alt.hn

5/20/2026 at 8:19:46 PM

A Wayland Compositor in Minecraft

 https://modrinth.com/mod/waylandcraft

by Jotalea

5/22/2026 at 9:57:49 PM

This is amazing. And it's all done in 8 KLOC – half of it Java, half of it Rust.

Link to source: https://github.com/EVV1E/waylandcraft

by nxobject

5/23/2026 at 12:47:44 AM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark

5/22/2026 at 10:40:19 PM

I can't wait to have windowing bugs and UI issues but in Minecraft!

Jokes aside, I've grown to love "XYZ in Minecraft". It's like a newer (still 2011 was a long time ago!) version of "Doom on XYZ".

by yakattak

5/23/2026 at 1:58:05 AM

I haven't used Linux desktop in 6 years but I remember when Wayland was new and started replacing X about 15 years ago and these were common complaints... I hope this is a joke and still isn't the case!

by mikeweiss

5/23/2026 at 9:02:04 AM

I've been using Wayland for some years (at least since Debian switched to it as their default) and not had any issues with it. I think complaints were more common about X, and Wayland has resolved a lot of it for the average user. For example my switch to Wayland was the first time I had 100% working video playback on Intel iGPUs without tinkering with conf files. I appreciate there are still some edge cases where X11 is still better -- but I think for 95-99% of users Wayland has just worked.

by kiwijamo

5/23/2026 at 10:20:58 AM

Is is a regular occurrence that students in my lab that use or switch to Wayland still run into problems. Switching back to X11 reliably works as a fix. The sad thing is that there is also no apparent advantage to Wayland, it is just pushed down to us via distributions.

by uecker

5/24/2026 at 6:56:32 AM

I've been using Wayland for a while now on Debian as of 13, and the advantage is that it just works so much better.

Animations are much smoother, frames are dropped much less, and there's very little artifacts. It's almost uncanny how good desktop compositing looks right now.

Naturally, some people don't care or don't notice. I notice because I run everything at 240hz and I'm a freak. But, for me, so far everything has worked in wayland. I have not had to boot up an x11 session on Debian 13 with KDE. And, mind you, this is Debian - not bleeding edge. But, screen sharing works, audio works, everything.

by array_key_first

5/23/2026 at 11:53:22 AM

I guess things like HDR support, high bitdepth, per-screen refreshrate/scaling, and all those things are just "no apparant advantage" to you.

Thats okay, just understand that it DOES matter to some people.

what also matters is the actual developers doing the work, which GREATLY prefer wayland

by redeeman

5/23/2026 at 11:59:27 AM

It might matter to some but not to many, and in practice the pain imposed on many others could have been avoided by simply improving X. That developers already like to rewrite things is well known, but nobody should pay for this.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 2:13:02 PM

Do you want the indisputable advantage of Wayland? No dropped frames in the desktop, even at high framerates. Back in 2023 when I was still using X11 dropping frames was par for the curse, no matter the machine, the configuration or the DE. You could only hope to get a fluid presentation when using a full screen program that used DRI unredirection (or DRM or whatever it was called) because... it eschewed X completely. Now, it used to be even worse if you go back many years from that, so there was progress, but there were always these tiny drops impacting fluidity. It also got worse the more loaded the machine was, any task in the background consuming 40% of the machine could make it feel like you were using a 30hz monitor. Or, if you dared to use 120hz it felt more like a stuttery 70hz, even at idle.

That same year I decided to give Wayland my third shot and what you know... it not only was perfectly smooth all the time but it had finally reached a point where I could use it on my HTPC. Less than a year later and it was finally usable on my desktop and laptop, and since then I haven't really looked back.

by amlib

5/23/2026 at 2:47:58 PM

This sounds more like random configuration problems with your drivers. The rendering model for modern X clients is the same as for Wayland, so the idea that there could be room for a fundamental improvement is based on misinformation.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 6:10:17 PM

Random? I saw it happen on every linux machine running X I came across over the last two decades, it wasn't just mine, it was colleagues machines and so on. Maybe if you combined KDE, AMDGPU drivers, the right distro and X from around 2022 and onwards you could get a mostly smooth experience, but the behavior when pushing the system a little bit or trying high refresh rate would prevail.

The point is, even if you could get a smooth experience it was at best an exception, specially across most of X11 life. There are many reasons why the Steam Deck shipped with Steam running through the gamescope micro compositor, and one of them was sidestepping some of the X11 jank.

by amlib

5/23/2026 at 6:57:31 PM

Not my experience and we have lot of Linux machines. Drivers and hardware expectations of programs certainly change over time, but this has not much to do with Wayland vs X.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 8:28:38 PM

My Wayland development work has gone extremely well.

I’m amazed at how smooth it is and how much just works.

Not my usual Linux development experience with xorg.

by andrewstuart

5/23/2026 at 12:49:42 PM

a great many people use external displays.

besides, even without using that, for the vast vast majority of users, there is no pain, they dont even realized they've switched to wayland, their distributions simply did it.

and people ARE paying a price staying with xorg, theres a reason projects like KDE are very happy about the change.

by redeeman

5/23/2026 at 1:01:00 PM

Well, I can only report from my experience and this is the pain I still see with Wayland but not really with X. If KDE wants to hurt some of their users, this is their decision.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 3:34:38 PM

what kind of thinking process is this? do you for real think any KDE project member has thought "yeah, I want to hurt some of our users".

this is not how it works. They have actual real data from real users about how many use wayland vs xorg, they also sit on the bugtracker, and they sit with the code. they also have very clear knowledge of how much time they can dedicate to make KDE better, both for themselves and EVERYONE.

They have decided that it is best for everyone to outphase X support. Several top contributors to KDE have also explained how several issues that people kept having under X, resulting in LOADS of bug reports, have more or less vanished now during wayland.

You might be having issues, others might too, but its arrogant to presume to think you know that most people are not better off than before, and of course those that at the end of the day matter most, the developers. This does not mean they want to hurt anyone.

by redeeman

5/23/2026 at 4:22:54 PM

Sure, they know best of course ;-) This is the arrogance and gas lightning we are talking about.

But I am not complaining about KDE, they can do whatever they feel best for their projec.t I do not use KDE and - if they make decisions like this - never will.

But please do not tell me my real world experience is an imagination because someone else decided what is best for me. This is like Microsoft telling me I need to like clippy.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 7:01:15 PM

its not just KDE, its pretty much everyone in the space.

I explicitly said im sure some have worse experience with wayland, perhaps read what I wrote?

Are you denying wayland is net benefit for the majority?

by redeeman

5/24/2026 at 5:23:13 AM

Yes, I do not believe for a second that wayland is a net benefit for the majority. Every improvement one can have in Wayland could have been implemented in X without breaking compatibility, without causing all the regressions and limitations that are waived away so arrogantly, without fracturing the community, and also ten years earlier.

by uecker

5/23/2026 at 2:58:28 PM

It's exactly this kind of arrogant attitude that makes me hate everything from dbus onward.

by tosti

5/23/2026 at 3:30:33 PM

what is arrogant? that some features matter to some users? or that developers that work for free have things that matter to them in trying to develop better code?

by redeeman

5/23/2026 at 10:56:19 PM

There's really no need for any finger-pointing while bragging about features.

by tosti

5/24/2026 at 7:01:36 AM

It's not bragging - the commenter stated that Wayland has no advantage, which isn't true. It has many features which just are not possible in X. Many of these features are par for the course on Windows and MacOS. They do matter to some people, but not all of course.

by array_key_first

5/24/2026 at 1:26:34 PM

Bragging isn't the problem.

by tosti

5/23/2026 at 1:56:17 PM

I imagine the 5% of issues are more likely to be related to Linux itself; then they hop back to a BSOD on Windows with forced updates or a buggy "stable" OS update on Mac.

by prophesi

5/23/2026 at 3:21:28 AM

Significantly less so than before, but it's unfortunately still the case. It's also just now getting features that people have been asking for for over a decade, and of course due to the nature of Wayland the implementations of these features are sporadic and inconsistent.

by ben-schaaf

5/23/2026 at 3:36:24 AM

I think the main difference is that there aren't really any deal-breaker kind of bugs any more, and as far as features there are none missing that users care about compared to X11. It's mostly just annoying bugs and the usual "third party" (including KDE) apps looking off in GNOME because the devs can't reach an agreement on some things, users be dammed.

by amlib

5/23/2026 at 3:24:49 AM

It's not. Wayland has really gotten its shit together in the last 5-ish years. A lot of the desktop ecosystem has matured in the last few years, actually.

I maintain that the Linux desktop in 2021 was actually less usable than it was in 2016. But things have really turned around since then.

by ryukoposting

5/23/2026 at 11:38:57 AM

I'm not particularly fond of X11 but barely working in 2026 is hardly an endorsement of the whole project.

A good replacement of X11 would have had a well designed local mode that abstracted modern hardware in all configurations and an actually good network protocol.

We're left with a barely-working local mode with awful X11 stuck on top.

And we've moved to it for purely political reasons.

by avadodin

5/24/2026 at 7:03:55 AM

The "purely political" reasons is that nobody wants to work on X.org implementation. Which, I guess, is technically political? Maybe? But it has real world consequences.

Like okay yeah we could all just stick to X. But in order to do that we need X to be developed, which it's not.

by array_key_first

5/24/2026 at 10:40:29 AM

I suppose being actively developed has positive connotations even in my own mind.

I don't think we disagree on facts at all.

by avadodin

5/23/2026 at 1:20:21 PM

I'd say Wayland was "barely" working in 2021. When I say it works, I mean it works. Screen sharing (finally) works, remote desktop works, ICC profiles, etc etc.

I, for one, like Wayland's design. The problem was that it was incomplete and the implementations were buggy. Well, now the protocol is feature-complete and the implementations are solid.

by ryukoposting

5/23/2026 at 3:31:35 AM

Wayland is a bunch of amateurs trying to be strict and secure and the end result is everyone opening their own security holes to make it usable. It's working now, mostly.

KDE got some kind of video bridge recently which is an insane workaround for something that should've just worked.

by lunar_rover

5/23/2026 at 8:53:58 AM

I'm not sure I get your complaint?

You're worried that capturing Wayland screens from X11 applications requires additional software?

How is that a real complaint? The only way this would be possible without additional software is if Wayland itself was just another X11 Version, if Wayland was X12 which is X11 but with protocol changes that break backwards compatibility, you would run into exactly the same problem.

Your standard for something being insane is that it is not 100% identical to X11.

by imtringued

5/22/2026 at 10:01:29 PM

Minecraft is becoming DOOM in terms of crazy technical feats.

I love it.

by sandruso

5/23/2026 at 7:59:27 AM

Interestingly they're opposites really, people try to run DOOM on anything, while they try to run anything in Minecraft.

This is closer to PSDoom:

https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html

by lloeki

5/23/2026 at 4:31:10 PM

Doom is Free Software, and Minecraft is proprietary. Minecraft encourages creativity in the game, and Doom encourages creativity with the game.

by Zambyte

5/22/2026 at 10:37:30 PM

Becoming? crazy stuff has been done in Minecraft for the longest time. Someone built a functional CPU and computer in Minecraft in 2010.

by colordrops

5/22/2026 at 10:45:41 PM

I agree: running simulated computers inside of Minecraft is a significantly more impressive technical feat than bolting on display surfaces to planes with a mod.

There's a big difference between something being compiled to run inside of Minecraft, versus running a sidecar that streams back a display. It's the difference between compiling and running on your machine, and streaming back a cloud machine using RDP.

Not like this makes a difference to users, who don't know how any of this works. But we are on Hacker News...

by avaer

5/22/2026 at 11:29:48 PM

Just because someone has done a more impressive project in Minecraft doesn't mean this one isn't interesting

by flexagoon

5/23/2026 at 10:17:16 AM

People not only built a functional computer in Minecraft, people have run Minecraft on that functional computer in Minecraft. Extremely slowly, obviously, but it did technically work.

by mcv

5/23/2026 at 2:59:38 AM

Now if only someone could make doom run on Minecraft, that would be the ultimate flex.

by amarant

5/23/2026 at 5:23:32 AM

Pretty sure this has been accomplished on redstone. It was definitely a demake and sped up >10000x not realtime but I believe it was done.

by xerox13ster

5/22/2026 at 9:57:44 PM

Finally, I can escape to paradise and work remote.

by inciampati

5/23/2026 at 7:06:34 AM

I'm impressed by the coding skill to achieve a seamless integration and "usability".

But other than a demo "because we can" I'm confused on what this could ever be useful for. AR/VR prototyping? Virtual showroom?

Or maybe for an online presentation? Stream a video of playing Minecraft and get fancy slide transitions? "let's go to the next slide" and "now we enter dangerous territory".. "over here I can show you how this program looks like in real life"

by schobi

5/23/2026 at 9:19:38 AM

This is a “because I can” type of project.

by nkrisc

5/23/2026 at 7:24:36 AM

Could have an office Minecraft world with a seminar room instead of Teams?

by dm319

5/23/2026 at 7:08:46 AM

Not sure why people praise Minecraft for this. This is huge feat of Wayland, and was possible because devs took time to consider use cases outside of current norm, and why it took so long to migrate the ecosystem. People liked to bitch about the "Gnome blocking/not implementing essential protocols" part, but even that partially made this possible

by exidex

5/23/2026 at 7:14:20 AM

Is there any reason that you couldn't implement this on Xorg?

by mandarax8

5/23/2026 at 7:28:15 AM

absolutely not.

a very near example would be immersed vr which is compatible with xorg and does essentially the same thing (2d windows pasted all over a 3d world), although not integrated into minecraft. also since their solution isn't wayland-centric it has ports to osx and windows.

wayland deserves credit but not for this concept.

by serf

5/23/2026 at 3:58:27 PM

Wayland is far more minimal API than X11 that mainly cares about surfaces and inputs. So, it's understandable that it can be "easily" translated to a game engine.

X11 has an entire drawing API. It'd probably be easier to run through Xwayland.

by ChocolateGod

5/23/2026 at 9:07:05 AM

https://github.com/augustoicaro/Immersed-Linux-Virtual-Monit...

>If you're reading this, you're likely in the same boat as me. You've discovered that Immersed can create virtual monitors for Windows and Mac, but on Linux, this feature is marked as "unsupported" on X11. This means you can't create virtual monitors directly through the Immersed agent. For now, the known workaround is to manually set up virtual monitors. If you use Wayland, now immersed offer support for native virtual displays on the Immersed agent on gnome Wayland. You can access this options in Immersed client menu -> Setting -> Configure virtual displays. Other Wayland DE/Compositors are not supported, but there are ways to create virtual monitors manually as we do on X11, please check the linux-help channel in the Discord server for more info.

Basically immersed vr doesn't support X11 windows, it only supports X11 screens, which means you would have to create a new screen manually for each window.

by imtringued

5/23/2026 at 7:54:13 AM

xserver only takes about 10 lines of code, that doesnt sound as impressive as 8,000

by DarkmSparks

5/22/2026 at 10:25:33 PM

If its not written with blocks its not real.

by jwlake

5/22/2026 at 10:27:22 PM

"In Minecraft" doesn't mean what it used to. When somebody wrote an 8-bit CPU literally "in Minecraft" it used to be badass. Now it's just a game addon.

by tines

5/22/2026 at 10:36:22 PM

There are multiple ways that something can be "in minecraft"

by rcxdude

5/22/2026 at 11:06:19 PM

It was more fun when people implemented gates. :)

by jwlake

5/23/2026 at 5:35:07 AM

Can't they just compete in separate categories? People have been making high-level computer mods years before even ComputerCraft, RedPower, or OpenComputers existed. And people will continue to make pure-redstone computers far into the future. Neither category is replacing the other :)

by creatonez

5/22/2026 at 10:34:14 PM

You speak as if this isn't neat in its own way.

by fluffybucktsnek

5/22/2026 at 11:52:10 PM

Is Minecraft dethroning Emacs as the new weird OS that can do everything but probably shouldn't? Can I check my email in minecraft yet?

by analogpixel

5/23/2026 at 12:00:31 AM

With this compositor I’d think it could do anything at this point.

by ltheanine

5/23/2026 at 12:13:54 AM

For the real emacs experience you could use this mod to render an IDE in Minecraft editing the mod that renders the IDE.

by wild_egg

5/23/2026 at 12:16:33 AM

emaception.....

by analogpixel

5/23/2026 at 12:19:34 AM

Emacs can do everything and probably should though

by arikrahman

5/23/2026 at 9:12:52 AM

If it handles text, it is in the realm of things you can reasonably prefer to do in emacs

by mghackerlady

5/24/2026 at 7:14:36 PM

Heck, I'll let AI hack it apart and turn it into an NLE video editor or 3D modeler if I could.

by arikrahman

5/23/2026 at 7:30:13 AM

you can open the web browser in that mod, so yes you can

by exallotriote

5/22/2026 at 10:40:39 PM

I wonder how this would pair with a VR mod. It doesn't seem like Vivecraft supports the version this was posted for at the moment, but if they had the ability to play nice that seems like it would would be a fun way to experience software.

by samtheDamned

5/22/2026 at 10:48:55 PM

There are already VR overlay applications that do this on top of any game, not just Minecraft.

by avaer

5/22/2026 at 10:50:05 PM

Yes, but part of the fun is doing it in Minecraft and using Minecraft's language for it (e.g. putting windows in your inventory, pulling them out of chests, etc)

by Philpax

5/22/2026 at 11:50:35 PM

A friend sent this to me yesterday - I was very disappointed that the video didn't show off Minecraft in Minecraft.

by a_t48

5/23/2026 at 7:14:01 AM

It is minecraft, even if you open Minecraft it will not work.

by itsmeadarsh

5/23/2026 at 12:20:00 AM

Finally

by pjs_

5/23/2026 at 8:50:40 AM

I was hoping Wayland pixels would be Minecraft blocks, so you could make gigantic Wayland screens, or use one block as a 1x1 pixel Wayland screen.

by DonHopkins

5/23/2026 at 7:57:56 AM

[dead]

by indianwashlet