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Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

theregister.com

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Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#91

Post by E1Q6Y57O »

mcpackieh wrote: post #88
E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect, apps installed through the macOS App Store have required sandboxing since 2012. Since 2018, Microsoft is also attempting to get developers to sandbox more apps, see more about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36059982

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Looking over the part where you imply that the MacOS App Store is the standard way to install Applications on MacOS (opposed to dragging the application to the Applications folder), let's look at what the system you're referring to actually does: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/configuring-... Show me where it says a program installed from the MacOS appstore will be unabl…

>Looking over the part where you imply that the MacOS App Store is the standard way to install Applications on MacOS

That is the standard way. An app that has its own custom installer or patcher/updater is by definition, using a non-standard install procedure.

But even if it wasn't, it definitely is the standard on Linux, where package managers are the norm.

>The application developer grants their app the entitlements to read user files.

Flatpak works in exactly the same way.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#92

Post by shrimp_emoji »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #49

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…

X11 also just "fucking works", and this is article is about a proposal to remove it from GNOME.

GNOME is the DE equivalent of North Korea. It's like hearing about North Korea contemplating removing the right to wear clothes and going, "I left Earth a decade ago, and this is a good reminder of why I haven't come back." :p

X11 will still be supported by sane (desktop) DEs for as long as Linux will still be in use, is my guess. (Just like window minimization and non-rounded corners and system trays and disabling composition and...)

> Now apparently we need to migrate to pipewire.

I don't even think I'm on pipewire. Using Arch, you can run anything you want; no ones forcing you to do anything. ;D

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#93

Post by E1Q6Y57O »

bandrami wrote: post #89
E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Even the X.org developers disagree with you here. Messing with the DPI will cause lots of clients to break even further. See this merge request for more info on this: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests... X11 simply isn't built to do this. If you want this to work, then the last 35 years of clients don't do the right thing and still would need to be changed to use a new extension that be…

And yet, it works better than in Wayland.

No it actually doesn't, I've heard tons of complaints about X clients not scaling correctly. Sure it might work for the subset of clients that are reading the DPI value the way you intended, but in doing so you've silently broke a lot of other clients.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#94

Post by jeroenhd »

DangitBobby wrote: post #83
jeroenhd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy wasn't maintaining Python, he as creating a new version incompatible with either Python 2.7 or Python 3. Red Hat and other large companies have maintained Python for years after 2.7 died (EOL date was January 1st, 2020). IBM/Red Hat offer Python 2.7 including security fixes and bug fixes until 2024 ( https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4455511 ). Had he just provided patches to Python 2.7, nobody would've ba…

After reading your first link I'm having a very hard time understanding how it's a "new version incompatible with either Python 2.7 or Python 3" or how you can think "they created an alternative language that was completely different" is true in any sense. > Python 2.8 is a backwards-compatible Python interpreter that runs Python 2 code and C-extensions exactly as-is, while also allowing Python 2 programmers to use t…

> Really sounds like Python 2.8 to me!

That's the problem, isn't it? Nobody who works on Python actually worked on this fork, but it sounds and looks official. That's why the Python Foundation people found this troublesome enough to demand a rename.

Tauthnon has lots of additions to normal Python, most stemming from a bunch of PEPs that author liked. You can't run Tauthon code on any Python interpreter (either 2.7 or 3.x), and there are a few edge case incompatibilities as well. It's probably a great interpreter for those who want newer features but are still stuck with Python 2.7 for whatever reason.

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#95

Post by sprash »

E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #79
sprash wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X11 has nothing to do with "traditional" Unix. Even back in the 80s the UNIX philosophy didn't work with a graphics stack and X11 itself is very un-Unix-like. This is even more true for the modern graphics stack. That being said, X11 is one of the few APIs that had a really long run and that everybody in the community agrees upon. This is extremely rare. 38 years of backwards compatibility and still being able to del…

>X11 is one of the few APIs that had a really long run and that everybody in the community agrees upon Outside of a very small niche of obscure window manager developers, this isn't true. GNOME and KDE have been trying to get rid of it for decades. The glaring flaws in the API have been known for that long. >38 years of backwards compatibility and still being able to deliver performance No, the Xorg server actually l…

> GNOME and KDE

Both are are really bad desktop environments and part of the reason the FOSS desktop never took off. Also they are mostly developed by full time paid employees with zero community involvement. As such they are the small niche.

> The glaring flaws in the API have been known for that long.

X11 has flaws but I wouldn't call them "glaring". They are a nuisance at best. You don't pay for functionality you don't need. Wayland has glaring flaws because it does not provide and standardize functionality that people need. It also has severe technical flaws like implicit sync which makes all your application stutter when one application has high GPU load.

> Xorg server actually lacks backward compatibility with lots of non-standard X11 extensions that for whatever reason were either removed or were never merged upstream.

Great, so there is a regular organic and efficient clean up process happening that keeps the unused or unpopular stuff out of X11. There shouldn't be much "old cruft" around then. If this is the case, why do we need Wayland?

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#96

Post by sprash »

E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #81
sprash wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xwayland only provides backwards compatibility for a very small subset of the X11 ecosystem (E.g. window managers or xdotool are not supported). As such it is only useful for very limited X11 clients on the level of GNOME applications and in most cases completely useless.

That's the same limitation as XQuartz or any other rootless X server. And you have this exactly backwards. The majority of X clients that users care about are ordinary programs, not window managers or xdotool.

> The majority of X clients that users care about are ordinary programs

This is simply not true. The only "odinary" programs according to your definition that I am running are a browser and a terminal. All other xclients I'm running go beyond that and can not work with Xwayland or XQuartz. (a quick ´grep "^[x,X]" .bash_history´ reveals xautolock, xbacklight, xbel, xcalib, xcape, xdpyinfo, xdotool, xkill, xmodmap, xrandr, xrdb, xsel, xset)

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#97

Post by BeetleB »

BeetleB wrote: post #27
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.

To answer my own question: 70% of Linux gamers use X. Definitely not a small fraction.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#98

Post by [deleted] »

E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #93
bandrami wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, it works better than in Wayland.

No it actually doesn't, I've heard tons of complaints about X clients not scaling correctly. Sure it might work for the subset of clients that are reading the DPI value the way you intended, but in doing so you've silently broke a lot of other clients.

[deleted]

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#99

Post by bandrami »

E1Q6Y57O wrote: post #93
bandrami wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, it works better than in Wayland.

No it actually doesn't, I've heard tons of complaints about X clients not scaling correctly. Sure it might work for the subset of clients that are reading the DPI value the way you intended, but in doing so you've silently broke a lot of other clients.

The "subset" of clients using Xcb or Qt? I'm fine with only counting them, personally...

Re: Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session

#100

Post by charcircuit »

michaelmrose wrote: post #39
charcircuit wrote: post #33

With every year X is still in use more and more tech debt is being built up. It's a big problem in how slow this migration is going. The Linux desktop community should have made this migration its top priority and have had completed it a decade ago. It's sad to see how far behind the Linux desktop is compared to other operating systems.

You are wondering why other people didn't invest more of their time working for free for the abstract goal of moving someone else's vision forward. If they wanted buy in the logical thing would be to provide a something usable and feature complete with wlroots like library inside of the first 5 years rather than producing something nobody would use, claiming it is usable, and then slowly evolving it towards usability…

I am not wondering that. There could have been corporate sponsors or community fund raisers to fund this essential work.

>If they wanted buy in the logical thing...

I already know that this was poorly handled. If Microsoft or Apple wanted to change rearchitect display servers I can assure you it would not take over 16 years.

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