Finally switched to Wayland with KDE+NVIDIA

Just wanted to share for the 10 people like me who has with an Nvidia + dual screen setup on ArchLinux (btw) with KDE Plasma desktop that since the new plasma 6 update I can finally use the Wayland session option!

The wayland should work has been around for the last 5 years and 5 years ago it was not even close, then 1 or 2 years ago it started not crashing but multi-screen was not OK (I tried all the kernel and driver parameters).

Now for me and my 5+ years-old setup (probably a lot of legacy plasma settings in my .config) it was finally seamless.

From previous tries I already knew that the desktop feels WAY smoother (true 60 fps everywhere, specially for the video players in web browser).

Feels great so far, discord screen-sharing is not there but can be done from Firefox if needed so OK for me.

I hope this post will be informative for some like me who tried several time over the years and didn't had much hope.

PS : the cursor has a weirdly strong outline (too shiny to my taste) feels like unintended but not a big problem. I spent 30 mins in the options but couldn't find anything about that.

LiiTheBaddie ,

I got to try out wayland with an nvidia card(cause it get set as the default with the KDE 6 update) and it was just horrible buggy feeling mess. Steam and websites would have parts of the page just blink out of existence, games would stutter. plus other random stuff going wrong.

fernandocarletti ,

I tried it with gnome recently and had the same behavior on steam and my browser, ended up rolling back to x11. I can tell I had less issues than the last time I tried it a year ago though :)

bitwolf ,

You can likely screen share a window but not your full screen on discord.

I can do this on Wayland it's just slow because no av1 support for AMD from discord.

authed , (edited )

You should try one huge monitor and use an addon that let you snap windows to 1/4, 1/2 of the screen, etc (30+ inches).... Been using Wayland for years with no problems

D_Air1 ,
@D_Air1@lemmy.ml avatar

Same, this is also the first time that I am able to use wayland on my nvidia card. There are still issues, but there are being worked out. 6.0.2 solved the issue with plasmashell just quitting whenever I turned one of my monitors off.

MaliciousKebab ,

I recommend vesktop, it's an open source discord client that pretty much fixed all the discord problems that I had on wayland. No need for nitro to stream high resolution, and it's even compatible with betterdiscord themes 🤌.

datavoid ,

My experience with this setup is generally:

  • login to a black screen
  • try to switch windows or desktops, then something appears with glitchy green animations
  • get annoyed
  • go back to x

I'm sure I missed something stupid like installing drivers properly, but I've been too busy / lazy to fix it.

orangeboats ,

You need to enable DRM KMS on Nvidia.

datavoid ,

Thanks 🙂

DumbAceDragon , (edited )
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah wayland on KDE+nvidia is pretty much perfect now, the only problems I have are xwayland stuttering and the KDE drawing tablet config not mapping out my tablet's scroll wheel. Both of these issues mean it's pretty much impossible for me to get any work done in krita lol, but I'm sure it'll continue to get better.

Czele ,
@Czele@lemmy.world avatar

Mind telling how does Krita works for You under xwayland? I am using Krita in flatpak under wayland gnome and Im getting a lot of flickering and gui turning black xD

Czele ,
@Czele@lemmy.world avatar

Nvidia gpu ofc

DumbAceDragon ,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah it's pretty much the same for me.

SteveTech , (edited )

discord screen-sharing is not there but can be done from Firefox if needed

You can also install KDE's XWayland Video Bridge, which converts Wayland screen sharing into an app for discord to share.

flatpak install --user --or-update https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/xwaylandvideobridge-nightly/org.kde.xwaylandvideobridge.flatpakref

You might also want to add the repo for updates, but I think it's been down for a little while for me.

Edit: There's a new repo: flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists xwaylandvideobridge-nightly https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/xwaylandvideobridge-nightly/xwaylandvideobridge-nightly.flatpakrepo

moonpiedumplings ,

Also switched here. OBS on wayland has some new features, that I'm excited to take advantage of, but I still cannot find a way to share some windows, but not an entire monitor.

OBS has another feature: "virtual monitor". It does what it sounds like, and creates a virtual monitor, which you can then treat like a real monitor, like extending to, or unifying outputs, etc.

It also has a feature to share the entire workspace, but it doesn't work like I expect, and instead uses all monitors (not workspaces) as a single input source. I suspect that's a bug tbh, because this behavior is useless considering you can just add monitors as a source side by side.

dysprosium ,

Same setup but with gnome. My video screen recorder broke: simplescreenrecorder for which I have not yet found a solution.

Also Mathpix anyone familiar? Just straigh out don't work

zewm ,
@zewm@lemmy.zip avatar

Feels great so far, discord screen-sharing is not there but can be done from Firefox if needed so OK for me.

I believe someone is maintaining a modified version of discord for Linux that has working screen sharing.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/discord-screenaudio

utopiah ,

Neat, naive question, what's the impact on Steam/Proton?

Kajika OP ,

Wine is fine so I guess proton would be.

GadgeteerZA ,
GadgeteerZA avatar

@Kajika thanks that sounds promising. I'd also seen some improvement but still got random freezes. Looking forward to the update. I have a similar setup with Manjaro KDE.

GolfNovemberUniform ,

I tried Plasma 6 + Wayland on Arch btw earlier today, ran into the first issues in like 3 minutes after installation and switched back to Xorg for good. Wayland never worked for me. Yes it's much more smooth and has nice features but it just never works that well on my machines. Btw for all the Wayland bodyguards, it was on Intel integrated graphics, not on NVidia or anything like that

Kajika OP ,

Damned, this is so frustrating when you cannot switch yet. Not like Wayland is perfect anyway but I felt the same with pipewire where the new system as some needed improvement but the switch is harsh.

GolfNovemberUniform ,

Never had issues with Pipewire smh. I didn't even notice the transition

optissima ,
@optissima@lemmy.world avatar

What were the issues?

GolfNovemberUniform ,

The whole system completely froze when I tried to resize the application launcher (aka Start menu). I switched to tty and saw Plasma getting stopped. I could launch the second GUI session but ehh I just rebooted. Maybe it wasn't exactly a Wayland issue but anyways I always have something not working well on it. I also had bad performance which was on Plasma 5 + Wayland too (on Xorg it was fine of course). On another machine I even got artifacts when using it lol. And btw Plasma 6 is really unstable, even on Xorg. Don't use it in production

4vr ,

Same. Switching users didn’t work in Plasma 6 and switched back to Gnome.

SmoochyPit ,

I just installed Hyprland (so different WM, but still Wayland) on my laptop with Intel integrated graphics and it works fine for me. It could be a difference between generations, though, as my laptop is from 2014.

You’re not really missing much yet imo— most software I use still requires xwayland anyways.

GolfNovemberUniform ,

The machine was probably from the same era. I don't remember the CPU model but it's 4th gen I3 I think

edinbruh ,

In the coming months, an important protocol will be merged to Wayland and xorg, and the next Nvidia driver release will have support for that protocol. This will make the Nvidia Wayland experience 100x better

Nilz ,

Care to elaborate? Sounds promising

SmoochyPit ,

I’m not a hardware dev, but I’ve been following this issue for several months. Nvidia on Wayland does not implement implicit GPU synchronization currently for Xwayland. Other vendors do.

This issue is related to how/when the framebuffer from the gpu is handed off to be displayed. Implicit sync isn’t a great solution, it’s just what’s been done for Linux in the past.

Here’s a bit more detail if you’re interested:

I believe this issue is more specific to Wayland because Wayland relies on the DRM, direct rendering manager, to facilitate communication between the graphics driver and Wayland clients (applications). Whereas Xorg kinda just covered everything along the pipeline.

Implicit sync sounds like a bit of hack, where software (I assume the client? Or maybe the drm driver?) implicitly checks for the frame to be finished, rather than being signaled when the frame is ready.

So instead, Nvidia has been arguing for, designing and developing an explicit sync Wayland Protocol (and one for Xorg), which will let the graphics driver explicitly signal when a frame is finished and ready to be displayed. This is how the graphics stack works on Windows.

Right now on Nvidia, Xwayland clients will show previous frames, incomplete/corrupted frames or will fail to update when a new frame is rendered. Here’s the XWayland Merge Request. The issue is much worse on drivers > 535.xx after some optimizations worsened the issue. For now, rolling back can help!

There will be benefits in general with explicit sync, but the major ones will be Xwayland functioning properly for Nvidia users, VRR and apps with inconsistent framerates.

Zenzio , (edited )

And apparently the plan is to have explicit sync ready for the next major driver version (v555).
From the discussions on Github and Gitlab it seems the work for that to happen is done. The changes in the necessary packages (Xwayland, Mesa?) just need to be merged and the the Nvidia driver 555 needs to be released. It hasn't been that long since the previous release 550. So I guess it is going to take a bit of waiting still.

unique_hemp ,

Yeah, still gonna be a couple of months, but that is the last signifficant issue for me, fingers crossed.

orangeboats , (edited )

It's the explicit sync protocol.

The TL;DR is basically: everyone else has supported implicit sync for ages, but Nvidia doesn't. So now everyone is designing an explicit sync Wayland protocol to accommodate for this issue.

edinbruh ,

It's explicit sync, look at my other comment for links

Matty_r ,
@Matty_r@programming.dev avatar

I'd like to know what this is as well? I was hoping Plasma 6 was going to solve my Nvidia + Wayland issues for me, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Because it's Nvidia drivers causing it.

Matty_r ,
@Matty_r@programming.dev avatar

That has already been established, yes.

PseudoSpock ,

PLEASE stop spreading that lie!!!

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Why do you think it's a lie?

PseudoSpock ,

Wayland could have been written to support NVidia, just as X11 does. They chose not to because they hate the driver being proprietary. Wayland had the option to be and do a lot of things that the devs refused.

edinbruh , (edited )

False, xorg isn't written with support for Nvidia, when xwayland windows flickers on Nvidia it's an effect of xorg not working Nvidia.

The Nvidia driver is a closed source implementation of the xorg server written by Nvidia for Nvidia GPUs. Xorg was invented at a time when drivers were done like that.

Now xorg uses glamor (except on Nvidia) which is a driver that implements the server over opengl, so you don't need to implement the whole thing for every GPU. Except glamor doesn't work on Nvidia because Nvidia doesn't implement implicit sync, which is required by Linux, and that is what you see in xwayland (which uses glamor as well).

Wayland doesn't require writing a whole server, but it requires implementing GBM and implicit sync (as does everything on Linux, unless you are using Nvidia's proprietary corgi server). Nvidia refused GBM until a few years ago, and still refuses to implement implicit sync. Which is why explicit sync will solve most issues.

PseudoSpock ,

That was a choice made by wayland devs not too use what was available. Their fault.

edinbruh , (edited )

What is available is a x11 server, not more not less, it cannot be used for anything other than x11.
If they made X12, it would not work on Nvidia, unless they wrote a new server, which they wouldn't.

You need to understand that the xorg server everyone use literally does not work on Nvidia, because it uses implicit sync, which is required by the Linux infrastructure. The only thing that works on Nvidia it's specifically their own proprietary server.

Nvidia does a lot of impressive stuff, but they have neglected the Linux scene for a long time, because it wasn't convenient, and it shows.

Edit: ...what was available... because Nvidia is gradually implementing things the correct way, and Wayland is becoming more and more usable with every driver update. Because, surprise surprise, it does depend on the drivers. Also, both Intel and AMD work perfectly with Wayland.

SmoochyPit ,

I just replied to Nilz over here with my understanding of it.

The protocol is to facilitate explicit gpu synchronization.

Currently xwayland apps show the most issues with this on Nvidia. Driver 535 and earlier help mitigate it, or using native Wayland apps, when possible.

edinbruh ,

Read these

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/proto/xorgproto/-/merge_requests/59

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/967#note_2323666

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/90

https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/pull/104

Plus, look for a merge request for your compositor, they are listed in the third link

Berny23 ,
@Berny23@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah, also waiting for it. Until the protocol is implemented, I have to use driver 535 without HDR support. :(

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