Fedora and wayland

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Steven A. Falco

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:20:46 PM9/13/23
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There is a proposed change for Fedora 40 [1] where the proposal is to upgrade KDE to version 6, and exclusively support wayland, dropping all support for X11.

I've posted to the development list [2] expressing my concerns. At the moment, dropping X11 is just a proposal, but it seems likely to happen at some point, so I wanted to make the KiCad dev team aware of the possibilities.

Steve

[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-a...@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/I3O6DZCT6WFGF5SQ2IPJSYAVBGZ3N47U/
[2] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/de...@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/7VBJCMY3OLWMTFY4KNYYCTODLXBNDABZ/

Seth Hillbrand

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:29:32 PM9/13/23
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That is potentially unfortunate.  It is unclear from the Fedora proposal whether this is just dropping X11 support for Plasma or dropping X11 support for the entire distribution. 

If it is only dropping it for Plasma but still packaging it for users to install, then this is fine.  We will just continue to recommend that Fedora users install X11 and use a desktop WM that supports it.

If Fedora does decide to drop all X11 support, we will probably be forced to drop Fedora from our list of supported distributions.  Since this will create bugs that the KiCad team cannot fix, it doesn't make sense to continue directly supporting it.  Of course, packaging could still happen and KiCad could still be used under emulation but we'd stop recommending it as a viable option.

Seth


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Seth Hillbrand
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+1-530-302-5483
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www.kipro-pcb.com    in...@kipro-pcb.com


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Marco Ciampa

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Sep 13, 2023, 5:28:48 PM9/13/23
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I wouldn't worry too much, since under wayland it is always possible to
run an x-server with which to also run x11 apps...

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 09:29:03AM -0700, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
> That is potentially unfortunate. It is unclear from the Fedora proposal
> whether this is just dropping X11 support for Plasma or dropping X11
> support for the entire distribution.
>
> If it is only dropping it for Plasma but still packaging it for users to
> install, then this is fine. We will just continue to recommend that Fedora
> users install X11 and use a desktop WM that supports it.
>
> If Fedora does decide to drop all X11 support, we will probably be forced
> to drop Fedora from our list of supported distributions. Since this will
> create bugs that the KiCad team cannot fix, it doesn't make sense to
> continue directly supporting it. Of course, packaging could still happen
> and KiCad could still be used under emulation but we'd stop recommending it
> as a viable option.
>
> Seth
>
>
> [image: KiCad Services Corporation Logo]
> Seth Hillbrand
> *Lead Developer*
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAFdeG-psLWNMtx7bFbmsUbA6gXkSqmjtHqOFMQU3Qcc7shta4A%40mail.gmail.com.

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Amike,
Marco Ciampa

Ian McInerney

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Sep 13, 2023, 6:53:59 PM9/13/23
to KiCad Developers
Fedora isn't removing the x server completely. This is just the equivalent for KDE of what Gnome did a while ago in using a Wayland session. Dropping Wayland support would break many other WMs in the distro, and FESCO would see that as a major problem/non-starter.

-Ian

Steven A. Falco

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Sep 13, 2023, 7:11:22 PM9/13/23
to dev...@kicad.org
It looks like this proposal would only affect KDE, should it go through. Other desktops could potentially continue to support X11, at least until they find that too difficult.

Personally I want to stay with KDE, and because of my multi-monitor setup Wayland is not an option. I'll have to see what makes the most sense for me should this change be approved.

Steve

On 9/13/23 12:29 PM, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
> That is potentially unfortunate.  It is unclear from the Fedora proposal whether this is just dropping X11 support for Plasma or dropping X11 support for the entire distribution.
>
> If it is only dropping it for Plasma but still packaging it for users to install, then this is fine.  We will just continue to recommend that Fedora users install X11 and use a desktop WM that supports it.
>
> If Fedora does decide to drop all X11 support, we will probably be forced to drop Fedora from our list of supported distributions.  Since this will create bugs that the KiCad team cannot fix, it doesn't make sense to continue directly supporting it.  Of course, packaging could still happen and KiCad could still be used under emulation but we'd stop recommending it as a viable option.
>
> Seth
>
>
> KiCad Services Corporation Logo
> Seth Hillbrand
> *Lead Developer*
> +1-530-302-5483
> Long Beach, CA
> www.kipro-pcb.com <https://www.kipro-pcb.com/> in...@kipro-pcb.com <mailto:in...@kipro-pcb.com>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 9:20 AM Steven A. Falco <steve...@gmail.com <mailto:steve...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> There is a proposed change for Fedora 40 [1] where the proposal is to upgrade KDE to version 6, and exclusively support wayland, dropping all support for X11.
>
> I've posted to the development list [2] expressing my concerns.  At the moment, dropping X11 is just a proposal, but it seems likely to happen at some point, so I wanted to make the KiCad dev team aware of the possibilities.
>
>         Steve
>
> [1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-a...@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/I3O6DZCT6WFGF5SQ2IPJSYAVBGZ3N47U/ <https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-a...@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/I3O6DZCT6WFGF5SQ2IPJSYAVBGZ3N47U/>
> [2] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/de...@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/7VBJCMY3OLWMTFY4KNYYCTODLXBNDABZ/ <https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/de...@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/7VBJCMY3OLWMTFY4KNYYCTODLXBNDABZ/>
>
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