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

Please Don't Promote Wayland

stoppromotingwayland.netlify.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#81

Post by lproven »

al3rez wrote: post #40

i am using wayland on fedora 42 + kde, it's fine what are you talking about? if you stop running sway/hyrpland rices you'll be fine.

What if someone doesn't want KDE or GNOME, or any tiling WM?

What if we want some of the other desktops out there?

Examples:

I like Macs and macOS, with a global menu bar. I like Ubuntu's Unity desktop. It doesn't work on Wayland and won't. Unity8, AKA Lomiri, does but it is intended for handhelds with touch and is badly compromised. No global menu bar, for instance.

What if we want something NeXT-like? I like GNUstep. Neither GSDE nor NEXTSPACE supports Wayland.

I like Xfce. It has an experimental version but keyboard window management is broken. Xfce's compatibility with standard Windows keystrokes is one of the reasons I like it. It seems to me Wayland folks don't know these and I've yet to see a Wayland environment that supports them. E.g. Alt+Space, X to maximise. Alt+Space, N to minimise.

I want full title bars, so I can use the scroll wheel on them to roll them up, as in Windowshade.

E.g. https://www.windowmizer.com/

I also want to be able to middle-click the title bar to send that window to the back of the stack. Once _every_ Linux desktop did this, but GNOME started software rot by getting rid of title bars in favour of "client side decorations" and the feature started to disappear.

What if I want one of the lightweight Windows-alike desktops? MATE, Trinity, EDE, XPde? No Wayland support.

What if I want a Chinese desktop with a bit of Win7 bling? DDE and UKUI both don't support Wayland.

What if I want a different trad Unix environment?

CDE, nsCDE, Maxx Interative, OLWM... none work on Wayland.

Amiga style: amiwm doesn't work.

Classic Mac style: mlvwm doesn't work.

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#83

Post by A907 »

xtracto wrote: post #24
rtpg wrote: post #4

I am very open to Wayland in theory but I legit worry because it's been in the air for years and years and it still feels so far away. And some of the Wayland-y points around things like security just never felt relevant to me. Though the real pain points for me have been around the various containerization things that just cause things like my IME to barely function. At least Python 3 if you started your project on…

All engineers implementing Wayland should read Joel Spolsky's seminal article on software rewrite https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... And Martin Fowler article on Strangle Fig pattern. It's been a waste of resources to have yet another biffurcation on the Linux Desktop ecosystem. It's pretty sad.

Joel spolsky article isnt that good and kinda has survivorship bias written over it. Focus is on few cases where rewrites werent successful without trully looking into why.

Also it predicates on idea that Xorg and x11 would have stayed and wouldnt have been rewritten which btw was always the plan as it was riddled with temporary hacks, insecure and had lot of legacy code/legacy protocols, things that would require loads of rewrites so the talk always was X12 wouldnt be backwards compatible and a new from scratch version of X11 protocols(with xorg being written from scratch to supprot x12 protocols) but instead of doing that they went with wayland as it already existed

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#84

Post by A907 »

wmf wrote: post #53
goku12 wrote: post #48

You could use most of those arguments verbatim and unironically create a page titled "Please don't promote X11". Meanwhile, some of the Wayland-specific complaints were solved a while ago and some weren't even Wayland's fault to begin with. I get it that some people don't want give up the old systems in favor of the shiny new technologies. I'm also on that side for some software like systemd (not debating. Systemd do…

Yeah, I agree with the author that we should simplify Linux... by dropping X11 completely. While we're at it we could also drop sysvinit, RPM/DEB/Snap, ifconfig, wget, etc.

I wouldnt say drop rpm deb ir ifconfig or wget but specially not snap

But each of these tools should be in its proper space rpm and deb should remain in system composition not installting user installed packages for that you have snaps and flatpaks

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#85

Post by A907 »

rtpg wrote: post #29
lordofgibbons wrote: post #12

The primary argument is to avoid fragmentation sprinkled with some other not-well-thought-through points. Distros aren't rolling back to X11. That ship has sailed. You can either help move things along, or drag your feet and increase fragmentation - the thing being complained about.. Everything under the "security" section of this article is so unbelievably wrong, that I'm not sure if it's worth anybody's time to ref…

I don't have a dog in this fight, I would be curious to know about the security stuff. Like is screen sharing a massive pain? Or is it "just" a prompt kind of like in the browser? Stuff like global hotkeys sounds unfun tho

Its literaly a single prompt that in some DEs is only shown once for one specific program. As someone who records a lot not a problem at all(screen sharing and screen recording are under wayland same thing)

Global hotkeys yea not fun but not lot of software nreds that

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#86

Post by A907 »

queenkjuul wrote: post #42
rtpg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog in this fight, I would be curious to know about the security stuff. Like is screen sharing a massive pain? Or is it "just" a prompt kind of like in the browser? Stuff like global hotkeys sounds unfun tho

The problem with screen sharing is if you're trying to share a headless remote machine with nobody at the console to approve the request. I don't think there's a proper solution there yet (which worries me, that's exactly how I run one of my machines at home)

In my experiance you only have to do it once at least on gnome

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#87

Post by A907 »

rtpg wrote: post #58
queenkjuul wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with screen sharing is if you're trying to share a headless remote machine with nobody at the console to approve the request. I don't think there's a proper solution there yet (which worries me, that's exactly how I run one of my machines at home)

Yeah seems like there should be _some_ mechanism in place, though I'll admit that it's not immediately obvious what that should be.

Problem is that what is that mechanism that doesnt compromise security

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#88

Post by A907 »

throw0101c wrote: post #37
eurleif wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X11 session support is being removed from the default install of Ubuntu with the upcoming 25.10 release. Gnome and KDE Plasma plan to remove X11 session support entirely within the next few years. Ready or not, Wayland is here.

> X11 session support is being removed from the default install of Ubuntu with the upcoming 25.10 release. Currently I can SSH from my MacBook/XQuartz onto an Ubuntu/Linux system and run xterm (or whatever). How does that work in the future?

You cant that has never been a feature that wayland had planned but there are other tools that can do aimilar like waypipe or rdp or something like sunshine or something like VNC but there is nothing as a part of wayland and doesnt need to be wayland isnt complete reimplementation of X

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#89

Post by A907 »

queenkjuul wrote: post #35
stingraycharles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mostly application support that’s lagging, right? And of course window managers like i3 needing complete replacement, but those seem to be mostly down already.

Some stuff like global hotkeys and remote desktop are Wayland problems inherently

Remote desktop isnt a problem just remote desktop as part of wayland itself, i run sunshine on wayland just fine

Re: Please Don't Promote Wayland

#90

Post by A907 »

jofer wrote: post #9

As much as X11 is an overly complex and dated protocol, this article hits its mark well. My current desktop is actually running Wayland, but I still need X11 for a variety of reasons. I see the development advantages of Wayland, but not the practical advantage as a user. And even as a developer, X11 is stable and well known (albeit definitely weird in places). At the end of the day, things worked perfectly on X11 and…

I ahve to disagree its far from hitting a mark, most of it is stuff that are solved for years and some that are just plain not true
Post reply on HN