Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#41

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

Simpler you can just scale lower dpi clients down from a higher resolution. Applications think every screen has the same DPI and draw accordingly. X scales such displays to the correct physical size.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#42

Post by jeroenhd »

mcpackieh wrote: post #36
jeroenhd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - O proper screen recording support Works just fine. I use OBS. > - broken screen sharing Never had any trouble with it. > - No proper global keyboard shortcut > - No push to talk support On its way: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/711 / https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/#gdbus-org.free... > - Several problems with multiple screens Haven't had any more than on X11, but then again I do…

OBS is absurd bloat. What's the wayland equivalent of `ffmpeg -f x11grab` ?

ctrl + alt + shift + R will record the screen on Gnome, it's built into the shell.

wf-recorder will do Wayland screen recording fromtthe she'll. I don't think anyone has bothered to implement Wayland screen recording in ffmpeg yet, maybe ask the ffmpeg mailing list to check if that's on the roadmap yet.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#44

Post by jeroenhd »

adastra22 wrote: post #37
jeroenhd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is more than a little ironic since Python stole its name from a British comedy show.

Monty Python didn't register Python as a name for computer software was far as I know. Nobody was going to confuse the two.

Releasing Python 2.8 would definitely confuse people.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#45

Post by JoshTriplett »

hifycycyv wrote: post #30
JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, my premise is that it takes time to develop features, and what's considered "basic" both changes over time and varies by person.

For instance, I would argue that "basic functionality" today, established by browsers and phones more than 15 years ago, is the ability to sandbox applications and not treat them as all-powerful. X still doesn't have that today. Wayland had that as a basic design premise from the beginning.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#46

Post by jjav »

janosdebugs wrote: post #19

This is going to leave so many people by the wayside. (Pun totally intended.) Late 2020, my jaw dropped on the floor when a developer from CERN showed up and said that X11 support was needed in ContainerSSH for their use case and then developed it. (The LxPlus service, which acts as a dev host for researchers.) I thought X11 forwarding was well and truly a thing of the past. Yes, I know that waypipe is a thing, but i…

> I thought X11 forwarding was well and truly a thing of the past.

Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

That's kind of the whole point of using X, the primary use case.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#47

Post by linuxandrew »

enriquto wrote: post #29
JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 al…

> 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.

I guess we should do away with memory protection as well. Filesystem permissions? Bah, they can go too, after all, a computer is generally used by a single person right?

The reality is that many users use untrusted applications that don't have access to home, ergo Flatpak. There are plenty of reasons why the free for all security model for X11 isn't suitable. Besides, that ship has well and truly sailed - most of the X11 devs have been working on Wayland for the better part of a decade now.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#48

Post by musicale »

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…

> Wayland is X12; it's designed and endorsed by the folks who worked on X11

That would make it a spiritual successor, but not X12.

Considering several comments - and PP's original issues - it also sounds like it isn't ready to become a candidate for X12 at this time.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#49

Post by uxp8u61q »

As someone who used to be a diehard Linux user and supporter, and then switched back to windows after about a decade, this thread is a good reminder of why I switched back. I've been hearing about the year of the Linux desktop for... Years... And yet here are people who suggest I should put up with an incomplete, partially broken display server, because they don't want to deal with maintenance of the old one. And in this thread, any complaint by real users who are missing features or have encountered bugs is met with a dismissal.

You know what? The equivalent of X11 in windows may be full of cruft, technical debt, poorly thought out / "unelegant" design decisions... But it fucking works. I'm sorry, but I have other things to do than dealing with the constant churn of Linux desktop software.

I remember a decade ago when everyone was supposed to switch to pulseaudio, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, its design was solid and future proof. Migrating from alsa did break everything and was a PITA. And alsa was still there! The fix for many problems was to configure something in the venerable alsamixer. Now apparently we need to migrate to pipewire. All I know is that upgrading broke my rpi4. I don't care about the software, I just want my htpc to play a video with sound when I get back from work. I still had to run alsamixer and flip a few knobs to get it to work again. This is madness.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#50

Post by bandrami »

jeroenhd wrote: post #44
adastra22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more than a little ironic since Python stole its name from a British comedy show.

Monty Python didn't register Python as a name for computer software was far as I know. Nobody was going to confuse the two. Releasing Python 2.8 would definitely confuse people.

I did in fact find it confusing that a very different language was released under the name "Python 3". They probably should have picked a new name rather than capitalizing on the original language's popularity to push their new idea.
Post reply on HN