Harvey Fear, uncertainty and doubt causes people to draw false conclusions that give people the impression that Wayland will not work for them despite never having tried it or having tried it once, years ago or on a distribution like debian that has ancient software... etc etc.

probably all true in contentious threads I read across the internets. I have no fear or uncertainty, it's just what I know could fill a thimble.

Harvey Wayland does not care about your sound card, motherboard, CPU, sata cables etc. Your applications need to support Wayland (But xwayland exists for compatibility with applications that do not). Your GPU driver needs to support wayland. Pipewire (we use by default now) is required for some functionality in Wayland

KEY. I learned more in 3 sentences here than I have in all those internet threads (hyperfocused on x11 v. W).
"Your applications need to support Wayland."
Does that mean the X11 Budgie I have now is different than the Wayland Budgie experience---different apps? Or to keep it real, Plasma X and Plasma W right now?

Harvey Odds are your hardware will work on Wayland. If you have a nvidia GPU that gets a bit messy, works for some, not others on the proprietary drivers. If you run gnome you may have bugs that do not exist on Plasma and vice versa as it isn't actually Wayland that is the problem. Currently XFCE and Budgie do not have wayland support.

Harvey, when Solus announces some beta implementation of Wayland Budgie available on boot up then I will get on that hard and help test test test like a Space Monkey to see what the limitations are with my own stuff. These are exciting times for Solus and linux evolution in general.

my unsupported nvidia, for instance has deprecated support, and runs perfectly fine on Nouveau. And it might not in Wayland? then no so much an nvidia/W problem then it would be a Nouvea/Wayland problem?

I have a better idea of this 'baseline' and now I know it's not demarcated in stone.
Here's my take: there is no magic list yet and it's still touch and go and older hardware is not necessarily a significant factor.

Anyway, thanks for the great response. I still got a couple questions above. Thanks for the time.

          brent Does that mean the X11 Budgie I have now is different than the Wayland Budgie experience---different apps? Or to keep it real, Plasma X and Plasma W right now?

          Wayland has improved security, supposedly frame perfect by design (no tearing), for some including me it felt snappier too but that is hard to quantify and could be more that my hardware sucked more on X11 than it does on Wayland rather than any actual improvements to Waylands design.

          brent my unsupported nvidia, for instance has deprecated support, and runs perfectly fine on Nouveau. And it might not in Wayland? then no so much an nvidia/W problem then it would be a Nouvea/Wayland problem?

          It is my assumption that if your using the nouveau driver you will avoid a lot of the nvidia problems under Wayland. But that is not to say there are not any. I no longer have nvidia hardware so I can not test it.

          brent Here's my take: there is no magic list yet and it's still touch and go and older hardware is not necessarily a significant factor.

          I can see newer hardware being more relevant today resulting in more attention fixing issues it may have but its just a possibility that crossed my mind, not a fact.

          If we ignore wayland and focus on proposed baseline changes. The only way to know for sure if you have oldish hardware is to run the ld.so --help command.

          Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order:
  x86-64-v4
  x86-64-v3 (supported, searched)
  x86-64-v2 (supported, searched)

          Mine is -v3 meaning anything compiled to -v3 or lower baselines will work fine on my system. If its -v4 it won't work at all. But if its lower than -v3 then there may be some features my CPU supports that can not be taken advantage of which may reduce performance on modern hardware which is why you may have have heard about other distros also looking at bumping this baseline.

          The reason no one can give you a list is because Intel and to a lesser extent AMD have disabled some features on their CPU's on the lower end models. My laptop from 2010 is -v2, some stuff from 2007 may be -v2 but some stuff in 2011 may not. Its a mess.

                  Harvey I can see newer hardware being more relevant today resulting in more attention fixing issues it may have but its just a possibility that crossed my mind, not a fact.

                  I'm going to monitor Wayl/Hardware threads more with that mind. Hopefully I'll know what I can get away with as it goes.

                  Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order:
  x86-64-v4
  x86-64-v3 (supported, searched)
  x86-64-v2 (supported, searched)

                  --my output identical.

                  Harvey Mine is -v3 meaning anything compiled to -v3 or lower baselines will work fine on my system. If its -v4 it won't work at all. But if its lower than -v3 then there may be some features my CPU supports that can not be taken advantage of which may reduce performance on modern hardware which is why you may have have heard about other distros also looking at bumping this baseline.

                  ^^^ Invaluable, now I understand the term baseline a bit better. your last sentence explains the -v2.

                  Harvey The reason no one can give you a list is because Intel and to a lesser extent AMD have disabled some features on their CPU's on the lower end models. My laptop from 2010 is -v2, some stuff from 2007 may be -v2 but some stuff in 2011 may not. Its a mess.

                  that's ok. as long as I'm paying better attention to the coming changes the more prepared I can be--the only reason I started this thread was to know if I had to throw my computer or any parts of it in the trash this year. I have no doubt Wayland will phase some things out and most things will be unaffected.

                  you would be a good educator professionally because you are a good educator. you can sift thru all the crap and focus on exactly the underlying sentiment expressed even if not articulated well by the thread-starter. I'm a lot closer to understanding then when I asked. Appreciate your help navigating this change.
                  edit/word

                        Harvey Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order:

                        Thanks for letting us know about that helpfile. When I ran it here on a Latitude laptop, it provided that information and much more - a lot of explanation. In fact, it was quite an education. Again, thanks. 😊

                            brent I think I can hijack myself!

                            Actually, I don't pay much attention to those dots. But after lunch, I'll wake up my hibernating Xfce laptop and check. I suspect that my video is updating on a 60 Hz basis, so probably wouldn't display the result you describe.

                                WetGeek I'll wake up my hibernating Xfce laptop and check.

                                Lunch is thawing right now, so I'll poke this laptop and check now. This is a workspace where a Settings dialog takes up a fraction of the screen.

                                On the workspace where Vivaldi is running - and I'm typing this - I can't get a screen shot of Plank, as it hides as soon as I try to take a screenshot. But while it's still present, I can confirm that the area of the plank below Vivaldi is indeed red. To be clear, both the dot and the area of the plank around it are red.

                                Gotta go now. From the sounds from the kitchen, my burger has thawed now, and is frying with abandon.

                                    WetGeek I had to change the refresh rate of my monitor to get the dots back.
                                    "I hate the weird ones."

                                    Zen Buddhist Dev Question: If a bug only happens to you and no one can reproduce it, is it still a bug?
                                    🙂

                                        brent I could not stand the dots like that went in and edited the plank theme
                                        and moved them der dots up.
                                        And few other things.

                                            Axios they are too small, not always obvious, and too far away from the icons. congrats on that! I'm glad it was possible to do. did you have to hack about in .conf file?

                                            p.s.--the budgie dock actually gets this right. dot is big, bright, and right on the app.

                                            anyhow thanks had no idea plank could be customized like that, that makes me happy.

                                                brent Yup ./local/share/plank/themes
                                                Just edit the theme file copy a backup just in case.

                                                    Axios ./local/share/plank/themes

                                                    my folder is empty. so you wrote your own .conf file and saved it in /themes? ( I thought you modified an existing one. but I did a search and couldn't find a plank .conf file...just the desktop entry file.)

                                                        brent Sorry that directory was for themes you added going be empty unless you added some
                                                        The default themes are in root forget where guess you could copy the root ones over there and rename
                                                        them to not get confused or download a theme and try messing with it.

                                                        whatever way you want to go.
                                                        Note just copy the one your using from root plank and rename it custom or something.

                                                        Sorry about that slip of the ole mind.

                                                        The files are dock.theme

                                                            brent No thats the root (Defaults) if you copy that Directory to the other Location and rename the directory to like Custom it shows up in plank auto.
                                                            Then edit there without messing root all the time
                                                            But the dock.theme are the ones you edit

                                                            ./local/share/plank/themes are where you put the ones you download from net to.

                                                              SethStorm666 that's a start, thank you (for illuminating possibilities)

                                                              what code would you use for making the dots brighter (looks like you did)?
                                                              what line would you write for moving the dots closer to the app itself (it doesn't appear you did that).

                                                              graci-

                                                                  brent When you edit and change something just hit save and watch plank and it will change
                                                                  no need reload or do anything else.

                                                                      Axios Linewidth raises it up but you have a line around plank but it does not
                                                                      take much to raise it up. You dont see line to much at least on mine you didnt
                                                                      Indicatorsize adjust the dot doesnt take much there either

                                                                      Linewidth=3 and indicator=8 is what i got

                                                                      If issue with line prob can change color of it to blend in.