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Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

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Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#161

Post by Yizahi »

throwaway63097 wrote: post #119
soraminazuki wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main dev, apart from being a reactionary nutjob This is honestly an understatement. Posting antivax conspiracy theories on LKML? Reactionary. Writing anti-DEI rants in his REAMDE and COC files? Reactionary. But this long-winded rant [1] defending WW2 Germany? "Reactionary" doesn't even begin to describe it. Whatever one's opinion on Wayland, his conduct [2] should be a huge red flag to anyone using his software…

Do you hold the same views that you used to hold six years ago?

You can evolve political views but it usually rarely happens, more like in six decades than in six years. You can't evolve or lose basic human empathy though. You either have it or not.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#162

Post by Gud »

Yizahi wrote: post #160

Author seems to conflate features unique to X11 with "useful" features or "desirable by many" features. I would try to project minimally, but the long list he provides is not that, at least for some significant number of users, or maybe even for majority (I suspect it is). While on the other hand he conveniently ignores that a majority of users do need stuff like working HiDpi scaling, multimonitor use with different…

Maybe unused by you, but I and many other hackers use those features.

I use FreeBSD and use bhyve to run OpenBSD. I also use FreeBSDs Linuxulator to run Linux software(Spotify, haven’t gotten my games working yet).

Without X forwarding this is no longer a possibility.

It seems to me a large part of the Linux community don’t understand that many of us want to continue living in a world of options.

The commercialisation of Linux has been detrimental to the free software community. It seems to me it’s no longer about hacking, enjoying life, but making money(“professional use”, hehe).

End rant

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#163

Post by Yizahi »

Gud wrote: post #162
Yizahi wrote: post #160

Author seems to conflate features unique to X11 with "useful" features or "desirable by many" features. I would try to project minimally, but the long list he provides is not that, at least for some significant number of users, or maybe even for majority (I suspect it is). While on the other hand he conveniently ignores that a majority of users do need stuff like working HiDpi scaling, multimonitor use with different…

Maybe unused by you, but I and many other hackers use those features. I use FreeBSD and use bhyve to run OpenBSD. I also use FreeBSDs Linuxulator to run Linux software(Spotify, haven’t gotten my games working yet). Without X forwarding this is no longer a possibility. It seems to me a large part of the Linux community don’t understand that many of us want to continue living in a world of options. The commercialisatio…

I would suspect that hacker/geek user share of Linux users is smaller than all other user categories together. I don't want to belittle any group btw, just counting share. So I suspect that many more people need monitor related features than thin client features. Thus a project supporting (or at least aiming to) the former wins in popularity over the project focused on the latter.

Same reason systemd won btw. More people (again, I suspect, I'm not collecting stats, only observing market situation) want features from systemd than people wanting complete transparency and plain text support of the init scripts.

I wish good luck to people trying to support X11, but it will be hard for them I guess.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#164

Post by Gud »

Yizahi wrote: post #163
Gud wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe unused by you, but I and many other hackers use those features. I use FreeBSD and use bhyve to run OpenBSD. I also use FreeBSDs Linuxulator to run Linux software(Spotify, haven’t gotten my games working yet). Without X forwarding this is no longer a possibility. It seems to me a large part of the Linux community don’t understand that many of us want to continue living in a world of options. The commercialisatio…

I would suspect that hacker/geek user share of Linux users is smaller than all other user categories together. I don't want to belittle any group btw, just counting share. So I suspect that many more people need monitor related features than thin client features. Thus a project supporting (or at least aiming to) the former wins in popularity over the project focused on the latter. Same reason systemd won btw. More pe…

Probably so but you don’t hear hackers arguing for less software choices.

“Oh, they’re a minority, who gives a shit about their wishes anyway”.

systemd didn’t “win”. It might be the most popular init system for Linux. Feel free to use whatever init system you want. I’m not looking to deprecate it

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#165

Post by Yizahi »

Gud wrote: post #164
Yizahi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suspect that hacker/geek user share of Linux users is smaller than all other user categories together. I don't want to belittle any group btw, just counting share. So I suspect that many more people need monitor related features than thin client features. Thus a project supporting (or at least aiming to) the former wins in popularity over the project focused on the latter. Same reason systemd won btw. More pe…

Probably so but you don’t hear hackers arguing for less software choices. “Oh, they’re a minority, who gives a shit about their wishes anyway”. systemd didn’t “win”. It might be the most popular init system for Linux. Feel free to use whatever init system you want. I’m not looking to deprecate it

Sorry if I was making that impression, I wish both projects good luck and success.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#166

Post by petre »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #145
throwaway63097 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Users don't care about your beautiful code and architecture if your product doesn't even work. Making excuses doesn't help anyone -…

Ignorance is a beautiful shield Against rationality & understanding, little green grasshopper (8 hour old account). The world has no ability to make Nvidia's drivers good. If Nvidia can't build drivers that work, there's nothing we can do about it. Defending a situation where hackers have no ability to improve or work a situation is unhackerly, dumb. Consumers are free to remain ignorant, but this situation of where…

Sure mate, but I guess I'll stick to X if it works, I don't care who's fault is it, nvidia's or wayland's. Life is too short to have a crashing UI interrupt my work.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#167

Post by panzi »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #146
panzi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't writing to /dev/uinput require you to be root? That's way worse security wise than faking X11 inputs. Also you can't direct the inputs to a specific window. That is bound to create problems where events go to the wrong process. Also PipeWire is an audio interface. A replacement to PulseAudio. That has nothing to do with accessing screens.

> Also PipeWire is an audio interface. A replacement to PulseAudio. That has nothing to do with accessing screens. No, it's a general audio/video system, including video from cameras and virtual video streams from screen capture; see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_shar... for some discussion.

Didn't know it also does video. But accessibility tools don't just want video, they want APIs to read all text and other GUI structures directly. OCR is just too imprecise and a waste of resources.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#168

Post by petre »

palata wrote: post #101
charcircuit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neede…

> Linux is about diversity

FreeBSD and even some Linux distros use boring technology™ that just works, thank you. I don't need breakage due to diversity, I need a stable OS that is reliable, works and doesn't crash.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#169

Post by eadmund »

em-bee wrote: post #148
eadmund wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to run an X11 window manager in XWayland and have it manage Wayland windows and intercept keystrokes for all windows? If not then it’s not really an upgrade path. I do get it — no-one owes me anything. They don’t even, really, owe me the kindness of not breaking the software I use. In principle I could fork and maintain everything I want myself, or working with others. But …

that's not fair. window managers are not regular apps. wayland has a different architecture that changes how windows are managed. this also has to affect things like taking screenhots, screen sharing, recording, locking, screensavers, etc. intercepting/sending keystrokes in particular had to be redesigned to make to make it more secure. without that there would not have been a point to wayland at all. your actual app…

> intercepting/sending keystrokes in particular had to be redesigned to make to make it more secure. without that there would not have been a point to wayland at all.

Sure, and I really would like to enjoy that security improvement. But would an evolutionary approach have been possible?

For example, would it have been possible to start by running Wayland with all programs in a privileged status, then migrate to using something like OpenBSD’s pledge(2) to spawn programs preferentially in an unprivileged status, then migrate to spawning some programs (e.g. legacy X11 display managers) in a privileged status?

It sure seems like Wayland requires a lot more work from software using it than X11 did. Wayland has been out for 16 years and still isn’t almost universal; 16 years after X11’s 1984 release it was well-nigh universal.

Again, I get that no-one owes me anything. But it seems to me that the Wayland developers committed the fundamental error of trying to replace a working system with vapourware. It’s still vapourware, in that in 2025 Wayland is still not a drop-in replacement for X11.

> your actual apps that just display stuff on the screen and take your input all still work though.

My display manager is an actual app that is a fundamental part of my workflow.

Re: Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

#170

Post by eadmund »

anon-3988 wrote: post #135
eadmund wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

> 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. You can keep using the older software? No one is forcing you to upgrade? Should these people be forced to work on projects they don't like?

I wrote in a sibling comment ‘I do get it — no-one owes me anything.’ No-one should be forced to do anything. Folks are and should be free to work on whatever suits their fancy.

But folks should also have a sense of duty or responsibility not to needlessly interfere with others. I am free to release a reïmplementation of ls(1). I’m free to extend it. But I shouldn’t change the meaning of ‘ls -d’ to delete all matching files, because it conflicts with POSIX. I shouldn’t change the meaning of ‘ls -b’ to overwrite matching files with nulls (blanks), even though POSIX doesn’t define it at all and in theory I am free to do so, because GNU ls(1) already uses it for printing C-style escapes.

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