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

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#551

Post by bsder » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #543

bsder wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) the old, mostly working thing is being abandoned in favor of Except that X11 is NOT "mostly working" for a significant amount of modern usages. Yes, if you happen to want to run your Terminal, Emacs, etc. remotely over a network connection, X11 is your huckleberry--but only because anything more complicated than a bitmap makes that a very difficult problem. If you want HiDPI, subpixel anti-aliasing, color calibr…

None of that require throwing away the entirety of Xorg/X11, breaking every existing application while expecting everyone to rewrite their code in a completely different way, breaking a ton of existing workflows (often without alternatives) and splitting the already tiny Linux desktop in half. Every single thing you've mentioned can be fixed with Xorg/X11. (except subpixel antialiasing because that already existed fo…

> Every single thing you've mentioned can be fixed with Xorg/X11.

Then why hasn't it been fixed?

In open source, those who make the code get to make the decisions--for better or for worse.

My personal opinion as to why X11 gets so few contributors--the build system is so terrible that nobody wants to touch it anymore. I suspect they would get a lot more contributors if they changed to something like meson/ninja which doesn't need to recompile the universe to be correct.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#552

Post by higerordermap » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 3:57 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #505

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…

> > It has been almost a decade, why does Wayland not have a protocol definition for screenshots?" - answer - "Because security, dude! Wayland is designed with the thought that users download random applications from the interwebz which are not trustworthy and run them. Wayland actually makes a lot of sense if you don't think of Linux desktop distributions and desktop systems, but of smartphones. Funny, Android has h…

And screen recorder apps, with a special permission IIRC.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#553

Post by tbr1 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:01 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #551

badsectoracula wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that require throwing away the entirety of Xorg/X11, breaking every existing application while expecting everyone to rewrite their code in a completely different way, breaking a ton of existing workflows (often without alternatives) and splitting the already tiny Linux desktop in half. Every single thing you've mentioned can be fixed with Xorg/X11. (except subpixel antialiasing because that already existed fo…

> Every single thing you've mentioned can be fixed with Xorg/X11. Then why hasn't it been fixed? In open source, those who make the code get to make the decisions--for better or for worse. My personal opinion as to why X11 gets so few contributors--the build system is so terrible that nobody wants to touch it anymore. I suspect they would get a lot more contributors if they changed to something like meson/ninja which…

Xorg has had a meson build system since 2017: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/1549e30...

Are you referring to something else?

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#554

Post by 1_player » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #546

1_player wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not Wayland or "something else". The issue is trying to implement a radical change in the userspace Linux ecosystem. It's not possible without a ton of effort, so it takes an incredible amount of time, sweat and tears. That's the reason it takes 12 years and counting. The utopian philosophy of "Linux is about choice" has doomed any idea of a Linux desktop.

> The utopian philosophy of "Linux is about choice" has doomed any idea of a Linux desktop. If it isn't about "choice" - ie. user control and freedom - then what is the point of using Linux in the first place and not stick with Windows where things are already chosen for you and way more often than not work out of the box because it is by far the most tested against desktop environment?

Libre/open source is the point. Not being restricted by proprietary software and walled gardens.

The only truly successful open source software running on a Linux system is the kernel, because there's NO choice. No talented teenager can write their own Linux kernel that does Y instead. Imagine what would the world look like if there were 50 half compatible, community-managed forks of the Linux kernel.

The year of the Linux desktop won't come because apart from the kernel the ecosystem is incredibly fragmented and reaching consensus is pretty much impossible, so in 2020 we're still deciding whether to do client side or server side decorations.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#555

Post by tbr1 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #496

horsawlarway wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is shipping Wayland by default now. I vastly prefer Wayland on every machine I've used both X and Wayland on (and on laptops, it's frankly hard to describe how much better it is). Basically - Wayland isn't the future, Wayland is the NOW . If you want a great touchpad experience on linux? - Wayland If you want multi-touch and gesture support out of the box? - Wayland If you want multi-monitor support and mixed…

Doesn't Ubuntu use Mir, not Wayland?

Mir is a Wayland compositor. It may not have started off as one, but is today.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#556

Post by sph » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

nialv7 wrote: post #517

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 find it really arrogant to claim "this software does everything I need, so it should never change", while in reality you are but an infinitesimally small part of the user base said software has to support. Sure, all the software can stay where they are if all the developers had to serve is you. But that is just not the reality.

Especially in the Linux world where not asking too much of their own PC is seen as a virtue, so people are running tiling WMs from the nineties, spend their time in Emacs and say everything is fine.

Meanwhile I want my Linux system to run VR, multiple 4K displays, very demanding games and bluetooth headphones. And Linux is the worst for it, because everything feels laggy and half polished there and on the proprietary OS my setup feels MUCH faster.

Sure, it's not Linux's fault, but let's stop saying everything is fine and dandy because Emacs is still running.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#557

Post by fomine3 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #494

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…

> These seem to be intentional design decisions (marketed as being necessary for security, but really being power-user hostile) That's an unnecessarily abrasive view: the Wayland protocol designers do not hate power users. But allowing programs to constantly take in arbitrary input & output information in the background, as well as simulate arbitrary input to other programs, is an obvious and glaring security flaw. U…

> I appreciate that the average HN poster, and to a lesser extent the average Linux user, does not do this - but many, many Windows users do. In order to actually break into a mass desktop market, there has to be consideration of the ways people who do not currently use Linux behave.

Restricting Wayland feature makes sense if other permission is also restricted like Android. But it's a Linux Desktop that can easily run/install anything with `sudo`. Wayland should support advanced features.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#558

Post by sergeykish » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #508

sergeykish wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This criticism looks like "free as beer and I know better". 1. The old, mostly working thing waits your commit 2. That new thing can have some help too I recommend developers story about this "mostly working thing" (2014) [1]. It is quite fun and eye opening, he clearly knows his subject better than most of the comments. Wayland demo worked almost from day one. I've run it in 2010 [2]. But we need applications, that…

It took python community 10 years to migrate to python 3, and the migration process from python 2 to python 3, while tedious, is certainly a lot easier than porting a gui app from xorg to wayland. It could take some time until most app developers finally migrated their apps from xorg to wayland.

Python 3 changed nothing

* print is function

* string is unicode by default

Should have been clean and easy migration path

    # python 2
    from __future__ import print_function
    print(u"foo")
    u"" # was u""
    b"" # was  ""

But u"" was not supported in Python 3 until PEP 414 (python 3.3) [1]. That's four years [2]:

    Python 3.0.0 Dec.   3, 2008
    Python 3.3.0 Sept. 29, 2012

Ruby string switched from codebytes to codepoints with encoding in 1.9. Ruby 2.0 switched default literal encoding to UTF-8 [3], timeline [4]:

    Ruby 1.8.7          2008-05-31
    Ruby 1.9.1          2009-01-30 # first 1.9
    Ruby 1.9.2          2010-08-18 # people already switched to 1.9
    Ruby 2.0.0          2013-02-24 # first 2.0
    Ruby 1.8.7-p352     2013-06-27 # last 1.8

Switch to Ruby 2.0 was even simpler than 1.9.

How specifically Wayland harms you? I've opened GTK+ tutorial [5], compiled code, works both on X.Org and Wayland. How it is not clean migration path?

And no, it is not XWayland which is additional migration path, I've removed it for this test:

    $ xterm
    xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: :1

[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0414/

[2] https://www.python.org/downloads/

[3] https://medium.com/rubycademy/the-evolution-of-ruby-strings-...

[4] https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/releases/

[5] https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-getting-started....

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#559

Post by modified001 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:58 AM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #542

modified001 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A developer sharing is experience working with EFL: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened

It sounds like the guy is way overexaggerating and basically didn't understand the library he was working with. What he describes isn't anything special - the "Evas_Object" (aside of the weird name) sounds like a HWND in Windows or Window in X. The part about layouts sounds like similar to sizers in wxWidgets which are used so that you can avoid using heavyweight native widgets just for layout that some other toolkit…

It definitely struck a cord when I had have to use it in a project around five years ago.

Luckily I got an opportunity to a new project. And the company in question (Samsung) ultimately dropped it IIRC.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#560

Post by sergeykish » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #540

sergeykish wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This criticism looks like "free as beer and I know better". 1. The old, mostly working thing waits your commit 2. That new thing can have some help too I recommend developers story about this "mostly working thing" (2014) [1]. It is quite fun and eye opening, he clearly knows his subject better than most of the comments. Wayland demo worked almost from day one. I've run it in 2010 [2]. But we need applications, that…

> 1. The old, mostly working thing waits your commit From what i understand there are commits, just not releases. What is the point of committing if the maintainers do not bother to make a proper release that your work can be distributed to the users?

Do you imply X.Org sabotaged? Issues fixed, system is stable and only maintainer stops it? You should notify disillusioned people who still commit to the repo [1].

[1] https://github.com/freedesktop/xorg-xserver/graphs/commit-ac...