Ebook-viewer does not work with Ubuntu 22.04 Wayland [6.13]

[noodler]

The ebook-viewer works normally in Ubuntu 22.04.02 LTS with X11 but if I switch to Wayland, the ebook-viewer does not launch properly:

- it appears in the task bar but no window is created.
- the auto-preview in the task bar says "loading b..."
- doesn't matter which book is opened
- The application cannot be closed and the underlying process must be killed.
- Same behaviour whether launched from within Calibre, from a file browser or from the command line
- I see no messages at the command line or in syslog
- also applies to the ebook-editor
- the main Calibre application runs ok
- applies to Calibre 6.13 installed using suggested script not from the Ubuntu Snap Store

[kovidgoyal]

Dont use Wayland, its nowhere near ready.

[3QVKwyNT9hR849t7]

Unfortunately, Calibre once again refuses to adapt to modern standards, and until it does so, you are going to need to hack things.

First, try launching it as such:

```
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb calibre
```
If the viewer works fine there, proceed with the following -

Run the following to get the full path to the executable. That is /usr/bin/calibre on my system.

```
command -v calibre
```

Then create /usr/local/bin/calibre with the following content:

```
#!/bin/bash

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb /usr/bin/calibre "$@"
```

And give it execute permission

```
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/calibre
```

That should be all you need to hijack the executable and force XWayland and have Calibre work correctly again, make sure to remove it when hell freezes over.

[Quoth]

Don't confuse unfinished niche new software (Wayland) with "modern standards". MS have thing called a "modern GUI" and it's rubbish.

Calibre works better than many programs on a wide variety of Linux, Mac and Windows.

[h68]

Originally Posted by 3QVKwyNT9hR849t7

Unfortunately, Calibre once again refuses to adapt to modern standards, and until it does so, you are going to need to hack things.

First, try launching it as such:

```
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb calibre
```
If the viewer works fine there, proceed with the following -

Run the following to get the full path to the executable. That is /usr/bin/calibre on my system.

```
command -v calibre
```

Then create /usr/local/bin/calibre with the following content:

```
#!/bin/bash

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb /usr/bin/calibre "$@"
```

And give it execute permission

```
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/calibre
```

That should be all you need to hijack the executable and force XWayland and have Calibre work correctly again, make sure to remove it when hell freezes over.

--
The workaround works perfectly!
Thank you very much.
PS : For the people being emotional on Wayland vs X11. Your comments are a waste of time. What we want is Calibre working correctly under Wayland nothing more, nothing less.

[DNSB]

Perhaps you should suggest the developers responsible for Wayland should be able to make Wayland work properly without blaming the hardware suppliers.

One co-worker of mine before I retired is now responsible for quite a few Linux desktops and his opinion as of a couple of weeks back is that until Wayland properly supports NVidia hardware or NVidia is somehow convinced that supporting Wayland's quirks is a good use of their support staff, Wayland will never be ready for general use. As they phrased it, X11 is mature, stable and just works, Wayland is a crapshoot with loaded dice so why would anyone who does not enjoy living on the bleeding edge want to use Wayland on a production system?

[kovidgoyal]

It's not just the lack of NVIDIA support, though that is bad enough. Wayland as a software ecosystem has a truly horrible design. The main protocol is completely anemic, lacking basic features needed for a desktop from the 80's let alone a "modern" one. All those features get tacked on randomnly using "protocol extensions". These extensions are published in an immature "beta" state and often go through multiple revisions over years, with endless bike shedding and politicing over every basic thing.

And that's just the protocol. After that you come to the implementations. Wayland has no reference implementation and no comprehensive test suites for either server or client implementations and no foundational libraries that can be used to easily build server or client side implementations of the protocol. In other words, no one in that ecosystem is willing to do the dirty, boring work to make the ecosystem actually robust. And yet it is being foisted on us.

There are dozens of different server side "compositors" aka implementations, each of which have their own bugs and idiosyncracies in how they implement the protocol and its myriad extensions. So talking of "Wayland" as a platform is complete joke. it's just a miscellaneous grab bag of ideas, some good, most awful, some implemented correctly, some not, some completely missing, depending on which compositor a particular system is running.

If you ask me Wayland is basically an effort to ensure the Year of the Linux desktop truly never arrives.

[gbm]

I have tested calibre on Mint 21.3 using there experimental Wayland and encountered no problems. That tell me the problem is not calibre but your distro.

bernie

P.S.

Wayland is what i would call still in Beta.

Originally Posted by h68

--
The workaround works perfectly!
Thank you very much.
PS : For the people being emotional on Wayland vs X11. Your comments are a waste of time. What we want is Calibre working correctly under Wayland nothing more, nothing less.

[3QVKwyNT9hR849t7]

Originally Posted by h68

--
The workaround works perfectly!
Thank you very much.
PS : For the people being emotional on Wayland vs X11. Your comments are a waste of time. What we want is Calibre working correctly under Wayland nothing more, nothing less.

You're welcome, but a recent enough Calibre version should properly detect `QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb`, if not, that's a bug on its own, make sure you're up to date, I was able to remove the workaround on my system a few months ago.

> It's not just the lack of NVIDIA support

This has changed recently.

Nvidia has decided to properly support Wayland starting with 2021 releases. They even have a TODO list for the remaining issues - https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/...release/214275

> All those features get tacked on randomnly using "protocol extensions". These extensions are published in an immature "beta" state and often go through multiple revisions over years

> There are dozens of different server side "compositors" aka implementations, each of which have their own bugs and idiosyncracies in how they implement the protocol and its myriad extensions.

Wayland ecosystem is developing rapidly now that Nvidia stopped constantly throwing obstacles at people.

Which protocol or compositor bug is preventing Calibre from implementing a native Wayland backend?

If there are any left, what's preventing Calibre from having an experimental backend for now, for those that would still prefer to leave XWayland behind at the cost of the affected feature?

> And yet it is being foisted on us.

That is absolutely true and needs to be taken into account - all the major Desktop Environments and more(Plasma, GNOME, Budgie, ...) are dropping X support in the foreseeable future, so Calibre *WILL* be stuck on XWayland and its associated issues on a Wayland system.

Distributions are dropping X support too, albeit more slowly than the DEs and other software.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre doesnt have any kind of native wayland or X11 or cocoa or windows backend. That comes from Qt, the toolkit calibre uses. Go annoy the developers of Qt about their lack of Wayland support. Or better yet, DONT USE the terminal piece of shit that is Wayland and stop annoying people with real work to do with these idiotic Wayland self goals. If you insist on using immature, badly designed technology like Wayland, that's your poor decision and you suffer the consequences thereof.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by 3QVKwyNT9hR849t7

> And yet it is being foisted on us.

That is absolutely true and needs to be taken into account - all the major Desktop Environments and more(Plasma, GNOME, Budgie, ...) are dropping X support in the foreseeable future, so Calibre *WILL* be stuck on XWayland and its associated issues on a Wayland system.

Distributions are dropping X support too, albeit more slowly than the DEs and other software.

@kovid: as you said sometime in the last few months, perhaps it really is getting to the point where dropping support for Linux desktop makes sense. Not only is a few % of the user base (Linux) the source of an enormous percentage of bug reports, as said above "calibre *WILL* be stuck" with an ecosystem that doesn't work.

Keeping the Linux standalone content server should probably be doable, with the possible exception of the packaging issues.

[kovidgoyal]

@chaley: Yeah, Wayland is really making Linux an even bigger PITA to support. Pointless fragmentation is Linux's biggest weakness and Wayland just doubles down on it for no good reason. It's not like drawing windows on a screen is not well understood some forty years after it was first invented, there was no reason to make such a pig's breakfast of it. Sigh. I just feel bad for Linux calibre users that stay with X11 and will get punished for the actions of the Wayland crowd.

For the moment I'll just setup an auto-response for Wayland issues. I already have one for GNOME+Wayland which is the worst offender in the Wayland ecosystem, with its insane refusal to support server side window decorations.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by chaley

@kovid: as you said sometime in the last few months, perhaps it really is getting to the point where dropping support for Linux desktop makes sense.

No, just refuse to support Wayland, which is not ready for release.

In nearly 7 years I don't remember having any Linux specific issues on Calibre apart from the easily solved cursor library at upgrade. Less issues than years of Firefox and Libre Office on Windows and Linux.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No, just refuse to support Wayland, which is not ready for release.

Yeah, that's what I do.

In nearly 7 years I don't remember having any Linux specific issues on Calibre apart from the easily solved cursor library at upgrade. Less issues than years of Firefox and Libre Office on Windows and Linux.

It's cause I myself use and develop on Linux (X11 based).

[3QVKwyNT9hR849t7]

> That comes from Qt, the toolkit calibre uses.

That's lucky.

Retesting with the native Wayland backend today after almost a full year (didn't expect it to work based on the overly friendly response, so didn't test until now) Calibre Viewer seems to render now, seemingly even correctly.

I suppose the ton of Wayland-related fixes that were shipped in Qt6 made things usable at some point, combined with the fact Calibre thankfully isn't lagging behind on Qt5.

Tested on Plasma(kwin) 5.27.10, Calibre 7.4, Qt 6.6.1 and a Nvidia series 4000 using the 545.29.06 driver.

Presumably people on Debian will have it working only on the new release (years away), but Ubuntu and its based distributions (i.e. person on Mint from yesterday) should start working properly when 24.04 ships, presumably sometime early May along with extra months for downstream adaptation.