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Wayland screen sharing broken with GNOME 41 on Fedora 35

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 4, 2021
94 replies
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Hi,

I recently updated to Fedora 35 with GNOME 41. This GNOME release restricts the screenshot API which Zoom has used for screen sharing on Wayland, so the screen sharing functionality no longer works (see here on Ask Fedora).

I require screen sharing for school, and I'm sure many others have a similar requirement/system configuration. With Wayland increasingly becoming a de facto standard on Linux, it is crucial that Zoom support Wayland screen sharing.

Video

Best answer by dalewe

It's not a bug in xdg-desktop-portal-wlr, so I'm not going to create a pull request to add code that does nothing (if the client is behaving correctly...). There's already work on supporting to share only a region of the screen (https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr/pull/156) which should coincidentally also fix Zoom.

Simply running Zoom with "env XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME /usr/bin/zoom" should be enough to make Zoom think it's on Gnome while still keeping dbus working.

Edit: This should not be marked as solution! If any, https://community.zoom.com/t5/Meetings/Wayland-screen-sharing-broken-with-GNOME-41-on-Fedora-35/m-p/67283/highlight/true#M35878 provides a workaround for the issue, which has to be fixed by Zoom!

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I

indyx1

Newcomer

This issue is important to me as well, I need wayland for different UI scaling on different monitors. Zoom please provide a fix!

I

ieugen

Newcomer

Hi @YaBoiB ,

Any updates on this issue?
Tried to use Zoom on Debian and it did not work.

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello @ieugen,

We found a solution, and we are working on implementing it into a future release. That is all of the information that I have at this point. I will update you as soon as I have more information to provide. Thank you all for your continued efforts on this issue.

I

ieugen

Newcomer

Hi,

Thank you for the quick reply.
I forgot to mention I am using flatpak version: https://flathub.org/apps/details/us.zoom.Zoom .

IMO I believe flatpack has advantages on the long run for both users ( security, sandboxing, it just works) and for distributors (installation across all linux distribution, stable runtime environment, etc).

It does come with some caveats - some things need a bit of attention because of the sandboxing.
On the long run I believe it is worth it.

Do you know if the solution is going to cover Flatpack as well?

M

marek_l

Newcomer

@YaBoiB any updates on this issue? It's really disappointing it's been so long and this still hasn't been fixed.

I really can't wait until my company decides to move away from Zoom.

C

cm-cc

Newcomer

Just noticed on https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205759689-Release-notes-for-Linux that a new release for Linux is due on Feb 28. Unfortunately, the wayland issue is not mentioned anywhere in the release notes...

D

despdx

Newcomer

good eye.

S

stephdl

Newcomer

Well 2022 is there and still nothing workable screensharing under wayland. That's a pity.

No problem so far for now, hopefully my company has switched to teams 🙂

N

NDOJOSEPH1OBITE

Newcomer

Wow

D

despdx

Newcomer

Yikes. This is getting out of control. I installed the new zoom 5.9.6 yesterday, and I thought I had tested it, but today, it crashes when I try to start it. I guess I'm glad these problems didn't happen when we first started using Zoom in Spring 2020. It hasn't been a carefree experience, but at least it wasn't like this.

E

es-kyra

Newcomer

What's wild is this timeline of events:

How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

2015, Wayland added as a login option for Gnome 3.16 … first Zoom release for desktop GNU+Linux lands several months later
2016-2020: Distributions begin switching to Wayland as the default, exposing many issues with Zoom's (lack of) support
2020-2021: Four years after distros began to switch, Zoom claims to support Wayland…but it uses a private API meant for the system to take screenshots, not video (the correct API has been advertised since 2018). Zoom is just as buggy, and the performance is unusable in many cases.
2021-now: End of last year, Zoom acknowledges issue in the forum after many customers complain and say they were ignored in support tickets. Workarounds which disable security are offered with no warning, customers are told complaints go against community guidelines, and even scapegoating of Gnome. A fix is supposedly in the "next release", which turns out to be entirely false, and several releases go by with no fix.

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

By all means, I'd love to be involved in a beta program if Zoom had one, to see if what they're building is actually solving the problem.

Hello @jasonriedy and @gehrehmee ,

We do have a beta program but this solution is not going to be involved in the Beta program. If you are on an account with a CSM (Customer Success Manager) or AE ( Account Executive) you can ask an admin or owner of your Zoom account to request to be in the beta build program through Zoom. All approvals for that program go through those teams.

Regards,

Brandon

J

johnfparis

Newcomer

FYI, the previously mentioned "workaround" for Wayland (disabling security) no longer works. It allows you to share the desktop (background) but not any application windows. Switching to GNOME on Xorg does work.

From cobbling together various information from a variety of sources, I have found a workaround that actually works to provide screen sharing under Wayland.

Here are step-by-step instructions:

1) install the Video For Linux (Version 2) loopback driver, known as v4l2loopback. NOTE: This is a kernel module.
-- Under Fedora, it's a kmod package (kmod-v4l2loopback) available in the rpmfusion-free repository.
-- Under Ubuntu it's v4l2loopback-dkms. See https://zoomadmin.com/HowToInstall/UbuntuPackage/v4l2loopback-dkms

2) Install OBS Studio. https://obsproject.com/wiki/install-instructions#linux-install-directions

3) Launch OBS Studio. Across the bottom of the screen you will see five panels, the second of which is Sources, the last of which is Controls.

4) At the bottom of the Sources panel, click on the + sign and choose Window Capture (PipeWire)

5) A dialog box will pop up, asking you which window you want to share. Click on the appropriate choice and then click on the Share button.

6) In the middle of the Controls panel, click on Start Virtual Camera. You have now created a "virtual camera" that you can share on Zoom.

7) Launch Zoom and connect to your meeting.

8 ) In Zoom, click on Share Screen

9) At the top of the screen that pops up, choose the Advanced tab

10) Choose "Content from 2nd Camera"

11) Click on the Share button

SIMPLE, RIGHT? You will probably want to double-click on the shared screen to take it out of full-screen mode, so you can make changes in the window you are sharing. Also, note that there is a "Switch Camera" button on the shared screen, which switches between the OBS Studio share and your built-in camera.

For more information on using OBS Studio to share your screen, including various bells and whistles, I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcn5ayvpoqw

J

johnfparis

Newcomer

One of the "bells and whistles" mentioned in the video above is the notion that, because Zoom sees the OBS Virtual Camera as a camera, you can switch to it (instead of screen sharing it). This allows you to share your screen even if you don't have permission -- it's just seen by the other participants as "your camera". (You do have to turn off the mirror image to do so, but it also might reduce lag.)

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello Team,

Once again, I would like to thank all of you for your time and efforts on this case. I know that you all have been very patient, and that has not gone unnoticed. I can tell you that I will not allow this thread to go stale, for one, because I am not that type of person. I was on vacation last week, and now I am wholly back, recharged to take this head on and get this solved for you all. I can tell you all that the beta testing that our Software Engineers have been doing is looking promising. We do have a target release, but I have not yet confirmed what release yet. I promise all of you that as soon as I know, you will know. I feel and understand how important this piece of software is to you all. Please know this. Zoom does have a beta testing program, and if you have an Account Executive with Zoom, I would say that this is a conversation you should have with that person. Zoom Support does not control that program. I can request that you be added to the beta program, but I have no power beyond a simple request. I do believe that we are getting closer to a GA release of this software based on the conversations that I have had with the Software Engineers. So, with that, it is looking promising. I cannot express my thanks to the many of you that I have chatted with here and in Support tickets. I thank you for your time and efforts.

S

solymr

Newcomer

Zoom, please fix it! Do you know how many Fedorians there are in the world? Is it rocket science? Come on...

M

marek_l

Newcomer

Month after month passes, and the only thing we hear from Zoom Support is that they know about the issue and that it's being worked on. By now I understand that it's one of the two options: either they don't care at all but just tell straight lies to make us stay on zoom as long as possible (while we're hoping it'll be fixed eventually) or they have so incompetent developers that simply can't fix it (which is ridiculous considering even a gnome maintainer offered to help them and they refused it).

To anyone who comes by this thread looking for a solution. I've been waiting for months, others for years, and here we are, the end of March 2022, with no progress at all. I can only tell you, don't expect anything from Zoom, if you need screen sharing, just look for an alternative. I've done so, and I'm a happier person now

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello All,

Update, our team is still actively working on this issue. I am personally working with the Dev Team and chosen customers/Zoom Partners. I have stated this before, and I will state it again. I do know and understand how important this functionality is to you all. I am not sure how to state that any differently. There is a solution on the roadmap, and I will let you all know when that solution is present. Many thanks to all of you who have helped along the way with your feedback. I truly appreciate this from the bottom of my heart.

Delivering happiness is at the core of who we are as Zoomies. We plan to deliver happiness with this issue as well.

C

chutchins

Newcomer

What I think would be a significant help is to have somebody write up a blog post on this issue to clarify that zoom is aware of the issue, it would probably keep a lot of users from jumping ship to other apps because this thread is not very visible. Anybody that doesn't know about this thread probably just downloads zoom, sees that it can't do screenshare, and then just says "oops that sucks time to use teams".

Plus having developers write up a response will clarify that the status is actually work in progress rather than "we have a guy in pr handling a bunch of people in the forums and otherwise ~we don't talk about screenshare~".

Mind you, I know that you can't tell the dev team to do something, rather, you can just request information. But it way help in the long run to get this issue visible to more users.

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