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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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair enough. if this is so, I can admit I'm wrong. so not everything works for everyone. For myself and members of my family, I can say that absolutely everything works on gnome. And I have several machines, spread over several cpu and gpu generations, and different form factors that confirm this. not only those 3 laptops I mentioned. Could it be that since you are not using gnome that you are hitting those problems?…

Thanks. It certainly could be GNOME vs not-GNOME. That doesn't really help me, either way, but it's not hard to imagine that different compositors have entirely different quality levels.

if you ever come into a position that you could try or would like to try gnome, I would encourage you to do it. maybe you could eliminate that bad opinion of Wayland (or confirm it)...

yes gnome has a vision of how the desktop should look like and strong behavior of "my way or the highway", but maybe you get surprised how well it works. especially on fedora.

I assumed wrongly other people (you mostly) use gnome by default, which obviously is not the case. in that case I could see it as a problem since not everyone has red hat resources for desktop development.

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

#432
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You shouldn't, cause it's wrong.

libwayland is 40k lines of code. wlroots is 60k loc.

And just to check, sway is about 49k loc.

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

#433
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether their reasons for "absolutely having to have X11" hinge on actual compatibility with e.g. old binaries or wanting full remoting without streaming pixels. This project would satisfy people who really actually want Wayland, but were upset by transitional pains or interactions they had around it and want to stick with X11 just-cause while getting some similar benefits. This arguably does describe s…

From my perspective X just got to the point where it just works for me few years ago and Wayland is just introducing more issues than it solves (to be clear it solves no current issue for me, only one that I think might be better for me is handling different refresh rate displays and maybe fractional scaling... and that could probably be done within X11) Like, why simple "copy the screen" got suddenly so complicated?…

> Why someone decided title bar management is optional to window manager?

Are you implying title bars should be mandatory in all WMs? I'm using DWM on X and I love that I have no title bars. If a program tries to force one on me I disable it or use something else if that's not possible.

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

#434
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The server runs on the machine that allows clients to connect to it. What is the confusing part about this?

The part that is counterintuitive to most people when it comes to the "server" terminology is that, with X, your end-user workstation (which may be an incredibly dumb X terminal) is the "display server", which means you remote into a server (in the traditional sense) elsewhere, which then acts as an X client by making requests to your local machine to display windows. The way most people think about it, "client" is y…

[deleted]

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

#435
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

What keeps you from going to Ubuntu 24.04? I have been screen sharing and screen shotting on Wayland (Gnome and KDE) without problem.

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

#437
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The -IMO- important part of that quote is "NOT HAVE THE TIME OR CAPACITY TO KEEP UP WITH wlroots CHANGES". X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes. wlroots seemingly isn't. This is a significant issue when it comes to relying on most 3rd party libraries.

> X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes. That's certainly one way to say "no longer developed".

Xorg is still being under development, there is another fork in development too (XLibre) and you're in the comment thread for a project about a brand new X server written from scratch.

Usually things which are "no longer developed" do not have (at least) three implementations in development.

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective X just got to the point where it just works for me few years ago and Wayland is just introducing more issues than it solves (to be clear it solves no current issue for me, only one that I think might be better for me is handling different refresh rate displays and maybe fractional scaling... and that could probably be done within X11) Like, why simple "copy the screen" got suddenly so complicated?…

> Why someone decided title bar management is optional to window manager? Are you implying title bars should be mandatory in all WMs? I'm using DWM on X and I love that I have no title bars. If a program tries to force one on me I disable it or use something else if that's not possible.

It should be mandatory wherein the title bar is expected/desired by the user and not inherently the responsibility of each individual app by default. The wm should have the capability of drawing a titlebar for each app and do so by default unless the app opts to draw its own OR the user configures the system to not do so.

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

#439
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The -IMO- important part of that quote is "NOT HAVE THE TIME OR CAPACITY TO KEEP UP WITH wlroots CHANGES". X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes. wlroots seemingly isn't. This is a significant issue when it comes to relying on most 3rd party libraries.

> X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes. That's certainly one way to say "no longer developed".

Mature projects often don't change much or quickly even when actively maintained or improved.

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

#440
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

It's actively maintained by projects like RHEL which still have versions which are supported which in turn support X11.

Others are looking to run X11 wm under wayland with wayback, xlibre wants to keep it moving forward, and phoenix wants to replace it with a modern version.

This isn't what abandoned means.

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