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X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

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Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#61

Post by cpach »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #33
chungy wrote: post #5

Mind that the page describes a hypothetical update to X. In practical terms, Wayland is X12.

Right, the name or any kind of lineage does not matter, Wayland is the X11 successor because it is the current seriously developed and improved open display protocol. Nothing about Wayland stole from X11, has any less legitimacy to be the post-X11 protocol than something called X12, or prevents anybody else from improving X11 or from working on an alternative they call X12 or anything else. I don't know why people ge…

Good point. And for those who need to connect over the network there are now FOSS implementations of RDP, for example. (And VNC, but the performance there is probably not so good.) Then there’s also proprietary solutions such as BeyondTrust and NoMachine.

Yeah, I know RDP was developed in Redmond but from my layman’s perspective, it’s one of the best protocols for accessing a graphical desktop environment over a network. If you worry about the security, just tunnel via WireGuard.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#62

Post by cpach »

gpderetta wrote: post #59
linuxandrew wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network transparency doesn't offer any tangible benefits for a lot of apps and desktop environments because they are drawn with bitmaps and textures rather than vectors. This topic has been done to death for the past decade. VNC and RDP won. X11 was a razor edge case and nothing more.

ssh -X is still easier and lighter weight that running a VNC server on any machine I need to run a GUI though. Incidentally at $CURRENT_JOB this happens very often: when WFH, I RDP to a windows machine, form which I VNC to a unix xvnc box form which I ssh -x to my actual dev box. It is amazing that it works at all and it is quite usable!

It is very convenient indeed. No doubt about that part. But it’s not like it’s impossible to find viable alternatives.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#63

Post by peoplefromibiza »

mjg59 wrote: post #40
oleg_antonyan wrote: post #14

X is almost 40yo, stable, reliable, difficult to maintain. Wayland is 15yo, barely usable. Any old timers remember 1999 when X was 15? Wayland is like IPv6 of desktops

Anyone who believes that XFree86 was stable in 1999 was apparently running a different XFree86 to me. The sysrq key was mostly useful at the time for using the SAK shortcut to kill all processes on the current terminal, which with luck included your wedged XFree86 which would then get respawned by xdm. I don't miss those times.

> Anyone who believes that XFree86 was stable in 1999 was apparently running a different XFree86 to me

XFree86 on Linux wasn't very stable in 1999 (although it was more than usable, more than Wayland is today).

X11 on IRIX in 1999 was pretty stable.

Parent said X, not specifically XFree86.

also something to consider: how many people were working on Xfree86 in 1999 and how many people are working on Wayland in 2023?

What was the state of the technology, tools, documentation, availability of specs, reverse engineering etc. back then?

AFAIK nobody was being paid by major tech companies (RH, just to name one) to work on free software in 1999.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#64

Post by throwawaylinux »

sprash wrote: post #55
mjg59 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who believes that XFree86 was stable in 1999 was apparently running a different XFree86 to me. The sysrq key was mostly useful at the time for using the SAK shortcut to kill all processes on the current terminal, which with luck included your wedged XFree86 which would then get respawned by xdm. I don't miss those times.

X11 became really stable in the late 00s. And since the introduction of DRI3 it is at the same technological level of Wayland concerning the efficient buffer swap mechanism. X11 is however still miles ahead on the architectural level. Parts of the system like window managers or compositors can fail or be replaced at runtime without affecting running clients. Wayland lacks the appropriate standardized interfaces for t…

The choices of architecture seem to reflect different priorities, there are things that the Wayland architecture does better than X and vice versa, aren't there? Hard to say X11 is ahead architecturally if you pick features that Wayland may not consider important. I've seen commentary from people who have worked intimately on both protocols and implementations of both who consider Wayland to have the better architecture.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#65

Post by lproven »

pauby wrote: post #52
fsh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user has a laptop with an Intel or AMD iGPU. Gaming machine are niche.

The average user isn't running a Linux desktop.

That may not be true any more.

ChromeBooks were outselling Macs from 2017-2021, although the pandemic meant hundreds of millions of people suddenly needed new computers for remote working and the kids to use for remote schooling, so sales spiked and have since collapsed.

But they sold ITRO 100 million units per year for several years.

China's 5-3-2 program is also nearing its end:

https://medium.com/technicity/chinese-3-5-2-policy-is-a-majo...

That means hundreds of millions more Linux PCs in the PRoC.

As such, that's somewhere around quarter to half a billion Linux desktops in the last few years, and maybe twice that.

Windows PC sales are struggling:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3675895/pc-sales-fall-...

Still hundreds of millions of units, but they're falling.

More people are staring at Linux all day than you might think.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#66

Post by em-bee »

lloeki wrote: post #21
chungy wrote: post #5

Mind that the page describes a hypothetical update to X. In practical terms, Wayland is X12.

That's quite a stretch, Wayland and X (any X, 11 or hypothetical 12) are so vastly different that calling Wayland "the new X" is like calling Quartz "X for macOS".

isn't X11 a full redesign of X10 like Wayland is of X11?

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#68

Post by sshine »

lloeki wrote: post #21
chungy wrote: post #5

Mind that the page describes a hypothetical update to X. In practical terms, Wayland is X12.

That's quite a stretch, Wayland and X (any X, 11 or hypothetical 12) are so vastly different that calling Wayland "the new X" is like calling Quartz "X for macOS".

Yes, but the comparison is still valuable.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#69

Post by sgjohnson »

ddtaylor wrote: post #35
sgjohnson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses. It’s not an unfulfilled promise. We’re out of IPv4 addresses and have been for almost a decade. NAT444444444444444444444 is not the solution.

Sure, but the end result is that nobody can host a service with an ipv4 address only. You would be missing out on the majority of your audience.

You absolutely can. I’m single stacking IPv6 on my fresh hetzner box.

Cloudflare in front of web services and it just works(tm).

For everything else - Argo can do arbitrary TCP (requires cloudflared though) and then you can start bugging your ISP about the very real need for IPv6.

Re: X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)

#70

Post by sgjohnson »

oleg_antonyan wrote: post #38
sgjohnson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses. It’s not an unfulfilled promise. We’re out of IPv4 addresses and have been for almost a decade. NAT444444444444444444444 is not the solution.

Well, most providers worldwide still use IPv4 which means that cost of switching to IPv6 is higher than cost of maintaining workarounds for 10 years, and who knows, maybe it will be the same for another 10 years

Yes, having everyone involved learn IPv6 is more expensive than burying your head in the sand and adding another 4 at the end of NAT444444444444444444444, but at some point it’ll just be too ridiculous.
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