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Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

omar.yt

211–220 of 502 posts

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#211
post #197
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already. This is my understanding of his actual concern - Linux corps are pushing Wayland as a replacement for X11 when it is full of issues. Anecdotally my experience was the same. I'm a dev so I'm fine in a terminal, but trying to switch to KDE actually sent me BACK to Windows. Basic windowing stuff just does not work, and like the OP says, to…

Funy that you mention multi-monitor since it's one of the reasons I eventually moved to Wayland. The only way to support different DPI monitors in X was to do janky scaling or even jankier multiple X servers. I don't use KDE (or GNOME anymore) but while I had to deal with a lot of initial speedbumps a couple years ago, these days instead of a full DE, I'm using a Niri setup and it's worked out great for me. For my la…

Does anyone have links on how to set up multi monitor on Sway?

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#212
post #99

So, compare this with say the Python2 to Python3 migration. Similar motivations: the developers had some legacy decisions that were unfixable without breakage. But they were sick of it, and decided to just go for it. Most end users didn’t care about those issues. The few that did were happy to pay the cost of switching. Everyone else clung to Python2 for years because migrating was high cost and low value. It took ab…

Not only that, the situation with Wayland also made me kind of afraid of the future of open source because it dawned on me that many of the figureheads in open source are actually simply put mentally unstable and extremely zealous and lack nuance. It didn't occur to me before but look at all the figureheads in free software: Theo de Raadt, Richard Stallman, Ulrich Drepper, Lennart Poettering, Linus Torvalds, Drew Devault. They are all kind of extremely uncompromising people who refuse to listen to reason with many of them even being known for vitriolic Twitter rants.

The issue is that free software is fundamentally a political thing and it seems to attract very political people who treat software like an ideology rather than a product who are out to wage war.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#213
X11 worked fine. Then Wayland came from somebody’s fever dream and forced everyone to use it, just for everyone to encounter some kind of bug every time they do anything slightly off the beaten path. For me literally every new install is some stupid Wayland BS I have to deal with, probably because I use Nvidia drivers, but X11 worked perfectly fine. Wayland should have stayed in the playground as the post says.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow what a showstopper!

It's just some of the so many reasons why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will never see the light. Linux is doomed to run mainly headless on a dark chamber hardware. As always when the Linux Desktop is just starting to take off, somebody comes up with a new great self destructive idea(wayland), it always has been like that and probably will never change.

Wayland is why Steam Deck is a product. Gamescope, the compositor it uses for all the features that makes it compelling to buy, uses it and it's features heavily.

Desktop Linux was never going to go anywhere stuck on X. Wayland is happening, it's currently going through it's trial by fire and in the end (and for a lot of people, right now) it'll be better for it.

It's easy to say Wayland has been around forever and barely progressed, but for me it's pretty easy to see, based on the massive amount of fixed issues and new features being added to Wayland, that we're no longer on the horizontal part of the curve. It seems a lot of people have become blind to it's exponential growth. Also the growth of desktop Linux adoption, which is real and happening, in spite of 'Wayland setting Linux Desktop back by 10 years'.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#215
post #3

And it's worse than this because there is no wayland. Without a strong reference implementation and with the very minimal wayland core protocol, each desktop environment picks and chooses and implements their own incompatible extensions for what should be wayland core features. This means you don't develop for linux, or even linux wayland. You develop for linux wayland mutter. Or linux wayland plasma. Or linux waylan…

I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I'm sorry that this is the case but it wasn't GNOME's fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry.

Prophetic words were once spoken and mocked long ere.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually think it's nice to have both Options that are equivalent enough for most end users just cause confusion. There are also too many distros, and the Gnome vs. KDE competition set desktop Linux back another 10 years. That's three dimensions of big, important choices with not much downside if you pick the happy path and a whole lot of downside if you don't.

I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others. The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop. Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them. But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow o…

If you just want something to use: install one of the most mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Fedora, accept the defaults, and move on with your life. There are compromises in all of the options, even my Mac has a handful of irritating problems.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#217
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Python 2 to 3 migration took a decade, isn’t it reasonable for a display server migration to take even more time to stabilize? Especially given: (1) The (relatively) fragmented reality of Linux distros and desktop managers. I am sure that such a migration could have been executed faster had the Linux desktop world been more centralized like Windows or macOS. (2) The age and maturity of X11

The python 2 to 3 situation was a similar colossal mistake of honestly incompetent developers who really enjoy programming in their free time who don't understand that time is money for most people. By comparison, Rust with its edition system understands this. But this is the major issue. They don't understand that even if Wayland had feature-parity with X11. The simple fact that it works differently means that if I…

> The python 2 to 3 situation was a similar colossal mistake of honestly incompetent developers who really enjoy programming in their free time who don't understand that time is money for most people.

It’s been years but even then, this sincerely cannot be repeated enough.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#218
post #60
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already. This is my understanding of his actual concern - Linux corps are pushing Wayland as a replacement for X11 when it is full of issues. Anecdotally my experience was the same. I'm a dev so I'm fine in a terminal, but trying to switch to KDE actually sent me BACK to Windows. Basic windowing stuff just does not work, and like the OP says, to…

Anecdotally, my experience with Wayland has been a lot better than with X11. I have been on Wayland for years, I can't remember the last time I had an issue (running Sway).

Exactly. Ubuntu LTS 24 and Intel integrated GPU + Wayland is zero problems even when running 4k120 and 150% scaled resolution. Chrome / vscode / zed / Rstudio / Youtube 4k60, it just works.

Edit this is running a 32" 2160p120 (4k) monitor alongside a 24" 1080p144 monitor.

Re: Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others. The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop. Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them. But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow o…

>What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month? The performance difference will be minimal. It's an aesthetic choice, pick the one you like the look of or give a few of them a try. It's like cars. Some people have extreme opinions on matters, some would be fine picking almost any car, and most test drive a few bef…

Yeah, I think the answer if you aren't sure which car to get is "any of the popular ones are probably fine for you" and that's probably true for Linux distributions and software choices too.
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