In any community related to Linux, Wayland It is one of the words that usually sound from time to time. In GNOME it works quite well, but it is NVIDIA users who usually ask about its status, because sometimes it gives problems. Plasma users ask if it can be used now, or why the option doesn't appear when logging in, and, spoiler wise, I think it's a matter of details right now.
As if it were a biannual newsletter, I have published several articles here at LXA about the state of Wayland in Plasma. In 5.24, my second tryI spent all my time watching things that I didn't like at all, and there were even problems that made me unable to work. at 5.25 things got a lot better and I was using it by default for a while, but I don't remember what made me go back to X11. I didn't write about 5.26, partly because I would have written the same as in my third attempt. But Plasma 5.27 is the last version to carry the 5 in frontAnd it looks better every time.
KDE improves Wayland, adds new functions, takes a step back, improves again...
These items are usually opinion. Both my feeling and the equipment on which the software is executed is subjective. I've heard cases where they say they're going to forget about X11 forever, but even these people mention those small details that need to be improved. Although they are polishing them, they are things that can be seen and are not pleasant. You have to take a scale, put the pros on one side and the cons on the other and see which has more weight.
An example of those details that have to continue polishing is what you see in the header capture. Isn't there something that jumps out at you? To understand it, you have to explain what is happening there: there are two stacked windows, and one should shrink when the other gets bigger. On X11 the resizing is done perfectly, but on Wayland there are a few tenths of a second where a part is seen in black. It's not a long time, in fact I had to record the screen to be able to get that capture, but it looks and reminds us of that word: details. Of course, noting that this happens to me in my team.
The icon problem
El icon problem is still present, and it is another stone in the shoe or another fly behind the ear. The GIMP icon in the task manager looks like the one on the right, white if the theme is dark. And if we have it pinned, let's say Wayland "passes" the Task Manager icon to just icons and shows two GIMP icons. At least the original serves as a launcher… On the other hand, there are other applications that don't even show the app icon. GNOME Boxes shows its icon while it is being opened, but once opened it shows the Wayland icon.
Speaking of GNOME Boxes, there's also another little thing to mention: it opens a version in GTK and not in Qt, which is out of tune with the rest of the operating system. And it's not the only app that does it. In Manjaro, Pamac, its software store, also shows the GTK version that we would see in GNOME.
KDE: Wayland or X11?
Although I've tried not to, the bottom line is going to be the same as what I wrote in Plasma 5.25 and left out in Plasma 5.26 (because I didn't write about that version). Wayland can already be used on Plasma, but there are small details that have to be polished. If there is any that prevents working, the choice should be X11; we cannot stay in something that does not allow us to finish our tasks. If we can work, the choice between X11 and Wayland in KDE should be what that balance between the absence of ugly details and other things like touchpad gestures or performance tells us, since in Wayland everything feels much more fluid. . Plus, it's safer.
plasma 5.27 It has yet to receive two more point updates, and these are expected to fix a few more Wayland-related bugs. After that, in the second half of 2023 Plasma 6.0 will arrive, with Qt6 and Frameworks 6.0. We'll see if then we can move to Wayland and never look back because we don't miss anything, in all the teams.