wayland desktop session.

Thanks, I think I heard recently (from the TLE youtube guy) that it was not possible, maybe I misunderstood it.

Wine just released an experimental driver for wayland, but I don't think thats usable for games.

If you run wayland you may have XWayland. XWayland it's a wrapper (from Xorg) for running to wayland.
Basically it starts an Xserver(Xorg), executes the program and renderizes to wayland instead of the screen.

If the hardware/driver is capable of wayland and you have xwayland should not be problems.


Last edited by jordicoma on 8 Mar 2024 at 11:29 am UTC

X11 still works perfectly here.. Multiple different refresh monitors and the likes have not been an issue on X11, just have to sync to highest refresh in order to prevent vsyncs/compositors cap to lowest.
Im quite sure that X11 will be still around quite some time. I personally can't switch before my Desktop Environment of choice starts supporting it fully without any edge case issues..So plenty of time to still roll on X11.

X11 still works perfectly here.. Multiple different refresh monitors and the likes have not been an issue on X11, just have to sync to highest refresh in order to prevent vsyncs/compositors cap to lowest.
Im quite sure that X11 will be still around quite some time. I personally can't switch before my Desktop Environment of choice starts supporting it fully without any edge case issues..So plenty of time to still roll on X11.

In the same boat as you man; I need an Nvidia GPU for work (DaVinci Resolve, Darktable, etc) and X11 is the only reason I'm able to ditch Windows completely. Wayland is a fantastic thing, sure, but I can't help but feel the bandwagon for it is taking off a little too quickly...

My experience is that Krita is terrible on GNOME, Wayland or X11, with a NVIDIA GPU. My Wacom tablet works properly on KDE Wayland and only KDE Wayland.

Of course, Krita's toolbar flickers black every 5 seconds so it's a little distracting.

Have I mentioned how tired I am of NVIDIA's proprietary drivers before?

Cool to hear that the KDE folks got their tablet support right. I'm using my Wacom tablet solemnly as a mouse replacement, not for actual drawing. So slightly different use case I guess. Lots of Wacom related PR's got merged for the upcoming Gnome version, so I have hopes that the normal interaction works better, but things like https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2983 are still open and probably no that easy to address :(

Yeah, the flickering might be related to the implicit/explicit sync issues. I sincerely hope that https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/90 gets merged soon and all related PR's land in compositors, xwayland etc. From my understanding, that should solve all flickering (asuming what you are seeing is related to that). Side note, reading through the discussion of that PR, NVIDIA engineers are pushing for this and contributed heavily, so it is not NVIDIA that is holding back.

The strange thing is, Krita was not flickering in the 535 series of NVIDIA drivers. It was only in the 545 series that the flickering was introduced. Fortunately, my entire monitor no longer flickers, so I guess I'll take it...

My understanding is that AMD and Intel's drivers implement implicit sync but NVIDIA doesn't want to implement that; they want explicit sync because implicit sync is imperfect, but I'd take imperfection over the flickerfest. I haven't looked into it at all; that's just what I've heard. Some cursory reading suggests this is accurate.

I don't know what the experience is like on AMD, but I've never gotten any flickering on my Intel iGPU. I hope this is fixed sometime soon, because it's a pain in several of my programs, including Steam. The end of that merge request is looking good...they all seem pretty happy with it. Implementations to follow in a few months?!


Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 8 Mar 2024 at 1:29 pm UTC

X11 still works perfectly here.. Multiple different refresh monitors and the likes have not been an issue on X11, just have to sync to highest refresh in order to prevent vsyncs/compositors cap to lowest.
Im quite sure that X11 will be still around quite some time. I personally can't switch before my Desktop Environment of choice starts supporting it fully without any edge case issues..So plenty of time to still roll on X11.

In the same boat as you man; I need an Nvidia GPU for work (DaVinci Resolve, Darktable, etc) and X11 is the only reason I'm able to ditch Windows completely. Wayland is a fantastic thing, sure, but I can't help but feel the bandwagon for it is taking off a little too quickly...

What's the problem with darktable on Wayland? Have been using this combo for years now. And "too quickly"? I mean, this thing has been in the making for 15 f*cking years now...

X11 still works perfectly here.. Multiple different refresh monitors and the likes have not been an issue on X11, just have to sync to highest refresh in order to prevent vsyncs/compositors cap to lowest.
Im quite sure that X11 will be still around quite some time. I personally can't switch before my Desktop Environment of choice starts supporting it fully without any edge case issues..So plenty of time to still roll on X11.

In the same boat as you man; I need an Nvidia GPU for work (DaVinci Resolve, Darktable, etc) and X11 is the only reason I'm able to ditch Windows completely. Wayland is a fantastic thing, sure, but I can't help but feel the bandwagon for it is taking off a little too quickly...

What's the problem with darktable on Wayland? Have been using this combo for years now. And "too quickly"? I mean, this thing has been in the making for 15 f*cking years now...

Darktable on Wayland is fine, but using it with an AMD gpu is horrible because of the lack of OpenCL support, and using an NVIDIA gpu on Wayland is... yep. And yes, too quickly, if it cant be a drop in replacement for X11 then it's not ready and distros are rushing it.

My understanding is that AMD and Intel's drivers implement implicit sync but NVIDIA doesn't want to implement that; they want explicit sync because implicit sync is imperfect, but I'd take imperfection over the flickerfest. I haven't looked into it at all; that's just what I've heard. Some cursory reading suggests this is accurate.

There's a quite detailed article about the issues with implicit synchronisation and the work being done to explicitly synchronise like every other platform (including Android) does here.

The crux of it is

Each of those can be pretty bad by itself but when you put them together the result is that, in practice, using implicit synchronization in Vulkan would completely serialize all work and kill your multi-queue parallelism. So we shut it off if the kernel driver allows it.

If we're turning off implicit synchronization, how do we synchronize with the window system? That's the real question, isn't it? There are a number of different strategies for this which have been employed by various drivers over the years and they all come down to some form of selective enabling of implicit synchronization. Also, they're all terrible and lead to over-synchronization somewhere.

Darktable on Wayland is fine, but using it with an AMD gpu is horrible because of the lack of OpenCL support, and using an NVIDIA gpu on Wayland is... yep. And yes, too quickly, if it cant be a drop in replacement for X11 then it's not ready and distros are rushing it.

There is OpenCL support with AMD gpus. OpenCL support can be installed standalone from the AMD repos along the Mesa drivers.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1406137/how-enable-opencl-on-amd-gpu-ubuntu-22-04-lts

Hope we can use NVK by then... since I have little hope that the proprietary nvidia wayland support will get better, to be true, it got worse from 535 to 545 :D. Those flickering issue in certain applications is annoying.

Hope we can use NVK by then... since I have little hope that the proprietary nvidia wayland support will get better, to be true, it got worse from 535 to 545 :D. Those flickering issue in certain applications is annoying.

Not a promise but I believe that NVK is no longer experimental and has been said by the developer to be mature by the end of the year.

Darktable on Wayland is fine, but using it with an AMD gpu is horrible because of the lack of OpenCL support, and using an NVIDIA gpu on Wayland is... yep. And yes, too quickly, if it cant be a drop in replacement for X11 then it's not ready and distros are rushing it.

There is OpenCL support with AMD gpus. OpenCL support can be installed standalone from the AMD repos along the Mesa drivers.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1406137/how-enable-opencl-on-amd-gpu-ubuntu-22-04-lts

Yea except its a pain and it doesn't work on Davinci Resolve.

For a few years, we were able to welcome more and more people switching from windows. Now we are finally back to telling people "Yeah, your still perfectly capable hardware is not supported, you should buy other hardware"
I personally think this is utterly stupid. I recognize wayland is the future, but compatibility is still favoring Xorg, especially for Nvidia users (~70%) with multi-screen setups. I can't believe people here are celebrating this cutting of workarounds.


Last edited by const on 8 Mar 2024 at 11:05 pm UTC

For a few years, we were able to welcome more and more people switching from windows. Now we are finally back to telling people "Yeah, your still perfectly capable hardware is not supported, you should buy other hardware"
I personally think this is utterly stupid. I recognize wayland is the future, but compatibility is still favoring Xorg, especially for Nvidia users (~70%) with multi-screen setups. I can't believe people here are celebrating this cutting of workarounds.

Despite my complaints about Wayland compositors, I think it has actually been an overall better experience. Games play smoother and it's generally smoother. Krita and Steam have the worst flickering in the world, but Bitwarden and Freetube's flickering I can live with.

Multi-monitor setup with my Wacom tablet flat-out doesn't work properly on Xorg. It will only work properly on KDE Wayland. Proper color accuracy is desirable, and while Xorg kind of implements it, the Wayland protocol looks to be close to completion and doing a much better job with all the input from all these important stakeholders.

Once explicit sync is implemented (it looks very close), I think that's the last thing Wayland needs for it to be a consistently good experience for me. It's already a consistently better experience than Xorg even with the flickering. Neither has been problem-free.

For a few years, we were able to welcome more and more people switching from windows. Now we are finally back to telling people "Yeah, your still perfectly capable hardware is not supported, you should buy other hardware"
I personally think this is utterly stupid. I recognize wayland is the future, but compatibility is still favoring Xorg, especially for Nvidia users (~70%) with multi-screen setups. I can't believe people here are celebrating this cutting of workarounds.

Despite my complaints about Wayland compositors, I think it has actually been an overall better experience. Games play smoother and it's generally smoother. Krita and Steam have the worst flickering in the world, but Bitwarden and Freetube's flickering I can live with.

Multi-monitor setup with my Wacom tablet flat-out doesn't work properly on Xorg. It will only work properly on KDE Wayland. Proper color accuracy is desirable, and while Xorg kind of implements it, the Wayland protocol looks to be close to completion and doing a much better job with all the input from all these important stakeholders.

Once explicit sync is implemented (it looks very close), I think that's the last thing Wayland needs for it to be a consistently good experience for me. It's already a consistently better experience than Xorg even with the flickering. Neither has been problem-free.

I don't argue that some people have a better experience with Wayland. That's a given. But just because it works for you it doesn't mean it works for everyone. Explicit sync may be close, but if that solves issues for many people, shouldn't distros wait for it before they drop Xorg sessions as a fallback?
I have a wacom tablet on my 3 screen setup, btw. It just works on Xorg.
I tried wayland nearly every year for a while. Have gotten a session to run once, it was misbehaving in every way I can imagine. Mouse offset, crazy colors, graphic elements moving randomly added to constant flickering seemed like the experience those warning banners in movies and videogames warn you of. That's the one time I got it to run at all. Every other time, selecting the wayland session would drop me back to the login manager. My 980TI might be old, but it's still pretty fine for a lot of games and I fear that entire generation can have comparable issues. So yeah, make it the default, pressure Nvidia to fix their driver. But until we are sure everyone has an equally good or better time with wayland, distros should keep the fallback.

Edit: ok, I'm now on wayland. Had to set a kernel option for it to work. It's not a nightmare for now, it actually seems pretty neat and a lot of KDE bugs that were bugging me lately have gone. That's great. Still, the fact I had to set a kernel option is kind of a sign this is not ready for prime time.


Last edited by const on 9 Mar 2024 at 10:05 am UTC

Had to set a kernel option for it to work.

Which option did you set?

Had to set a kernel option for it to work.

Which option did you set?

nvidia_drm.modeset=1

That's a interesting postulate,

I'm curious why do you think this would be strategically in Valve's interest? How would they stand to benefit? And Are there any observable behaviors or things in the news that align with this hypothesis?

Genuinely curious, no pressure or need to even answer at all, I just found the concept intriguing.

I wish I could say I had some insider information, but sadly, no. It truly was just speculation. I'm just going off the little public information we have. Valve did say they intend to release SteamOS to the public eventually. People have been wondering what they're waiting for. I'm just speculating that they're waiting for certain Linux features to be ready for all systems. The biggest hurdle right now would be Nvidia proprietary drivers. That would explain why now, after all this time, Nvidia has suddenly shown interest in supporting open source drivers. Again, total speculation.

There's also the whole steam machine thing. Valve clearly did want Steam in the living room, but Steam Machines failed because of the general lack of support for games back then. They've largely eliminated that issue, and the only other possible hurdle, as I said, would be out-of-the-box Nvidia driver support since most PC gamers currently use Nvidia.

For a few years, we were able to welcome more and more people switching from windows. Now we are finally back to telling people "Yeah, your still perfectly capable hardware is not supported, you should buy other hardware"
I personally think this is utterly stupid. I recognize wayland is the future, but compatibility is still favoring Xorg, especially for Nvidia users (~70%) with multi-screen setups. I can't believe people here are celebrating this cutting of workarounds.

Despite my complaints about Wayland compositors, I think it has actually been an overall better experience. Games play smoother and it's generally smoother. Krita and Steam have the worst flickering in the world, but Bitwarden and Freetube's flickering I can live with.

Multi-monitor setup with my Wacom tablet flat-out doesn't work properly on Xorg. It will only work properly on KDE Wayland. Proper color accuracy is desirable, and while Xorg kind of implements it, the Wayland protocol looks to be close to completion and doing a much better job with all the input from all these important stakeholders.

Once explicit sync is implemented (it looks very close), I think that's the last thing Wayland needs for it to be a consistently good experience for me. It's already a consistently better experience than Xorg even with the flickering. Neither has been problem-free.

I don't argue that some people have a better experience with Wayland. That's a given. But just because it works for you it doesn't mean it works for everyone. Explicit sync may be close, but if that solves issues for many people, shouldn't distros wait for it before they drop Xorg sessions as a fallback?
I have a wacom tablet on my 3 screen setup, btw. It just works on Xorg.
I tried wayland nearly every year for a while. Have gotten a session to run once, it was misbehaving in every way I can imagine. Mouse offset, crazy colors, graphic elements moving randomly added to constant flickering seemed like the experience those warning banners in movies and videogames warn you of. That's the one time I got it to run at all. Every other time, selecting the wayland session would drop me back to the login manager. My 980TI might be old, but it's still pretty fine for a lot of games and I fear that entire generation can have comparable issues. So yeah, make it the default, pressure Nvidia to fix their driver. But until we are sure everyone has an equally good or better time with wayland, distros should keep the fallback.

Edit: ok, I'm now on wayland. Had to set a kernel option for it to work. It's not a nightmare for now, it actually seems pretty neat and a lot of KDE bugs that were bugging me lately have gone. That's great. Still, the fact I had to set a kernel option is kind of a sign this is not ready for prime time.

Linux Mint is where you want to be if you want the best experience. They aren't going to transition to Wayland until it's deemed well and truly ready.

Fedora is not, and has never been about the best experience. It's about embracing the new as quickly as possible. I don't know what Ubuntu's doing but I can't imagine they're going to take the Xorg option away any time in the next 5 years.

Yes, it was hard for me to enable it on Arch. Though I think you've touched upon the reason Plasma has set it as the default: they've stopped fixing bugs for Xorg and are only focusing on Wayland, so it's probably going to be a better experience for more people. And bugs might be easier to fix, too.

I hope that Noveau + Zink + NVK is set as the default drivers for NVIDIA sometime soon and we won't need to worry about those particular issues sometime in the near future.

I do think you're right that it's an awful time to be a newcomer, because you're stuck with two not-very-great options right now. There's cool and fundamental stuff on Wayland you won't see on Xorg, but there are definite issues with Wayland too. I hope that the pain now will result in a great experience in 2025, which is just around the time some people might be considering their options.

And out of genuine curiosity, what is missing on Wayland? I wanted to compile a list so I can keep tabs on the issues, but so far I've got:

* Explicit Sync to fix flickering (recently got 3 ACKs and is nearly ready to merge, awaiting implementations in compositors + drivers)
* Color Management Protocol (seems like some early implementations have recently been done and Plasma 6 has limited HDR support)
* Better IME protocol, maybe? It works for me on GNOME and KDE, but the implementation was a little broken on wlroots

That would explain why now, after all this time, Nvidia has suddenly shown interest in supporting open source drivers.

The open source kernel modules were more a result of discussions with Red Hat: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/05/11/why-is-the-open-source-driver-release-from-nvidia-so-important-for-linux/

And as the only linux vendor with a significant engineering footprint in GPUs we have been working closely with NVIDIA. People like Kevin Martin, the manager for our GPU technologies team, Ben Skeggs the maintainer of Nouveau and Dave Airlie, the upstream kernel maintainer for the graphics subsystem, Nouveau contributor Karol Herbst and our accelerator lead Tom Rix have all taken part in meetings, code reviews and discussions with NVIDIA.