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'[...] but a prominent Intel open-source developer has conceded that the X.Org Server is pretty much "abandonware" with Wayland being the future.' So? A "prominent US politician" recently conceded that global warming is a hoax by the Chinese, with coal being the future. Should I be doubling over myself to dismantle my solar panels? Very weasel-wordy article if you ask me. X11 is fine.
Yes, I agree. X11 is a historic artifact that is supposed to be honored in the museum now. The C/S architecture of X11 hits the spot when terminals and thin client are the norm, that means 20-30 years ago, but today, we all have dedicated graphics display devices (GPU, monitors) even in our pocket smartphone, and the way X11 works is holding Linux desktop scene back. But without X11 there you can't show how much impr…
I think X11 not seeing a lot of development doesn't necessarily mean that it's abandonware, it's probably more that people like me who still use it feel like it's effectively feature-complete.
And I won't take the word from some graphics hardware vendor that it is abandonned. Over the years they've always done the bare minimum to support the Linux desktop so of course they'll take the first opportunity to claim that X is "abandonware" so that they have a plausible excuse for dropping support.
I have been using Fedora with Wayland daily for over 7 months now and I it works pretty well. I see that there are a lot of complains about Wayland here on HN. About input, screenshots and other stuff. But I have not experienced any of that. Input works perfectly and I have no problem with screenshots or screencasts. Maybe it's that I have well supported hardware (Thinkpad X1C7) or is it something that I'm missing?
You are probably only using Gnome and GTK3 applications. Everything else lags behind (because in Wayland you need to reinvent everything for each WM and toolkit). Everything is also incompatible because of all those reimplementations, so if you don't just stick to the one true Gnome way, it will be broken. If you just do what Fedora is designed for, I agree that it can be fine.
I have been using Fedora with Wayland daily for over 7 months now and I it works pretty well. I see that there are a lot of complains about Wayland here on HN. About input, screenshots and other stuff. But I have not experienced any of that. Input works perfectly and I have no problem with screenshots or screencasts. Maybe it's that I have well supported hardware (Thinkpad X1C7) or is it something that I'm missing?
It isn't anything to do with the hardware, it is the design assumption that isolating application's input and output should be mandatory.
In hindsight; that was a design mistake. The correct design is probably something like isolation by default but optional (ie, allowing sharing). The current design means further protocols and de-facto standards are required to support, eg, streaming and screenshots. That is bad for an ecosystem that relies on low barriers to entry to get good software written.
Basically, there needed to be a security model but the developers skipped it because it seemed like it shouldn't be the compositor's job. And after a very painful couple of years, seems quite likely that it was the compositor's job.
I am not necessarily against Wayland or new things in general. But it bothers me when no clear upgrade path is defined ("drop your stuff" is not acceptable) and a half-hassed incomplete solution is proposed instead, and backwards compatibility is pretty much disregarded. For what concerns my personal computing, I'll stay on Xorg until XFCE supports Wayland. Then I'll update.
1) Wayland is really slow. I don't know if it's the compositing or what but it's unusable on lighter hardware that X ran fine on.
2) Widget toolkits handling window decoration is awful. Before the large number of toolkits just meant some controls were a little different but now basic behavior changes based on how programmers decided to build an app. And if you don't like the window decorations (say, they take up too much screen space) your choices are suck it up, or if you're lucky and willing to spend a bunch of time reconfigure every different toolkit your apps use.
3) basic stuff that worked fine on X11 doesn't work on wayland in the name of "security" (screenshots are a big one, there are extensions but isn't that the complaint about X? And if there's a security problem with something isn't hacking around with it because people need it a really strong indication that the idea is broken and probably making the situation worse?)
I am not necessarily against Wayland or new things in general. But it bothers me when no clear upgrade path is defined ("drop your stuff" is not acceptable) and a half-hassed incomplete solution is proposed instead, and backwards compatibility is pretty much disregarded. For what concerns my personal computing, I'll stay on Xorg until XFCE supports Wayland. Then I'll update.
Wayland compositors provide backwards compatibility with most X11 apps via XWayland, I don't think it's fair to say that they completely disregard compatibility
I have been using Fedora with Wayland daily for over 7 months now and I it works pretty well. I see that there are a lot of complains about Wayland here on HN. About input, screenshots and other stuff. But I have not experienced any of that. Input works perfectly and I have no problem with screenshots or screencasts. Maybe it's that I have well supported hardware (Thinkpad X1C7) or is it something that I'm missing?
It depends on your desktop environment and the applications, because the only compatible parts of Wayland are the dumbest "draw a rectangular window" and simplest input support (assuming your "WM" implemented the input right). Essentially, what could depend on shared standards and implementations in X11, can't do so in Wayland, and there are two major forks when it comes to protocol extensions, as well as major fork…