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Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

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Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#21

Post by jeroenhd »

bandrami wrote: post #17
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Given the nature of Open Source, anyone is free to fork something and say "I'm going to keep maintaining the old thing forever". But that's often not feasible solely with the handful of people and energy of those people interested in a given older technology, especially in a world in which people expect pieces of the ecosystem to cooperate and interoperate with each other. So, instead, the standard tactics a…

Except for the guy who tried to do that with Python2 and the Python Foundation threatened legal action

When did they do that? All I can find is the Python foundation protecting their trademark. Someone launched "Python 2.8" without any affiliation to the Python Foundation, that's a silly move. Surely everyone in open source learned from the Iceweasel debacle.

Something called Tauthon is still being patched every few months for people who can't let go of Python 2.7, though I don't see many contributors to that fork.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#22

Post by redox99 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #9
v3ss0n wrote: post #5

Wayland is no way ready - O proper screen recording support - broken screen sharing - No proper global keyboard shortcut - No push to talk support - Their developers are seriously crazy on their design decisions. - Several problems with multiple screens A proper refactor of X11 should have been the way to go and there should had been X12 with modern technologies

> proper screen recording support > broken screen sharing Both work perfectly here with pipewire installed. I can do screen recording, and share my screen in video meetings in Firefox. > No proper global keyboard shortcut System-wide keyboard shortcuts already work, through the desktop. The ability for an arbitrary application to request a global keybinding is in progress and expected to become available soon. > No p…

So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release.

And I believe gnome still has that thing where if the UI lags, the cursor lags.

Windows DWM, WDDM architecture, and anything graphics related on Windows is superior in so many ways. They should have copied that instead of the mess that Wayland is, which was developed in a manner that is typical for so many free software: the developers think they know better than the users about what features they need or don't need

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#23

Post by YarickR2 »

aumerle wrote: post #4
bitwize wrote: post #3

X can easily support per-display DPI -- clients just have to eschew the legacy global DPI setting. The Xrandr extension knows the dimensions of each display in both pixels and millimeters from its EDID. Clients interested in making adjustments based on per-display DPI could simply use those values obtained from Xrandr. These values can be wrong, of course -- monitors have been known to lie in their EDID reports -- bu…

xrandr is not sufficient for this. One needs a way for users to configure the per monitor DPI. And have the configuration available to X clients. Currently the only cross DE mechanism for this is Xft.dpi and its global, not per monitor.

>Xft.dpi and its global, not per monitor.

It's per screen, though ; you can have different Xresources on different screens bound to different monitors, I'm running such configuration just fine. Actually, since most of the software I'm using is GTK-based, my per-monitor DPI configuration tool(s) are a pair of xsettingsd running with different DISPLAY variables, and having different Xft/DPI values (and a few other tweaks, like different font rendering options). I'm running two openbox instances , xfce4-panel and tint2 , and two picom instances to properly support client side decorations. And I'm trying to scrape some time to patch xfwm4 and xfce4-panel to support per-screen processes for both . This way I'm driving 24" 4K as my primary display, for coding/browsing/etc, and 24" 2K as a sidekick for monitoring/documentation/spotify/etc

My .xsession:

  xrdb -screen -display :0.0 -merge .Xresources-0.0
  xrdb -screen -display :0.1 -merge .Xresources-0.1
  nohup /usr/lib64/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd &
  export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0 cff:darkening-parameters=500,500,2000,450,3300,450,4600,200" 
  export DISPLAY=:0.0
  export GDK_SCALE=2
  export GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.5
  export QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0
  export QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=2

  nohup xsettingsd -c ~/.xsettingsd-0.0 -s 0 &
  nohup openbox --config-file ~/.config/openbox/rc-0.0.xml &
  ~/Apps/Picom/picom --vsync  --use-ewmh-active-win  --no-frame-pacing --backend glx -b
  nohup xfce4-panel --display=:0.0 &
  nohup /usr/lib64/xfce4/notifyd/xfce4-notifyd &

  export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0" 
  export DISPLAY=:0.1
  unset GDK_SCALE
  unset GDK_DPI_SCALE
  unset QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS
  nohup xsettingsd -c ~/.xsettingsd-0.1 -s 1 &
  nohup openbox --config-file ~/.config/openbox/rc-0.1.xml &
  ~/Apps/Picom/picom --vsync  --use-ewmh-active-win  --no-frame-pacing --backend glx -b
  nohup tint2 &
  wait

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#24

Post by aragilar »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

GNOME (and many others) have spent years telling anyone who has issues with Wayland that lead them to run an X session to report bugs, and has put a lot of effort into fixing those bugs. This seems like a reasonable next step. > This plan seems to The Reg's FOSS Desk to be strong-arming people into adopting Wayland. Or, more reasonably, to maintain less code for alternate paths in favor of fixing the issues that lead…

My impression though is that for enough people, the wayland code doesn't exist (see this comment from a GIMP dev on the aforementioned MRs for example: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/-/merge_request...). It's one thing to choose between different buggy behaviour, it's another when the new way does not allow you to do your job.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#25

Post by JoshTriplett »

redox99 wrote: post #22
JoshTriplett wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> proper screen recording support > broken screen sharing Both work perfectly here with pipewire installed. I can do screen recording, and share my screen in video meetings in Firefox. > No proper global keyboard shortcut System-wide keyboard shortcuts already work, through the desktop. The ability for an arbitrary application to request a global keybinding is in progress and expected to become available soon. > No p…

So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release. And I believe gnome still has that thing where if the UI lags, the cursor lags. Windows DWM, WDDM architecture, and anything graphics related on Windows is superior in so many ways. They should have copied that instead of the mess that Wayland is, which was developed in a manner that is typical for so many free software: the developers think they know…

> So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release.

X11 didn't have what we currently consider "basic functionality" for decades after its release.

The design of X11 says that every application connected to your display is completely trusted, hence why it can grab any key (and thus be a keylogger if it wants to be). The design of Wayland starts with the premise that every application connecting to your display might not be completely trusted, and thus has to ask for a global key shortcut. That makes some things harder, requiring the design of a protocol for such requests. It also makes it possible to have sandboxed applications. That seems like a tradeoff worth making.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#27

Post by BeetleB »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

GNOME (and many others) have spent years telling anyone who has issues with Wayland that lead them to run an X session to report bugs, and has put a lot of effort into fixing those bugs. This seems like a reasonable next step. > This plan seems to The Reg's FOSS Desk to be strong-arming people into adopting Wayland. Or, more reasonably, to maintain less code for alternate paths in favor of fixing the issues that lead…

> Every bit of effort spent fixing a bug in X to help the fraction of users still using it is effort that could have gone into fixing the bugs in Wayland that leave people using X in the first place.

What fraction is that? I thought X still had the larger user share.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#28

Post by YarickR2 »

pengaru wrote: post #12
bitwize wrote: post #3

X can easily support per-display DPI -- clients just have to eschew the legacy global DPI setting. The Xrandr extension knows the dimensions of each display in both pixels and millimeters from its EDID. Clients interested in making adjustments based on per-display DPI could simply use those values obtained from Xrandr. These values can be wrong, of course -- monitors have been known to lie in their EDID reports -- bu…

The way multihead works in modern XOrg is basically a hack to enable seamless dragging of windows across physical display boundaries. Once upon a time you'd do multihead on X with discrete screens and your display environment variable would be something like DISPLAY=:0.0 vs. DISPLAY=:0.1 where the last digit after the dot was the screen number. But your X client would then be confined to that screen. In this old mann…

IDK if ability to drag a window between screens is something more important than properly supporting different DPIs; but that might be a decent level of ignorance on my part

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#29

Post by enriquto »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #25
redox99 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release. And I believe gnome still has that thing where if the UI lags, the cursor lags. Windows DWM, WDDM architecture, and anything graphics related on Windows is superior in so many ways. They should have copied that instead of the mess that Wayland is, which was developed in a manner that is typical for so many free software: the developers think they know…

> So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release. X11 didn't have what we currently consider "basic functionality" for decades after its release. The design of X11 says that every application connected to your display is completely trusted, hence why it can grab any key (and thus be a keylogger if it wants to be). The design of Wayland starts with the premise that every application connecting to yo…

> The design of Wayland starts with the premise that every application connecting to your display might not be completely trusted,

What a strange premise... Do the wayland people have keylocks on all the rooms, drawers and cupboards on their houses?

Unix programs by default have access to all files in the user home. That's the main point of running programs after all: to edit your files. Letting these programs see all pixels in you screen does not seem that bad, does it?

If for some reason you want to run an untrusted application, use a container. But building your whole house around the "untrusted" premise sounds ridiculous.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#30

Post by hifycycyv »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #25
redox99 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release. And I believe gnome still has that thing where if the UI lags, the cursor lags. Windows DWM, WDDM architecture, and anything graphics related on Windows is superior in so many ways. They should have copied that instead of the mess that Wayland is, which was developed in a manner that is typical for so many free software: the developers think they know…

> So, basic functionality is still not there 15 years after release. X11 didn't have what we currently consider "basic functionality" for decades after its release. The design of X11 says that every application connected to your display is completely trusted, hence why it can grab any key (and thus be a keylogger if it wants to be). The design of Wayland starts with the premise that every application connecting to yo…

> X11 didn't have what we currently consider "basic functionality" for decades after its release.

What's the relevance of this? You're position is that we should give up features we have for software that doesn't have them after 15 years of knowing they needed them.

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