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Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

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Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#91
post #76

[flagged]

Can you explain how xorg developers removing a lot of their own code and calling it "bad" because they get mad at someone makes you think that xorg is professional and makes the fork look bad? I am only able to see it the opposite way, that is, xorg developers have no idea wtf are they doing. I mean them deleting their own code only proves their own incompetence not Enrico's.

They're reverting this developer's previous changes, because those changes were bad.

More on those previous changes here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797#no...

Definitely some blame also belongs to the Xorg committer who reviewed and merged those changes (and it looks like that person understands that in retrospect). But the primary responsibility for getting a change right is the author's.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#93
post #55

I'll throw my hat in the anti-Wayland ring. I have a 5-year-old graphics card from the most popular graphics card company in the world. And yet, in 2025, I cannot run Sway/Wayland on my Nvidia 3070 for more than 20 minutes without a crash. i3/Xorg works fine. Wayland just straight doesn't work and the push to move everyone to it looks ridiculous from my perspective.

At least in the past, this was an nvidia issue (not respecting the kernel). But I do understand the user issue here: X works, Wayland does not.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#94
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think politics will always be a big part of open source, as the nature of open source development is inherently at odds with corporatism and control. It's particularly the reactionary stuff that concerns me when it comes to projects like this. When someone's motivation is tied to short-lived movements of social energy like that, I don't trust them to have a long term vision or investment in a project.

> short-lived movements of social energy It's hard to imagine an energy that's apparently existed for 12 years and still going being described as "short-lived." Perhaps it's really just unfamiliar and that's why it seems so concerning?

I don’t recall anyone ranting about “DEI” 12 years ago. I do recall the same rants about 3 or 4 other terms that ultimately resolve to “people that aren’t me are allowed to do things”, though.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#95
post #43

Well, it's my understanding that Xorg still cannot do per-monitor fractional scaling these days, have they fixed it? That was the major selling point of Wayland for me, as an occasional linux desktop user. Retina MacBook Pro was released in 2012, about 13 years ago. Personally, I don't think Xorg is in a position to sneer at its competitor for being "beta in quality" after "15 years into making."

XFCE solves this by using XRandR multipliers which can be applied per monitor, where the canvas is really big and is scaled however the target display needs it. It's like macOS is doing it, by the way.

I always thought I'd run into this issue when I got a machine with a hidpi monitor. Well I have one now and use it with a normal monitor and yeah I fixed it with a single xrandr command. It's not clear to me what exactly everyone's problem has been.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#97
post #91
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how xorg developers removing a lot of their own code and calling it "bad" because they get mad at someone makes you think that xorg is professional and makes the fork look bad? I am only able to see it the opposite way, that is, xorg developers have no idea wtf are they doing. I mean them deleting their own code only proves their own incompetence not Enrico's.

They're reverting this developer's previous changes, because those changes were bad. More on those previous changes here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797#no... Definitely some blame also belongs to the Xorg committer who reviewed and merged those changes (and it looks like that person understands that in retrospect). But the primary responsibility for getting a change right is the author's.

[deleted]

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#98
I understand that change can be challenging, but actively seeking reasons to avoid change is another matter entirely. The criticism of Wayland in this article seems unfounded. Transitioning to new tools can resolve many issues.

You have a choice: acknowledge that Wayland is faster, more user-friendly, and more secure, or remain tied to technologies from the 1990s.

Since Ubuntu has adopted Wayland exclusively for its new LTS release, I've noticed over the past few days that much of the criticism comes from Windows users who rely on RDP to configure Red Hat or CentOS with a GUI, or something similar. These users have become accustomed to the lack of security in Xorg to perform their tasks. Now, they must reconsider how they maintain their Linux machines.

In any case, I was unaware that Wayland was becoming the new systemd. Perhaps this is because I have been using it for more then four years, starting with bullseye (sid) / GNOME, and for about two years with FreeBSD / Sway. I use these systems daily at work without any major issues.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#99
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The README being stuffed with political dogwhistles is downright weird For reasons I've never understood politics started invading open source about 10 years ago. What's weird is that these political ideas all seem to be highly aligned and this is the first major project that breaks that alignment. Personally I'd prefer to see the politics, on both sides, disappear forever. It only pollutes the engineering and it f…

I think politics will always be a big part of open source, as the nature of open source development is inherently at odds with corporatism and control. It's particularly the reactionary stuff that concerns me when it comes to projects like this. When someone's motivation is tied to short-lived movements of social energy like that, I don't trust them to have a long term vision or investment in a project.

> the nature of open source development is inherently at odds with corporatism

No, you're thinking of “Free Software” — “Open Source” was explicitly pro-corporate from the moment the term was coined. OSI themselves will tell you that “open source” as we know it was a product of AOL's desire to get people to work for them for free: https://opensource.org/history

“The [February 3rd, 1998] conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label ‘free software.’”

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#100
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XFCE solves this by using XRandR multipliers which can be applied per monitor, where the canvas is really big and is scaled however the target display needs it. It's like macOS is doing it, by the way.

I always thought I'd run into this issue when I got a machine with a hidpi monitor. Well I have one now and use it with a normal monitor and yeah I fixed it with a single xrandr command. It's not clear to me what exactly everyone's problem has been.

xrandr exposes a lot of stuff that's not available in GUI configuration screens. At least for Gnome, this is one of them.
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