Yeah. Valve invented most of the attention direction techniques for Half-life (light, motion, etc, etc.) Trailblazers.

“Let’s give them lots of player freedom this time!”

Play testers continually don’t look at a set piece vista the developers and artists spent 400 hours creating.

“Well, that’s enough of that. Back to the rails.”

I appreciate the information, and I’m willing to give it a shot again when I next need to do a distro switch or a new installation, but until now my experiences with Wayland have basically been a stream of broken things over several days as I try to reestablish my workflow in a new desktop environment. The time it all goes successfully is the time I’ll be sold.

Like I said, I use Linux in my classroom, and I heavily use global shortcut keys set via script for individual lessons, with fullscreen opening of applications that don’t have automatic support and shortcut key based window switching all without mouse input to create a seamless presentation for my students.

Global shortcuts and wmctrl, which form the critical backbones of this system, simply don’t work in Wayland.

And to suggest it’s just a perfect transition is wrong. I don’t use Steam Link, but if I did? Doesn’t work in Wayland. Everyone constantly bemoans that applications should be rewritten for Wayland, but one of Linux’s advantages is eternal backwards compatibility so software can actually be FINISHED.

Wayland isn’t the kernel and it shouldn’t be held to the standard of the Linux kernel, but do you remember when Linus Torvalds publicly screamed at and berated a developer for a change to the kernel that broke a userspace application and then having the sheer GALL to suggest the application developer was at fault? Wayland evangelists could stand to be a little more understanding that people don’t like it when you break functional userspace applications, force developers to work on stuff that is FINISHED to get it working again, and then blame them for not getting on board with your changes. You know who does that? Google.

Look, Wayland works for you and that’s fantastic. Use whatever you like. Linux is Linux and one of the most beautiful points of Linux is freedom of choice. What I take exception to is the people in this thread who are acting like anybody who isn’t on Wayland is crazy and insisting there’s no good reason to still be on X11 just because they personally don’t understand why someone would need features they need. Anyone expounding that “Wayland is a 1 to 1 replacement for X11 and superior in every way!” is either being intentionally disingenous or a cultist. You know who insists users are wrong for having their own use cases and workflow and wants them to change to their preferred system because THEY don’t think the other use cases matter? Microsoft.

I’ll be happy to make the switch to Wayland… when I do a system install or update and it happens invisibly and I don’t suddenly have to wonder why all of my custom scripts no longer work.

It’s not that I have issues - it works just fine in the domain it’s designed for. It’s that the Wayland system does not provide feature parity with X11. I make extensive use of window manipulation using xdotool and wmctrl for my daily use case, and those are both unsupported on Wayland. It’s a fine system for users whose use case fit with its design. It is not a feature complete replacement for X11.

I’ll never make the claim that X11 is perfect, but my use case requires features that are either not built into Wayland yet or simply won’t be built into it in the future.

I’m sure it’s a fine product, but asking me to change my workflow to use it is a non-starter. When it reaches feature complete support of X11 functionality, I’ll consider changing.

Just off the top of my head, Linux Mint, which I know because Waydroid is incompatible with the machines I use in my classrooms. Even if it were compatible, unless the lack of global hotkeys has been addressed changing is a non-starter.

That’s a fair point, and it’s the Waydroid team’s unquestioned right to use whatever technologies they want to build their software on.

But just throwing it out as a solution to a general Linux question when there’s a VERY good chance it’s incompatible with major distros is omitting critical information.

It saddens me to see you being downvoted by the Wayland evangelists when it is CLEARLY not a (EDIT: feature complete) replacement for X11 yet. If I could upvote you twice, I would.

Major, MAJOR caveat here.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt that maybe I didn’t grasp what you said, but reading your reply it seems like I grasped it fine.

Here’s the thing. People use emulators for piracy. That is also COMPLETELY and totally irrelevant to the discussion. The right to developing emulators is well-established, and game preservation isn’t even the most important consequence. The right to developing emulators is what allows virtualization that forms the backbone of server architecture, as well as running legacy code from old architectures on modern hardware, alleviating the need for thousands of man hours in rewriting tried and tested code. 20 years in the future, when the IoTs stupidity litters millions of homes with inaccessible, useless plastic garbage, emulation of no longer supported control units will be a panacea.

Nintendo is totally free to not like the law, but it is the law, and this pressure to shut down these projects is a flagrant violation of the developers’ legal rights, which regardless of the morality of piracy is a disgusting flouting of the legal system.

People use guns to murder, yes. But whether you or I think it’s correct or not, the law does not hold gun makers liable for the things their users do with them. We can’t just DECIDE that there are exceptions to the law and begin prosecuting or acting as if they are liable. That requires either a new law or an interpretation by a court to set a precedent - not lawyers sending a cease and desist to Smith & Wesson. That is a slippery slope to an absolutely nightmarish dystopia.

There is no justifying this in a “Well, I can see why they did it…” sense any more than in a murder case. The law is clear. The established rights of the developers are clear. The right to make a Switch emulator is NOT Nintendo’s right to give or deny like a trademark dispute or the ability to make a fan game. They don’t GET a say. The right to make an emulator is explicitly YOURS by LAW. And a giant corporation has taken their money and used it to violate established rights with threat of bankruptcy in violation of that established law. If you believe in the rule of law, no matter what you think of piracy, that should be utterly haunting.

I can’t blame them for taking down that kind of software development.

Your not being able to blame them is completely irrelevant. Nintendo can not like stuff all it wants. The question is if it is LEGAL. If it is, and it is, your defense of their actions is a defense of the argument that they should be above the law because they don’t like something, and that’s an absolutely TERRIBLE position to take. You don’t need to white knight for Nintendo. They have more money than God and taking up their fights for them against your own rights as a consumer is so far beyond Stockholm Syndrome that I don’t think we even have a word for it yet.

And because these are never finished projects. People can rant and rave about cloning the git all day, but without active, knowledgeable developers with the knowledge of the original dev team, these projects are dead. It’s not about using the emulators as they exist today… it’s about continuing to keep them working going forward. Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.

Make no mistake… those people are clowns too.

Tim Sweeney (crying): “There’s no future in Linux gaming. No! Stop it! Stop enjoying the good thing that isn’t from me!!!”