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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)

#191

Post by kelnos »

vetinari wrote: post #132
destructionator wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This link comes up in literally every Wayland thread and it is even more bullshit now than it was in 2013 when it was first posted (and it was bullshit then too). It is titled "the real story" but it is quite the opposite. A few key points: 1) he laughs at how X has a bunch of extensions. https://wayland.app/protocols/ hypocrites much. In 2013, since it was completely unusable, it probably didn't have many. But turns…

1) no, he complains that X11 has a big core and then extensions. Extensions are fine, but they were unable to kick out parts of the core, because it is the core and something somewhere assumes it is there. So they had to maintain it, despite not being used in practice, except by that little something that nobody can point their fingers at. 2) he talks about obsolete hardware. There's no really a point to support s3 t…

> he complains that X11 has a big core and then extensions. Extensions are fine, but they were unable to kick out parts of the core, because it is the core and something somewhere assumes it is there.

The thing that I find ridiculous about this attitude is that you have two choices:

1) Remove parts of the core that some (mostly old, unmaintained) applications rely on, which will break them. You'd probably have to call it "X12" now, but that's fine: most X11 applications would continue to work with no (or very few) modifications.

2) Throw out the entire system and build a new one from scratch, that literally no applications will work on until new toolkit backends are written and some applications themselves are rewritten or at least fixed up. Those same old, possibly unmaintained apps that would stop working in #1 are still not working, but now it's along with literally everything else too.

> RDP support is wip in wayland

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "$IMPORTANT_FEATURE is WIP in Wayland", I'd be able to get several pizzas delivered.

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

#192

Post by aleph_minus_one »

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.

Relevant:

Aquarela do Linux!

> https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#52

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

#194

Post by kelnos »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #108
ravishi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

So then, in other words, the default setup is still broken?

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

#195

Post by kelnos »

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.

No, but the average Linux user has probably been bitten by nvidia compat issues so much in the past that they're even more likely than the average generic laptop user to be using Intel or AMD graphics.

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

#196

Post by nine_k »

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

The problem is that systemd vs sysv-init is a false dichotomy.

Systemd took over a ton of important non-init functionality, like DNS, logging, and interactive sessions. That could be fine if systemd did so in a nice and rock-solid way, but it was unpleasantly bug-ridden for years after being thrust on mainstream distros via a hard Gnome dependency.

SysV-init sucks in many ways, it's well known, and I can personally attest to that. I don't want SysV-init to be perpetuated.

There were, and are, viable alternatives to both, which are a less radical rework of the well-established Unix approaches around the area, do not overreach well past the init system scope, and are sane and well-functioning. For examples, see [upstart], [openrc], [s6], [runit].

I think that the prevalence of systemd was mostly achieved not through its technical merits (which undeniably exist) but through Red Hat's strongarming, because Red Hat wants certain things work in a way convenient for their business, and they have a powerful battering ram under their control, the Gnome DE.

Fortunately Wayland is not being force-fed in such a way, because, much like systemd when it was introduced, it's still in many important regards not exactly ready. I, with my 25 years of running Linux on desktop, will gladly migrate to a better graphics architecture when in becomes adequate for my purposes, if the whole current Unix architecture is not obsoleted and replaced wholesale by that time.

[upstart]: https://upstart.ubuntu.com/

[openrc]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRC

[s6]: https://www.skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/

[runit]: https://www.skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/

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

#197

Post by kelnos »

pabs3 wrote: post #67
pauby wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user isn't running a Linux desktop.

The average user isn't running a desktop.

Oof, that hits hard, but you're probably right: I expect there are more people who primarily (or even exclusively) use a smartphone or tablet than a general-purpose computer running a general-purpose OS.

It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure.

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

#198

Post by wkat4242 »

vetinari wrote: post #90
adrianmsmith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At our uni, we used DEC and had vxt2000 terminals. It worked fine, just like wayland does today. But it wasn't rock stable, or even remotely secure.

Secure no, lol. But in those days telnet was still the norm.

At my college they didn't even have xauth implemented which was loads of fun embarrassing other users with xv and some cool pictures :P Or xblast

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

#199

Post by kelnos »

armistace wrote: post #182
ravishi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm on Arch on my work machine and it started working with pipewire about 3 months ago... no config necessary just works as intended both screen and window. There are some others at work on Ubuntu LTS but that is because Ubuntu is using ancient packages.

Ah, but the reply was about defaults. Do any of those distros ship with Pipewire as the default? If so, I'm sure it hasn't been since 2019 as the original poster claimed.
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