You know I would be happy if the Linux community produced one working desktop environment instead of 2-10 different versions for each component depending on how difficult that component is to implement.
You go to a Apple, Google or Microsoft conference, GUI programming talks are about how to implement good UI/UX and take the best advantage of their tools for UI development, usually with workflow exemples from concept up to final product.
Most GUI tracks on GNU/Linux conferences are about low level details how to make certain drivers work, ongoing XWindows refactorings, or refactorings on GUI libraries.
So it is clear which tech do eventually GUI focused developers go to.
I know what you mean and my frustation goes beyond that. All my servers and many tools are all Linux based, but my desktop dev environment haven't change in years (even when I hop from LTS to LTS). It's mostly abstracted with my own GUI code so when people start fucking with the underlying and regular components I can just do a quick fix on my side. When I'm customizing my Linux desktop (CLI aside) I feel like I'm wasting my time just to make things work, not have a prehistorical workflow and minimize the GUI toolkit hell. Ironically, on Windows I feel like an actual power user when I'm making scripts and automating workflows. Not sure why, it's just how I feel.
Maybe the annoyances are from the lack of a core desktop experience/"interface" (not talking about GUI) that feels familiar (especially for new users). I bet it also scares developers from other platforms and commercial initiatives. I'm all in for freedom but a "default stack" is desperately needed.
Read the FAQ entry I linked to. (Specifically, the "How can I replace Wayland's Window Manager?" heading; the anchor doesn't seem to work properly.)
Standalone window managers aren't a thing in the Wayland ecosystem, no more than they are under Windows or macOS. Much of the functionality which would be implemented by an X11 WM is either built into the Wayland compositor, or delegated to clients.
The only difference I notice between window managers is configuration options: is there a shortcut to send the window to another workspace..? Can you resize when maximized, etc.
I’ve never had a corrupted xauthority. I’d guess there’s a bug in some component other than X. (Does X11 even create the .Xauthority? Isn’t that the display manager (like xdm)’s job?)
Have you tried i3wm? I switched to it permanently a few years ago and never looked back. Here [0] is my config. Sway [1], a port of i3wm to Wayland, is kind of stable as well.
