Some XWayland apps become quickly unusable after installing to Ubuntu 23.04

Ignacio Carrera

7/22/24, 2:19 AM

I recently installed Ubuntu 23.04 from scratch, using GNOME Shell. I still use some ~GTK2~ Xwayland apps (e.g. Synaptic and Audacity / Tenacity ~via wx~).

The behavior they present is quite strange. At first they work normally, but soon become seemingly unresponsive. Sometimes just entering Overview mode (say, hitting the Super key), makes the app update its content, and I can see that it was not really unresponsive but simply not showing me updates.

It's quite different for each app. Guake unblocks immediately after going into overview mode. Chrome just needed a few seconds to come back. Synaptic and Tenacity seemingly have trouble with input events (hover stops working, drag and drop fails as well).

I updated the title to reflect that now I believe it is related to XWayland, because something similar (but much less pronounced) happened to me using Chrome, but soon I switched it to Wayland and it stopped doing that.

It also happens (SELDOMLY) with Guake which is an XWayland surface.

I tried searching for this and couldn't find anything, apologies if this has been asked before.

Short video showing the weird behavior on Tenacity: https://youtu.be/Dvjdzkns714 (update: I just realized that it's really hard to see that I'm dragging around and nothing happens)

-- nachokb

0 + 6

gtk

wayland

gnome-shell

guiverc

7/22/24, 2:39 AM

`synaptic` is GTK3 (https://packages.ubuntu.com/lunar/synaptic), as is `audacity` (https://packages.ubuntu.com/lunar/audacity) if you look. Whilst GTK2 apps still exist (`hexchat` for example) they are extremely few... I still use `hexchat` thus GTK2 apps without issue, but your facts I find confusing. Adding https://packages.ubuntu.com/lunar/hexchat which will show what you'll see with a GTK2 app

guiverc

7/22/24, 4:23 AM

GTK2 is *deprecated* and only ever supported Xorg. GTK4 is the *development* branch with GTK3 still being maintained as its in *maintenance mode* (*thus has provision for Wayland via XWayland*). GTK2 was *deprecated* long ago and isn't intended for use on Wayland, thus why there are almost no apps that are GTK2. You highlight something *deprecated* (GTK2) & the future (Wayland meaning GTK3 or newer) so use more modern apps (GTK3 was released in 2011! with GTK2 *deprecated* just prior to GTK4 release - https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/migrating-3to4.html).

Ignacio Carrera

7/22/24, 6:06 AM

you're correct about Synaptic and GTK3*; it is an xwayland window in any case, confirming that it's related to xwayland (* it just feels so out of place with other gtk3 apps that I forgot about the switch)

Ignacio Carrera

7/22/24, 6:09 AM

updated my original post to reflect this

Ignacio Carrera

7/22/24, 6:11 AM

while I enjoy using newer apps, in specific cases (say, I find gnome/ubuntu software a poor substitute of synaptic), users will keep on using what works

Ignacio Carrera

7/22/24, 6:14 AM

the fact remains that some apps present buggy behavior (I'm now convinced it's about xwayland, but I might be wrong); in this particular case, the behavior is erratic and hard to communicate, for which I apologize (in the video I forgot to enable to show the mouse cursor, but believe me I'm dragging trying to select audio and expand its height)

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