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Wayland on OpenBSD

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Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#131

Post by badsectoracula »

csande17 wrote: post #29
badsectoracula wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it will eventually start to suffer benign neglect, and stop keeping up with new hardware. At least on Linux, Xorg and Wayland compositors use the same underlying APIs, so the chances of Xorg not running somewhere Wayland runs are pretty much zero - unless said new hardware is only exposed via a new kernel API and nobody bothers to update the modesetting driver for it and/or to write a new Xorg driver for th…

> unless said new hardware is only exposed via a new kernel API and nobody bothers to update the modesetting driver for it And this is actually really unlikely for Wayland, isn't it? The whole idea is that each desktop environment implements its own display server using the modesetting API. That's why there's all kinds of drama about Nvidia "not supporting Wayland"; their kernel driver exposes some nonstandard APIs,…

Might be unlikely but not impossible - after all if people cared about not breaking existing software Wayland itself wouldn't exist in the first place :-P

Xorg is open source and drivers can be fixed as long as there are enough people to notice and care. Worst case you can run an X root window on top of Wayland compositor and pretend the latter is just a graphics driver :-P.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#132

Post by pmontra »

dagenix wrote: post #17
shrubble wrote: post #11

I as a user haven't seen any reason to care about Wayland. And losing/dropping X11's network transparency seems rather surprising in a heavily networked world...

In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. There is significant overlap between former X11 developers and Wayland developers. They didn't drop it because they are incompetent which seems to be what your are implying. The people that decided to drop it are probably the people that know X11 the best.

It worked well for me at my university in 1990. We had a large room full of 1024x1024 X terminals. We run our programs on some HP-UX shared server and displayed the pixels on those terminals over a 1 Mb/s LAN. No glitches.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#133

Post by badsectoracula »

mort96 wrote: post #61
hist_thr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not exactly, they have thrown out everything that almost nobody uses - such as networking. And color calibration. >such as different HiDPI across multiple monitors I had this working with multiple X11 servers 20 years ago. >And that has changed in the past 2 years I was told that exact same line 5 years ago. I guess it will be just as true in 5 years again.

Good news, color calibration is being worked on! ( https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m... ) Wayland doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have yet, it's missing some big things like global hotkeys and color management. It's not moving as fast as I'd like, but all those things are being actively worked on. X11 also doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have, such as the ability…

> X11 also doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have, such as the ability to render frames without tearing

What exactly do you mean? My Xorg setup can render frames without tearing just fine, both in video playback (VLC) and in games.

TBH i don't really care about tearing (since it tends to come with input lag even on desktop usage) aside from videos, so i haven't looked much into it. However people are working on tearing in Xorg - see the latest commits by Sultan Alsawaf on the xfree86 subtree[0] (which is the standalone X server). Specifically this[1] commit adds a "TearFree" page flip mode in the modesetting driver for not having any sort of tearing at any setup.

[0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commits/master...

[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/a94dd95...

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#134

Post by mort96 »

badsectoracula wrote: post #133
mort96 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, color calibration is being worked on! ( https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m... ) Wayland doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have yet, it's missing some big things like global hotkeys and color management. It's not moving as fast as I'd like, but all those things are being actively worked on. X11 also doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have, such as the ability…

> X11 also doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have, such as the ability to render frames without tearing What exactly do you mean? My Xorg setup can render frames without tearing just fine, both in video playback (VLC) and in games. TBH i don't really care about tearing (since it tends to come with input lag even on desktop usage) aside from videos, so i haven't looked much into it. However people are work…

I don't know what sort of magic you're doing. I haven't been able to get a proper tear free experience on X11 across a very wide range of hardware and distros and desktop environments/compositors.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#135

Post by jraph »

pravus wrote: post #114
kaba0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, please repeat the same bullshit for the umpteenth time. This happens under every goddamn wayland-related thread from people who have never ever touched anything graphics related with this typical cocky attitude - at this point this is just fake news. So if X is so great, why exactly have the very developers who worked on it all switched to Wayland? Like, if they could made something you believe is good, shouldn…

> Yeah, please repeat the same bullshit for the umpteenth time. I'm currently streaming X11 over my LAN which is something I can't do with Wayland. Give me a fucking solution instead of telling me I'm doing it wrong. Yes, I'm tired of seeing all this bullshit, too. I'll switch immediately when Wayland gives me want I need to make me productive. Until then, I'm absolutely sick of this cocky attitude.

> I can't do with Wayland. Give me a fucking solution

You can. It'll use XWayland. I'm assuming you are speaking about ssh -X or its friends. It's transparent for you, you don't have to configure anything for this. Yes, it's still using X for this use case, but I don't see how it is a Wayland issue. The protocol that talks with your hardware / local graphic stack does not have to be the same as the one talking on the network. The problematic thing is that it has X11 limitations like not changing the DPI of the window when moving it across screens, but that's also true on a X11 session.

I'm still using X11 but I'm close to switching to Wayland, KDE on Wayland has improved a lot recently.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#136

Post by kaba0 »

j16sdiz wrote: post #111
kaba0 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome is not your window manager - it’s your display server. You can trivially install/write an extension to manage your windows differently and reuse everything gnome provides for example. A wm has always been trivial compared to a display manager, people just mistake one for the other.

I still think having multiple display server implementation is a mistake. Qt/KDE is lagging behind and there are no easy way for them to catch up. Had the display server been a single implementation, Qt/KDE can focus on WM/Widget..

It’s not ideal, but what is the alternative? We couldn’t even agree about an implementation language, and there are many more decisions that are display-server specific.

Wlroots is there for those who wants it and can agree with its design tradeoffs and it is used by plenty niche wms, so I think we have it as good as is feasible in a bazaar style, “everyone works on what they like” fashion. Without a higher power to spearhead a single project there can’t really be a difference.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#137

Post by badsectoracula »

mort96 wrote: post #134
badsectoracula wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> X11 also doesn't have all the features we'd like it to have, such as the ability to render frames without tearing What exactly do you mean? My Xorg setup can render frames without tearing just fine, both in video playback (VLC) and in games. TBH i don't really care about tearing (since it tends to come with input lag even on desktop usage) aside from videos, so i haven't looked much into it. However people are work…

I don't know what sort of magic you're doing. I haven't been able to get a proper tear free experience on X11 across a very wide range of hardware and distros and desktop environments/compositors.

I'm using the amdgpu driver with Window Maker, i didn't need to do anything special for it to work. FWIW variable refresh rate also works (my monitor has VRR support and displays the current refresh rate in an overlay), though it needs an option in xorg.conf to enable.

Note that i do have tearing in the desktop if i -e.g.- move windows around, but this is something i want as i do not like the slight input lag compositors add (even on my 165Hz monitor). However there isn't any tearing in VLC or in games (which, depending on the game, i might also run with VRR).

AFAIK the modesetting driver got VRR support only recently and the TearFree mode only just a few months ago so if you used that you might have used some older version.

Though if you tried a compositor, i don't remember using any compositor that didn't do some form of vsync to avoid tearing. I just started KDE Plasma with Xorg in another virtual terminal with its compositor and default settings (i started it as a different user with default settings that i sometimes use for testing) and there wasn't any tearing at all even on the desktop (again using the amdgpu driver).

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#138

Post by smorrebrod »

vetinari wrote: post #126
smorrebrod wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because Linux users tend to be more familiar with their software than users of other OSes. They chose it and they configured them, sometimes for hours. Also they may have bent software to their liking and when you change something so important as the way images are rendered, then their particular workflow can go haywire. I was in the community for less change (wayland, systemd, etc.) however now I tend…

> I think it is because Linux users tend to be more familiar with their software than users of other OSes. But they really don't. They might have familiarized at one point of time, but that snapshot is not where the world is at now. They cannot really expect that the world around them will stop developing, so their know-how and hacks stay current. It is still this, all over again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdU…

> But they really don't. They might have familiarized at one point of time, but that snapshot is not where the world is at now. They cannot really expect that the world around them will stop developing, so their know-how and hacks stay current.

Maybe we have different experiences. I am not working in a computer related industry so the people I know who use Linux are the only one following tech news, self hosting services, etc. So in my experience they are more familiar with their software. But my point of view is necessarily incomplete.

What I wanted to say was that people who do not know enough to be able to not run in circle, do it because they feel attached to them after becoming familiar with them after so many hours learning their paradigms, their inner workings, etc.

Again, it may be my incomplete POV but I have never seen any Windows user look at source code to try to understand a particular function to adapt the software to their workflow. I've seen numerous Linux users do this.

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#139

Post by didntcheck »

kaba0 wrote: post #78
didntcheck wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is my window manager now also my display server? The (relatively simple) program that decides how to lay out my windows is clearly a separate concern to the (complex) program that actually interfaces with the GPU to render the screen Having to worry if your WM supports your GPU is like having to worry if your web browser supports your NIC

Gnome is not your window manager - it’s your display server. You can trivially install/write an extension to manage your windows differently and reuse everything gnome provides for example. A wm has always been trivial compared to a display manager, people just mistake one for the other.

Yes that's the point I'm making. It is now a display server. On X it was just a desktop environment. Traditionally that comprises

* A set of utility X applications, like a panel and launcher

* A recommended window manager

* A recommended display manager

And then this all runs on top of a separate X display server

Generally the last two are easy to replace, for example I have used both Compiz and Xmonad on Gnome 2 and XFCE. Gnome was probably a bad example for me to pick since modern Gnome does merge the first two bullets into one, but it's still separate from the display server and can be launched from other display managers, or none (just startx)

Again, it would be like Firefox needing to talk directly to my network card rather than the actual packet sending be managed by the layer below (the OS in that case)

Re: Wayland on OpenBSD

#140

Post by rcxdude »

vetinari wrote: post #93
rcxdude wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For global shortcuts, there's an API in the making. This is kind of the problem, though. X11's model of 'everything can access everything' is obviously bad, but when wayland went with a more restrictive model they didn't provide a means for legitimate functionality like this. That's basically the origin of all the objection: things that worked on X11 don't work on wayland, because wayland's developers seem to be ve…

Things "worked" by the virtue of being able to snoop on everything and inject anything; which is exactly what is wrong about the approach. On the other hand, Rome wasn't built in a day either. You want to do it right, not quickly. The final solution will be there for decades, so it better be not drag on maintenance and further development. Especially one, where the requirements are not so clear (no, register random k…

Sure, but you can understand why people are not so keen on moving to an unfinished system, then? Or at least one which has not yet reached parity with its predecessor for a large proportion of its users.

Remember the excel effect: each feature which was previously implemented by snooping and injection may only have a small number of users, but there are many of them and most users will use at least one of them. If you want to replace a system and not have users hate you, you need to implement all the little fiddly bits as well: my personal example is krita, which is not supporting wayland until it has support for tablets and qt has support for that, as well as color management (these aren't even things which were insecure on X11!). So for the forseeable future an app I'm unwilling to abandon is not even looking to start with wayland support until wayland has sorted itself out, and then it looks like it'll take them a few years to actually deal with it. And so it grates when I hear 'why is anyone still on X11?'

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