Suggestion: Add Config Option to Select Wayland/X11 Backend Without Relying on Global Environment Variables

[ffs-akl]

Currently, Audacious relies on global environment variables such as GDK_BACKEND=wayland or QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to enable native Wayland support. While this works in principle, it introduces a significant usability issue: setting these variables globally can interfere with other GTK or Qt applications that do not support Wayland properly.
Requiring users to manually set global environment variables to switch between X11 and Wayland is no longer appropriate in modern desktop environments. It introduces unnecessary complexity and can interfere with other applications. A more user-friendly and future-proof approach would be to offer backend selection via configuration files, command-line flags, or GUI settings.
I suggest adding a configuration option within Audacious itself—either in the GUI settings or in the config file (e.g., ~/.config/audacious/config)—to explicitly select the graphics backend. For example:
[UI]
gtk-backend=wayland
qt-backend=x11

[jlindgren90]

We do not recommend the use of native Wayland for Audacious. The environment variables are there for developer use only. Just leave them unset and let Audacious use Xwayland please. Anything else is unsupported.

[radioactiveman]

I actually like the idea making this configurable. The Qt and GTK interface work well meanwhile on Wayland. Only the Winamp interface actually requires X11/Xwayland.

We could add a "Use Xwayland" checkbox in the Audacious settings dialog and ask users at runtime to enable it when using the Winamp interface. I will see how this works and prepare a pull request. It would then also fix #1656 as a positive side effect.