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

#211

Post by microcolonel » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

the_pwner224 wrote: post #178

microcolonel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> May I suggest you buy an AMD GPU next time around This doesn't help anyone. I bought an expensive Nvidia GPU 6 years ago, when AMD support on Linux was really bad. What do I do, throw out a perfectly good powerful graphics card and spend another $500 to satisfy the needs of some newfangled software which doesn't solve any of my problems? I've had 6 years to experience the horrors of Nvidia, on multiple machines. I'…

> What do I do, throw out a perfectly good powerful graphics card and spend another $500 to satisfy the needs of some newfangled software which doesn't solve any of my problems?

If you want to replace a card which was expensive six years ago, you can spend a hell of a lot less than five hundred dollars to do so. Even a brand-new RX 570, which will outperform a GTX 770 (the highest performance GPU for $500USD or less in 2013), should only cost you about $130USD today. If you're okay with pre-owned cards, you can get better than that for the same money.

> This doesn't help anyone.

It helps people who are in the market for a new GPU, who want it to work well with Linux, especially the cutting-edge stuff.

Even in 2013 though, I think I was able to run Wayland on a discrete AMD GPU (Terascale 2 or 3?) with at least OpenGL 3.3 available; and it worked OK. I don't think AMD got that working more recently than 2013.

I can understand not wanting AMD's cards on the top end as ca. 2013 (since they were not competitive, IIRC), but now they do have competitive offerings, and their support for desktop Linux is incomparably better, which is why I suggest people go with them.

I don't get why I'm getting flak here.

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

#212

Post by bitwize » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #174

zrm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason they're gaining control is becuase the rest of the linux userbase has decided that although they might complain about Red Hat's work on hacker news and deride it as "not good", it's actually good enough that nobody wants to use any alternative projects to the ones red hat works on. The decisions they're making are what prevents others from doing that. When they make a bad choice you would be willing…

> Then since no one else can justify spending the resources to replace the entire Linux userland Well that's just it, though. Red Hat is spending the resources to maintain and build much of the Linux userland. And they are no longer willing to do so in a way that helps support the userlands for the BSDs or the buffet mentality of building the Linux userland. If people don't want to use the Red Hat userland, then they…

Meanwhile, 20 years ago on Slashdot...

"Well that's just it, though, Microsoft is spending the resources to maintain and build the underlying standards of the PC ecosystem. And they are no longer willing to do so in a way that helps support Linux, the BSDs, or the bazaar mentality of open source. If people don't want to use Windows, then they _need_ to support an entire computing platform that resembles what they want."

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

#213

Post by logicprog » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #209

logicprog wrote: post #134

I'm really not very sad to see X go. It was old, creaky and insecure. As advanced and cool as it may have been at one time, and as much as I respect the people who worked on it, it's time for it to go. As for the people complaining about Wayland possibly missing some of X's features, remember that it takes time for something to mature, to accrete features and fixes, and Wayland hasn't had that time yet. If we give it…

> As for the people complaining about Wayland possibly missing some of X's features, remember that it takes time for something to mature, to accrete features and fixes, and Wayland hasn't had that time yet. It has been a decade, precisely how long does it need to catch up? I ask because from what I can tell it is still missing features that were standard in Windows Vista in 2008, when that OS switched to DWM and WDDM…

If you're talking about screen recording and screenshots, fair point, except that that lack is a result of designing for security.

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

#214

Post by ht85 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

Slightly off-topic, but is anyone here using Wayland with a touchpad?

The last time I tried libinput, the behavior was horrendous compared to a synaptics.

2 finger scrolling had a ~2mm threshold before it activated and wouldn't compensate for the lost distance once the scroll started, making it feel very unnatural.

I couldn't find an option to enable true palm detection either. There was an option to disable the touchpad for a fixed time every time the keyboard was used, which is abysmal compared to how it works normally (ignoring taps and drags if they start too close to an edge).

It's hard to believe that this is the current state of things, but I did search for a way to set it up with no success. Is there a way to get those to work?

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

#215

Post by JeremyNT » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

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…

I've used Wayland and Gnome ever since they became available in Arch Linux, and I've never needed or missed any of those things. Yes early on there were some annoying bugs but this is life on the bleeding edge ;) These days it all just works.

There's a large group of users that goes to great lengths to customize their desktop experience. This kind of change understandably frustrates them. But it's important to understand that many of us just don't care very much.

Can it run gnome-terminal and Firefox? Can I switch resolutions and do multiple displays? That covers a vast majority of what I ever need from a graphical desktop. Beyond that I don't really care how the sausage is made.

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

#216

Post by csande17 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #206

chrisseaton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NVIDIA doesn't support GBM If Nvidia don't support it, how much of a useful standard can it really be?

GBM is a very useful standard if you only ever want to request buffers from drivers that use the Linux kernel's GPU buffer management code and modesetting code. (Preferably only Mesa-based drivers too.) NVidia doesn't use this and probably can't for licensing and other reasons. If you want to talk to any graphics driver that isn't correctly and intimately entwined with the right parts of the Linux kernel, GBM is basi…

I'm not super familiar with the details of this stuff -- does this mean that there's basically no hope of any wlroots-based window manager ever working on non-Linux operating systems like BSD?

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

#217

Post by bitwize » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #76

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…

It sounds weird to me to claim the Wayland ecosystem is less modular than the X ecosystem. With X, you're depending on one huge monolithic display server implementation; with Wayland, you can switch display server at will and they all conform to a common protocol. I get the concern that most of the functionality which used to be in separate programs is now bundled with the Wayland compositor, and I used to share it,…

With X, you can switch your display server as well (and there were proprietary X server offerings available as late as the late 90s/early 2000s). It's just that Xorg, being internally more modular than XFree86, sapped the value add of redoing the entire X server and effectively "won".

In fact, with X you can switch out your display server and keep your window manager. Can't do that with Wayland -- by design.

Now who's huge and monolithic?

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

#218

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

rspeele wrote: post #155

I can't say it any better than JWZ did over 15 years ago. This is the result of the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model and is why Linux will not approach Windows or OSX in usability. Cannot link to his site: JWZ dot org /doc/cadt.html A complete teardown and rebuild of the whole ecosystem (because X succccckkks) is fun! Making something backwards-compatible, or standardized, or polished that "last 90%" so i…

Wayback is HN-safe: https://web.archive.org/web/20030912064745/https://www.jwz.o...

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

#219

Post by beezle » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #185

So what are the BSDs planning on doing? Do OpenBSD/FreeBSD just plan on maintaining their own forks of Xorg, or are there plans to try and port Wayland to these operating systems as well?

FreeBSD user too, I'd like to know that as well. Not going to lay blame on RedHat for doing what is in their own best interest, but do find it troubling that the *nix world has had a major piece of software made redundant on the decision of one company/maintainer.

As an end user my perspective, perhaps incorrect, is that since the late 90s development of application and system software has become increasingly siloed with less diverse views and the involvement of fewer stake holders.

I suppose that would happen based on math alone (more linux end users with no interest beyond a working web browser) but I worry where that path might lead.

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

#220

Post by segmondy » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #95

notatoad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 w…

There's no Red Hat. They got by IBM for $34 billion, I keep seeing a lot of reference to Red Hat in this post. Please call it, what it is. IBM. It's all about money. Much can be said about this, but money has really corrupted and polluted OSS.