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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
291–300 of 462 posts
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users? Obviously xorg devs want to work on something that isn't ancient and crufty. But users want something that actually works and it has taken almost 2 decades to get to that point. Actually I still have more issues on Wayland than X. Although it is at least starting to swing in the other direction - e.g. KDE's screen recording feature doesn't work on X. The button's still there but if you click it nothing happens…
Most users have no idea what is behind. They don't want X or anything X related, they want things to work. Most of the things worked before 2020, including legacy things through xwayland. Now all things work, except maybe remote apps through ssh ootb, but for this you can either use RDP or Waypipe. The only thing maybe worth discussing is video acceleration. this aside, I have been using gnome on Wayland for years an…
Wayland:
* straight up doesn't work on at least one of my laptops (driver problems AFAICT)
* does run on the other one, but crashes at an alarming rate compared to Xorg
* breaks all of my accessibility tools (some have (worse) replacements, some don't)
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do per-display DPI just fine on X11 (through xrandr), it's just the major toolkits don't support it. GTK, for example, reads a single global DPI value from XSETTINGS; there's no reason why it has to be that way. The annoying thing about the other things you mention is that they honestly are not that difficult to fix. The X server can throw an error (or just silently ignore it) when one client passes the windo…
>You can do per-display DPI just fine on X11 (through xrandr), it's just the major toolkits don't support it. GTK, for example, reads a single global DPI value from XSETTINGS; there's no reason why it has to be that way. I remember people complaining about the GTK file picker not having a preview for more than a decade, and at some point it sort of became a meme. When it finally got added, the PR was like a 2-300 lin…
And was added after they rewrote everything for the new GTK version when there're functional patches adding thumbnails to previous versions. (Which were rejected/ignored because they didn't feel good.) A situational very in parallel to Xorg/Wayland if consider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382940.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not technically behind on window positioning. Rather, it was a deliberate choice not to support it. You can very reasonably object to that, but it is sorta a necessary measure to prevent clickjacking.
I'm amazed how both wayland and x11 miss the logical solution: let the user decide. Any function that is a threat should be behind capabilities. A program should be able to request moving its windows. The user should ultimately decide what should happen: allow or nah.
And common sense mitigations: if a new program I've never seen before drops an actionable control under my cursor, maybe just default to not immediately accepting the next input to it so I have a chance to see it.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#295This is a great project! I like and use Wayland but the portal protocols and extension mechanism does leave a lot to be desired. Wayland is still quite a way behind Windows and macOS in terms of what productivity users need An X11 rewrite with some security baked in is an awesome approach. Will be watching!
I don't really understand what is supposedly missing in Wayland for productivity users? At work I have been using gnome with the wayland backend for years at this point and I can't really figure out anything that's missing.
>what is supposedly missing in Wayland
My desktop is a bit long in the tooth (22.04), but I've long given up on trying to screen shot or screen share from Wayland. I have my Macbook sitting next to it and use it for those things, where it works basically flawlessly.
Kind of waiting for 26.04 to upgrade at this point, but I'm not really expecting any of this to be better yet.
edit: If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have gone Wayland at 22.04.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do they say they're omitting drawing and xrender?
It talks about trimming 'legacy' features and specifically says they are omitting 'font-related' operations. That obviously means no useful core X11 application will work (unless you count xlogo and xeyes). Whether the XRender glyph cache mechanism is included is unclear. It also says only DRI is *currently* supported, but maybe that's incidental?
XRender isn't part of the core protocol so it should be implemented in the future. There is already some xrender code in there. Almost no applications use x11 core protocol font, except for cursor. Since the x11 core protocol font (on xorg server at least) is rendered without anti aliasing and doesn't really support unicode.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#297The Wayland people were right about everything
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#298Please 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.…
> Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later.
I don't think there's any concrete proof of this. Ideally I think people want accessibility handled by their WM/DE; you're not getting Windows or macOS-quality a11y "for free" unless your desktop embraces it. At which point you might as well make it a separate, aftermarket protocol and slap it into d-bus.
If the Linux ecosystem is going to be fragmented and move past single-point-of-failure, polishing Xorg's accessibility works against the goal of standardized a11y.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which one? The Gnome Wayland, the KDE Wayland, the xroots wayland, Weston, or one of the others? Each one is an independent implementation of a Wayland compositor, with a differing, incompatible set of extensions. X11 was a single, pretty janky implementation. Wayland is the worst of both worlds -- it's cleaned up a little, but it's still kinda janky. In exchange for a little bit of cleanup, mainly around bitmap font…
If we're hypothesising a perfect world, ideally they standardise some way of sharing framebuffers between programs into Wayland. I suppose maybe they already have I gave up on the ecosystem in the early 2020s. That seems like it should be long enough ago now that they've got even advanced features like screenshots under control and rolled out.
Your "perfect world" sounds suspiciously similar to a remote infiltrator's paradise.
Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I said build on top of wlroots, not DWL. And I only brought it up as an example of a small Wayland compositor/window manager because the poster I was replying to wants to build their own anyway. DWL is more interesting as a learning exercise than something to use.
> I said build on top of wlroots, not DWL. Turns out, the wlroots API is so volatile atm that even the developer of the super small compositor DWL has to throw in the towel for now. > DWL is more interesting as a learning exercise than something to use. The same is said about DWM, its xorg counterpart, but I, for one, am a happy user of DWM.
Nearly every Wayland compositor is built on wlroots. Somehow they manage. But yeah, of course it's going to change more than X11, which is older than I am and more or less abandoned...