This is why X11 is better. I’d rather have settings like this in a text file that I can copy over to my next machine than have to navigate a UI that will change on a different DE or the next upgrade.
Backwards compatibility, portability, and text-based interfaces are a virtue.
X config files aren’t “hacky scripts”, they are fundamentally more powerful, customizable, usable, and future-proof. Xrandr is a powerful and capable interface with applications across the system.
When Wayland adopts these kinds of powerful interfaces with decades of refinement I’ll switch to it. I don’t want to keep track of whether my DE uses wlroots or gnome or plasma and their independent/redundant/feature-lacking randr alternatives. Randrs should be more fundamental to the display operation than the DE. Wayland is fundamentally hacky and broken.
Edit: thank you all for the discussion. I’d like to clarify a point. I don’t just want a text file with configuration settings that implement features that I need to beg/bother the devs for. They are likely to have better things to do and it might not be a priority for them. I want access to powerful tools via the configuration files that I can make do pretty much anything if I read the documentation. Xrandr is such a tool. I don’t want setting for a feature that has to be baked into the DE which I have to beg to have implemented and which will be implemented differently across different DEs. I want flexible, dynamic, modular tools.
Yeah that difference in configuration definitely makes it so much better, it completely outweighs the fact that Wayland does proper multi-monitor VRR, fractional scaling, HDR and much more.
You can't be this stupid, Wayland also uses a config file, you just have a GUI button to copy the configs from inside your session to the login screen. Or do you think the button recompiles the login screen with a different configuration?
In Wayland, the compositor is the window server ( the equivalent of Xserver ). What you are looking for has to be a feature of the compositor and it is.
As others have said below, wlroots based compositors offer wlr-randr. There is also gnome-randr. For KDE, there is Kscreen-doctor. For X ( the window server being used by SDDM here ), there is xramdr.
Now, some people may see it as a problem that we have multiple Wayland implementations. I am mostly not fighting that battle. I will say that I hope these are not the same people that winge about systemd though and push for alternate init systems. I hope nobody that thinks MUSL is cool
Is clinging to X11.
I would prefer that there was a common configuration standard for this stuff on Wayland. It will probably come eventually. Maybe as part of the freedesktop.org stuff.
Generally, I believe the Linux ecosystem has been stronger in areas where there has been competition between implementations ( even compilers ). I hope that Wayland will be one of those areas. As the core problems get fixed, the pace of innovation will increase. I believe we are already seeing that. There are more examples every day of things Wayland can do that X11 cannot. Let’s hope for more of that.
I never configured anything on X with a DE, let it be KDE, Gnome or Cosmic, but configure everything with config files I can just copy on sway. It has nothing to do with X or Wayland, but the DE/WM you use.
Tip: Both GDM and SDDM have startup scripts that are executed when X is initiated. For GDM, these are in /etc/gdm/, while for SDDM this is done at /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup. This method requires root access and mucking around in system configuration files, but will take effect earlier in the startup process than using xprofile.
Is this when the screen is locked or when you're logged out? Those are two different things and I suspect it's the latter. That's probably sddm and I suspect it can be fixed by using Wayland with it. Should be some option in /etc/sddm.conf or so.
usually monitors can be freely rotated. if yours can't, the back usually has a square vesa mount on the back and you can just take out the four screws and reattach it the way you like.
If you think this is very witty and a gotcha, you're wrong. This argument doesn't work in reverse because whoever is using Linux already knows all about Windows, since, y'know, it has most of the Desktop market in its grip
It's true though, every thread about Windows is full of Linux users saying how you should just use Linux, and others saying they still can't because it still doesn't work properly after all this time. Then you get the Linux users saying "iT jUSt wORks", then posting shit like this demonstrating that it clearly still doesn't
If you think this is very witty and a gotcha, you're wrong. This argument doesn't work in reverse because whoever is using Linux already knows all about Windows, since, y'know, it has most of the Desktop market in its grip