Since a week I was using beta release and since few days I cannot find new
issues so I decided to send this report now.
First issue that I would like to bring to your attention is that most
windows are by default aligned to the left instead of being centered like
on Xorg. For example Welcome Screen is aligned to the left (this issue was
reported some time ago during another testing) and Screen Locker (password
prompt) is being spawned in upper-left corner instead of center of the
screen. Unfortunately I don't know what causes those issues nor how to
resolve them.
Another UI issue is that Tor Connection window has scrollbar, which
doesn't appear on Xorg.
Last UI issue that happens every time is that Tor Browser window is taller
by default, but I'm not sure if it's issue purely related to Wayland or
something that was intentionally changed in Tor Browser's design.
Unfortunately there is one UI issue that I'm not able to reproduce nor
debug. When GNOME Terminal window is maximized, then after locking and
unlocking the screen, sometimes the terminal window gets maximized beyond
the bottom bar so last few rows are hidden behind the bottom bar.
I also decided to test how many applications are compatible with Wayland
and unfortunately I was able to find that many applications use Xwayland
by default or don't work without it at all, which means that they require
additional configuration or should be replaced or completely removed:
- Audacity requires GDK_BACKEND=wayland,
- Kleopatra, KeePassXC and Electrum ignore XDG_SESSION_TYPE on GNOME so
they require QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland environment variable and qtwayland5
package,
- Dasher doesn't seem to work without Xwayland at all. I tried running it
with GDK_BACKEND=wayland but received "option parsing failed: Cannot open
display:" error. The issue related to native Wayland support is still open
since 2017:
https://github.com/dasher-project/dasher/issues/103
- GIMP version which is currently installed (2.10.22) is based on GTK2,
which means that (as far as I know) it will not work on Wayland.
GTK3-based version (2.99.12) is only available through experimental suite
in Debian. In my opinion GIMP is not needed in Tails, because Inkscape and
Libreoffice Draw are already installed,
- I was not able to run ImageMagick (display-im6.q16) natively on Wayland
so I'm not sure if it will continue to work if Xwayland would be removed,
- Pidgin is based on GTK2 and thus doesn't have Wayland support, but it
should be replaced with Gajim anyway.
At the end I would like to suggest two changes:
1. xclip should be replaced with wl-clipboard,
2. Unsafe Browser should be disabled by default or at least it should be
possible to disable it. Nobody can predict what exploits will be
discovered in future and forcing Unsafe Browser to be enabled possibly
endangers Tails users and increases attack surface.
