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Bug 5331

Summary: Suggestion: default to Wayland for better compatibility, at least on mobile (or maybe everywhere?)
Product: SDL Reporter: Ellie <etc0de>
Component: videoAssignee: Ryan C. Gordon <icculus>
Status: ASSIGNED --- QA Contact: Sam Lantinga <slouken>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P2    
Version: 2.0.12   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Bug Depends on: 5194    
Bug Blocks:    

Description Ellie 2020-10-27 23:09:13 UTC 
On the PinePhone, it appears SDL2 defaults to XWayland still. This means issues with scaling and such, because the X11 compatibility of the new phone-centric mobile desktops is often quite basic and incomplete. I would anticipate this to possibly remain that way since GTK+ and Qt work nicely with Wayland, so there is no incentive for those new desktops to iron out the X11 support for all corner cases. As a result, SDL2 defaulting to X11/XWayland (without an env var set to change this) means it automatically runs in a buggier second class mode.

Would it therefore make sense to always have SDL2 try Wayland first? I can't really see the harm in an X11-only environment, where that would simply fail and then SDL2 would fall back to X11 anyway. Or am I missing something? Is there a reason this isn't how it currently operates other than nobody thought of it so far?