Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 419 posts

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#201

Post by severino »

canofbars wrote: post #92
rob74 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a complete outsider - ok, I'm a developer, but I haven't had the pleasure (?) of writing something that interfaces directly with Xorg yet - I have been reading for years about Wayland being the way forward and how Xorg is dragged down by a long history of dubious design decisions and features nobody needs anymore, and I was secretly wondering: if this is really the future of desktop Linux, why doesn't it gain more…

>if this is really the future of desktop Linux, why doesn't it gain more momentum? Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this. Fedora has actively discouraged using the proprietary nvidia driver for a while now and they ship wayland by default since the open source driver works fine. I saw that ubuntu is also shipping wayland by default soon for amd and intel users.

> Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this

I know, but it can be difficult to understand. I mean, how come we currently have Nvidia drivers for Linux, which work pretty well, and they can't be used for Wayland?

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#202

Post by zbuf »

Nobody has said it, but it seems we are reaching a fork in the desktop?

For users, not 'right' and 'wrong' here, just two groups whose goals differ.

Those supporting X.org are using X very much in the spirit of it; custom window managers, network transparency, and possibly bitmapped fonts, BSDs.

And those in support of Wayland have arrived there via Linux with eg. GNOME and dominated by GTK and QT desktop apps; looking for an open-source offering with the same functionality as Mac and Windows desktop.

Really, this has been brewing for a while. It's been a fluke that the underlying X has allowed these two groups to co-exist.

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#203

Post by scarygliders »

noname120 wrote: post #99
brmgb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xorg is 16 years old Xorg is a fork of Xfree86 which started in 1991 but feature parity minus the cruft has been reached years ago. Some people disagree about what is cruft however. For example, I view 90% of the list in the posted articles to be minor softwares relying on undesirable behaviour and unwilling to adapt (the remaining 10% being misrepresentation of actually solved issues listed in bad faith). The orig…

> How can people accept to use a display manager with constant screen tearing is beside me That's solved by using a compositing window manager such as Compton.

You don't even need a compositor. Just activate Force Full Composition Pipeline if you have an nvidia card.

see: https://imgur.com/a/lDfObqw

It's in the advanced settings.

Silky smooth Xorg web browsing and video at no extra compositor cost.

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#204

Post by bkor »

p_l wrote: post #155
pmontra wrote: post #136

I think I'll wait until every screen sharing, video calling application I use will work with Wayland. Pasting selected text with middle button is also very important to me (huge time saver) and it seems not to work with Wayland yet.

Basic things like embedding windows (and thus classic, non-remote-puppet-over-dbus) systrays are impossible, which funnily enough break things like signing my tax forms with digital signature...

That can be done using subsurfaces, see https://wayland-book.com/surfaces-in-depth/subsurfaces.html.

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#205

Post by vetinari »

72deluxe wrote: post #179
vetinari wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have no monetary obligation to your "customers" (=users), there's not really a lot that forces you to maintain backwards compatibility. And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then c…

I don't know if everyone is fine with Apple making so many changes. I think it's because they have no choice, being stuck with whatever Apple decides. eg. for years you couldn't resize a window from the left edge and everybody was "fine" with it. When they actually bothered to implement it, it was astounding to think you couldn't do it before! As for me, I await each Apple release with trepidation and fear. Will my a…

My point is exactly as yours; it was addressing comments as the GP one, where the FOSS community is being shown as the one constantly breaking compatibility, while commercial vendors are being shown as example worth to follow. My example intended to show exact opposite -- I'm also Mac user (Windows user and Linux user too), and while I understand the rationale for some steps (i.e. deprecating i386 was in order to not overly complicate Rosetta2), it doesn't mean it won't hurt the users anyway.

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#206

Post by HeckFeck »

Wouldn't it be possible to write Wayland in such a way that it is similar and familiar to Xorg, so porting Linux GUI applications is easy? Or is the API already familiar enough that this is already possible?

Surely it's possible to write a modern display stack while preserving the rich legacy of applications, toolkits, window managers. I would certainly like proper isolation of input, and better support for HiDPI and even locking. But I would certainly miss Xscreensaver and Fluxbox, and even random applications like Asunder or Suckless Terminal.

Though I admit that I'm speaking from a position of ignorance, having only ever written in C/SDL for anything graphical on *nix.

PS: Now the possibility of porting Fluxbox to Wayland is beckoning me. Could such a mad thing be attempted?

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#207

Post by michaelmrose »

gspr wrote: post #192
michaelmrose wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User services only really make sense for user stuff that requires more complex set up and tear down than start foo and kill it when I log out. Creating a user service per single line exec foo is extra ceremony. I have nvidia hardware so sway makes no sense for me to use. Also it's developer is extremely abrasive. Furthermore a lot on that list isn't an even trade. ydotool is a poor unmaintained replacement, making yo…

> User services only really make sense for user stuff that requires more complex set up and tear down than start foo and kill it when I log out. > > Creating a user service per single line exec foo is extra ceremony. Then go with the parent post's other suggestion: a simple startup script that ends with launching Sway. > I have nvidia hardware so sway makes no sense for me to use. I mean the fact that Nvidia refuses…

I asked you to name even one thing sway did better and you tell me about the nature of the legacy code base.

No user on earth cares any more than they care about the sharpness of the blades used to grind the sausage they ate for breakfast.

I'm not sure why you imagine that nvidia is obligated to support Linux in the fashion you would prefer. I bought the hardware based on the existing drivers working well under Linux and windows not love for them or idealogy. This is why most people buy things.

X11s future departure seems like a thin justification seeing as it's future seems pretty secure for the next decade. Maybe by 2030 there will be a compelling case for switching plus hopefully the kinks will have been worked out courtesy of folks like yourself.

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#208

Post by gggtt »

nly wrote: post #124
roenxi wrote: post #36

Wayland represents an interesting and possibly classic software situation - a beautiful standard has been developed. It blocks the user from using a screenshot application in the name of security. Now when the standard gets rolled out kludge will be developed to allow users to still take screenshots. The beauty of the standard will be compromised or everyone will spend a bunch of time pretending the kludge isn't de-f…

Taking your example of screenshots... I don't think there's an 'official'/defacto Wayland protocol for that. Under GNOME Shell you can use the org.gnome.Shell.Screenshot dbus API, but under KDE you presumably have to use something else. It is pretty grim.

All major distros seem to have agreed on Flatpak/Freedesktop Portal dbus APIs. For eg, for screenshot :

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/portal-api-reference.html...

There are still apps using legacy gnome/kde specific APIs, but, from what I understand, in the future Flatpak APIs are becoming the defacto standard

Re: Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet

#210

Post by AshamedCaptain »

vetinari wrote: post #198
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to change those decade old binaries to work with Wayland??? At least if you don't throw X11, those decade old binaries still work. If you throw X11, they will not! You need to put in some type of kludge which is the reason this article exists in the first place (e.g. copy paste will work randomly). And if the toolkit is linked dynamically, you are very lucky... Not to mention that a more realistic s…

With Xwayland. On hidpi display they will be upscaled and blurry, but at the right size and they will work in the first place. Even window grabbing will work, albeit only with other Xwayland clients.

Xwayland is the kludge I was talking about (and this article).

No reason your "classic" X11 compositor cannot scale and make any windows blurry, either. No changes required to the client code at all, but some are required to X11 itself, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK4c7iFJLs

Post reply on HN