Finally Switched to Wayland (This is gonna be a long one)

I finally had enough down time a couple of weeks ago to start the process of migrating to Wayland. I figured I'd share my experience for anyone who (like me) was/is concerned about how difficult the process may be or what changes may be required for someone who uses a more "niche" setup.

**Context**
My primary device is a Thinkpad X280. My backup is essentially a mirrored setup on a T480s. I've been using Arch/Arch derivatives for well over a decade now, and I'm currently on Artix Linux. My main X11 workflow was DWM (heavily patched) with the typical suite of supporting apps (dmenu, rofi, st, dunst, dwmblocks, etc). My daily workflow centers heavily around the tags system with simple startup scripts depending on which apps I need for work on any given day versus when I'm just using casual email/browsing apps. Most daily apps are assigned to specific tags and I HEAVILY depend on the ability to right click a tag to show it's windows on another tag temporarily (for example, pulling over a floating browser quickly to research something then sending it back to it's home tag when I'm done). The other important aspect is my use of a 3rd gen Lenovo thunderbolt dock for swapping to a dual display setup when needed for more complex work flows.

**The Switch**
I switched to MangoWM with waybar. The switch was relatively painless, as MangoWM is pretty much a prebuilt version of DWL with all the available patches most people would want, which is essentially the wayland version of DWM. I chose Mango of DWL mainly because the stagnant/slow development of DWL means it often falls behind current Wayland functionality, which is quite relevant since Wayland is VERY MUCH still a work-in-progress. The only real issues I ran into were configuring waybar and setting up tag/window rules. I eventually figured out the waybar stuff through reading docs and watching YouTube. Once figured out, it was quite simple to create a setup superior to my prior dwmblocks setup. The window rules were slightly more annoying because I learned that wayland identifies windows by their "appid" vs X11's method of using the "class". To make this more tedious, there's no true equivalent for xprop, so I had to learn how to use Mango's built-in IPC to find the appid I was looking for (grep will be very useful). Mango further complicates (or simplifies?) this by using a pseudo-fuzzy search algorithm for identifying the appid. For example, if I want to set a window rule for a PWA made through firefox, I don't have to quote the entire appid. I can just extract a unique string of characters from the appid and Mango will recognize it (pretty nifty once you get used to it).

**Pros**
I'll truncate this since the post is already unreasonably long.

* Wayland is just smoother than X11/XLibre
* Built in compositing removes the need for picom/fastcompmgr
* Despite much of what I saw online before switching, resource usage is actually measurably less on my MangoWM setup vs my prior DWM setup
* Battery life actually improved for me (anywhere between 30 mins to 1.5 hours depending on usage)
* Many random X11-specific packages/config files are simply no longer necessary (xinit, xprop, XAUTHORITY, etc)
* MangoWM is just more pleasant to use with the built in transparency, blur, and simpler animations. Animations aren't a must for me, but I do have fond memories of compiz when my browser opens with a subtle zoom effect versus just popping into place

**Cons**

* Trying to run a system without xwayland comes with MANY compromises depending on your workflow
* Many popular apps like virtualbox, steam, and bitwarden can't even launch without xwayland (which kinda feels like it defeats the purpose of moving away from X11). Zoom works, but completely messes with keyboard shortcuts, which led me to just switch to a PWA. I also swapped to a PWA for bitwarden, but didn't have simple alternatives to virtualbox and steam, so I ended up biting the bullet and installing xwayland
* Some apps simply won't work - even with xwayland