The X.Org Server Is Abandonware? • Hacker News Board

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#181

Post by gnufx » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #83

swiley wrote: post #67

Sure X.org is abandonware but there are serious problems Wayland still hasn't solved that X has. 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 programm…

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…

For what it's worth, Exceed was never fine in my experience, and you were better off with the Cygwin server. At one time, the first thing to ask about certain sorts of Emacs problems that were reported was "Are you running Exceed?", with high probability the answer would be "Yes". I never understood why "we" paid for it. But, yes, X did always run on relatively low-resource machines. (I can't comment on how Wayland compares.)

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#182

Post by badsectoracula » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

So why not just fork it?

If the maintainers do not want to maintain it anymore... why not just fork it? I've heard people saying that it is big and complex but some time ago i downloaded the code of the X server itself and it didn't seem that big (i've worked in much bigger codebases myself).

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#183

Post by ddevault » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

verroq wrote: post #166

ddevault wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME is not a good representative of Wayland. Wayland is just a protocol - it's up to the compositors to have good performance to distinguish it from Xorg, and GNOME does not do well in this regard. Other compositors, particularly wlroots, enjoy excellent performance. Wayland also opens the door to many performance improvements which are not possible on Xorg, and which take advantage of newer GPU features, especiall…

Is there a benchmark where it blows X11 out of the water?

I am not aware of any up-to-date benchmarks which make a fair comparison (i.e. not just benchmarking GNOME), but I am intimately familiar with the technology and its performance characteristics.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#184

Post by adwn » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #110

Flex247A wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Okay, nice rant, but are too many layers of abstraction the actual cause for Wayland's (alleged?) slowness compared to X? From what I understand, no.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#185

Post by dralley » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #105

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those standards need to exist, but those standards do not need to exist as part of the display protocol.

People make this mistake over and over and over. Nothing prevents the compositor writers from deciding on a common API for screenshots and similar things (and there has been movement in this direction)

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#186

Post by fugufugu » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

Curiously, noone mentioned Xenocara[1] yet?

[1]: https://www.xenocara.org/

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#187

Post by adwn » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #83

swiley wrote: post #67

Sure X.org is abandonware but there are serious problems Wayland still hasn't solved that X has. 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 programm…

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…

For what it's worth, whenever I tunneled X over a non-local SSH connection, it was slow as molasses. That's because almost all contemporary GUI applications render to a bitmap anyway. Those that actually use the outdated X vector graphics operations look like utter garbage compared to anything post-1995. Frankly, I'd rather my applications are at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#188

Post by josefx » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #159

rjzzleep wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wayland is a protocol. It has nothing to do with multi screen support. You're talking about the compositor you used. The one I use handles multi-screen setups quite well.

> Wayland is a protocol.

A protocol definition could cover multi screen support, requiring implementors to do something sane. Of course one of the reasons that Wayland exists was to cut down the bloat X had accumulated over the years. Given that it is rather surprising that the Wayland spec isn't just an empty page.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#189

Post by taeric » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

beervirus wrote: post #139

oriesdan wrote: post #94

This sounds like a bad case of Cult of Release. X works perfectly for me, and there is nothing I would want it to do that it doesn't do now. Why should it change? I have many programs I wrote years ago that I don't change and I use every day. Constant changes are not a measure of utility. But again and again, you'll find users looking at repositories and deciding that something is "dead" because there isn't any recen…

Having an active maintainer fixing security bugs as they arise isn’t “finding new problems to solve.”

While not wrong, ignores that this isn't the norm.

I think we could use the terms releasing and maintaining. Constant releases is not the same as constant maintenance. And it is hard to agree that our industry sees that.

By way of analogy, we seem to think we can improve the roads by building new bridges every year.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#190

Post by jhasse » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #173

ddevault wrote: post #152

Oh, look, more non-experts spreading misinformation about Wayland on HN. Must be Sunday. https://drewdevault.com/2019/02/10/Wayland-misconceptions-de...

So, there are plugins somewhere that support all kinds of basic functionality. I can already see how nice will be to keep a system like this up to date. Do the developers expect to incorporate those plugins at the main code at some time?

Wayland isn't a code base but a protocol.