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The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

phoronix.com

101–110 of 714 posts

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#101
The fact that both X.org and Wayland are unusable and have horrible architectures for various different reasons, plus both seem to be abandonware, does not give me hope that desktop Linux will ever become a meaningful thing within the next two decades.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#102
post #57

I have been using sway on Fedora for a year. It's been really good so. It's a smaller niche than X.org's, but I get to do everything I need. HiDPI support is just right, just throw output eDP1-1 scale 2 in the config and you're set. Clipboard works perfectly splendid, screen-sharing works (not as perfectly splendid as clipboard does), input works, chromium/electron is getting support for native wayland. Qt and GTK Wa…

Just out of curiosity, how does screenshare work for you? I've been trying setting it up for work (slack/teams), but to this day it just doesn't work. Using debian sid, so pretty up-to date packages tbh.

I just start new xorg session for screenshare, which, frankly, sucks.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. This is crazy when you think about it. I remember running an X server, Hummingbird I think it was called, on 386 and 486 machines connecting to Suns and it was fine , this was a perfectly acceptable way to work. Couple of xterms, an Emacs, xbiff for email, maybe some xeyes just for fun. Devel…

What could be the reason behind this? Asking as a noob.

Part of it is toolkits throwing sometimes multiple megabyte bitmaps to draw, which starts to have problems the moment you don't have a zerocopy, gpu accelerated method to draw them.

The old core protocol approach extensively used optimized graphic operations on the server side, with clients sending things like "draw me a rectangle/fill a rectangle/draw a bunch of lines" etc. - today you're going to get pretty big bitmap (especially with high dpi).

It's the same problem that mobile devices faced, and is related to a lot of issues on how android devices were "janky" (and related to the various hacks that Apple did to make sure your application wasn't capable of overstressing the early iPhones - cause just displaying basic UI was close to doing that.)

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#104
I'm all for Wayland - I agree with its direction and focus. However, Wayland will take a long time to reach the maturity that X.org has had for decades, including remote support. As a result, having both X.org and Wayland available on your disto is probably going to be the norm (and should be the norm) for a while. X.org is less "abandonware" and more "transitionware" in my opinion.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#105

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 alre…

I love how people say that an unified method of taking screenshots, screen streaming, screen recording and performance in general is legacy baggage.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#107
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.

Who are you expecting to provide this for you?

Let me fill in with my perspective as a Mac user: I expect the vendor (i.e Apple) to supply a decent desktop environment. The did a quite good job at it. I didn’t need to pay extra, it was included in the sale of the computer.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#108
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.

Who are you expecting to provide this for you?

Who is he to expect non half assed solution? That's your answer?

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#109
This is a rather worrying stance to be pushing on something which is relied upon day in and day out. The phoronix author has lost credibility with me by the opinion expressed in this article.

With this kind of FUD, it is no wonder Linux has a hard time being accepted on the desktop. What enterprises -- and everyday developers like me -- need, is a stable desktop to run IDEs and the like. As an example, Debian with Xorg has been fantastic for me for several years for JetBrains tools and GSuite for mail and docs, which is a pretty complete setup, and in the WFH era, Zoom and Teams just work. This is what we should be striving for -- boring, predictable, reliability, not juggling with chainsaws on the bleeding edge.

X11 comes from a different time, but any successor must be worthy, not just have a different approach. It's also worth remembering that much of Windows' practical longevity is due to its backwards compatibility. It's not shiny, but it works, and that begets loyalty.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. This is crazy when you think about it. I remember running an X server, Hummingbird I think it was called, on 386 and 486 machines connecting to Suns and it was fine , this was a perfectly acceptable way to work. Couple of xterms, an Emacs, xbiff for email, maybe some xeyes just for fun. Devel…

What could be the reason behind this? Asking as a noob.

What could be the reason behind this? Asking as a noob

Abstractions piled on top of abstractions. Something that might have been 5 function calls deep on either side with a carefully crafted packet in the middle is now 100s on each side.

We have a culture that prizes programmer happiness above all and this means everyone thinks "this is a mess, I'll put my own layer on top to make it nice, then work above that layer". Repeat 100 times and now you have processors literally 2000 times faster that struggle to even keep up with keypresses. But what noone wants to admit, is that it's messy because the problem domain is messy and sometimes you just have to live with the mess and get some real work done. The programmers of old understood this.

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