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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)

#71

Post by mnd999 »

fsh wrote: post #34
oleg_antonyan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of usability - definitely. But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses VS X11 is unmaintainable legacy full of security bugs. 20 years later IPv4 is still dominant, Wayland is still unusable and X11 just works.

X11 cannot handle the average user connecting an average laptop to an average external monitor (no usable per-screen scaling). Maybe this was good enough in the 80s, but today it is seriously holding back the platform.

This is my situation. I use sway for this reason and it’s just about okay if you’re not on Nvidia.

Screen sharing is the main gripe, it’s a pain to configure, involves a lot of different bits of software which have to be orchestrated and none of them are mature enough not to break occasionally in an unexpected fashion.

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

#72

Post by sgjohnson »

rekoil wrote: post #47
oleg_antonyan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No it's higher because they've started charging for IPv4 addresses, they don't want to lose their cash cow...

But it's really not. About 85% of the entire public IPv4 range is currently announced.

Transfering IPv4 prefixes comes with a 2 year transfer restriction period.

IPv4 addresses currently cost about $50, and you have to buy an entire subnet at once, minimum /24.

It makes perfect sense to start charging for them if you're running out of them and don't want to buy additional prefixes.

Not to mention that there's also additional cost involved in case someone was using that particular address (or even worse multiple addresses from the same /24) for spam or malicious purposes, because that means that the entire prefix is currently trashed and there's some effort involved for it to be removed from all the independently maintained blacklists etc.

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

#73

Post by goosedragons »

fsh wrote: post #34
oleg_antonyan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of usability - definitely. But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses VS X11 is unmaintainable legacy full of security bugs. 20 years later IPv4 is still dominant, Wayland is still unusable and X11 just works.

X11 cannot handle the average user connecting an average laptop to an average external monitor (no usable per-screen scaling). Maybe this was good enough in the 80s, but today it is seriously holding back the platform.

Sigh. X11 actually can. Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays. But a lot of Linux programs (especially GTK ones) will flat out assume the specified monitor PPIs are just wrong and will use 96 PPI. Plus with the way modern multi-monitor usage works with X11 by faking one giant single screen that doesn't work anymore. But when it works, it works.

But even with that it's STILL possible with the right setup using xrandr where you essentially render at a higher res and then downscale. Ubuntu's X11 version of Gnome has had this out of the box since I think 20.04 and it works very well. IIRC upstream Gnome refused it because that's what Wayland is supposed to do...

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

#74

Post by LinAGKar »

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!

For running individual applications over the network, Waypipe might be the way to go, though I haven't tried it.

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

#76

Post by petepete »

stonogo wrote: post #29
petepete wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it's fair to call it struggling when it's the default in just about every distro and has been smooth and stable for years.

I think it's fair, since every one of those distros ships an X11 fallback. I desperately want Wayland to succeed but exaggerating its current wins won't get us there. I don't want this post to focus on the negative, though, so I'll suggest a more positive argument: the people who would have been responsible for a hypothetical X12 instead decided to make Wayland. I can't think of a body of experts more likely to make…

Fair. I'll admit there are a few rough edges, mainly caused by some apps (Slack) having older versions of certain libraries that makes some functionality (like screen sharing) break.

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

#77

Post by pjmlp »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #51
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.

XFree86 in 1999 might not have been, but in 1994 when I went to university in the UK and was using Sun computers which were solely X servers to display programs running on the "main" shared computer in the corner of the room, X and all the associated software was all stable and worked fine.

Solaris X Server wasn't the same.

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

#78

Post by pjmlp »

lproven wrote: post #65
pauby wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/chines…

Chrome OS isn't Linux desktop.

Even if you mention Linux sandbox environment, it is only available in selected models.

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

#80

Post by kaba0 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #41
oleg_antonyan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV. When it reaches the level of X11 that "just works for everyone without preconditions" it will become usable in my coordinate system

X11 is not usable for everybody without preconditions though.

I honestly don’t get people, like were these people just extremely lucky and never had to tweak anything? Like, I remember times when I had to blindly log into my user and try to fix my setup from there, purely by muscle memory.
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