Screen sharing: global solution for Wayland that works for all apps

[Raman Gupta]

I'm finally switching over to Wayland as my daily driver.

However, I'm still finding big problems with screen sharing in general. I'm
on KDE/Plasma.

Many apps that are supposed to support screen sharing on Wayland --
Electron-based apps, Chromium, OBS, proprietary apps like Zoom etc. either
completely don't work, or work but only partially. For example, Chrome can
share X11 windows but not Wayland windows, and cannot share screens at all
(the option is available, but the screens are just black). OBS doesn't work
with Pipewire+Wireplumber either, though it does seem to be able to capture
windows that are running under XWayland.

Some very nice and useful apps e.g. Pop simply output: "we don't support
Wayland, switch to X11".

As long as it is up to each app to develop their own solutions for Wayland
this situation is likely to only change in a decade or so, if even then.
Are there any tech initiatives on the go -- maybe at the compositor level?
-- to have Wayland screen sharing work essentially transparently to apps
that have already got screen sharing working for X11? I'm fine with a
global setting that says "I don't care about screen sharing security" --
that's essentially what I'm doing by changing my desktop back to X11 anyway.

[Neal Becker]

You may have heard me mention on this list that this is a barrier for me to
switch to Wayland.  Working from home, as so many of us are, I need to give
presentations.  I prefer not to share my screen, but share a window.  Using
chrome, for example, I could share a screen, a window, or a tab.  Problem
is, when run on Wayland, when I try to share a window only some windows are
shown as  choices.  Apparently these are the Wayland native windows.  In my
testing, none of the pdf viewers I've tried fall into this category and are
given as choices to share a window.  To me this is a showstopper, and I
have to believe a lot of others have similar issues.  For now I haven't
found any alternative except stay on X11.

On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 2:07 PM Raman Gupta  wrote:
> I'm finally switching over to Wayland as my daily driver.
>
> However, I'm still finding big problems with screen sharing in general.
> I'm on KDE/Plasma.
>
> Many apps that are supposed to support screen sharing on Wayland --
> Electron-based apps, Chromium, OBS, proprietary apps like Zoom etc. either
> completely don't work, or work but only partially. For example, Chrome can
> share X11 windows but not Wayland windows, and cannot share screens at all
> (the option is available, but the screens are just black). OBS doesn't work
> with Pipewire+Wireplumber either, though it does seem to be able to capture
> windows that are running under XWayland.
>
> Some very nice and useful apps e.g. Pop simply output: "we don't support
> Wayland, switch to X11".
>
> As long as it is up to each app to develop their own solutions for Wayland
> this situation is likely to only change in a decade or so, if even then.
> Are there any tech initiatives on the go -- maybe at the compositor level?
> -- to have Wayland screen sharing work essentially transparently to apps
> that have already got screen sharing working for X11? I'm fine with a
> global setting that says "I don't care about screen sharing security" --
> that's essentially what I'm doing by changing my desktop back to X11 anyway.
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[Raman Gupta]

It's very unfortunate in this day and age of remote working that screen
sharing is so broken on a modern Linux desktop. Back to X11 for me as well.

For anyone else on KDE making the switch, keep in mind the workaround in
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385135.

On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 3:56 PM Neal Becker  wrote:
> You may have heard me mention on this list that this is a barrier for me
> to switch to Wayland.  Working from home, as so many of us are, I need to
> give presentations.  I prefer not to share my screen, but share a window.
> Using chrome, for example, I could share a screen, a window, or a tab.
> Problem is, when run on Wayland, when I try to share a window only some
> windows are shown as  choices.  Apparently these are the Wayland native
> windows.  In my testing, none of the pdf viewers I've tried fall into this
> category and are given as choices to share a window.  To me this is a
> showstopper, and I have to believe a lot of others have similar issues.
> For now I haven't found any alternative except stay on X11.
>
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 2:07 PM Raman Gupta  wrote:
> > I'm finally switching over to Wayland as my daily driver.
> >
> > However, I'm still finding big problems with screen sharing in general.
> > I'm on KDE/Plasma.
> >
> > Many apps that are supposed to support screen sharing on Wayland --
> > Electron-based apps, Chromium, OBS, proprietary apps like Zoom etc. either
> > completely don't work, or work but only partially. For example, Chrome can
> > share X11 windows but not Wayland windows, and cannot share screens at all
> > (the option is available, but the screens are just black). OBS doesn't work
> > with Pipewire+Wireplumber either, though it does seem to be able to capture
> > windows that are running under XWayland.
> >
> > Some very nice and useful apps e.g. Pop simply output: "we don't support
> > Wayland, switch to X11".
> >
> > As long as it is up to each app to develop their own solutions for
> > Wayland this situation is likely to only change in a decade or so, if even
> > then. Are there any tech initiatives on the go -- maybe at the compositor
> > level? -- to have Wayland screen sharing work essentially transparently to
> > apps that have already got screen sharing working for X11? I'm fine with a
> > global setting that says "I don't care about screen sharing security" --
> > that's essentially what I'm doing by changing my desktop back to X11 anyway.
> > _______________________________________________
> > users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> > To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> > Fedora Code of Conduct:
> > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> > List Archives:
> > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> > Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
> > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
>
> --
> *Those who don't understand recursion are doomed to repeat it*
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[George N. White III]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 09:50, Raman Gupta  wrote:
> It's very unfortunate in this day and age of remote working that screen
> sharing is

so broken on a modern Linux desktop. Back to X11 for me as well.
>

For many users, screen sharing is no longer the preferred option for remote
work
because they spend most of their time in one of the web-browser
environments like
rstudio-server or Jupyter.  These are generally much more responsive than
screen
sharing, even when run over ssh tunnels.   A smaller user base translates
to
reduced maintenance efforts, so the few remaining users suffer.

[Raman Gupta]

Off the top of my head the tools that are either completely broken or
partially broken on Wayland that work fine on X11.

* Google Meet
* Zoom
* MS Teams
* Slack screen sharing
* Discord screen sharing

and then there are the various broken desktop sharing apps:

* TeamViewer
* AnyDesk
* Chrome Remote Desktop
* x11vnc
* many more

and then there are the various niche products for the developer community
with smaller communities but are nonetheless startups who see a market
opportunity:

* Pop (https://pop.com/) -- works only on X11 for now, seems they are
having issues with implementing Wayland, especially screen control
* Tuple (https://tuple.app/) -- they are building Linux support now, and
only on X11
* Pair-programming tools built into products like JetBrains IDEs

I don't think the user population represented by these and others is
shrinking at all -- on the contrary, it's growing by leaps and bounds, and
any one just the top 6 above likely boasts user communities thousands of
times larger than the data scientists who use rstudio-server and Jupyter
via browser.

On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 3:27 PM George N. White III  wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 09:50, Raman Gupta  wrote:
> > It's very unfortunate in this day and age of remote working that screen
> > sharing is
>
> so broken on a modern Linux desktop. Back to X11 for me as well.
> >
>
> For many users, screen sharing is no longer the preferred option for
> remote work
> because they spend most of their time in one of the web-browser
> environments like
> rstudio-server or Jupyter.  These are generally much more responsive than
> screen
> sharing, even when run over ssh tunnels.   A smaller user base translates
> to
> reduced maintenance efforts, so the few remaining users suffer.
>
> --
> George N. White III
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
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[George N. White III]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 18:50, Raman Gupta  wrote:
> Off the top of my head the tools that are either completely broken or
> partially broken on Wayland that work fine on X11.
> Google Meet
> Zoom
> MS Teams
> Slack screen sharing
> Discord screen sharing
>
> and then there are the various broken desktop sharing apps:
> TeamViewer
> AnyDesk
> Chrome Remote Desktop
> x11vnc
> many more
>
> and then there are the various niche products for the developer community
> with smaller communities but are nonetheless startups who see a market
> opportunity:
> Pop (https://pop.com/) -- works only on X11 for now, seems they are
>
> having issues with implementing Wayland, especially screen control
> Tuple (https://tuple.app/) -- they are building Linux support now, and
>
> only on X11
> Pair-programming tools built into products like JetBrains IDEs
>
> I don't think the user population represented by these and others is
> shrinking at all -- on the contrary, it's growing by leaps and bounds, and
> any one just the top 6 above likely boasts user communities thousands of
> times larger than the data scientists who use rstudio-server and Jupyter
> via browser.

The really large user communities are using Windows.   Wayland may get much
more attention if Windows 11 and wsl2 reach mainstream adoption in large
enterprises.
> On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 3:27 PM George N. White III 
> wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 09:50, Raman Gupta  wrote:
> > > It's very unfortunate in this day and age of remote working that screen
> > > sharing is
> >
> > so broken on a modern Linux desktop. Back to X11 for me as well.
> > >
> >
> > For many users, screen sharing is no longer the preferred option for
> > remote work
> > because they spend most of their time in one of the web-browser
> > environments like
> > rstudio-server or Jupyter.  These are generally much more responsive than
> > screen
> > sharing, even when run over ssh tunnels.   A smaller user base translates
> > to
> > reduced maintenance efforts, so the few remaining users suffer.
> >
> > --
> > George N. White III
> >
> > users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> > To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> > Fedora Code of Conduct:
> > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> > List Archives:
> > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> > Do not reply to spam on the list, report it:
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>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
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