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The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

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Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#141

Post by pmarreck »

dralley wrote: post #103
pmarreck wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, people who actually have to screen-share are having trouble in Wayland. So maybe this policy of "don't trust any code ever" has some downsides. It's the usual "convenience vs. security" debate all over again

I've not had any issues with screen sharing in, like, 3 years. The problem is that people use video chat clients by vendors that don't give a crap about Linux.

The problem is that they don't always have a choice, depending on work context

I do share your dismay at those apps, though (I primarily use Linux)

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#142

Post by michaelt »

hulitu wrote: post #110
michaelt wrote: post #41

There are some technical problems - especially in areas like introducing new security controls - where the upsides are relatively obscure from the perspective of end users while the downsides are obvious. Changes where there are plenty of chances to garner negative attention, but almost none to garner positive attention, and the ultimate success would be for the work to go completely un-noticed. From an end user's pe…

> introducing new security controls Messing with clipboard has nothing to do with security. I bet the web browser (and other programs who do RCE or phone home) still has access to all my files in wayland, just like in X

Yeah I was thinking more about the way they broke screen sharing.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#143

Post by reisse »

ndriscoll wrote: post #126
kouteiheika wrote: post #40

This might be a hot take, but you'll have to take X from my cold, dead hands. Or at least until things start breaking, or maybe until Wayland has e.g. stellar HDR support and I'll get a nice OLED monitor. Otherwise, no dice. I know that X is a crusty old spawn of Cthulhu; but honestly, I don't really care? It just works! I set up my system 10 years ago with how the UI works (including my window manager), and it stabl…

Yeah the blog OP is replying to is just silly. > Unless your workflow (and hardware) comes from 20+ years ago, you have almost no reason to stick with Xorg, especially as it continues to get worse and worse when the user experience relies on newer and newer features. My workflow is probably 20+ years old because not much has changed with software in the last 20 years. My computer is getting close to 10 years old. It…

> if I were running multiple monitors each with different scaling factors and refresh rates, but that sounds pretty niche

So basically you're calling almost every modern laptop + external screen setup "pretty niche". I wonder whose post is more silly.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#144

Post by mcv »

mcpackieh wrote: post #139
mcv wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care. I've only recently learned about them, and I'm not in any way an expert on any of this, but from what I understand, they do an important job, and the way they do that in X11 either hurts gaming performance or makes them unstable. When I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077, occasionally the game crashes (hasn't happened often, but a few times), and when it does, the compositor fails until I kill the CP process. And while…

I haven't tried Cyberpunk 2077, but I play a bit of Minecraft and from my testing KDE's Wayland implementation has about a 25% FPS penalty at least. I keep the FPS capped at 60fps, my display speed, and with X11/kwin the game can maintain that in all but extreme circumstances (e.g. breeding thousands of mobs, or https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-226966 (ludicrous bug btw)) With Wayland in the same parts of the map my…

That's a lot worse than I expected. I thought Wayland was supposed to be able to handle this without performance loss, but that's clearly not the case here. It doesn't make me eager to try out Wayland, but maybe I should try it for myself.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#145

Post by goodpoint »

enriquto wrote: post #124
goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

> X allows every application to take screenshots of the whole screen. I have bad news for you: linux allows every application that you run to wipe out your entire home directory.

Not when they are sandboxed, no.

Also no, it's not "linux", it's every OS without per-application MAC or sandboxing.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#146

Post by goodpoint »

Maken wrote: post #122
goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

Until we have proper app sandboxing in Linux desktop, in the sense that third party proprietary programs use it, that's a minor concern.

> Until we have proper app sandboxing

We have it and there are multiple tools like bubblewrap and co. You can already restrict applications if you want.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#147

Post by goodpoint »

Qwertious wrote: post #102
goodpoint wrote: post #46

The security benefits are massive. X allows *every* application to take screenshots of the whole screen. 40 comments and nobody pointed out this benefit...

Even snap/flatpak frequently give flat-out full filesystem access, so the desktop is already insecure as heck and the security advantages are all theoretical. It's like nitpicking what lock the door has when the window is left wide open.

Speak for yourself, I use proper sandboxing and it works.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#148

Post by ndriscoll »

reisse wrote: post #143
ndriscoll wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the blog OP is replying to is just silly. > Unless your workflow (and hardware) comes from 20+ years ago, you have almost no reason to stick with Xorg, especially as it continues to get worse and worse when the user experience relies on newer and newer features. My workflow is probably 20+ years old because not much has changed with software in the last 20 years. My computer is getting close to 10 years old. It…

> if I were running multiple monitors each with different scaling factors and refresh rates, but that sounds pretty niche So basically you're calling almost every modern laptop + external screen setup "pretty niche". I wonder whose post is more silly.

I think every monitor I've seen in the last 20 years has had a 60 Hz refresh rate. Most people probably don't even know scaling options exist, so using different ones on different monitors is going to be niche, yeah.

I just got a new laptop for work last month. HDR 4k display. It's still 60 Hz. More only matters for people who are really into gaming, and then you wouldn't be using a laptop.

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#149

Post by Nullabillity »

reisse wrote: post #143
ndriscoll wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the blog OP is replying to is just silly. > Unless your workflow (and hardware) comes from 20+ years ago, you have almost no reason to stick with Xorg, especially as it continues to get worse and worse when the user experience relies on newer and newer features. My workflow is probably 20+ years old because not much has changed with software in the last 20 years. My computer is getting close to 10 years old. It…

> if I were running multiple monitors each with different scaling factors and refresh rates, but that sounds pretty niche So basically you're calling almost every modern laptop + external screen setup "pretty niche". I wonder whose post is more silly.

Virtually every modern laptop with a dGPU runs Nvidia, so Wayland is still a no-go there too.

(And no, if Nouveau is an option for you then you probably wouldn't have a dGPU in the first place.)

Re: The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant

#150

Post by Gud »

jchw wrote: post #7

Very true. Wayland is now stable enough to be used in a lot of "production" environments and I've been using Sway as my desktop for years , and yet still, there is work left to be done: - Hardware support. NVIDIA support is spotty still. Easily the biggest issue IMO, though it's better than it was. - Network operation. X will always be better here because it was designed to be (at least with toolkits that can still t…

Regarding your post scriptum,

It is clear to me as a FreeBSD user that Wayland is primarily developed first hand for Linux.

To me, Wayland looks like a threat rather than something I should embrace.

I remember when it was a given that free software was developed to support a wide eco system. What happened?

“There is even one for macos” XD

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