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.

  • edinbruh
    461·
    4 months ago

    In the coming months, an important protocol will be merged to Wayland and xorg, and the next Nvidia driver release will have support for that protocol. This will make the Nvidia Wayland experience 100x better

      • SmoochyPit@beehaw.orgEnglish
        161·
        4 months ago

        I’m not a hardware dev, but I’ve been following this issue for several months. Nvidia on Wayland does not implement implicit GPU synchronization currently for Xwayland. Other vendors do.

        This issue is related to how/when the framebuffer from the gpu is handed off to be displayed. Implicit sync isn’t a great solution, it’s just what’s been done for Linux in the past.

        Here’s a bit more detail if you’re interested:

        I believe this issue is more specific to Wayland because Wayland relies on the DRM, direct rendering manager, to facilitate communication between the graphics driver and Wayland clients (applications). Whereas Xorg kinda just covered everything along the pipeline.

        Implicit sync sounds like a bit of hack, where software (I assume the client? Or maybe the drm driver?) implicitly checks for the frame to be finished, rather than being signaled when the frame is ready.

        So instead, Nvidia has been arguing for, designing and developing an explicit sync Wayland Protocol (and one for Xorg), which will let the graphics driver explicitly signal when a frame is finished and ready to be displayed. This is how the graphics stack works on Windows.

        Right now on Nvidia, Xwayland clients will show previous frames, incomplete/corrupted frames or will fail to update when a new frame is rendered. Here’s the XWayland Merge Request. The issue is much worse on drivers > 535.xx after some optimizations worsened the issue. For now, rolling back can help!

        There will be benefits in general with explicit sync, but the major ones will be Xwayland functioning properly for Nvidia users, VRR and apps with inconsistent framerates.

        • Zenzio@kbin.social
          8·
          4 months ago

          And apparently the plan is to have explicit sync ready for the next major driver version (v555).
          From the discussions on Github and Gitlab it seems the work for that to happen is done. The changes in the necessary packages (Xwayland, Mesa?) just need to be merged and the the Nvidia driver 555 needs to be released. It hasn’t been that long since the previous release 550. So I guess it is going to take a bit of waiting still.

      • orangeboats@lemmy.world
        10·
        4 months ago

        It’s the explicit sync protocol.

        The TL;DR is basically: everyone else has supported implicit sync for ages, but Nvidia doesn’t. So now everyone is designing an explicit sync Wayland protocol to accommodate for this issue.

    • Matty_r@programming.dev
      9·
      4 months ago

      I’d like to know what this is as well? I was hoping Plasma 6 was going to solve my Nvidia + Wayland issues for me, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

            • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              12·
              3 months ago

              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.

              • edinbruh
                1·
                3 months ago

                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 implicit 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.

                  • edinbruh
                    2·
                    3 months ago

                    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.

      • SmoochyPit@beehaw.orgEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        I just replied to Nilz over here with my understanding of it.

        The protocol is to facilitate explicit gpu synchronization.

        Currently xwayland apps show the most issues with this on Nvidia. Driver 535 and earlier help mitigate it, or using native Wayland apps, when possible.

    • Berny23@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      4 months ago

      Yeah, also waiting for it. Until the protocol is implemented, I have to use driver 535 without HDR support. :(