Hello,
For the past 3 years I have used Manjaro Linux KDE, now I switched to openSUSE KDE Tumbleweed. On both distro's I have tried (on Manjaro several times in those 3 years) to use Wayland but it was always the same: panels and menus are almost completely transparent.
I have to say I do use Kvantum with transparency but even when I switch it off and reboot texts on panels and menus are unreadable because of what is behind them, and now clearly visible.
I also noticed that parts of the screen, for example my Conky, has different sizes: texts are not on the same place as when using X11, but that's not my main problem. This is a one time change to correct it and when I don't use X11 again it's all good.
The transparency is my main concern and I wonder if others have the same experience. I searched but couldn't find a solution to my problem, no matter what I did, transparency did not go away, or at least almost gone so texts would be readable again.

Does anyone here know what to do about it? It's not that I really need Wayland, but since it does exist for so many years already and apparently "X11 is unsafe to use" I wouldn't mind switching to it. But as it is now I can't use it.

Code: Select all

inxi -Gxxz
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Samsung Co R730 Laptop driver: i915 v: kernel
           bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0046
           Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.5 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa alternate: intel
           compositor: kwin_x11 resolution: <xdpyinfo missing>
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ironlake Mobile v: 2.1 Mesa 19.1.7 direct render: Yes

Thanks.

"X11 is unsafe to use" is quite an exaggeration. Wayland isn't that much more secure (IIRC keyloggers have already been created for it), nor does it need to be. Your X11 server isn't Internet-facing, so the only threat is from viruses, and most Linux users are good with tech, so nobody bothers to write and distribute Linux viruses. Wayland is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Also, Wayland has terrible performance with games and stuff. You really should just stick to X11, at least it actually works.

retrodll wrote:"X11 is unsafe to use" is quite an exaggeration. Wayland isn't that much more secure (IIRC keyloggers have already been created for it), nor does it need to be. Your X11 server isn't Internet-facing, so the only threat is from viruses, and most Linux users are good with tech, so nobody bothers to write and distribute Linux viruses. Wayland is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Also, Wayland has terrible performance with games and stuff. You really should just stick to X11, at least it actually works.

This is completely something else than what I read on other forums, well the unsafe X11 part. I agree that it works, it works well for what I do with it. I don't play games, never have, never will, so that's not why I want Wayland. It's something which has been worked on for so many years and still it doesn't work well. I do believe the devs should stop the work they put into it. It feels it will never work well.
Yes, I stick to X11, like I stick to EXT4 (not BTRFS), I stick to MS-DOS (not UEFI), all these things just work and as long as my computers can handle them I will use them.

Thank you for your answer.

X11 is a bit unsafe, but that allows programs to easily implement useful functionality (i.e. global shortcuts, screen capture) in a way that best suits their purpose, without bottlenecks caused by "security" restrictions. And Wayland isn't even that much more secure! One of its main selling points is that it's "impossible to keylog", which is false. Libinput is trivial to record events from: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/blob/master/tools/libinput-record.c, and someone already wrote a keylogger for Wayland: https://github.com/Aishou/wayland-keylogger/blob/master/Keylogger.cpp. And apparently, XWayland bypasses some of Wayland's restrictions in order to accommodate programs that only support Xorg (which are still extremely common)!!!

If you refuse to trust your display server, you may as well not trust your keyboard, mouse, display, etc.

Also, although Wayland's bloat and general awful performance is most apparent in games, it affects anything that makes heavy use of OpenGL, such as graphics utilities or Wacky Desktop Effects(TM).