Live data from Hacker News

Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

phoronix.com

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#31
post #3

I had to look up what "Gnome Mutter" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutter_(software) > Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, but then evolved to be a display server ("Wayland compositor"). It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, Gnome alienated some developers around the time of GTK 3, and there have sometimes been regressions, and some opinionated unconve…

How many X11 holdouts are still around, really? I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020; once Sway was there as a good tiling window manager, and Emacs got its Wayland-ready pure-gtk branch, there was no need to look back. I of course see people here and there on forums express discontent, but I don't think that demographic is big enough to drive both si…

I'm personally open to Wayland, and able to move to it (and sometimes have, though once I had to back it out because it was breaking too much in a critical factory embedded appliance) (and XMonad works noticeably better for me than i3wm/Sway). But not everyone can move to it.

Wayland is only one of the many Gnome desktop feature and technical decisions that not everyone agrees with. Some decisions are regressions, and outright defective, for years and counting.

There's an awkward situation, in which the companies paying for the programmers effectively get to decide, and the governance doesn't necessarily reflect the user base. But, like "they who has the gold, makes the rules", they who does the work...

So the healthy competition comes in when someone someone can afford to spend time to build alternatives. Sometimes expending effort just to undo changes of someone else, on a fork.

For example, when Gnome decided to take the desktop behavior in their own creative direction, the Cinnamon project gave everyone back a more familiar and intuitive desktop, which continued to work with all the application programs that people had been using.

(Strangely, Cinnamon seems more an enterprise-desktop look&feel drop-in replacement than the default Gnome desktop. When I would've guessed Gnome corporate funders would've been focused on getting Linux desktop on corporate desktop as their first priority, and then second priority would be mobile. But I don't see the default Gnome desktop getting them either. Cinnamon, on the other hand, is immediately usable by any corporate worker who's used any Microsoft desktop since Windows 95.)

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#33
post #4

A decade of a their trademark hard line "you're holding it wrong" ethos will likely already have driven away what people might object to this sort of change.

Anti-Gnome people really need to get over it. We get it, just don't use their software.

I've never believed on that dichotomy: either you are happy with everything a project does, or you are a hater. Why?

That was precisely what drove me away from the project after many years.

I don't use the software anymore and, for the most part, no changes they make affect me, but Gonome 3 should be treated as an example of an awful way of driving change by burning bridges and hurting the community.

I haven't thought about this for many years now, but I would have expected RH to do better.

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#34
post #3

I had to look up what "Gnome Mutter" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutter_(software) > Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, but then evolved to be a display server ("Wayland compositor"). It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, Gnome alienated some developers around the time of GTK 3, and there have sometimes been regressions, and some opinionated unconve…

How many X11 holdouts are still around, really? I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020; once Sway was there as a good tiling window manager, and Emacs got its Wayland-ready pure-gtk branch, there was no need to look back. I of course see people here and there on forums express discontent, but I don't think that demographic is big enough to drive both si…

There are a few. There is still some software that has trouble with XWayland, which could hold back some users, and there are many who aren’t happy with the state of accessibility tools. But I don’t think this justifies the hatred towards it, as it’s not like these issues are unfixable. (Wayland now works better than X for me on all of my systems.)

It’s really disappointing how often disagreements in the open source world turn into religious wars. I think it’s because so many would rather yell and scream than contribute a single line of code. So much wasted energy.

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#35
post #3

I had to look up what "Gnome Mutter" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutter_(software) > Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, but then evolved to be a display server ("Wayland compositor"). It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, Gnome alienated some developers around the time of GTK 3, and there have sometimes been regressions, and some opinionated unconve…

How many X11 holdouts are still around, really? I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020; once Sway was there as a good tiling window manager, and Emacs got its Wayland-ready pure-gtk branch, there was no need to look back. I of course see people here and there on forums express discontent, but I don't think that demographic is big enough to drive both si…

> I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020

You must not be that curmudgeonly! I haven't tried Wayland yet, and so long as people are still arguing about it, I'm too afraid to even try it. :-)

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#36
post #3

I had to look up what "Gnome Mutter" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutter_(software) > Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, but then evolved to be a display server ("Wayland compositor"). It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, Gnome alienated some developers around the time of GTK 3, and there have sometimes been regressions, and some opinionated unconve…

How many X11 holdouts are still around, really? I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020; once Sway was there as a good tiling window manager, and Emacs got its Wayland-ready pure-gtk branch, there was no need to look back. I of course see people here and there on forums express discontent, but I don't think that demographic is big enough to drive both si…

The whole audio plugin field is on X11 for formats reason

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#37
post #33
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-Gnome people really need to get over it. We get it, just don't use their software.

I've never believed on that dichotomy: either you are happy with everything a project does, or you are a hater. Why? That was precisely what drove me away from the project after many years. I don't use the software anymore and, for the most part, no changes they make affect me, but Gonome 3 should be treated as an example of an awful way of driving change by burning bridges and hurting the community. I haven't though…

Just to add: well-founded criticism is not being a “hater”, nor is forking or leaving a project over irreconcilable disagreements. Being a hater is repeatedly publishing absurd screeds, attempting to organize smear campaigns to pressure devs, and using sock puppets to flood social media with negative comments in order to influence users. Sadly there are a few very loud haters in the FOSS community.

If someone is calling you a hater over a difference of opinion, they are just wrong. That said, if you’ve been on the other end of frequent attacks from haters, it’s understandable that you might be overly sensitive to it!

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#38
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never believed on that dichotomy: either you are happy with everything a project does, or you are a hater. Why? That was precisely what drove me away from the project after many years. I don't use the software anymore and, for the most part, no changes they make affect me, but Gonome 3 should be treated as an example of an awful way of driving change by burning bridges and hurting the community. I haven't though…

Just to add: well-founded criticism is not being a “hater”, nor is forking or leaving a project over irreconcilable disagreements. Being a hater is repeatedly publishing absurd screeds, attempting to organize smear campaigns to pressure devs, and using sock puppets to flood social media with negative comments in order to influence users. Sadly there are a few very loud haters in the FOSS community. If someone is call…

[deleted]

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never believed on that dichotomy: either you are happy with everything a project does, or you are a hater. Why? That was precisely what drove me away from the project after many years. I don't use the software anymore and, for the most part, no changes they make affect me, but Gonome 3 should be treated as an example of an awful way of driving change by burning bridges and hurting the community. I haven't though…

Just to add: well-founded criticism is not being a “hater”, nor is forking or leaving a project over irreconcilable disagreements. Being a hater is repeatedly publishing absurd screeds, attempting to organize smear campaigns to pressure devs, and using sock puppets to flood social media with negative comments in order to influence users. Sadly there are a few very loud haters in the FOSS community. If someone is call…

I don't see well found criticism in ops statement just blunt ragebait.

Re: Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

#40
post #3

I had to look up what "Gnome Mutter" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutter_(software) > Mutter is a window manager initially designed and implemented for the X Window System, but then evolved to be a display server ("Wayland compositor"). It became the default window manager in GNOME 3, Gnome alienated some developers around the time of GTK 3, and there have sometimes been regressions, and some opinionated unconve…

How many X11 holdouts are still around, really? I'm a curmudgeonly old man fond of old tech, but I have still had a Wayland-only setup since early 2020; once Sway was there as a good tiling window manager, and Emacs got its Wayland-ready pure-gtk branch, there was no need to look back. I of course see people here and there on forums express discontent, but I don't think that demographic is big enough to drive both si…

I don't use a compositor in XOrg.
Post reply on HN