Wayland support for Linux client and server

[nbolton]

Problem: We do not support Wayland on Linux. Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain.

Solution: Add Wayland support for both the client and server.

From Wikipedia:

In general, out of the box support for a full desktop running Wayland in major Linux distributions is still in early stages. Most Linux distributions that ship version 3.20 or newer of the Gnome desktop environment do support manually installing a Wayland session, and in case of Gnome 3.22 or newer might default to Wayland. Notable early adopters that provide Wayland out of the box are:

Fedora starting with version 25 uses Wayland for the default GNOME 3.22 desktop session, with X.Org as a fallback if the graphics driver cannot support Wayland.[65] Fedora 25 carries patches that make the Wayland session work with NVidia drivers as well.[66]
...

[circuit-breaker]

Agreed, Wayland is coming fast. Nvidia has been busy parting out the bulk of their drivers.. And the design means a lot more walls between applications and not touching each other's resources unchecked. It is the future

[Pajinek]

When do you plan to support wayland? Is it question of far future? I tried it and synergy doesn't work correct.

[lig]

I'm switched to Gnome 3.16 and will use Wayland from now on as it work pretty stable for me unlike Gnome on Xorg. Thus I will not be able to use Synergy until this will be resolved.

[neilmayhew]

I'd like to vote for this too.

[neilmayhew]

I did some quick experimentation with using synergy through xwayland (which happens automatically) and it starts to go wrong when trying to grab the pointer on leaving the screen. I commented out the lines in XWindowsScreen.cpp and was able to get a bit further, actually controlling the mouse on the other screen, but the movement wasn't positioned correctly.

I'm using a Debian Jessie system, and Wayland has been a login option for some time. I don't even need to use weston, because gnome-shell (and almost all other gtk3 apps) can use wayland directly. So Debian would make a good testbed.

[Kami-no]

+1 vote to support Wayland.

[gregsheremeta]

+1 gonna need this soon!

[skoslowski]

+1

[dotted]

+1

[hertzg]

+1

[acdingman]

I don't care about the "pro" features, but will commit to buying "pro" anway if Synergy works in Wayland when Fedora 24 comes out. Anyone else?

[lig]

@acd-rht I already have "pro":) And I feel lack of wayland support and lack of the several other features…

[Djhg2000]

I'm using Synergy as a system critical component on my gaming rig. Windows 7 runs in a VM and has no physical mouse or keyboard. Up until now I've used Xorg on the host system but now that I'm running Wayland the only way to control my Windows 7 VM is through a virtual desktop connection (local access is not possible due to the forwarded graphics card).

When I run "synergys -f" and try to cross the screen border I just get "WARNING: can't leave screen".

Since it turns out Wayland runs much smoother than Xorg on my machine and enables a lot of new functionality I'm very reluctant to switch back to Xorg. With Fedora 24 set to release in 48 days I think it's time we consider this an urgent issue.

[thegass]

+1
wayland is pretty stable on my machines (fedora 23,24) but i cannot use it because of synergy.

[bcdonadio]

+1
Wayland is working flawlessly on my machines with Fedora 24, and the only application that's holding me back from switching to it is Synergy. The mouse actually seems to work, however there's no cursor showing. The keyboard, however, doesn't work.

[rboati]

+1

[preactive]

+1

Same as bcdonadio.

Switched back from wayland to standard gnome and worked like normal.

[tbporter]

To add to this, Fedora 25 is going to use Wayland by default.
https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1615

[trejjam]

Today my Gnome by default switch to Wayland (ArchLinux), and also Synergy not work correctly

[ghost]

Switched from Ubuntu (Unity 7) to Arch (Gnome 3) and got the same problems.
Synergy just crashes when i try to leave the screen.

[cekstam]

+1

[pierrre]

@cekstam please don't post a useless "+1"
You notify EVERYONE on this issue by email !
Just add a "thumbs up" emoji on the first message.

@nlyan @nbolton I suggest you lock the conversation because:

• Synergy doesn't support Wayland yet
• More and more distributions are migrating to Wayland
• I don't think we will receive any interesting feedback until Synergy supports Wayland.
• All the previous comments are useless "+1"
• I'm bored to receive useless notifications

Thank you.

[nbolton]

Good news, lots of mentions of Synergy in the libei library! This is very promising for Wayland supporting apps like Synergy.

**libei is a library for Emulated Input, primarily aimed at the Wayland stack. Wayland is the new display protocol for Linux/Unix-like, set to replace X11.

[nbolton]

Hello all, Wayland is being implemented in PR #7449. If you have the ability to compile code, you're welcome to give it a try. Right now, we're waiting on an update from the libportal team but you can test it by compiling the latest libportal yourself.

[atrauzzi]

Very much looking forward to this and continued improvements to the overall experience on Linux.

[agates]

Ten years later....

EDIT: Dislikes don't get the joke/meme, apparently.

[neilmayhew]

As a long-time Synergy user on Linux, I'm looking forward to being able to use it again. I've been on Wayland for several years now. Thanks for doing the work to make this possible.

…

On Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 03:26 Nick Bolton ***@***.***> wrote: Hello all, Wayland is being implemented in PR #7449 <https://github.com/symless/synergy/pull/7449>. If you have the ability to compile code, you're welcome to give it a try. Right now, we're waiting on an update from the libportal <https://github.com/flatpak/libportal> team but you can test it by compiling the latest libportal yourself. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://github.com/symless/synergy/issues/4090#issuecomment-2320631225>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABIXB42237ESG73W5RJNTTZUA3DBAVCNFSM6AAAAABK6AM2ACVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGMRQGYZTCMRSGU> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[nbolton]

Ten years later....

I know, I know. Although Wayland is quite mature now, there are still parts of it that are brand new, such as the bits of Mutter (the GNOME window manager) that allow EI (emulated input) and libportal input capture to work. In fact, this is all so brand new that libportal input capture support isn't officially released yet (it's in the git master code but hasn't made it's way into Linux distro packages yet), which is blocking us from announcing official support (but you can try it out by building the latest libportal from their git master).

We should be super grateful that very talented developers from Red Hat like Peter Hutterer (@whot, the author of libei which provides Wayland support to Synergy) and Olivier Fourdan (@ofourdan) have invested a great deal of time to bring support to Wayland for apps like Synergy. We literally couldn't have done it without the work of such talented individuals.

Join the discussion about Wayland support: https://github.com/symless/synergy/discussions/7456

[nbolton]

Update: https://github.com/symless/synergy/discussions/7456#discussioncomment-10521843

[ralberts]

Wow, amazing, thank you all, looking forward to it!

[brianjmurrell]

Although Wayland is quite mature now

Is it though? That this kind of functionality has been missing from it for 10+ years means to me that it's not mature enough to be using as a daily driver.

And yet GNOME and the distros are hell-bent on replacing X.org with it, even though it's a huge functionality step back into yester-decade.

And it's still missing functionality, functionality that it will never get like being able to restart gnome-shell without taking down your entire desktop. Yes, you shouldn't need to restart gnome-shell, but still, to this day you need to for at least two reasons:

1. It('s extensions) leaks resources and needs a restart to reclaim them
2. It cannot run updated extensions without a restart

[jwwatts]

I don’t think this is the appropriate place for you to grind this axe. J

…

On Tue, Sep 3, 2024 at 12:39 AM Brian J. Murrell ***@***.***> wrote: Although Wayland is quite mature now Is it though? That this kind of functionality has been missing from it for 10+ years means to me that it's not mature enough to be using as a daily driver. And yet GNOME and the distros are hell-bent on replacing X.org with it, even though it's a huge functionality step back into yester-decade. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://github.com/symless/synergy/issues/4090#issuecomment-2325643198>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AATNOHJ7KHU5N72D6QLY3J3ZUVDQZAVCNFSM6AAAAABK6AM2ACVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGMRVGY2DGMJZHA> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[arquio]

Thanks to this thread I have just used Synergy again after more than 10 years without using it and I have purchased a license.

by a Fedora User

[nbolton]

just used Synergy again after more than 10 years

Welcome back! So glad to have you with us.

Update: I just merged in a PR that makes it easier to build the latest version of libportal required to test full Wayland support (while we wait for libportal 0.8.0 to be adopted by Fedora 40, Debian 13, Ubuntu 24, etc.)

Discuss: https://github.com/symless/synergy/discussions/7456

[agates]

Ten years later....

I know, I know. Although Wayland is quite mature now, there are still parts of it that are brand new, such as the bits of Mutter (the GNOME window manager) that allow EI (emulated input) and libportal input capture to work. In fact, this is all so brand new that libportal input capture support isn't officially released yet (it's in the git master code but hasn't made it's way into Linux distro packages yet), which is blocking us from announcing official support (but you can try it out by building the latest libportal from their git master).

We should be super grateful that very talented developers from Red Hat like Peter Hutterer (@whot, the author of libei which provides Wayland support to Synergy) and Olivier Fourdan (@ofourdan) have invested a great deal of time to bring support to Wayland for apps like Synergy. We literally couldn't have done it without the work of such talented individuals.

Join the discussion about Wayland support: #7456

Jokes aside, big props for having such a long-running open source project. Definitely an inspiration.

[atrauzzi]

@nbolton - Not looking for an exact date, but I'm curious roughly how long before I can get V3 with Wayland from my downloads dashboard 🙂

[nbolton]

@nbolton - Not looking for an exact date, but I'm curious roughly how long before I can get V3 with Wayland from my downloads dashboard 🙂

We're planning to make it available in the next v3.2 update since Synergy 3 uses Synergy 1 as its core.