Just wanted to share for the 10 people like me who has with an Nvidia + dual screen setup on ArchLinux (btw) with KDE Plasma desktop that since the new plasma 6 update I can finally use the Wayland session option!
The wayland should work has been around for the last 5 years and 5 years ago it was not even close, then 1 or 2 years ago it started not crashing but multi-screen was not OK (I tried all the kernel and driver parameters).
Now for me and my 5+ years-old setup (probably a lot of legacy plasma settings in my .config) it was finally seamless.
From previous tries I already knew that the desktop feels WAY smoother (true 60 fps everywhere, specially for the video players in web browser).
Feels great so far, discord screen-sharing is not there but can be done from Firefox if needed so OK for me.
I hope this post will be informative for some like me who tried several time over the years and didn’t had much hope.
PS : the cursor has a weirdly strong outline (too shiny to my taste) feels like unintended but not a big problem. I spent 30 mins in the options but couldn’t find anything about that.
Wayland could have been written to support NVidia, just as X11 does. They chose not to because they hate the driver being proprietary. Wayland had the option to be and do a lot of things that the devs refused.
False, xorg isn’t written with support for Nvidia, when xwayland windows flickers on Nvidia it’s an effect of xorg not working Nvidia.
The Nvidia driver is a closed source implementation of the xorg server written by Nvidia for Nvidia GPUs. Xorg was invented at a time when drivers were done like that.
Now xorg uses glamor (except on Nvidia) which is a driver that implements the server over opengl, so you don’t need to implement the whole thing for every GPU. Except glamor doesn’t work on Nvidia because Nvidia doesn’t implement implicit sync, which is required by Linux, and that is what you see in xwayland (which uses glamor as well).
Wayland doesn’t require writing a whole server, but it requires implementing GBM and explicit sync (as does everything on Linux, unless you are using Nvidia’s proprietary corgi server). Nvidia refused GBM until a few years ago, and still refuses to implement implicit sync. Which is why explicit sync will solve most issues.
That was a choice made by wayland devs not too use what was available. Their fault.
What is available is a x11 server, not more not less, it cannot be used for anything other than x11. If they made X12, it would not work on Nvidia, unless they wrote a new server, which they wouldn’t.
You need to understand that the xorg server everyone use literally does not work on Nvidia, because it uses implicit sync, which is required by the Linux infrastructure. The only thing that works on Nvidia it’s specifically their own proprietary server.
Nvidia does a lot of impressive stuff, but they have neglected the Linux scene for a long time, because it wasn’t convenient, and it shows.
Edit: …what was available… because Nvidia is gradually implementing things the correct way, and Wayland is becoming more and more usable with every driver update. Because, surprise surprise, it does depend on the drivers. Also, both Intel and AMD work perfectly with Wayland.