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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)

#101

Post by vetinari »

goosedragons wrote: post #73
fsh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays

Yes and no.

X11 screens could have different resolutions, color modes and pixel density, but windows could not span over multiple screens, or moved from one screen to another. The only way the user/the application could move window to a different screen would be to open a new connection to the screen (denoted by that familiar DISPLAY:0.x environment variable) and recreate all the resources there.

There was exactly one application that was capable of doing that at runtime (XEmacs). For all the others it meant restarting the application with a new DISPLAY env var.

Hence Xinerama. It joined all the different physical displays into a single screen, which allowed to move windows around, but came with limitations, like the same color modes or DPI for all displays -- since it was single screen logically.

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

#102

Post by Nzen »

bartvk wrote: post #10
avhception wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet I'm still running X11, with Wayland still struggling and no X12 in sight.

I'm not up to date on the Linux desktop ecosystem. In what sense is Wayland struggling?

Dudemanguy wrote about its deficiencies 2022-06-11 [0], ex lack of feature parity with X11 and self imposed limitations like only allowing integer scaling (ie to get 1.5 scaling, it uses x3/x2 scaling). For some perspective, consider checking other hn reader reactions to this post [1].

[0] https://dudemanguy.github.io/blog/posts/2022-06-10-wayland-x...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31752760

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

#103

Post by ranger207 »

dark-star wrote: post #96

The discussion about "wayland vs X11" is eerily reminiscent of the discussion of "systemd vs. sysv-init"... Some people apparently really do hate it when things change that they seemingly have no control over Edit: I fully expect to be downvoted into oblivion for this post :-D

Yeah, I'm a big fan of systemd but I can accept that when it first came out it was probably a lot worse than it is today. Similarly, Wayland has a bunch of good ideas, along with a bunch of functionality that isn't there yet. Of course, Wayland also has the problem that it's intentionally excluding some useful features that X had, like global hotkeys and screensharing. I think systemd and Wayland are actually opposites in this regard, where systemd was disliked at first and then turned liked, while Wayland was liked at first but is now turning to disliked

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

#104

Post by vetinari »

sprash wrote: post #97
vetinari wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. For those interested in details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ

Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3. Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works on Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11. This is not a neutral source.

> Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3

Not true.

> Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works an Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11.

Maybe his employer works on Wayland because there are no X11 jobs?

> This is not a neutral source.

He has experience with both, and he presents his arguments.

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

#105

Post by raydiatian »

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

> “barely usable”

I run Hyprland just fine with Wayland, I seriously doubt it is barely usable.

> IPv6 of desktops

Dunno if you’ve looked at your ip link lately but you probably have an ipv6 address!

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

#106

Post by vetinari »

ranger207 wrote: post #103
dark-star wrote: post #96

The discussion about "wayland vs X11" is eerily reminiscent of the discussion of "systemd vs. sysv-init"... Some people apparently really do hate it when things change that they seemingly have no control over Edit: I fully expect to be downvoted into oblivion for this post :-D

Yeah, I'm a big fan of systemd but I can accept that when it first came out it was probably a lot worse than it is today. Similarly, Wayland has a bunch of good ideas, along with a bunch of functionality that isn't there yet. Of course, Wayland also has the problem that it's intentionally excluding some useful features that X had, like global hotkeys and screensharing. I think systemd and Wayland are actually opposit…

> Of course, Wayland also has the problem that it's intentionally excluding some useful features that X had, like global hotkeys and screensharing

Screensharing has been supported for some time already. Some apps support it, some don't. It is up to the apps to use the respective APIs, the times of free reign over framebuffer is over.

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

#107

Post by vetinari »

ravishi wrote: post #100
kstenerud wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland is the default on RHEL since 2019. Wayland is the default on Centos since 2019. Wayland is the default on Ubuntu and Debian since 2022. In Arch, Wayland is the default for GNOME installs. Wayland is far from "barely usable" And yes, I remember 1999. X was a pain to get working properly with many graphics cards. Some things never change...

Have you ever tried sharing your screen? Do your organization uses Microsoft Teams? It is barely usable for quite some people.

Wayland screen sharing works fine (in Chrome, Webex...). It doesn't work in Teams, but that's Microsoft's issue, since they didn't bother with implementing it.

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

#108

Post by JoshTriplett »

ravishi wrote: post #99
fsh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland is the default on Fedora, Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Debian. The majority of desktop linux users is probably on Wayland by now.

Until they have to share screen in a meeting and give up tweaking flags in different places, login using X and never look back again. Seriously for anyone who works remotely sharing screen is essential, but it still doesn't work flawlessly in Wayland.

> Until they have to share screen in a meeting

This was absolutely true, until I switched to pipewire. Once I did, this started to just work, with no issues whatsoever. (No configuration required, just followed Debian's package dependencies switching to pipewire and it started working in Firefox.)

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

#109

Post by steponlego »

bitwize wrote: post #83
steponlego wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not, it barely does any of the things X11 is useful for.

100% of the developers who know anything about how graphics works under Linux are focusing on Wayland. Development on Xorg is moribund, with only Xwayland getting significant attention. Hint: X was optimized for 1980s graphics, which was 90% simple blits, line draws, and fills mediated by the CPU perhaps with special fixed-function accelerators for those operations. In 2023, graphics is done with the GPU -- period. Y…

It doesn’t matter to me if the X.org developers have decided not to do their jobs, which is maintaining X.org. This isn’t proof that X.org is bad, it just shows that giggers who really work for big tech firms shouldn’t also be trusted to maintain Free software.

I’ve noticed them slowly trying to ruin X.org for a couple years now, deprecating drivers for no reason whatsoever, etc.

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

#110

Post by vetinari »

aidenn0 wrote: post #89
saturn_vk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like X11 is running reliably for you either

I restart X11 only when either there's a power failure longer than the battery on my UPS, or I upgrade my kernel, so it's reliable enough.

Having to disable compositing doesn't sound very reliable.
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