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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

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Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the simple way for a bash script to get the title of the currently focused window? In X this is easy and the bash script will work with every DE. In Wayland you have to write a different solution for each compositor/DE.. Prove me wrong, please. It shouldn't be hard, all I want to do is fuzzy match window titles to named audio streams in pipewire, but "Oohh noo that's a security flaw!" say the patronizing Wayla…

> In X this is easy and the bash script will work with every DE. In Wayland you have to write a different solution for each compositor/DE.. Prove me wrong, please. I don't know what you expect people to prove other than that X and Wayland both have the same problem but since X is so complicated there is only one implementation to begin with, which makes it look like X has solved the problem even though it suffers fro…

There are in fact multiple implementations of X and xdotool works with all of them. Typical Wayland advocate, doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about while telling people to just ignore the problems they have with Wayland, probaby because you don't even understand the problem in the first place. Why did you even respond to me? To insult me? To waste my time?

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#282
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair! Though I'm actually not sure I understand what you mean with simplicity. X11 is so vastly more complicated than Wayland.

Afaik Xorg is 'only' like ~500k lines of code, which is not huge by the standards of large porjects. In fact, one of the major counter arguments against Wayland, is that the compositor + a few core libs, like wlroots necessary to provide a similar set of functionalities, is already larger that the equivalent X11 code (which has a ton of unused cruft).

> like wlroots necessary to provide a similar set of functionalities, is already larger that the equivalent X11 code

I absolutely don't buy this.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In X this is easy and the bash script will work with every DE. In Wayland you have to write a different solution for each compositor/DE.. Prove me wrong, please. I don't know what you expect people to prove other than that X and Wayland both have the same problem but since X is so complicated there is only one implementation to begin with, which makes it look like X has solved the problem even though it suffers fro…

There are in fact multiple implementations of X and xdotool works with all of them. Typical Wayland advocate, doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about while telling people to just ignore the problems they have with Wayland, probaby because you don't even understand the problem in the first place. Why did you even respond to me? To insult me? To waste my time?

> There are in fact multiple implementations of X and xdotool works with all of them

Are there non-Xorg X servers for Linux that are usable? Asking because I'd like to try them if they exist

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#285
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can "assume Vulkan exists" helps a lot (both hardware and software renderers exist). Do remember--Wayland predates Vulkan by almost a full decade. In addition, you can offload OpenGL compatibility to Zink (again leaning into Vulkan). > pull in a group of long term maintainers. "Use new cool language" seems to be a prerequisite for this nowadays ... At least Zig is very compatible with C.

You can't "assume Vulkan exists". Any pre-2016 hardware won't have proper hardware support for Vulkan and that's a lot of hardware still in use. Software renderers are unworthy of any serious consideration due to the perfomance drawbacks. Just use OpenGL. I don't know when this trend to overcomplicate everything using Vulkan began, but I hate it.

Nvidia had a driver for Vulkan for Kepler which launched in 2012, AMD had support all the way back to GCN 1.0 (also 2012). Intel did have issues supporting it, I can't recall if it was for hardware reasons or just lack of desire for a driver.

Vulkan has substantial advantages for multi-threaded code, as well as exposing the underlying asynchronous nature of running code on the GPU. The kind of thing you want to be able to control with a desktop compositor where controlling vsync and present timing is very important.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XLibre is a joke. They're making changes for the sake of changes: for example, commit aefde9 strips out vendoring in an ad-hoc, incomplete fashion (introducing a minor spacing bug in the process); and commit aafd986 replaces `int` with `unsigned int` (instead of `size_t`), failing to properly fix the bug that the compiler warnings identified (albeit, also removing an unrelated C footgun along the way, so this does lo…

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> most of the Wayland complaints you read are handwave-y bullshit, idk what else to say.

The dislike of the product among users is certainly sincere. I feel like somewhere there is probably an author of a young adult novel with a title like “He’s Just Not That Into You” with a cathartic and cautionary ending and that author should write a pamphlet or something specifically for the benefit of the Wayland people.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#288
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wayland is still quite a way behind Windows and macOS in terms of what productivity users need What's missing?

Window positioning? You cannot position the window, you cannot send a hint, nothing? So my pop-up with GTK4 will randomly be placed somewhere, anywhere, without any control. OK, GTK4 went further and also removed popups without the parent, so you hack that with an invisible anchor window and then write platform-specific code for sane platforms that CAN, of course, move the window. And let's not talk about window icon…

Have you considered if someone wants to make a compositor where each window is projected onto a facet of a hyper cube and must place windows in 4 dimensions? These are important use cases we should support, we should make cross platform software as difficult possible to develop for Linux by removing features that have been standard on desktop operating systems for decades.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#289
post #261

Please prioritize to keep accessibility features working. This is really the main issue with wayland. Yes, it might be more stable these days and work fine for you. We can talk how how it makes writing you own WM needlessly complicated and all that but the one thing that makes wayland unacceptable is its lacking accessibility story. After so many years. Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later.…

As someone who is not deep into linux desktop history: Can you please elaborate on the missing accessibility features in wayland or direct me to resources on that? I've been using wayland for a while now and am very happy with it, but my accessibility needs are pretty basic.

See this comment for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075#46381858

Here is a slightly-hopeful article: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the protocol spec being minimal is that it enables a wide variety of implementations, something it definitely succeeded at. I still don't know how people twist this obvious success into a failure.

Xorg fans reverse all the normal Open Source logic. Imagine we were talking about web browsers… There should only be one! No security makes all my extensions work!

Imagine if web browsers all had mutually incompatible DOM implementations for basic functionalities.

That's the situation with Wayland that people are complaining about. I don't need innovation in keyboard and mouse sharing, I need it to work.

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