Running Wayland Plasma on Nvidia

WannaBeOCer

Edit: Anyone know a better way to upload long code on here or is there a way to hide text?

This is experimental, there are many obvious bugs when using Wayland and I wouldn't recommend using this as a daily.

Lately I've noticed X11 randomly flashing black screens when switching between apps, a bit frustrating waiting a few seconds between clicks. I decided to test Wayland out with Plasma which did get rid of the annoying flashing black screens but introduced many other headaches which make this unusable for a daily. It's much easier than I expected it would be after installing the 470 beta driver.

Create a config named plasmawayland.desktop under /usr/share/wayland-sessions/ with the contents below:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Wayland
Exec=/usr/bin/startplasma-wayland
TryExec=/usr/bin/startplasma-wayland
DesktopNames=KDE
Name=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ast]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[az]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ca]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[cs]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[da]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[de]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[en_GB]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[es]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[et]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[eu]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[fi]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[fr]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[gl]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[hu]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ia]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[id]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[it]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ko]=Plasma(Wayland)
Name[lt]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[lv]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[nl]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[nn]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[pa]=ਪਲਾਜ਼ਮਾ (ਵੇਅਲੈਂਡ)
Name[pl]=Plazma (Wayland)
Name[pt]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[pt_BR]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ro]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[ru]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[sk]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[sl]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[sv]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[tg]=Плазма (Вэйленд)
Name[tr]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[uk]=Плазма (Wayland)
Name[vi]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[x-test]=xxPlasma (Wayland)xx
Name[zh_CN]=Plasma (Wayland)
Name[zh_TW]=Plasma (Wayland)
Comment=Plasma by KDE
Comment[ar]=بلازما كدي
Comment[ast]=Plasma por KDE
Comment[az]=KDE Plasma
Comment[bs]=Plazma od strane KDe
Comment[ca]=Plasma, creat per la comunitat KDE
Comment[ca@valencia]=Plasma, creat per la comunitat KDE
Comment[cs]=Plasma z KDE
Comment[da]=Plasma fra KDE
Comment[de]=Plasma von KDE
Comment[el]=Plasma από το KDE
Comment[en_GB]=Plasma by KDE
Comment[es]=Plasma, por KDE
Comment[et]=KDE Plasma
Comment[eu]=KDEren Plasma
Comment[fi]=Plasma KDE:ltä
Comment[fr]=Plasma, par KDE
Comment[gl]=Plasma, fornecido por KDE.
Comment[he]=פלזמה באמצעות KDE
Comment[hu]=Plasma a KDE-től
Comment[ia]=Plasma per KDE
Comment[id]=Plasma oleh KDE
Comment[is]=Plasma frá KDE
Comment[it]=Plasma di KDE
Comment[ja]=Plasma by KDE
Comment[ko]=KDE Plasma
Comment[lt]=Plasma pagal KDE
Comment[nb]=Plasma av KDE
Comment[nds]=Plasma vun KDE
Comment[nl]=Plasma door KDE
Comment[nn]=Plasma frå KDE
Comment[pa]=KDE ਵਲੋਂ ਪਲਾਜ਼ਮਾ
Comment[pl]=Plazma dzięki KDE
Comment[pt]=Plasma do KDE
Comment[pt_BR]=Plasma do KDE
Comment[ro]=Plasma, de către KDE
Comment[ru]=KDE Plasma
Comment[sk]=Plasma od KDE
Comment[sl]=KDE Plasma
Comment[sr]=Плазма од КДЕ‑а
Comment[sr@ijekavian]=Плазма од КДЕ‑а
Comment[sr@ijekavianlatin]=Plasma od KDE‑a
Comment[sr@latin]=Plasma od KDE‑a
Comment[sv]=Plasma av KDE
Comment[tg]=Plasma аз ҷониби KDE
Comment[tr]=KDE Plasma
Comment[uk]=Плазма KDE
Comment[vi]=Plasma, do KDE
Comment[x-test]=xxPlasma by KDExx
Comment[zh_CN]=KDE Plasma
Comment[zh_TW]=Plasma by KDE
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=5.22.1

Then I followed this guide which states what needs to be done to get the proprietary Nvidia driver on Wayland working: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland/Nvidia

I added the kernel parameter: nvidia-drm.modeset=1 following this guide: https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/boot-management/en/

You can check your session with this command:
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

Output should be wayland if you picked it at the login screen.

ReillyBrogan

FYI the Nvidia 470 driver won't necessarily be better than the 465 driver for Wayland unless you have the XWayland patches (which you most likely don't as they're not in the repo and you would have had to have built them yourself).

abimagnus

I'm on Wayland however using RX580 now..in the past i was using GTX970, really fed up with the nvidia issues(screen tearing,latecy,jerky animations,stuttering) not a enjoyable desktop experience..! Tried Wayland also it crashes a lot when i tried ! Now happy with Wayland and AMD using it as a daily driver now and no major crashes till now after updated to 5.22 release ! 😃 Thanks Solus team for the KDE spin, neatly integrated !

WannaBeOCer

abimagnus I haven't experienced any of those issues with Nvidia using Xorg except for the recent flash of a black screen when switching between apps. Doesn't happen on Ubuntu 20.04 or openSUSE tunbleweed.

For gaming Nvidia's shader compiler was much quicker than AMD's proprietary and Mesa's until Valve's ACO shader compiler was released. I switched from a Radeon VII to a Titan RTX due to AMD constantly breaking ROCm. Switching back to Nvidia definitely has been an overall better experience.

joebonrichie

Just so peeps are aware there is a plasma-workspace-wayland-session package which accomplishes the same thing. After installing and a reboot you can select a plasma wayland session from sddm (login screen).

xorg-xwayland is also a separate package now (in unstable) so we can take advantage of the Xwayland fixes and improvements much quicker for the few people who are using wayland.

ReillyBrogan

FYI for those running unstable the xwayland patches are now in (they should be part of next weeks sync for those on Stable).

Here are the current list of known issues with Nvidia 470 and Wayland: https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/BBZVDNST67I2AQOCPSHKYAY6D5Z66JIP/ , please read it as there may be dealbreakers for some of you.