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

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#441

Post by sergeykish » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

SweetestRug wrote: post #237

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 have to wonder if this is distribution dependent? On Manjaro my experience with Wayland has been fantastic. I cannot perceive any speed differences vs X.org; Wayland just flies. It would be interesting to poll users and see just what factors are contributing to speed issues. GPU? CPU? Distribution? Wlroots vs Gnome? etc. Learning more about what users experience could be helpful in making W…

I've found GamingOnLinux statistics [1]. Mostly X11, wayland 7%. But look at the other data:

* Both Ubuntu and Arch based distro 40%

* Manjaro helped a lot 15%

* Both AMD and Intel 50%

* AMD GPU 40% and rising

* Open source GPU driver 43% (almost all of it AMD)

* 10% own VR Headset

[1] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=statistics&vi...

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#442

Post by bitwize » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

boudin wrote: post #74

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.

Wayland is in many ways the exact opposite of X design principles. It's a giant rebellious-teenager "fuck you, daddy!" to X11, not really a successor. A successor technology would be great.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#443

Post by _abox » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #411

nsajko wrote: post #132

If Wayland is the future, the future is grim. People often complain that Wayland is taking a long time to catch up to X11, but that actually stems from a deeper issue: Wayland has a horrible design, for an X11 replacement, a design that leads to massive fragmentation issues across the graphical part of the Linux ecosystem. Implementing a Wayland compositor requires much more effort than implementing an X11 window man…

I've added this comment to my favorites; a very succinct description of the problems with Wayland. At this point I wonder if starting from scratch was the right call vs. spending the 12 intervening years trying to (yes) dig into X11 and fix existing issues.

And it doesn't even mention the valuable features of X11 that were considered out of scope for wayland, such as network transparency.

It's really super useful being able to just fire up a program on a remote SSH session and get the window on my local computer. Without having to set up VNC and a window manager etc etc on the remote computer.

Of course this feature also needs a big review. It needs proper security (though tunneling over SSH fixes a lot of that) and there's too many back-and-forths in the protocol leading to it being really sluggish over high-latency connections. Makes sense as it was mainly invented for X-terminals on a local network. Also, more and more features like fonts are now rendered remotely instead of locally on the user's computer (the server in X terminology). NX and X2go fix that mostly but it would be great to have this in the actual protocol. As well as provisions for smooth video streaming.

As well as that, the whole computing industry is moving back from powerful endpoints (PCs) to powerful central computing (now cloud, the mainframes/powerful unix servers in the early days of X). So really, this feature will become more important again.

But yeah I would really prefer to see X11 being brought up to date rather than Wayland. Wayland is focused way too much on the local desktop.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#444

Post by bitwize » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #422

What looks like "typical Linux geeks being geeks" with this situation: 1) the old, mostly working thing is being abandoned in favor of 2) that new thing which doesn't work in so many cases it's laughable, even after 11 years. How many years was it between the concept of X and a working release at Palo Alto? Note that the new situation is so perfect for passing the buck from the windowing system to the compositors, an…

> What looks like "typical Linux geeks being geeks" with this situation:

I call systems like this CADT-compliant after Jamie Zawinski's Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers idea.

Wayland is a system for which CADT-compliance (and maybe security) trumps nearly all other concerns. No surprise, the primary use case for Wayland is and was always GNOME -- the very system for which Zawinski coined CADT.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#445

Post by ubercow13 » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #428

cannedslime wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think our sight is all a little different. I can clearly see 50/60hz strobing in light when others can't. Back in the old CRT days I would get strained eye sight and nausea if I worked at monitors running below 85hz, unless it had long lasting phosphors like the old monochrome CRTs.

Good LCDs are static unless you're running a dvi-vga-displayport-vga-hdmi dongle monster where the pixels are inevitably shifting a bit every instant. What you're more likely to be seeing is PWM backlight flickering at you. If it's indeed the LCD and not the backlight, pray tell us the model so we don't end up buying it.

They didn’t say anything about LCDs.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#446

Post by meddlepal » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

grandinj wrote: post #325

sergeykish wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fedora switched to Wayland, that is unfortunate for X.Org users but basically it means someone stopped fixing issues. You either fix them yourself and contribute back if possible. Or switch to distribution where someone still fixes these issues. I've investigated X.Org caused bug just for two days and since then totally support Wayland development. What we have today is not healthy.

We used to have a well-functioning display server that was robust and battle-tested. The wayland people replaced that with a half-baked solution because they insisted on boiling the ocean - replacing the entire thing in one go, instead of working piecemeal (which the X protocol was explicitly designed to allow). Which is a great pity, because now the day of the Linux Desktop is even further off.

The day of the Linux desktop is Windows with WSL2.

The irony.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#447

Post by josteink » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #71

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…

> I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works

I use Wayland daily and have for a few years. It’s clearly gotten better, and I rarely encounter problems. I do have my load of applications still running in XWayland though.

But yes. Support for varying DPI in my multi-monitor setup is handled much better on Wayland than on X11. I would say much better than on Windows too.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#448

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #444

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #422

What looks like "typical Linux geeks being geeks" with this situation: 1) the old, mostly working thing is being abandoned in favor of 2) that new thing which doesn't work in so many cases it's laughable, even after 11 years. How many years was it between the concept of X and a working release at Palo Alto? Note that the new situation is so perfect for passing the buck from the windowing system to the compositors, an…

> What looks like "typical Linux geeks being geeks" with this situation: I call systems like this CADT-compliant after Jamie Zawinski's Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers idea. Wayland is a system for which CADT-compliance (and maybe security) trumps nearly all other concerns. No surprise, the primary use case for Wayland is and was always GNOME -- the very system for which Zawinski coined CADT.

I mean, could it help if we mercilessly threw away all the code from Xorg that is there to support all the Unixes from the 80s and 90s, all the code paths for kernel-bypassing direct hardware access, and reimplemented the protocol on the same stack Wayland compositors live? Wouldn't it have solved the problems that were not about the protocol design?

Sure if someone wrote it in Rust it would be also safe and secure /s

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#449

Post by bashtoni » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

darthrupert wrote: post #115

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.

Wayland was the last straw for me. It made me switch to Macs after 20 years of almost exclusive Linux on the desktop and a few dev stints. It was cool when my time was less expensive. I check the state of the linux world about once a year still. And obviously keep using it on the servers. Best of luck to everyone using it for desktop. I totally get why you do it, but it's just not for me right now.

I was provided with a Macbook Pro 15" by my work and I struggle to understand comments like this.

Upgrades often break things, I'm forced to use brew to install software which leaves files strewn around the file system and regularly seems to have cross package conflicts.

And don't get me started on the hardware - the laptop is excessively heavy and the keyboard is awful (and I don't just mean the touch bar gimmick).

My personal laptop is a Lenovo Carbon X1 and Fedora runs very nicely on it, requiring very little thought put into management if you're running the default desktop (Gnome). I can update the firmware and BIOS from inside Linux, and Lenovo have even started shipping newer versions of the laptop with Fedora pre-installed.

There's massive scope of tinkering with Linux if you want to, but as long as you're careful with the hardware you buy there's absolutely no need to tinker at all if you don't want to.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#450

Post by shrimp_emoji » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #447

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…

> I keep trying to use Wayland, but it never fully works. Everyone keeps saying how well the highdpi stuff works I use Wayland daily and have for a few years. It’s clearly gotten better, and I rarely encounter problems. I do have my load of applications still running in XWayland though. But yes. Support for varying DPI in my multi-monitor setup is handled much better on Wayland than on X11. I would say much better th…

How's the forced v-sync? I assume all games run XWayland, which makes it a non-issue. (Otherwise, it'd presumably be an FPS hit in a world where adaptive sync [like G-SYNC but not really FreeSync since the latter doesn't really work in Linux lol] makes tearing a thing of the past and obviates v-sync entirely.)

Also, can you use xdotool for key input redirection or screen capture programs and stuff yet?