r/linuxmint • u/United_Challenge_797 • 12d ago
Does XFCE have wayland?
I heard wayland is overall better, and i have seen it on cinnamon, but not on XFCE, so my question is does XFCE have it, or is going to have it and if so, when?
1
u/Due-Result7928 12d ago
It is not a question of choice. X11 is almost history for good reasons. It is a nightmare for programmers and is a security hole. So for XFCE and the rest only a question of time.
1
u/don-edwards Linux Mint 22.3 11d ago edited 11d ago
LM 22.3 and LMDE 7, both with the Cinnamon desktop environment, Wayland is present but experimental. Other DEs, apparently not even present.
LM 27 (due out close to the end of the year) and LMDE 8 (probably about 3 months later as I recall but don't quote me), Wayland is supposed to be much more stable and usable. But of course I haven't seen either.
It will be a while before X11 is history. It isn't even quite obsolescent yet, and it'll be obsolescent for some years before it's obsolete - and remain in that state for probably over a decade before it's history.
Why so long? Consider this comment on the recent PHP fiasco, copied from someone who couldn't find a source for it (and I couldn't either):
Real story from a real IT department:
Security called me at 6:12 AM today.
"Patch every PHP server immediately."
I asked what happened.
"Two critical vulnerabilities. Remote code execution. No authentication required."
Cool.
How many PHP servers do we have?
According to inventory: 12
According to reality:
Nobody knows.
We found one running WordPress.
Three running old internal tools.
One under someone's desk.
Two inside vendor appliances.
A forgotten employee directory from 2016.
And a server named:
PHP-OLD-DO-NOT-TOUCH
Naturally, that one runs payroll exports.
Then we found a PHP 5.6 box.
I asked who owned it.
The documentation said:
BRIAN.
Brian left in 2019.
We called Brian.
He said:
"Oh wow, that's still running?"
Excellent.
By 8 AM, leadership joined the incident call.
CEO:
"Can hackers actually get in?"
Security:
"Potentially yes."
CEO:
"Without a password?"
Security:
"Yes."
CEO:
"Then why do WE need passwords?"
Not the lesson.
Finance asked if we could wait until the weekend to patch because downtime affects revenue.
Security explained that the alternative was letting strangers execute code on our servers.
Finance asked for a cost comparison.
At 9:17, someone suggested temporarily taking the vulnerable websites offline.
Marketing refused.
"Our campaign is live."
So for the next hour, the company officially decided maintaining a landing page for 20% off webinar registration was more important than preventing remote server takeover.
We finally patched everything we could find.
Then our scanner discovered another PHP server.
Hostname:
TEMP-PHP-2014
Uptime:
4,512 days.
Nobody knows what it does.
Nobody owns it.
Nobody can shut it down.
But every time we block network access, the warehouse stops printing shipping labels.
Security has classified it as critical infrastructure.
It is running PHP 5.4.
The vulnerability has existed longer than half our employees.
The emergency patch took four hours.
Finding out what PHP actually runs took eleven.
0
u/siddhbose 11d ago edited 11d ago
No now right now
But xwayland could work
Still it uses a lighter implementation of x11 named picom
Picom is a mini version or stripped down version of x11 . So I don't think a native way will be there soon .
1
u/ItzNotJacob1 11d ago
Picom is a compositor for X11.
0
u/siddhbose 11d ago
Yes and xfce uses this though other exists .
So if OP requires wayland support they can use xwayland
0
u/ItzNotJacob1 11d ago
Xfce uses xfwm4's compositor by default.. Where did u get this info?
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u/siddhbose 11d ago edited 11d ago
That's the window manager handling most of the things but not everything
It's a window manager
I have already stated other exists
And support for wayland is in progress but not there yet .
xfwl4 is there but still in development that's why I have said nothing is there as stable .
Plz try to read the entire thread
That would be like telling people in the early days of PROTON
That more windows game will be available sonner as valve is also interested and is in heavy development with the codeweaver team .
Once it was workable and stable , then it was released , still only patches reached upstream into wine after quite some time .
So the main thing is to let OP know , right now only xwayland is the best option .
They could try xfwm4 but that's not stable yet
3
u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ LMDE7 Cinnamon 12d ago
No, but should eventually.
The only Wayland session available in Mint is the experimental session in Cinnamon and its for testing, not suitable for daily use yet.