News: 0175340067

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Raspberry Pi OS Now Using Wayland By Default (phoronix.com)

(Monday October 28, 2024 @11:30PM (BeauHD) from the officially-official dept.)


Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports:

> Over the past year we have seen Raspberry Pi [1]working a lot on Wayland support for the Raspberry Pi OS desktop and using it on their latest Raspberry Pi models. With today's new Raspberry Pi OS update, Wayland is [2]being used by default across all Raspberry Pi devices . The new Raspberry Pi OS update shipping today is using Wayland across all Raspberry Pi models. Labwc is also now the Wayland compositor of choice and those upgrading their existing Raspberry Pi OS installation will be prompted whether to switch to Labwc or keep using the prior Wayfire compositor. Raspberry Pi developers feel that the [3]Labwc Wayland compositor offers the best experience on their single board computers.

You can learn more about the update and download it via the [4]RaspberryPi.com blog .

Further reading: [5]Raspberry Pi Launches Its Own Branded SD Cards and SSDs - Plus SSD Kits



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/039221/raspberry-pi-os-elementary-os-will-default-to-wayland

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Raspberry-Pi-OS-Wayland-Default

[3] https://github.com/labwc/labwc

[4] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-new-release-of-raspberry-pi-os/

[5] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/28/052209/raspberry-pi-launches-its-own-branded-sd-cards-and-ssds---plus-ssd-kits


I hope it's improved (Score:2)

by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 )

I tried the Wayland version of Raspberry Pi OS about six months ago and it sucked. Even just moving the mouse around consumed 40% of CPU resources.

Went back to the old version (Bookworm?) and things went back to normal.

Re: (Score:2)

by phantomfive ( 622387 )

The article is pretty nonsensical. It starts by claiming that Wayland in more efficient, then halfway through, says they couldn't switch to Wayland because it consumed too many resources on their older models.

X was designed in the 1980s. It's going to be more efficient than most things designed in the 2010s.

Re: (Score:3)

by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

Silly desktop effects take fewer passes on Wayland than X11. But making every window into a GL/Vulkan context with two or three dedicated buffers is not appropriate for a resource constrained system.

Also, screwing around with hot config files to adjust display settings and rendering options is a huge step backwards from having X11's RandR protocols.

Wayland also took a step backwards with input methods editors, somehow doing a worse job than X11 at it. Almost would have been better to do nothing at all (whic

Re: (Score:2)

by dskoll ( 99328 )

I have X driving four monitors... two at 1920x1080, one at 1920x1200 and one at 3200x1800 (scaled in software to 1600x900). I assume it uses GPU acceleration, but it's plenty fast.

This is obviously not on a Pi. It's on a very fast workstation with a pretty decent video card.

A GUI on a Pi? (Score:2)

by dskoll ( 99328 )

Why would you run a GUI on a Pi? Admittedly, I haven't tried the Pi 5, but I did try using a Pi 4 as a desktop machine just for kicks, and it wasn't great. Pretty slow, terrible YouTube playback. This is not what the Pi is meant for. Even the cheapest mini-PC will outperform a Pi as a desktop machine.

I have two Pi Zeros, an ASUS TInkerboard, a Pi 3 and three Pi 4s running various services for me. Only the Pi 3 even has a display and it's a custom thing I wrote to scroll weather and news in my living r

Re: (Score:2)

by ZipNada ( 10152669 )

You run a GUI on a Pi if you are writing Pi-specific applications. Anything that uses the camera or the GPIO for example. A Pi 5 will run VS Code reasonably well, even through VNC. It is way better than a Pi 4.

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