I've tried distros with faster cadences. All that means is that I get an endless stream of new bugs, rather than a few that I can find workarounds for (such as just reverting to the still-good X11).

I worked with a guy who railed against the conservatism of our company's releases. He said "new software has more bug fixes." Then again, he was maybe a kind of hardcore software quality guy -- not the sort to add "features" to a piece of infrastructure that had demonstrated its worth.

The only issue I have with software conservatism, like Debian, is that some new thing requires something newer. If you live in a world where you can do without the new thing, then it's really quite nice. Security patches are another matter, but are usually dealt with.

I like to be on the bleeding edge, but Debian was created for a reason. Only time can determine which configurations don't suck.

> All that means is that I get an endless stream of new bugs, rather than a few

For some obscure reason, bugs are easier to produce than fixes. But the next release will be better. I promise.

This is the way.

I used to "hate" Wayland, but that was because I was stuck on an ancient kwin_wayland implementation that didn't get updated for years on Ubuntu.

When it comes to big changes like Wayland and Pipewire, you really want the latest versions you can get. Like the OP, I only use rolling releases on my machines for that reason.

Even as of Ubuntu 24.04 there's still plenty of stuff that's just broken. Can't stream my screen from Discord, can't share my screen from Firefox. Weird color problems with my calibrated monitor. Switching to Xorg solved all of these issues.

I'm open to moving to Debian testing/unstable if Wayland can actually deliver. What do you run?

My CachyOS / KDE install with pure Wayland has been buttery smooth and recently got an update that finally lets me calibrate the max brightness of my HDR OLED monitor (which was the monitor's fault. Not even Windows could make it work properly for non-games until now). CachyOS is also the first distro I've used in years that does things close enough to way I like out of the box that I haven't bothered to update my system reinstall script in months.

I've also been giving Bazzite to some non-tech people who have not once asked for help. That one is immutable and Wayland only, so it's a further testament to how far Wayland has come if you're on an up-to-date-enough system.

Sadly, I'm stuck on older Ubuntu for my work laptop because the mandated security software won't run on anything better.

What is the mandated security software? I’m asking to avoid it in my own org.

I've had to patch the .desktop file in debian for killbots to make it start via x11 because the wayland one was unplayable.

> you really want the latest versions you can get

> Even as of Ubuntu 24.04

I get that this is the current LTS release, but clearly this isn't want the parent poster had in mind. Notably 24.04 never shipped Plasma 6, which carried a lot of critical Wayland fixes.

Yeah, I wouldn't even bother with Wayland on Ubuntu unless it works out of the box.

I'm on an unholy amalgamation of Arch/Cachy/Endeavour now, but I have been using screen sharing nearly everyday on calls via Firefox on Arch for about a year and it's worked without a problem.

I considered Debian testing, and it does work well on servers, but a true rolling release is more convenient. The software release and update loop is shorter, it's really nice to be able to pull fixes to packages in a reasonable amount of time after they're released.

Debian testing (without security updates from unstable) is a no-go for servers as you are getting no timely security updates. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting#Considerations

None of this is a problem on Debian stable. I even run discord as a Flatpak - screen share works fine. I believe there's systems for that now (way pipe? xdg stuff?)

Ubuntu 24.04 is older than Debian stable currently.

> I believe there's systems for that now (way pipe? xdg stuff?)

You need to get portals working correctly for screensharing to work

It just works on newer distros in my experience. There's no config or anything, including with containerization like flatpak.

Been my experience as well. There was a short period where older distros needed some hacks for things to work smoothly if it worked at all.

Try Fedora 42 KDE (or its atomic equivalent Kinoite). It works very well.

Regardless, that's still a huge Linux usability issue when the user needs to know for sure the specific source to install a friggin web browser where screen sharing works.

Indeed, though not so much Linux but rather a Ubuntu-specific issue. Most (all?) other distributions don't distribute Firefox as a Snap, so screen sharing will work out of the box.

Oh I absolutely agree. I've seen way too many people fall into this trap, install Firefox from Snap, Zoom client from Snap, what could possibly go wrong? Turns out, quite a lot!

I’m in Arch and I generally struggle to get video acceleration in a browser with an Nvidia GPU.

Wayland + KDE in Arch has worked seamlessly with NVDIA GPUs for a couple of years now.

That’s what you’ve heard or been your experience?

I’m sitting with SW acceleration in the browser today because some update broke it. I have had it working in the past but I’ve had like 2-3 updates in the past 2 years break it.

And for what it’s worth there was a really bad tearing bug because of the argument over implicit and explicit synchronization that neither side wanted to fix. I think it’s since been addressed but that was only like in the past 6 months or something. So it’s definitely not been “years” since it’s been working seamlessly. Things break at a greater rate than X because X basically is frozen and isn’t getting updates.

That has been by experience. Browser seems fine for me.

With Arch, you have to read up ahead of time before updating software because it's a rolling release.

I remember one breaking change when I was switching from the previous Nvidia drivers to the new 'open' ones, but some breakge was expected with that change.

Yeah, except when it bugs out. Mentioned some things to try to in another comment. I'd be surprised if it was just me seeing these issues...

With an older GPU, things aren't smooth I believe.

So it might make sense to avoid Wayland in that case.

I’m on a 2080.

That's the first supported generation for the official open source drivers.

Make sure you have switched over instead of using the old proprietary one.

Yup, same, using X, everything mostly works. Wayland - not so much.

> What may be broken in one release will very likely be fixed a few releases after the last debian stable release

This joke is being told since 20 years. If it is fixed in KDE5, why do they need KDE6 ?

It wasn't fixed in plasma 5 and it is in Plasma 6.

And yet i tried setting up manjaro to see what all the fuss was about with arch based systems. In less than ten minutes i understood the origin of all the krashes memes.

I've been running debian stable (with backports) as my desktop for a couple of years now, I find that KDE is updated enough, and wayland is stable enough (on my hardware, of course, a 13 year old macbook and a 8 year old NUC).. honestly, as a simple user, i haven't appreciated any difference between X and wayland sessions, so i just login into wayland.

Manjaro is a notorious mess, don't let its poor implementation sour you on Arch based distros

Stability is just as valuable for a workstation as it is for a server.

Software doesn't magically become "stale" by itself. It's deliberately broken by PEOPLE who DECIDE TO BREAK IT.

> evolve rapidly

... um, okay, that's true, although in the last 10+ years it did not "rapidly" reach stability