Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The death watch for the X Window System has probably started

utcc.utoronto.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 518 posts

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

#91

Post by cwyers »

dmix wrote: post #85
csande17 wrote: post #79

I would use Wayland, but the most actively-developed tiling window manager, sway, doesn't work with the NVIDIA graphics card I own. And come to think of it, isn't that a really weird problem to have? On X, the compositor (responsible for actually drawing all the windows on the screen) and the window manager (responsible for deciding how to arrange the windows and what their title bars/borders should look like) can be…

Which NVIDIA graphics card do you own? I’m surprised Sway doesn’t support certain graphics cards. I believe the goal of wlroots is to solve this problem: > wlroots provides backends that abstract the underlying display and input hardware https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots

Nvidia's drive doesn't support the GBM API on Linux, and the maintainer of Sway doesn't want to support Nvidia's preferred EGLStreams API.

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

#92

Post by Boulth »

dmix wrote: post #85
csande17 wrote: post #79

I would use Wayland, but the most actively-developed tiling window manager, sway, doesn't work with the NVIDIA graphics card I own. And come to think of it, isn't that a really weird problem to have? On X, the compositor (responsible for actually drawing all the windows on the screen) and the window manager (responsible for deciding how to arrange the windows and what their title bars/borders should look like) can be…

Which NVIDIA graphics card do you own? I’m surprised Sway doesn’t support certain graphics cards. I believe the goal of wlroots is to solve this problem: > wlroots provides backends that abstract the underlying display and input hardware https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots

Sway generally doesn't support NVIDIA, or it's rather NVIDIA that doesn't support common kernel modes that Wayland needs.

Details here: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

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

#93

Post by microcolonel »

csande17 wrote: post #79

I would use Wayland, but the most actively-developed tiling window manager, sway, doesn't work with the NVIDIA graphics card I own. And come to think of it, isn't that a really weird problem to have? On X, the compositor (responsible for actually drawing all the windows on the screen) and the window manager (responsible for deciding how to arrange the windows and what their title bars/borders should look like) can be…

> I would use Wayland, but the most actively-developed tiling window manager, sway, doesn't work with the NVIDIA graphics card I own.

May I suggest you buy an AMD GPU next time around; not only because they didn't try to impose their "standard" (which virtually nobody other than them implements, as far as I can tell) without implementing the de-facto standard interface, hurting their customers' access to Wayland to this day... but also because AMD will probably be better value next time you're in the market for a GPU.

> That last issue could be solved with a reusable library that provided basic compositor functionality for window managers.

Sway is based on such a library! (wlroots) However, again, NVIDIA has made it an extra effort to support their GPUs (both in applications and in compositors), and I'm not sure anyone wants to go to extra effort to support a vendor who actively impedes development. By all means, if you want to do NVIDIA's job, be my guest.

I think Sir_Cmpwn has a point in not putting in that effort though.

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

#94

Post by AnthonBerg »

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?

In my experience NX / x2go blows everything else out of the water. VNC isn’t even comparable.

NX allowed me to work on my Linux desktop in Iceland from a hotel room in China.

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

#95

Post by neilv »

notatoad wrote: post #63
nextos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>they are effectively gaining control of the Linux userland. but they aren't gaining control by some dastardly power grab, they're gaining control because they're the only ones actually putting in the work. They're simply doing what they think is best for their product, while at the same time contributing their work back to the open source world. That is good, that's how it's supposed to work. The only reason they're…

Yes, a lot of open source goodness is due to Red Hat, and a lot of open source programmers' livelihoods are and have been due to Red Hat.

Red Hat earned a lot of goodwill among early Linux people, and fortunately they were able to sustain their work with enterprise business revenue flow, of actual dollars (not just goodwill).

It's also true that a lot of people have been implicitly delegating a lot of foundation on which we depend, to Red Hat and a few other organizations. We build atop that, usually with only a little awareness of what's going on, and maybe we should be better informed about that -- as engineers with immediate responsibilities in our own work niches, and/or as altruistic participants in some broader worldwide collective effort.

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

#96

Post by jschwartzi »

zzzcpan wrote: post #68
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows managers? Sway/wlroots. > Consistent window decorations? This is up to individual compositors and toolkits. > Thousands of applications Like what? Any that rely on X specific behaviour run via XWayland. > Consistent performance Wayland in theory should be faster than X, but again, this depends on compositor. > Redshift Gnome has night-light on Wayland already. KDE I think just added it. > Global keybindings…

I always wonder how people use their linux desktops when they claim that wayland works. Why aren't you using anything like wmctrl, xdotool, xprop, xbindkeys, xterm? Or non-Gnome DE? Don't you need custom keybindings for multiple keyboard layouts with caps/scroll led indication? Don't use wacom devices or anything like it? Wayland ecosystem is literally decades away from being usable and it's very unlikely to survive…

A lot of the things that Stack Overflow claims you need X tools for can also be accomplished using sysfs. Without knowing the details of what you're doing I can't give you any specifics.

I maintain an embedded Linux system which uses Wayland as a compositor for Qt. I use sysfs to EG turn off cursors and set the display mode so I can blit a splashscreen. And sysfs can be used to rotate the console, change display modes, etc..

On my desktop I don't use any of the tools you're listing and haven't needed then for almost 12 years. The wm handles that for me.

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

#97

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #72
ip26 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are gaining control of the Linux userland because they are the only ones willing & able to put in the development effort, then IMO we can hardly complain. "Decisions are made by those who show up"

Additionally, no alternative project is even providing close to the set of features that i.e. systemd or pulseaudio does, not even via modules. sysvinit for example is only an alternative to systemd the same way a SUV is an alternative to F1. (watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo if you don't know why)

> sysvinit for example is only an alternative to systemd the same way a SUV is an alternative to F1

Perhaps. But this is the same tired old argument that ignores the existence of any other init/daemon-manager aside from systemd.

And I would use the same car metaphor for comparisons with some of the other options, esp. runit, except with systemd in the SUV slot (e.g. my runit systems all behave themselves; my systemd systems frequently hang on reboot, often needing a REISUB).

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

#98

Post by emersion »

nextos wrote: post #50
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 t…

>All these dependencies seem to be getting more or less mandatory.

Note that Wayland is not a _new_ dependency. It's a dependency that replaces X11.

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

#99

Post by rpedela »

atemerev wrote: post #40
CaptainBern wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm under the impression it's more like NVidia does not want Linux users, or at least has turned some WM developers against them[0]. [0] https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

Nvidia is mostly used on Linux, as most of their GPUs are installed in datacenters for deep learning acceleration purposes. More than that, Nvidia is the only major video hardware manufacturer that keeps up to date drivers for other free UNIXes, e.g. FreeBSD.

Most of their GPUs are still used for gaming and graphics acceleration, but you are right that their cards and drivers generally work well on Linux and FreeBSD. I think the main issue is that they have no intention of making their driver open-source which understandably irks the Linux community.

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

#100

Post by ken »

While I appreciate having choices at some levels, for infrastructure it's always good to have everyone agreed. Desktop Linux has been held back by the X11/replacement situation for years (there, I'll say it), and the sooner we can all get (back) on the same page, at least for this one piece, the better.

Many open-source communities are run by perfectionists (and I must count myself among the worst of them). While it's a noble goal to create a gem that will stand the test of time, it's disheartening to see proprietary products move faster by making a decision, even a lousy one, and then shipping it and making it work.

Post reply on HN