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Wayland vs. X – Overview

wayland.freedesktop.org

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Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#101

Post by arp242 »

vetinari wrote: post #78
arp242 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also didn't have much choice; XFree86 is what everyone used and it more or less the only realistic option. Also doesn't help some people have been rather aggressively banging the Wayland drum for a long time now in a way that quite a few people find rather unpleasant. About half a year ago someone told me I "need" to switch to Wayland because programs will drop X11 support "any time now", all with a sense of glee…

> XFree86 is what everyone used and it more or less the only realistic option. Not really; in the 90s, there were many X servers, each implementing a different set of extensions. Not just for other Unices, even for Linux, you could purchase a proprietary ones. For XFree86, it was a monolith, that you had to compile for a specific chipset. Distributions shipped with many binaries, each intended for a specific graphic…

That's what I mean with "more or less", and they were all more or less compatible and was mostly a "Vim vs. Emacs" type situation, not a "plz rewrite your entire stack"-type situation. That's really the key difference here.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#102

Post by account42 »

SilverCode wrote: post #31
bufio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Wayland fixed the fact that compositing sucks by definition?

"combine (two or more images) to make a single picture, especially electronically" ... sucks? I can't even begin to think how you would present multiple windows to a user if you didn't composite them into a single image. Even if you are doing a 3D virtual desktop, you still have to composite the layers down to 2 single slightly offset images.

Compositing in the context of window management hase a more specific meaning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager

vs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacking_window_manager

There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Note that X.org is traditionally a stacking window manager but has had the compositing model bolted on for a long time now.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#103

Post by asveikau »

hedora wrote: post #68
asveikau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're phrasing that incorrectly. There was no application sandboxing for X to break. And you can't build sandboxing atop X. You speak as if application sandboxing within the ever existed in the past... Not that people tried to build it and X doesn't play well with it.

You certainly can build sandboxing atop X11. If you're reading using a web browser on a Linux desktop (or in a VM on a Linux desktop), then you're literally staring at an existence proof.

I guess the point is it can't be sandboxed by directly exposing X protocol messages to the sandboxed app. Although your sibling comment by gpderetta makes an excellent point. I guess they're saying no one wants to sandbox the X protocol, and breaking compatibility, proponents would claim, lets you design a sandbox friendly protocol from scratch.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#104

Post by anton96 »

smoldesu wrote: post #66
anton96 wrote: post #49

I feel like the debate between Wayland and X always bring more a general discussion about technology refactoring and modularity. To me be, the big question is not why freedesktop.org or redhat is doing all of this, they're a company and they have their needs. It is why distro maintainers have chosen to adopt those technologies(systemd,Wayland, others?), not that those options are especially bad but to me,but they rea…

Wayland is still customizable, and x11 isn't going away. If you want to trade in security and maintenance for features and capabilities, nobody will try to stop you. In that sense, distributions still don't hold much power over the user besides what they present as default. > The fact that the same organization hosts flatpack but has not vision of how to use the capability model for Wayland really poses questions on…

Yes, technically nothing prevents someone to make a customizable Wayland compositor. You’re taking about KDE and I agree that it is certainly one of the most customizable Wayland desktops we have.

What I deplore is that those customization have not made their way into at least an extension of Wayland.

And as you say, hopefully I can still use X11 when needed but I wish the more modern option would carry everything I need.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#105

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jbverschoor wrote: post #4
tapoxi wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Isn't only the transport layer of X insecure? That could be swapped out with another layer. With Wayland you have to use VNC which is fine for local networks, but not for remote ones.

No, the big problem with X isn't the transport but that once a client has access to the X server it can do more or less anything it wants (including logging keyboard input and recording other windows).

And I haven't actually used it[0] but I thought waypipe was the better option for remoting?

[0] Well, successfully or recently; I'm assuming it's usable now.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#106

Post by jsrjenkins »

icarito wrote: post #8

I suffer from the limitations of both X11 and Wayland. Some things work in one and not the other, it's a trade off. In Wayland I can use different scaling for each monitor (in exchange for a LOT of RAM). But in X11 I can use Barrier to share my mouse / keyboard with my other computer. So I use one when I have a second monitor and have to restart my session when I use a second computer :'( Please fix this!

Can't you just set the dpi in each display with X11?

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#107

Post by nolist_policy »

troyvit wrote: post #90
vlovich123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't inherently insecurities, but the way X implemented them was quite insecure. Wayland is now having to do the heavy lifting of defining a secure protocol to implement it and migrating the entire Linux GUI ecosystem to using the new mechanisms. Also, I can take screenshots just fine on Wayland via KWin. I can't pick arbitrary 3p apps just yet but KWin's screenshotter is fine. Not sure about screen recording…

> Wayland protocols hit 1.0 in 2015 and [...] (from further up in the thread[1]) > Also, I can take screenshots just fine on Wayland via KWin. I can't pick arbitrary 3p apps just yet but KWin's screenshotter is fine. Maybe in another nine years Wayland users can choose whatever screenshot tool they want. X is annoying but I'd go crazy if that was my life. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38709188

You can wait 9 years and have a low chance of your screenshot tool working on Wayland.

Or you can use a different tool that supports Wayland now.

Or you can can add Wayland support to your favorite tool now (assuming it's open-source).

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#108

Post by asveikau »

gpderetta wrote: post #35
asveikau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're phrasing that incorrectly. There was no application sandboxing for X to break. And you can't build sandboxing atop X. You speak as if application sandboxing within the ever existed in the past... Not that people tried to build it and X doesn't play well with it.

I don't profess to have any deep knowledge of X11 or Wayland, but I don't understand how sandboxing can't work in X11. XWayland exists and it is either non-sandboxed (hence Wayland doesn't add any security benefit) or it is. And if it is it means that X can be sandboxed and it should be possible to run XonX sandboxes. Something like xnest.

This is a very good comment.

I guess then the claim is more that no common implementation is amenable to sandboxing, and the compatibility break of a brand new protocol means they can implement it from day 1 in the way they like. Which is a lot weaker an argument, but practically speaking, it's true that no one is rushing to bolt on security features to X. To be clear I'm not realy a Wayland fan.

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#109

Post by account42 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #41
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those are insecurities, I want an insecure desktop. I use my computer to get things done, not be a paradigm of security.

Those aren't inherently insecurities, but the way X implemented them was quite insecure. Wayland is now having to do the heavy lifting of defining a secure protocol to implement it and migrating the entire Linux GUI ecosystem to using the new mechanisms. Also, I can take screenshots just fine on Wayland via KWin. I can't pick arbitrary 3p apps just yet but KWin's screenshotter is fine. Not sure about screen recording…

"secure" really has become a buzzword.

> Those aren't inherently insecurities, but the way X implemented them was quite insecure.

In what way does X.org add any security holes to the average Linux desktop where you have programs (from a trusted package repository) which can access everything your user account can?

Re: Wayland vs. X – Overview

#110

Post by nolist_policy »

rhabarba wrote: post #86
vetinari wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should be Windows or Mac support a concern for Wayland compositors? DWM or Quartz authors don't care about Linux either.

To be fair, X (VcXsrv) works on Windows and (XQuartz) pre-M1 macOS.

And Windows apparently has a Wayland compositor for WSL
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