X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by chimeracoder » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

The first "large" distro to switch from sysvinit to systemd was Arch, and that switch happened over ten years ago. The switch itself was quite rocky (the upgrade path was not particularly seamless, and while Arch users tend to be more tolerant of that sort of thing, it's worth mentioning).

That said, even in 2012-2013, the end result once you completed the upgrade was significantly better than collectively expected. The original plan was to support both systemd and sysvinit (at least for a period of time), but that was quickly abandoned because not enough people wanted to actually maintain sysvinit packages, so support[0] ended up getting dropped very quickly.

[0] Arch is a community project, so "support" is different from what you'd expect in (e.g.) RHEL, but it still has separations of what's considered supported and what's not.

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

#142

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #134

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works, it works. And some of us never bothered installing a compositor in the first place, so it's hardly a high bar.

Obviously it doesn't work if your workaround is disabling it. It is either bad hardware, or buggy driver. For the latter, it has to be some obscure hardware; popular hardware would have it fixed.

Okay, let's enumerate.

Option 1: Wants to used hardware acceleration, fails, allows you to disable it and actually use your computer.

Option 2: Wants to use hardware acceleration, fails, refuses to allow you to disable anything, literally cannot display graphics.

One of these works, even degraded. The other does not.

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

#143

Post by chmod775 » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:16 PM UTC

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.

> Do your organization uses Microsoft Teams? It is barely usable for quite some people.

That describes Teams on any platform.

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

#144

Post by bokchoi » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:21 PM UTC

jmclnx wrote: post #115

DonHopkins wrote: post #113

Haven't we been through this fiasco of trying to replace X11 with X12 about a dozen times in the last several decades? Just go onto Y0. https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398...

Yes, and who remembers "Y" from I think 20 to 25 years ago :)

I remember that effort! I recall seeing a 3d notepad or something like that.

Wow, the website is still up: http://www.y-windows.org/about.html

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

#145

Post by lizknope » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:22 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #94

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

I don’t identify as an old timer but I was using NCD X-Terminals connected to Data General Aviion back in the mid 90s and they were solid as a rock. XF86 also worked quite well in the late 90s but it did require a lot of work and there were warnings that certain settings could blow the monitor. Fun times.

I remember creating a new modeline and adding it to the list. Then using ctrl+alt and +/- to cycle through the modes. I would get to the new mode and the monitor would start buzzing and clicking and the image would flicker. I would quickly toggle to the next mode that was "safe" then go back and edit the modeline and try again.

I did manage to get my monitor to run at 1280x1024 @72Hz but couldn't make it go 75Hz

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

#146

Post by csdvrx » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:24 PM UTC

raydiatian wrote: post #105

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!

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

Same. I wasn't convinced about Wayland until I tried Hyprland. It's just great!

The design of X11 meant many windows managers, which mostly were average. But that was ok, as the issues could be addressed by separate tools

Wayland had 3 issues 1) not many tools (now there's wev, ydotools...) 2) they were limited in what they could do, as the keys to the kingdom are mostly given to the compositor, and 3) outside sway (with its own issues) the compositors were not so great.

So if you didn't have a good one, or if it was missing essential options, you suffered until you went back to X: to prep my laptop for uni in the late 2010s I evaluated wayland but returned to X as it was simpler to get a better experience.

Now with hyprland, I love wayland: I can script again very precise behaviors with hyprctl and wlrctl. The foot terminal emulator is great. Edge works fine with the right wayland options.

Much has changed since I first discovered Wayland in 2016: I'd put 50% of that on hyprland (it's seriously wonderful) and the other half on the availability of more wayland-compatible tools.

I'm eagerly waiting for the patches for wine on wayland: not just because I love Office, but because for a long time it was said to be impossible to have a good wine experience on wayland.

Well, these patches prove it wasn't impossible, just a bit hard, and old people are stuck in their ways and hate change even for better tools.

It's like how systemd was so unpopular at first, except it had most of everything ready. Wayland in comparison was missing many small tools that are only important for very few people (ex: for scripting) but about everyone had one thing they couldn't do on Wayland.

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

#147

Post by lizknope » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:24 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #63

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.

> 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? W…

XFree86 worked fine for me since 1994. I sometimes had problems when exiting a video game like Doom or Quake. SVGAlib would give problems but that wasn't X.

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

#148

Post by vetinari » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #142

vetinari wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it doesn't work if your workaround is disabling it. It is either bad hardware, or buggy driver. For the latter, it has to be some obscure hardware; popular hardware would have it fixed.

Okay, let's enumerate. Option 1: Wants to used hardware acceleration, fails, allows you to disable it and actually use your computer. Option 2: Wants to use hardware acceleration, fails, refuses to allow you to disable anything, literally cannot display graphics. One of these works, even degraded. The other does not.

I don't dispute that. My claim was, that both options you mention are broken, and for that one "working", "limping" would be a better term.

Certainly not something you would architect a display system around.

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

#149

Post by terrorOf » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:26 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #138

jmclnx wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest issue with Wayland is it has "Linuxisms". That means no work was done by the Wayland people to make it portable to other UN*X. So the BSD folks (and other UNIX people) have a lot of work to get it going. And there still seems to be confusion if or will Wayland require systemd, from what I have seen, no 100% clear direction from anyone.

Since 99% of users are on Linux anyway, that can't be the largest issue.

What a typical Linux user mindset! That IS one of the largest issues for non-Linux users. Linux is by large margin a niche OS in desktop market share. So it is no issue if all programs are developed only for Windows and/or Macintosh. Right?

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

#150

Post by vetinari » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 10:29 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #135

vetinari wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one standard and single simple answer: xdg-desktop-portal with pipewire. Some compositors might have implemented their own private APIs, but that is not a standard by definition. Global shortcuts are a bit more thorny, exactly for the reason you mentioned. You present one POV, the another is, that application-defined shortcuts are incredibly hostile, as they allow application to stomp on each other in the be…

Isn't xdg-desktop-portal a flatpak thing? It claims to be so here: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal > A portal frontend service for Flatpak and possibly other desktop containment frameworks. When it comes to global shortcuts, I'm not saying it has a super easy solution, but it's something that it's essential to support. Wayland intentionally doesn't, and I can't see that changing in the short term (as yo…

It is dbus api, and is able to work cross-namespaces (i.e. flatpak containers too). There no harm in using it in non-flatpak apps, at least you will be ready if your app ends up in flatpak.

Wrt global shortcuts, I see that there is some work done. The intentional part isn't malice, as in not willing to implement it at all. It is about not implementing temporary solution, that will be quick and dirty, and then being stuck for supporting it for next 50 years.