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Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

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Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#11

Post by GuB-42 »

shmerl wrote: post #9
o11c wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland is still buggier than a swamp. At this point they're no longer showstopping bugs, but if you don't want to be constantly annoyed by little things not working, X11 is still the way to go.

Buggier or not - it's too late to think X11 is the alternative. It's not. Wayland is going to get better for whatever is needed. X11 is absolutely not the way to go.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better.

When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen.

It is still a good idea to consider Wayland support for your own apps and have at least a test machine running it, but doesn't mean writing apps designed to work with X11 like this one is a wasted effort. X11 is here to stay, for a while at least.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#12

Post by jdiff »

FascinatedBox wrote: post #3
compressedgas wrote: post #2

This does not appear to do anything that xdotool doesn't already do.

This solves a few issues in xdotool for me: Window selection allows for multiple criteria at once, and I can also reject windows. I'm also able to use the window manager's client list as a source, which makes getting toplevel windows much easier. Window movement is done using static gravity, fixing an issue where windows were moving differently if they were a terminal window versus non-terminal window. Bonk can delet…

Can it send whatever signal it is that WMs do when a window is fullscreened, or block the signal sent when it's unfullscreened? If so, I'm 100% sold.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#14

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

GuB-42 wrote: post #11
shmerl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buggier or not - it's too late to think X11 is the alternative. It's not. Wayland is going to get better for whatever is needed. X11 is absolutely not the way to go.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better. When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen. It…

Further, it's not even clear that this kind of program is practically possible on Wayland. At best, that's yet another new protocol someone would need to invent that only some compositors would implement.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#15

Post by kiwijamo »

o11c wrote: post #7
shmerl wrote: post #6

Kind of obsolete in the age of Wayland.

Wayland is still buggier than a swamp. At this point they're no longer showstopping bugs, but if you don't want to be constantly annoyed by little things not working, X11 is still the way to go.

It depends a lot on your desktop enviornment/window manager, distro, hardware, etc. I personally find Wayland works perfectly out of the box whereas X11 still to this day has issues with basic stuff like screen tearing that needs me to add a line to my xorg config file to enable the driver feature that stops screen tearing. (Note that every other display server has zero issues -- MacOS, Windows, Wayland, etc so the fact X11 still suffers from this in 2024 is a strong indicator of its suitability for everyday use). For me the GNOME/Debian/Wayland on Intel GPU has worked flawlessly since Debian switched the default to Wayland a few years ago. The same combo has been problematic for X11 for years until Debian switched over to Wayland and it has been great ever since. Firefox has supported GPU/Video acceleration in Wayland for several years as well which has solved that particular bugbear. I understand though that other combos (particually the less-used DE/WMs and/or closed-source GPU drivers etc) are better for X11 for legacy reasons however I suspect with time these issue will be resolved.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#16

Post by shmerl »

GuB-42 wrote: post #11
shmerl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buggier or not - it's too late to think X11 is the alternative. It's not. Wayland is going to get better for whatever is needed. X11 is absolutely not the way to go.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better. When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen. It…

> The question is "when?

I'd say within this year already. Some major parts like explicit sync are being merged already. And all future work (like HDR) will only go to Wayland. Not to X11.

So this claim that X11 is a viable option is a fallacy.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#17

Post by shmerl »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #14
GuB-42 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better. When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen. It…

Further, it's not even clear that this kind of program is practically possible on Wayland. At best, that's yet another new protocol someone would need to invent that only some compositors would implement.

> Further, it's not even clear that this kind of program is practically possible on Wayland.

It's pretty clear. But some are too stuck up to even research it or be part of shaping it. Which is common among legacy vendors who very rarely even care to communicate with Wayland developers about their needs.

Those who aren't stuck up deal with it just fine (OBS Studio for example).

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#18

Post by bitwize »

GuB-42 wrote: post #11
shmerl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buggier or not - it's too late to think X11 is the alternative. It's not. Wayland is going to get better for whatever is needed. X11 is absolutely not the way to go.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better. When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen. It…

> The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better.

If you run more than one monitor with different DPI, Wayland is the only choice. If you want to do HDR, Wayland will be the only choice.

> When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen.

Toolkit developers are already considering removing their X11 code paths. All of the effort is going into Wayland. The best time to switch was a few years ago. The second best time to switch is now.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#19

Post by arp242 »

shmerl wrote: post #16
GuB-42 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is "when?". Wayland is 15 years old, it already had a lot of time to "get better". So today, in most cases, I'd say X11 is still the way to go, it just works better. When Wayland will get better and apps start supporting Wayland more than they support X11, it will be the time to switch, but at the glacial pace Wayland advances, chances are that your current system will be obsolete when it will happen. It…

> The question is "when? I'd say within this year already. Some major parts like explicit sync are being merged already. And all future work (like HDR) will only go to Wayland. Not to X11. So this claim that X11 is a viable option is a fallacy.

It works. Therefore, it's viable.

It's my computer. I decide what's "the way to go" or "viable" there. None of your business. No one is forcing you or anyone to use it.

This is clearly a "I wrote it because it's useful for me, I put it online for whom it may concern"-type of project. You need to calm your tits and stop shitting all over people's hobby projects.

Re: Show HN: Bonk, a command-line tool for X11 window management

#20

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

shmerl wrote: post #17
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, it's not even clear that this kind of program is practically possible on Wayland. At best, that's yet another new protocol someone would need to invent that only some compositors would implement.

> Further, it's not even clear that this kind of program is practically possible on Wayland. It's pretty clear. But some are too stuck up to even research it or be part of shaping it. Which is common among legacy vendors who very rarely even care to communicate with Wayland developers about their needs. Those who aren't stuck up deal with it just fine (OBS Studio for example).

Lol - it's "stuck up" to prefer software that works? If you want people to switch, it'd help to actually cover their use cases. Showing up to proclaim software "obsolete" when the supposed replacement literally doesn't support the features in use, then... what, claiming we're bad people for not contributing to Wayland? is the cultural part of why people don't like Wayland. (In a distant second place behind the technical reasons people don't like it, which boils down to missing features and present bugs.)
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