Heya!
As one user suggested, I am reposting the long macaroni and cheese here so maybe someone will notice it.
My concern is that Gnome 49 is ditching X11 so there will be no retreat when it comes to using it with Wayland if image retention persists, there will only be changing the whole desktop env at that point.
Anyhow, was messing around few days ago moving all my stuff to linux from windows and setting stuff up and noticed the burn in when using Wayland. Tried X11 and it desn’ t have this issue. Been using X11 now for few days and haven’t noticed anything unusual. Wayland though Very noticable image retention. Am on 165 Hz monitor though.
No offence, I kinda find this funny, but every other linux user I know use only bare minimum hw so they never notice any issues (as developers would say when testing “it works on my machine“) Refresh rate never exceeds 60 Hz though Right now am typing this from one of my dirty work laptops and it’s supper low spec. Couldn’t tell the difference Wayland vs X11 for daly use.Never had a burn-in with this brick too.
Would be cool if someone from dev team could look into high hz display thing. Would take 2h max to get some empirical evidence, though God knows if it’ s fixable without touching Wayland, though I am pretty sure that is an issue, but on what end, no clue.
Though I also use nvidia gpu and I hear people still have some issues. Though am on newest drivers from nvidia.
Update:
To correct myself, I now remember also installing all that stuff on iMac18,3 with Radeon Pro 580, though with fixed refresh rate of 60 Hz I experienced the same image retention. Though I didn’t test it with X11 to confirm. I might sometime later.
From what I can tell happening here noone really reads these so I guess gonna stick with Gnome 48 and X11 for forseeable future.
Most likely this my last message I write here since I guess I was naive that anyone will actually adress the issues, but anyhow after a year or two if someone will search for answers then yes, here they are. Wayland has issues and if you don’t want to wreck the hardware (youd monitor) most likely don’t use it if you haven’t tested on your specific display, no idea if they are related to Gnome or KDE though, might be.
And last note. Just tested it on iMac with 60 hz display and Radeon graphics. And yes, with Wayland image retention happens. With X11 it doesn’t. Kinda makes you want to cry seeing how good Gnome looks on retna display, though will be unusable with force Wayland move if issues are not addressed of course. Wayland is going to EOL your OLED, don’t use it if you haven’t tested and 100% sure.
I personally am not quite sure what your issue is. I think you are saying you are seeing this: Image persistence - Wikipedia. But apparently this is just temporary.
And as someone who isn’t well versed in all those related IT and hardware topics, I don’t quite understand why wayland would cause this (and X11 wouldn’t).
All I know is that I never had this happening in any of my monitors, neither with X11, nor with wayland.
As an aside: I didn't get any answers when I asked questions here in discourse; but then I visited the appropriate IRC and got plenty of help. Maybe you can find the relevant channel and ask your question there? You can find a list at
Thanks for response!
Yea, the issue with image retention is tricky. My wild guess why wayland would cause that is that it doesn’t re-draw the window like X11 do with some frequency. Am pretty sure it is a massive issue. I got IPS displays, both show the same behaviour with Wayland. This would decimate OLEDs.
Very noticable image retention. Am on 165 Hz monitor though.
Refresh rate never exceeds 60 Hz though Right now am typing this from one of my dirty work laptops and it’s supper low spec. Couldn’t tell the difference Wayland vs X11 for daly use.Never had a burn-in with this brick too.