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.

[danielheaton]

@skela Just installed the newest version (1.8.8-stable-258cb2) on Fedora 27 with Gnome 3. The mouse would not show, but I could type and copy/paste. I had to disable Wayland for it to work properly.

[skela]

Right, thx @RadiogenicHeat , I guess I will wait :D

[fenrig]

Still not working? Using ARCH with all packages recent

[btaens]

Nope, still not working. At the end of 2017.

[sgala]

I'm seeing this also, I need to start ubuntu 17.10 with "wayland over xorg" to have synergy sort of working (no dock, some other problems).

[daveboutcher]

I wonder if we could get a definitive update on Wayland support....in Synergy 1 or 2. Not having Wayland support in 2018 is kind of a deal-breaker for using Synergy with Linux. I know there is a workaround (turn off Wayland), but that's not really a viable alternative for me.

[phoenixdigital]

If you or anyone finds a good solution for Win <-> Linux instances please post here. I used to use synergy quite a bit and have really missed it over the last year since switching to the more recent Fedora releases with Wayland at stock.

…

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 8:40 AM, Tony ***@***.***> wrote: I'm in the same boat as @daveboutcher <https://github.com/daveboutcher> -- if three years isn't enough time to support Wayland I have to assume it's time to start looking at alternatives. It's unfortunate, I really liked using Synergy all these years, and even though I purchased 2.0 with the hopes this would at least be somewhat functional, I don't really have any other option than to start researching alternatives. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4090 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADkx-6An4DtPDF_vaYlSHNYkXy0xdcRMks5tLmizgaJpZM4Ct53P> .

[polarathene]

• I assume Wayland support is waiting on protocol or something to let Synergy do it's thing otherwise require each compositor have it's own implementation?
• Not sure about what the issues with Wayland are, Synergy still not being transparent about barriers they've run into?

For those looking for alternatives with guest VMs(assuming they run Wayland, I'm more interested in Wayland as a host) or running Wayland as a host, you might be able to use QEMU/KVM(not a switch, but hypervisor KVM), and something like evdev with a key combination to redirect input between host and guest. It's a common way to handle input for linux host, windows guests on r/VFIO these days.

If you need it for going across several actual machines, I guess with Wayland you're out of luck? I guess Wayland users/customers are more of a minority though to Synergy and their current changes to monetize the product is working out better for them. Wayland support is likely to come eventually, but until development elsewhere has gotten to a point that it's worthwhile for Synergy devs to actually implement support for we're likely not going to see it as other features will be prioritized to cater to the wider user base needs.

It's odd though that there was some tweets/communications about the Wayland support getting in good shape some time ago and no updates since as to why progress halted?

Looked briefly at the repo, noticed a Wayland branch here no updates since March 2017. Earlier comments in this thread suggest keyboard input is working in Wayland on 1.8.8 and mouse uncertain but the mouse cursor visual just doesn't display?

[ppaalanen]

I still don't know what exactly is Synergy's use case, but I hope the below clarifies the obstacles in general a little. I hope I didn't guess wrong what the intended use is.

There are two completely different aspects to "Wayland support":

1. Running the UI application on a Wayland session, controlling whatever remote system.
2. Controlling a remote system that is running a Wayland session.

The latter can further be divided into roughly two cases:
2.1. The "remote" system being a VM where you are actually controlling the virtual machine as if it had real physical input and output devices, these being actually virtual remote devices.
2.2. The remote system being a normal user session where the remote control connection just introduces new input and hijacks the output, e.g. a helpdesk connecting to a user's machine.

Cases 1 and 2.1 are perfectly implementable as is, the Wayland features already exists at least as unstable standard interfaces. 2.1. does not actually concern Wayland at all.

Case 2.2 is the one that requires explicit support from each and every Wayland display server being remote controlled. There are no standard interfaces even proposed for this case yet. Each Wayland display server is going its own way here, e.g. offering an integrated RDP or other server, or not having implemented anything yet. In other words, as far as I have seen, the support in the display servers seems to be not introducing Wayland interfaces for it but implementing a suitable server directly.

I think it would be nice if the company behind Synergy would support these remote controlling features in the various display server projects or publicly propose whatever they think would be better. One thing is almost sure: one cannot anymore write a (proprietary) application to hijack a display server, like it was possible with X11. There is no central software component like Xorg to depend on for it.

As I said before, it is probably possible to run case 2.2 through Xwayland on the remote system, but it will not be able to control any Wayland-based applications on the remote and you likely have problems with a mouse cursor.

[CapOM]

I think a large set of users are interested in Case 1: Work station is running wayland and the remote is a mac or win laptop. This case does not even work despite being the easiest setup to support.

[cadesalaberry]

Given that this feature is the most requested by far it would be great to have an actual answer from the synergy-core dev team.

[nbolton]

We do plan on adding Wayland support to the next major version.

[nbolton]

We had previously prioritised Wayland support for Synergy when Ubuntu 17.10 made it the default. We had invested development time in developing Wayland support, but a short while later Ubuntu 18 was released and Wayland was no longer the default, so we decided to lower the priority. Due to the recent release of Ubuntu 21.04 and Fedora 34 where Wayland is being used by default, we are now reconsidering the priority. Unfortunately, we cannot promise anything at this time.

[nbolton]

We plan to implement Wayland. Right now, it's mostly GitHub users asking for Wayland. Most of our users are not on GitHub and aren't asking for Wayland yet. Thanks for your patience.

[nbolton]

As requested, here is a link to people discussing Wayland on the forums: https://forums.symless.com/topic/4798-wayland-support/

[nbolton]

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

*9 mentions of Synergy on the libei readme.

**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.