The death watch for the X Window System has probably started • Hacker News Board

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#41

Post by ainar-g » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #26

beowulfey wrote: post #16

Is there any plan by Wayland to incorporate ssh forwarding? Last I heard it wasn't in the cards, and I think that feature is useful enough; it's probably the only feature I really would miss.

I see this a lot and now I need to ask: do you actually use it and find it usable? Every time I've tried it, it was plagued with problems (fonts, HiDPI issues, different environments) and horrible performance. I mostly had to resort back to NX, which is okish, but not better at all than Windows' RDP or better VNC solutions. So what's the big draw here?

Re. performance. Did you use SSH's “-C” switch for data compression? The first time I used X over SSH it was lagging as all hell, until I used this switch, and after that everything ran much smoother.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#42

Post by snazz » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #39

A tad concerned about this because my system still heavily relies on X and there really isn’t an alternative for my applications (yet). Wayland isn’t supported for many applications.

Does XWayland not solve your issues? It’s a pretty good (seamless) compatibility layer. Of course, it still involves running an X server, but applications can switch to Wayland one at a time and you can use both simultaneously.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#43

Post by petschge » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #28

whatshisface wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use screen capture and remote operation every day. Are those features planned?

I don't use remote operation (as imagined by X11) at all. But I do use non-X11 screen-sharing systems all the time. Ask yourself, "why do all of the major GUI systems - in daily use by billions of people, evolved over the past 40 years - opt to offer remote operation only as an optional add-on?" Maintainers, beware of the tail wagging the dog!

And I use remote operations all day every day. As does the entire department with hundreds of people. Don't dismiss other peoples works flows without understanding them.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#44

Post by arendtio » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #36

arendtio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I wouldn't bother if Nvidia would go out of business, as I find it disgusting how they ignore consumer wishes since ages. I mean, in the past I have bought GPU hardware from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel but for a Linux desktop, the experience has been so much better when not using Nvidia, that I try to avoid their products nowadays. This won't help current owners of Nvidia hardware (as myself), but you shouldn't…

Unfortunately, there is only one CUDA, and OpenCL is not an alternative.

Yes, I know :-/

I am not sure what the status of AMD ROCm is, but I guess it will take a while until it becomes a viable alternative.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#45

Post by _delirium » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #26

beowulfey wrote: post #16

Is there any plan by Wayland to incorporate ssh forwarding? Last I heard it wasn't in the cards, and I think that feature is useful enough; it's probably the only feature I really would miss.

I see this a lot and now I need to ask: do you actually use it and find it usable? Every time I've tried it, it was plagued with problems (fonts, HiDPI issues, different environments) and horrible performance. I mostly had to resort back to NX, which is okish, but not better at all than Windows' RDP or better VNC solutions. So what's the big draw here?

I use it, but generally only at work on a local network, where the performance is fine. My most common use is to run R on a big server but still have plots pop up on my laptop. There are other ways to do this, e.g. one of the IDEs for R (RStudio) apparently has some infrastructure that would let me run R on my laptop and then farm out the computations remotely. But I find just ssh -X the easiest for now.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#46

Post by mrob » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

voldacar wrote: post #7

Are there any major x11 features that wayland lacks other than remote operation over a network? I think at one point it locked the refresh rate to 60hz, has that been changed?

Low latency. Wayland forces you to use a compositor.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#47

Post by snazz » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #14

hyperion2010 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal keybinding and screen capture of any kind. Kind of show stoppers for people who actually use their window manager for managing windows.

I use screen capture and remote operation every day. Are those features planned?

Screenshots and recordings work fine with Sway and GNOME. I don’t know about other compositors. See https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki#taking-screenshots

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#48

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

One of the comments on the article ( https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/XDeathwatchSta... ) is also possibly of interest, suggesting possible technical routes for using existing windows managers on Wayland:

> There is XWayland, and apparently it will support handling the root window, not just application windows:

    https://wayland.freedesktop.org/xserver.html

> The missing piece of the puzzle is Xweston, which apparently allows you to run window managers for X on Wayland:

    https://github.com/ackalker/Xweston

> or maybe xwlnest will work better:

    https://github.com/gschwind/xwlnest

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#49

Post by blodovnik » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

There's a lot that xwundows can do that it'll take many years for anything else to catch up to.

Re: The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

#50

Post by nextos » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #32

Quoting a quote from the article: > The reality is that X.org is basically maintained by us and thus once we stop paying attention to it there is unlikely to be any major new releases coming out and there might even be some bitrot setting in over time. We will keep an eye on it as we will want to ensure X.org stays supportable until the end of the RHEL8 lifecycle at a minimum, but let this be a friendly notice for ev…

My concern at the moment with Wayland (and Systemd, Pulseaudio, DBus and a few others) is that Linux is loosing modularity.

All these dependencies seem to be getting more or less mandatory. Running a distribution without them is getting harder.

Given that they are all getting pushed by the same group of people at Red Hat, it is concerning as they are effectively gaining control of the Linux userland. And given that their architectural decisions are quite contentious and at odds with many Unix design principles, this is not good.