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Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

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Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#101

Post by palata »

charcircuit wrote: post #61
palata wrote: post #52

I don't get the Xorg vs Wayland fight. Feels like it mostly coming from people who don't contribute to either of them. If you like Xorg, use Xorg. If you like Wayland, use Wayland. If you're not happy about an issue, contribute to it.

The fight is because: 1. freedesktop based on xorg is outdated and needs to be modernized to keep up with competing operating systems. 2. The Wayland movement is and has been run extremely poorly. Both xorg and wayland are bad so it's easy for either side to point that out.

> so it's easy for either side to point that out.

Sure, it is. But does it matter? I don't think so.

I was happy with Xorg, and there were things it couldn't do that I didn't plan on contributing, so I didn't complain to them.

I am now happy with Wayland, and there are things it cannot do that I am not contributing, so I don't complain.

What I see is that Wayland is quite active and they actually added things I needed that didn't exist a few years ago. That's great. Many people seem to be very vocal about how they prefer Xorg because it works for them: that's great, they can use Xorg.

Someone wants to write another one? That's great, let them do it.

Linux is about diversity. Don't come to Linux and ask it to become Windows or macOS.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#102

Post by msgodel »

Izkata wrote: post #100
msgodel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of me really feels like 90% of people's complaints with X is really just complaints with gnome. Maybe we'll quit hearing them when gnome finally stops supporting it.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#103

Post by jauntywundrkind »

63 wrote: 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.

AMD has great open source drivers that work wonderfully everywhere. Even their old hardware keeps getting amazing upgrades & enhancements, a decade+ latter!

Word on the street is Nvidia is doing a much much better job, for a year or so now. But, like, you are using a GPU that sway used to make you type "--i-wont-buy-an-nvidia-gpu-again" and now makes you type --unsupported-gpu to use.

It's not Wayland's fault if your video card can't do the pretty same sensible reasonable kernel calls asked of it without crashing. I realize that you might not really care about the distinction, I sympathize highly that it just sucks, and no one in open source likes this (Google image search "Linus Torvalds Nvidia"; 2025 only a bit better than 2012 if your bug report here really true I guess). But fault & culpability matters, and Wayland does way way way less special magic & is way more straightforward with how it handles the display subsystem than X, which half ignores the kernel & has its own absurd driver subsystems and mountains of jank overlapping extensions to do what kernels and GPUs just do these days. GPUs have it easy under Wayland!

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#104

Post by eadmund »

exiguus wrote: post #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…

> I understand that change can be challenging

It’s less about change and more about outright breakage. Wayland does not support me.

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

Wayland may be faster, it’s certainly more secure (in the same sense that a system embedded in a ton of concrete and dropped to the bottom of the ocean is more secure), but I’m not convinced that it’s more user friendly. It’s certainly not friendly to me, since it does not allow me to run my window manager of choice.

I’m not convinced that the technologies of the 1990s were necessarily all that bad, either. Yeah, there were some assumptions which turned out not to be the case in reality. And yeah, there is a ton of cruft. And yeah, no-one would design X11 the way it is today. But, you know what? X11, unlike Wayland, works for me.

I would love to use Wayland, honestly. That’s not a lie. But it doesn’t work. And from what I can see it doesn’t want to work.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#106

Post by bsder »

palata wrote: post #52

I don't get the Xorg vs Wayland fight. Feels like it mostly coming from people who don't contribute to either of them. If you like Xorg, use Xorg. If you like Wayland, use Wayland. If you're not happy about an issue, contribute to it.

> If you like Xorg, use Xorg. If you like Wayland, use Wayland. If you're not happy about an issue, contribute to it.

The problem is that RedHat nee IBM are attempting to force everybody onto Wayland by dropping X11 support. They already tried once and the outcry was so huge that they had to back off saying they would try again next version.

This is kind of a rock and a hard place. The Wayland developers don't want to support X11 but neither does anybody else. Wayland is fundamentally broken in many ways down at the architectural level, but the sunk cost fallacy keeps them working on it.

Everybody forgets that Wayland predates Vulkan. A "real" replacement for X11/Wayland probably needs to restart from "Vulkan support is the base layer" and build up from there.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#107

Post by eadmund »

palata wrote: post #52

I don't get the Xorg vs Wayland fight. Feels like it mostly coming from people who don't contribute to either of them. If you like Xorg, use Xorg. If you like Wayland, use Wayland. If you're not happy about an issue, contribute to it.

That doesn’t really work. If there’s no longer a browser which supports X11, then I have to choose between browsing the web and having a usable desktop.

The problem is that the Wayland folks are trying to replace X11 rather than provide an easy upgrade path. They simply don’t care about anyone who uses a computer in any way outside of the ways they can be bothered to support. ‘It’s better!’ they cry, despite users telling them for well over a decade now that it’s not actually, because we cannot do the things we want.

And Wayland is being used as a form of lock-in. ‘GNOME uses Wayland now. Just drop support for that crufty old X11,’ they whisper. Never mind that plenty of folks don’t use GNOME and don’t want to use GNOME. Never mind that Wayland is still not fit for purpose.

It may be someday, and that would be great. I’d genuinely look forward to being able to move on from X11. But Wayland does not work for me, and as projects start to remove support for X11 they are removing support for me.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#108

Post by arp242 »

marcodiego wrote: post #41

Having this specific guy becoming the lead/creator/maintainer of Xlibre, strengthens my argument about the kind of people who are against the Xorg->Wayland replacement.

I'm sorry, but this is just complete nonsense. You can't just paint with a mega-broad brush just because there's one (or a few) unpleasant people in some demographic. You can do that for any demographic: Canadians, Vietnamese, people over 1.80m, people under 1.80m, people exactly 1.80m, etc.

I just got better things to do than rewrite code from one working display system to ... another working display system. That's all there is to it, and that's the case for many (probably most) people.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#110

Post by exiguus »

eadmund wrote: post #104
exiguus wrote: post #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…

> I understand that change can be challenging It’s less about change and more about outright breakage. Wayland does not support me. > You have a choice: acknowledge that Wayland is faster, more user-friendly, and more secure, or remain tied to technologies from the 1990s. Wayland may be faster, it’s certainly more secure (in the same sense that a system embedded in a ton of concrete and dropped to the bottom of the o…

I understand your perspective and the challenges you're encountering with Wayland. It's evident that this transition can be difficult for many, particularly when it comes to maintaining compatibility with specific setups and personal preferences, such as your choice of window manager.

When selecting technology, I always consider my specific use case. For instance, at work, I need to manage multiple open windows simultaneously, so I rely on tiled windows across four monitors. To ensure stability and avoid OS issues, I use GNOME with Pop Shell on Debian. On my smaller laptop, where mobility and keyboard-only navigation are priorities, I've found Sway to be an excellent replacement for dwm.

The key point I want to emphasize is the importance of identifying your unique use case. Once you understand your needs, you can choose the tools that best meet those requirements. The tool itself isn't the ultimate goal; it's about finding what works best for your specific situation. Typically, there are plenty of tools available that can solve your problem or fit your use case.

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