KDE & Wayland

tuxador

tuxador

Adrian De Groot wrote this Blog post about his recent work on KDE on Wayland for FreeBSD.
I'm hyped to see the updates coming in pkg repo so one can enjoy a Wayland desktop experience on FreeBSD.
Prerequisites are

  1. FREEBSD 13.0 64
  2. Intel l915kms
  3. Disabling sddm.
**Edit:**
As of 2021-05-13 with recent update:
- amdgpu driver is working as well .
- you don't have to disable sddm to get plasma Wayland working, you just need to run the script from a TTY.
- there are fewer bugs and the system looks snappier.
 
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It will be interesting yes. Although it seems wayland doesn't work right now. Although I'm happy with how the KDE Plasma desktop is running on my laptop.
 

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I really like your desktop ! It's said that today's upgrade ( latest repo not quarterly) should make it .
 
today's update allowed me to finally enjoy a plasma session with wayland in FreeBSD :p
Desktop is really fast and snappy, but there are some visual bugs and some applications do not work, like spactacle and EMACS :eek:
 

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Ahhh... I'm jealous. OP beat me to the punch. I saw the same blog post, and wanted to try the same thing, starting from compiling EVERYTHING from scratch (world, kernel, amdgpu.ko, wayland, mesa, and plasma).

I only got as far as compiling world and kernel from my list, but plasma desktop still needs to be compiled. Pre-compiled ports are lagging behind the ports snapshots.

One thing that I'd nitpick at is EMACS not working. Isn't EMACS supposed to be a terminal-based text editor (editors/emacs)?
 
the
astyle said:
^Ahhh... I'm jealous. OP beat me to the punch. I saw the same blog post, and wanted to try the same thing, starting from compiling EVERYTHING from scratch (world, kernel, amdgpu.ko, wayland, mesa, and plasma).

I only got as far as compiling world and kernel from my list, but plasma desktop still needs to be compiled. Pre-compiled ports are lagging behind the ports snapshots.

One thing that I'd nitpick at is EMACS not working. Isn't EMACS supposed to be a terminal-based text editor (editors/emacs)?
Click to expand...
pkg maintainer, Adrian DeGroot did some changes to the binary, adding for example a shell script name startplasma-wayland.sh, which operates some changes automagically and allows running the binary startplasma-wayland.
Hence i would recommand using pkg install over compiling from ports.
Concerning Emacs, it has a GTK3 gui so it needs some tweaking to make it run in wayland desktop.
 
tuxador said:
the

pkg maintainer, Adrian DeGroot did some changes to the binary, adding for example a shell script name startplasma-wayland.sh, which operates some changes automagically and allows running the binary startplasma-wayland.
Hence i would recommand using pkg install over compiling from ports.
Concerning Emacs, it has a GTK3 gui so it needs some tweaking to make it run in wayland desktop.
Click to expand...
Tuxador, thanks to your suggestion to use packages, I was able to use Adriaan DeGroot's blog description to get Wayland going on my machine, as well. I'm posting from within a complete Plasma Wayland session - x11/xeyes has moving eyes, % echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE returns Wayland, and a lot seems to be in place.
wayland_screenshot.png

I had to compile Spectacle graphics/spectacle to take a screenshot. I first tried graphics/ksnip, but that didn't work. Overall, I think this is very encouraging. There are still graphical glitches from time to time, like a disappearing titlebar on some windows, or from time to time, I can't see what I typed into KMenu's search. I think those can be solved with a local compilation, which is what I will be trying next.

Unless sig 's screenie is of a Wayland session, it looks like I beat most everybody to the punch of getting a screenie like mine out! Even ADG screenie shows Intel UHD integrated graphics.:p:beer:
 
Thanks. Do you notice any difference in framerate, or tearing? Once the SDDM handoff work is done I might give it a shot.
 
astyle said:
compile Spectacle
Click to expand...

Please, in what way?

From the blog post:

… not going to look at AMD compatibility, or nVidia for the time being. …
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, it ran for me with Thames [Radeon HD 7550M/7570M/7650M]. Not perfectly, but enough for me to wish to take a screenshot.

With X11, I typically have an extended desktop, the large display to the left of a notebook is my primary display and my main panel is to the far left.

With Wayland, the extension was correct, however the panel was to the left of the display on the right, so I dragged it to the display on the left.

Afterwards, in X11 I couldn't find the panel, so I had to return to Wayland to drag the panel to the wrong place for it to be visible (in the correct place) in X11.
 
24 hours of compiling (spread over 2 days), and I got all the way to reproducing my initial screenie, but with Plasma 5.21.5 and Frameworks 5.82. Sometimes, KDE feels a little slippery (I have to be careful where I put the mouse in the taskbar), and sometimes, it feels rough around the edges (Both KHTML and WebEngine seem rather unpredictable. One minute, they look nice and polished, and the next - something fails to load/get drawn on the screen, and it looks like a mess). Compiling still has its merits - the system at least makes an effort to be snappy, even if visually, it's looking sloppy. But yeah, this post is stil from within a completely compiled Wayland session. It's usable if you can put up with visual messes. Oh, and for some reason, Konqueror's address bar seems to be rather broken in Wayland... I may have to get ahold of Firefox and try using that instead. I'm rather determined to use Wayland full-time.
 
Dunno if SDDM handoff is gonna make it into Plasma 5.22... Plasma 5.22 is due out in a couple weeks. Based on some clicking around on github, it looks like the devs are still trying to iron out how to correctly run Xorg rootless. Once that happens, then Wayland should be possible. The devs do want that issue resolved before they release 0.20.0...
I complained in a different thread about this...
Click to expand...
We still have a big constellation of details to get right before Wayland is usable by default on FreeBSD. Progress is being made, but connecting the dots and making things work - proceed at your own risk. ;)
 
Just went to KDE's Plasma 5 release schedule page... they say that Plasma 5.23 is expected around October, at which point KF5 will be on version 5.86 or 5.87...

Same page also says that Plasma 5.22 / KF5 5.82 is the supported combo until 5.23 is released. Makes me wonder what is FreeBSD planning for this... Are we stuck with KF5 5.82 until October?

Also - breaking news, and they're not good: wayland-related bug was discovered in SDDM just 7 hours before this post's timestamp... This has me re-calibrating my expectations for SDDM Wayland to maybe debut this year, but y'know, once that is out of the way, the devs will still have QT6/KF6 to worry about.
 
Alain De Vos said:
How do you start plasma - wayland from the terminal/commandline? And can you add a bar ?
Which are the packages i need to install ?
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Well, do read this thread from the start, and then the blogs we linked to. Gotta have plasma5-plasma-desktop and plasma5-plasma-workspace. And pay attention to versions - if stuff is too old, it won't work. And - don't start X11/Xorg... you won't be able to just launch a Plasma Wayland session from xterm or another DE. Technically, that's not entirely true, but if you do that, you'll end up with a separate, nested Wayland session inside an Xorg window. So, go back to the beginning of this thread, and follow along if you want an actual Plasma Wayland session that is not nested :p

Edit: There's noise that FreeBSD is actually behind OpenBSD when it comes to QT6... What's up with that????
 
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