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The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

phoronix.com

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Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#71

Post by rjzzleep »

znpy wrote: post #38

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.

I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works, but then it really only works for a subset of things. For the rest it's actually worse than Xorg.

Multiscreen is Xorg is kinda mushy so I thought maybe Wayland fixes it, but no it doesn't.

Wayland is now 12 years old and everything is still half-baked.

It quotes an intel developer saying they don't want to do any more stuff on Xorg. But the reality is that as much as I admire intels open source contributions. I don't remember a time where all the features in the Intel driver actually fully worked. But sure, maybe it's an Xorg issue, or they don't know how to do release management.

Either way, Wayland doesn't seem to solve the problems it promised to fix.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#72

Post by brabel »

s1k3s wrote: post #30
lloydatkinson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s this kind of endless stream of broken and incompatible technologies that makes me use Linux in server and embedded scenarios only. Every time I’ve had to use desktop Linux it’s just been one problem after another.

Not sure what you're trying to use it for but I've been on Mint for the past 4 years and I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution. I'm using it for development, I also have a personal Mac and my work PC is Windows and I can say the Linux is miles ahead of both of them. And the Mac and Windows computers have been $1500…

> I've been on Mint for the past 4 years and I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution.

That's funny. I was on Linux Mint (windows PC with dual boot) for a few years, then I bought a Dell XPS13 with Ubuntu installed from the factory. I really wanted to like the XPS13, but both the hardware and the OS were just so poor compared to my Mac (that I used at work) that after a few broken things (power source plug broke, the fan was very noisy when I was coding on an IDE, the trackpad was not nearly as advanced as the Macs', shortcuts broke when I upgraded to Ubuntu 19, then to 20, language switching suddenly started taking 2 seconds for no reason, etc etc etc I hope you get the point) that I decided to finally hit the bank and get a little MacBook Air... what a life changing experience: even though the specs of the MacBook Air are a lot lower than the XPS13, it's just a incredibly superior UX. No fan noise even when using the most out of my IDE... trackpad is awesome... even the keyboard is excellent (after the fiasco of the previous Macs, they did get it right), quite superior to the XPS13. The OS itself is just much prettier in all aspects. I feel a small amount of delay sometimes when putting some pressure on the processor, but that's still not something I would call remotely annoying (as opposed to the incredibly annoying Linux UX).

As much as I don't like using Apple stuff due to price and their closed-garden policies, I just can't pass on the superior UX.

Even though my Windows and Linux machines are still available in my closet, I just never had the desire to touch them again since I got the Mac. Unfortunately!

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#73

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

trashburger wrote: post #32

I think the solution is not Wayland but an X12, that is, a protocol that solves the problems of the aging X11 protocol while also not completely breaking compatibility and requiring the use of a separate Xorg server within Wayland. I wish people had gone that way instead of fully dismissing Xorg.

I disagree and think a clean break was the way to go. X had acquired a whole lot of legacy baggage and compatibility with that should be provided by a separate piece of code.

Wayland should have been a completely new thing built with the lessons learned from X but vastly simplified for how modern display systems are actually used. Unfortunately it was built with no intent to handle many of the common use cases X already handled just fine, leaving that up to third parties to develop their own ways handling it, leading to some fragmentation (Linux really needed more fragmentation!) and very slow adoption.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#74

Post by boudin »

trashburger wrote: post #32

I think the solution is not Wayland but an X12, that is, a protocol that solves the problems of the aging X11 protocol while also not completely breaking compatibility and requiring the use of a separate Xorg server within Wayland. I wish people had gone that way instead of fully dismissing Xorg.

Since wayland has been pretty much started by Xorg developers, you can consider it as X12 I guess.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#75

Post by jcelerier »

mrob wrote: post #66
znpy wrote: post #38

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.

I'm against Wayland because it forces compositing on all windowed applications. I'll stay on Xorg as long as possible because I'm not willing to sacrifice latency for no tearing.

yep, compositor latency is infuriating when you're used to non-composited UI

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#76

Post by p_l »

kochthesecond wrote: post #70
p_l wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have to say the story on server side decorations is nasty and disappointing from the GNOME devs.

It's evolution of the stance that started in early GNOME 2.x time, and crystallised with GNOME 3. Similar to how GNOME 3.8 was used to push systemd one everyone, similar to how they tried to push their own idea about input methods on everyone (since I don't use IBus, I don't know if they finally succeeded - fortunately UIM and XIM still work).

"We know better" could be their motto.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#77

Post by vetinari »

willtim wrote: post #23
flavor8 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your problem with NetworkManager? It's generally good, and certainly much better than what came before.

This isn't true. It was never as good as Intel's Connman, which was designed to be modular from the start. NetworkManager started out as a UI app and then was evolved into what it is now. It's still not as fast as connecting to WiFi as Connman. I guess it was adopted instead of Connman because RedHat.

NM doesn't connect to wifi by itself, it uses wpa supplicant for that. If something is slow, it is wpa supplicant. Fortunately, nm backends are modular and you can use Intel's iwd instead.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#78

Post by simcop2387 »

boudin wrote: post #21
est31 wrote: post #7

Today I've updated to the newest Kubuntu release 20.10 and considered switching to Wayland, but then abandoned the idea when I found out that middle click copy paste is only implemented in Plasma 5.20, and I only have Plasma 5.19. I've seen they've fixed the screenshot program though (which I remember to have been an issue on older versions). I'm looking forward to 21.04 for my next attempt to switch, maybe by then F…

Firefox native support is pretty much here already (I've been using it for quite a time now and it works really well). The only missing piece that is not merged yet is screen sharing unfortunately. It's available on Fedora's Firefox build. All GTK3 apps runs well on Wayland too. Qt apps runs well but it doesn't feel as polished (I mainly have issues when I use 2 screen with different scaling). The last big things are…

Based on my somewhat limited testing, the qt stuff is much better with qt 5.15, which is a very new release (and what kde plasma 5.20 is based on).

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#79

Post by corty »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #31
corty wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear you are right. While there might be commits in the Wayland repos, featurewise progress has ceased. Waylands broken architecture has made progress hard to impossible. Porting of popular window managers is extremely slow since there is just no thought given to X compatibility. Input handling by each application on its own is insane and broken. Feature-consistency across compositors on things like screenshots is…

In what way is Wayland's architecture broken? Is there a critique floating around I could look at?

The design overview slides are their own critique: Wayland does almost nothing besides render buffer handling. Input? Applications job. Window decorations? Compositors job. Application talking to the Compositor? Somebody elses job. Clipboard? Maybe compositor or toolkit. Screenshots and remoting? Somebody elses job, but only after Wayland has bored the appropriate holes in its security model. This all leads to a ton of incompatibilities between compositors, toolkits and applications. And beyond Gnome, the full "featureset" is still not implemented, where "featureset" is barely adequate as an X11 replacement.

But the buffer handling is great, no more flickering...

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#80

Post by znpy »

diegocg wrote: post #69
znpy wrote: post #38

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.

>backwards compatibility is pretty much disregarded. 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

last time i checked remote desktop (ala vnc) was not really a thing and opening remote apps on the local display (ala ssh -X) wasn't a thing either.

That's disregard for backwards compatibility to me.

edit: which is not to shit on wayland itself, it's to complain about the general attitude which is like "just don't do that" or "oh that's old, we don't support that"

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