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

#481

Post by ddevault » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #452

hannasanarion wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope! Not unless your DE has implemented their own custom screenshot solution, and your screenshot program has Code to interface with that DE.

Don't throw such bullshit. Of course you can take screenshots, and no a screenshot program does not need to be adjusted for each DE. The screenshot program only needs to interface with the org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot api, which works on GNOME, KDE and wlroots.

The dbus screenshot API does not work on wlroots without a standalone bridge.

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

#482

Post by Crinus » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

arghwhat wrote: post #467

Crinus wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he refers to the fact that Nvidia's drivers provided excellent OpenGL support for multiple years compared to the absolute dumpsterfire that fglrx was. Before Valve decided to pay attention to Linux and thus prod AMD to improve their drivers, if you wanted anything approaching serious 3D performance on Linux, you had to use Nvidia. Anything else would be a waste of money.

Fair enough: That was indeed true many years ago.

Not that many, fglrx's replacement amdgpu was released in april 2015, that is just four years ago. And it wasn't until later that it got usable.

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

#483

Post by shmerl » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #474

shmerl wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend you simply to switch to AMD if you are using Linux and want a high end GPU. That's the only way for you to get a usable desktop with modern features. Or wait until Intel will release a new GPU next year, it should work well with upstream too. Nvidia has no interest in making their cards play well with Linux, so just avoid them completely to keep your sanity and don't waste your time trying to work around…

Or you know, just don't use the linux desktop. Nvidia's drivers are the only ones with a good Vulkan / OpenGL implementation, the other ones are underperforming severely. Nvidia also exclusively develops CUDA, so it basically it the only serious alternative for accelerating scientific workloads. Basically no-one cares what Kernel/Window system developers think as long don't cripple the Kernel severely enough that NVI…

> Nvidia's drivers are the only ones with a good Vulkan / OpenGL implementation

On the contrary, Nvidia drivers have bad reputation of violating OpenGL spec left and right. Mesa is a lot more strict about OpenGL compliance.

And they don't have Vulkan advantage either. Don't use Windows if you need good quality OpenGL.

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

#484

Post by mnm1 » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #472

mnm1 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any decent high end laptops that use AMD? I haven't seen anything. Not Lenovo. Not Dell. Not system 76 or any other Linux vendors. I prefer one too considering what shit nvidia drivers are. So the Redhat/wayland people are essentially saying all powerful laptops that have a chance of running Linux are already obsolete even ones not released yet? Redhat is powerful but not powerful enough to decide that. Fuc…

MacBook Pro's generally use AMD I think (although Apple laptops were about 40% more expensive for an equivalent spec when I looked). nVidia needs to choose to support Wayland, not Redhat.

Yeah that's what I suspected. Unfortunately mbpros have many other issues with Linux, if they even have drivers at all for the new ones. As far as nvidia they won't budge so Redhat going in on a technology that isn't supported by a large majority of its user base seems a failing on their part to me. Then again, I don't think they care much about desktop Linux so I can see where they are coming from focusing on server products and the minimal ui needed to occasionally run a gui rather than something one could use every day like os x or even windows. So much for the Linux desktop.

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

#485

Post by ori_b » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

calcifer wrote: post #277

ori_b wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long did it take to get multiple monitors working with xrandr, again?

Funnily enough, this is exactly what I was talking about. Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView, they simply didn't add support for the open source xrandr for 4-5 years, but even that has been supported for ~7 years now.

> Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView

And Xorg supported them for decades before using Xinerama. Instead of collaborating with upstream, they just dumped something incompatible and broken, and said "Deal with it".

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

#486

Post by arghwhat » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #368

arghwhat wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the small decade it took them to support KMS so that their driver behaved even remotely like a modern one? Or perhaps their marvelous installation methods of running a random script as root that rewrites configuration files, and its configuration interface that likewise also rewrites configuration files in attempts to get multi-monitor setups working that until recently hardly ever worked? Maybe…

Most distros have a nvidia driver package that aligns with the kernel version shipped. This also means updating one updates the other automatically. Furthermore lag time for supporting newest kernel normally lags what 30 days? In brief what you are describing is self inflicted wounds.

Indeed, any problems spawning from using NVIDIA can be considered self-inflicted, which is why I left that dumpsterfire.

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

#487

Post by earenndil » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #449

earenndil wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exclusive fullscreen = application runs directly on the screenbuffer, bypassing the compositor. Not just that a window happens to be taking up the whole screen.

This is never going to exist the same way it did in X, which was a hack around the X display model.

Well--no, not in the same way, but it can still be a hint passed along somewhere, to allow the compositor to swap out its root framebuffer for the program's.

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

#488

Post by rleigh » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #395

zokula wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with your suggestion is that Wayland won't be around in 15 years while Xorg will still be km kicking.

What makes you think that? The maintainers of both Wayland and Xorg have chosen to take Xorg behind the barn and shoot it.

That's not the germane point. There are applications dating back over 30 years written for X11. Thousands upon thousands of them. Compatibility matters.

Wayland may turn out to be a flash in the pan. Those applications aren't going away. I have many open source and proprietary applications which I fully intend to carry on using. They don't, and won't, support Wayland.

Unless you're using a modern toolkit which will be modified to support Wayland, you're not going to be using Wayland in a hurry. Because you'll be tied into the X11 world.

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

#489

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #167

badsectoracula wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your best bet is to commit now to switching, entirely, to Wayland. The aim is to get everyone off of X altogether as quickly as possible, and then stop shipping X (including XWayland) altogether. Ah, it is the "32bit isn't needed anymore" all over again. Yeah, this will happen around the same time you wont need to ship 32bit support on Linux :-)

If the sole maintainer of the 32-bit code base decided to fuck off, and no one else is stepping up, your choices are to either stick with your old OS forever, or get a 64-bit machine. This is where we're at with Wayland and X.

Maybe nobody is stepping up because they have no reason to do so and nobody even asked for anyone to do so? If the message was "hey, we want to stop working on Xorg and move to Wayland, is anyone interested in taking over?" instead of "Xorg is dead, we wont work on it, nobody will work on it, ever" then perhaps some people would show up?

Besides, even though i am not interested in taking over Xorg, if something breaks on it i'm more likely to look into fixing it than switching my environment to Wayland.

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

#490

Post by darkpuma » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #451

darkpuma wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to put up the money? Not Redhat, they don't want to pay for it anymore. Will the nvidia users? Will they be willing to pay for their card twice? Will Nvidia pay for the continued development of X, when they already seem to loath spending money on linux? If nobody picks up the slack, the paths ahead seems pretty clear. Either Nvidia produces a proper driver, or their support for the Linux desktop can be cl…

This is exactly the kind of reasoning that has always stood in the way of real people using Linux. It makes me sad that we've come a really long way towards taking that mindset out of the OS and we seem to be moving back to it again.

You may not like my reasoning, but how is my reasoning wrong? Somebody needs to pick up the slack now that Redhat has no interest in funding X. All you're doing is protesting that you don't appreciate this situation, but that's irrelevant.

It doesn't matter who the ones "suffering" are. What do you expect to do, convince me of the moral necessity of supporting nvidia cards so that I turn back time and devote my life to reverse engineering GPUs and implementing FOSS drivers? That can't happen. I don't have the power to support nvidia cards, only Nvidia has that power, and they seem to have no interest in exercising it. It doesn't matter if you convince me that nvidia card support is more important that curing child cancer; the situation remains unchanged. To change the situation you must convince nvidia, complaining to anybody else about it is a waste of your time.