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The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

phoronix.com

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Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#481

Post by nsajko »

Androider wrote: post #438
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…

The problems Wayland solve are those of yesteryear, sprinkled with the broken dreams that we'd all be running it on Linux phones by now. In that context a strict security model makes sense. Trouble is, that security model makes no sense on today's desktop. In 2020, people aren't downloading and running native applications on desktops, not even (especially?) on Linux. The desktop is now solely a manager of browser win…

One more thing: the Wayland security model doesn't make much sense anyway, considering that running untrusted code over a large attack surface and without at least virtualization is probably a bad idea anyway nowadays (and even virtual machines can be escaped from).

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#482

Post by ywei3410 »

jcelerier wrote: post #432
akvadrako wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wayland base can be implemented in a library, like wlroots, which complete compositors could use. Currently compositor developers prefer separate implementations and it's really their choice.

the fact that the system provides a choice is the issue that leads to fragmentation (which is the main problem). Saying "people could just do / not do X" absolutely never ever ever works, not in politics, not in programming, not in "not being an asshole to each other", not in "not using firearms", etc - things have to be enforced & unescapable at some point if we want sanity.

I’m not entirely sure that I understand your point. Here are the facts which I think we can agree on.

* X11 is a protocol

* Wayland is a protocol

* X11 and Wayland are not compatible protocols

* Wayland protocols are all public

* XOrg is an implementation of the compositor of the X11 protocol

* wl_roots is a toolkit used for creating compositors

From this, it follows that:

* Anyone can theoretically write another X11 compositor which implements a subset of the functionality

* Anyone can write a Wayland compositor which implements a subset of the functionality

I really don’t understand where this supposed extra fragmentation is coming from — unless your objection is that we have more than one Wayland compositor? I don’t see that as a particularly bad; in the same way I don’t see having GNOME, i3 and XFCE existing is necessarily problematic.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#483

Post by p_l »

symlinkk wrote: post #359
p_l wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet, they have built the most popular desktop environment for Linux. To me, GNOME (on Fedora) feels more polished and visually consistent than Windows 10, which is impressive considering the massive imbalance of resources between those two projects. Would that have been possible if they listened to the zealots online who complain if they don’t support every possible configuration under the sun? I don’t think so.

It's not about supporting every possible configuration under the sun. It's often about not supporting the bare minimum that would make it a good environment, based on "know better" from people who have no relevant experience.

The IBus case is classic example - There was high-handed declaration that having one single global IME state is "easier" for users. The problem is when you regularly have to use languages that are incompatible in writing systems and input methods. Whether its one of the CJK or switching between one of the cyrillic variants and latin, life is much easier when you can have separate input state between let's say an Instant Messenger and your IDE.

For me, I recall the "canary in the coal mine" was when they refused (despite earlier promises and roadmaps) to re-implement certain things related to printing, again in a way that probably didn't bother the developers.

A similar case involves all the very deep integration with systemd, where they essentially declared that there's one Operating System under the Sun and its name is Fedora.

And it might feel more polished than Windows 10 on surface, yes. But then it's much less capable and the resources in Windows go towards things like not breaking people's software and behaviours.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#484

Post by modified001 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #433
wegs wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newer isn't better-designed. Unix was really well-designed, compared to so much of the modern stuff, and it does everything I need. Nineties Linux was a nice Unix. I wish we hadn't spent the past quarter-century turning it into nineties Windows, with layers upon layers upon layers of cruft. I don't get why Wayland is slow, when Enlightenment was fast on machines with 32MB of RAM, a 3dfx Voodoo, a spinning HDD, and a…

I've heard enlightenment can be a Wayland compositor now, could you try it? Also I think 3dfx Voodoo was the magic pixie dust, once you ever go OpenGL, you're not going back.

https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#485

Post by p2t2p »

I recently went back to dwm (X11) from Sway (Wayland).

As much as I love Sway, doing all sorts of weird stuff just to share my screen in zoom is too much of a hustle.

I'll probably keep using Sway on my personal device where I don't need that feature, but my work computer will be X11 for a while.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#486

Post by p_l »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #439
p_l wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took about a decade for NetworkManager to gain CLI, all the time it tried to eat more and more control over network stack. It was also opinionated in the worst possible way, like responding to requests to support ad-hoc wifi mode (back when NM was only about WiFi) with "your request is dumb, you're dumb, and we will never do that". It got usable within last few years as somewhat general thing (after having already…

NetworkManager was literally just a GUI initially, wasn't it? IIRC in 2006, connecting to wifi from the CLI on a system with NetworkManager involved running the wpa_supplicant commands that NetworkManager wrapped.

It already had beginnings of current architecture, but at the time it only wrapped iwconfig and wpa_supplicant, yes.

But the decision to leave people who asked for ad-hoc support (especially when, outside of USA and possibly few other countries, access points were still not as common equipment) was done by design, not because it would require any significant increase in code (IMO).

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#487

Post by modified001 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #433
wegs wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newer isn't better-designed. Unix was really well-designed, compared to so much of the modern stuff, and it does everything I need. Nineties Linux was a nice Unix. I wish we hadn't spent the past quarter-century turning it into nineties Windows, with layers upon layers upon layers of cruft. I don't get why Wayland is slow, when Enlightenment was fast on machines with 32MB of RAM, a 3dfx Voodoo, a spinning HDD, and a…

I've heard enlightenment can be a Wayland compositor now, could you try it? Also I think 3dfx Voodoo was the magic pixie dust, once you ever go OpenGL, you're not going back.

A developer sharing is experience working with EFL:

https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#488

Post by ludocode »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #468
horsawlarway wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... having used both X and Wayland as daily drivers, you're fucking insane if you think you can EVER get me back on X. On Wayland I get excellent multi-monitor support (mixed scaling ratios, much better automatic detection and configuration, much better plug-and-play). I also have a touchpad on my XPS that feels just as good as a Mac. To boot, I haven't had to touch a config file related to input devices or out…

Cannot say Wayland works smoothly on my triple-monitor setup. One of the monitors sometimes stops working randomly, and wakes up to display Plymouth screen when I reboot the thing. Dell Precision 7520 with an AMD GPU. The degree of flakiness is different depending on whether you're on Plasma or GNOME, but it's there nonetheless.

I'm guessing that's an AMD GPU thing and not a Wayland thing. I run a triple-monitor setup with an AMD GPU on X.org and I have a similar problem: every once in a while when I boot my PC one of the monitors just doesn't come to life. Restarting X usually fixes it.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#489

Post by sergeykish »

taeric wrote: post #452
sergeykish wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I only really care about performance and Wayland hasn’t been very convincing [0] with no discernible improvement over X11. there would be no controversy with "I only really care about GNOME performance and GNOME Wayland hasn’t been very convincing [0] with no discernible improvement over GNOME X11" GNOME matters for you, it does not matter for me (xmonad, xterm, browsers). If all user see is GNOME he can decide it…

Ah, fair. Taking back to the root, I see the connection. Since you directed specifically at me, I took it just back to my entrance. Continuing in that vein. I stand by pointing that the choice of benchmark matters. I've been burned by my own choices and choices from peers too often to agree that hypothetical benchmarks will see improvements for everyone. I also find it dubious that there are many use cases that are b…

It would be nice to reproduce phoronix results. Do they run in GNOME shell? What if I run in Sway? What exactly they expect of Selenium? I've heard gedit startup example.

Sorry, I can't continue until you've watched presentation [1]

> gedit startup:

> 130 blocking InternAtom calls

> 34 blocking GetProperty calls

> 116 property change requests

> blocking because Xlib is terrible

> usually spends 25ms waiting for requests

> sometimes spends 1428ms

[1] https://youtu.be/GWQh_DmDLKQ?t=1390

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#490

Post by horsawlarway »

freetime2 wrote: post #140
ceronman wrote: post #22

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?

I last tried Wayland on Ubuntu 19.10, but quickly went back to Xorg after discovering some issues trying to share my screen on Zoom. I don’t remember what the issues were specifically, but given that Xorg was working perfectly fine, it wasn’t something I was willing to spend much effort troubleshooting. It sounds like screen sharing is a known problem area? Does anyone know if they have fixed these issues in later ve…

Screen sharing and recording are a pain point because the default security model of Wayland doesn't allow applications to see what other applications are rendering.

That said, Pipewire is a working solution for Zoom today on Wayland. I'm not on Ubuntu, so I don't know if the Chromium package they ship has Pipewire enabled by default, but my guess is that they do.

I use a small extension to automatically default Zoom to opening calls in the browser (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zoom-redirector/fm...) and there I can share screens just fine (Full desktop, application window only, etc - For the most part, things work fine).

I'd give it another 12 months if you don't want to have to think about it at all, but I'll be honest, Arch/Gnome/Wayland is the happiest I've EVER been on desktop linux.

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