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KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

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Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#191

Post by big-and-small »

ferguess_k wrote: post #154
prmoustache wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in a cave and am not a system programmer -- what's so wrong with X11 so people need to replace it with something else instead of improving it? Tech debt. The X11 dev have thrown the towel and have prefered working on something they deemed more maintainable.

Thanks. This alone could be enough validation. I worked only in smaller codebases but I get sometimes it is impossible to untangle a tech debt -- much easier to just ask for a new copy of the requirements and start over, which also has the benefit of triggering things such as "Oh we actually don't need A,B and C, don't bother with them".

Main problem isn't sheer amount of code. Problem is that X11 have to somewhat stick to protocol so apps written in 1995 keep working on top of it.

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#192

Post by pabs3 »

o11c wrote: post #99
elcritch wrote: post #33

I tried Wayland earlier today on my home lab with Plasma and FreeBSD. It seemed pretty great for a bit and ran my monitor at 120Hz. Until it hard crashed my machine after I opened discord in firefox. Konqueror crashed on opening.

Yes, Wayland is broken by design, since a single crash takes down the whole desktop; unlike other Wayland complaints, this one fundamentally will never be fixed. This is unlike X11, where it was very common to recover from the inevitable single-component crashes.

Crash resilient Wayland compositing exists since 2017, it just isn't implemented in mainstream Wayland implementations. You have to go to Arcan for full resilience. KDE does have some crash resistance, thanks to some changes in toolkits, but it doesn't go as far as Arcan does.

https://arcan-fe.com/2017/12/24/crash-resilient-wayland-comp...

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#193

Post by pabs3 »

o11c wrote: post #99
elcritch wrote: post #33

I tried Wayland earlier today on my home lab with Plasma and FreeBSD. It seemed pretty great for a bit and ran my monitor at 120Hz. Until it hard crashed my machine after I opened discord in firefox. Konqueror crashed on opening.

Yes, Wayland is broken by design, since a single crash takes down the whole desktop; unlike other Wayland complaints, this one fundamentally will never be fixed. This is unlike X11, where it was very common to recover from the inevitable single-component crashes.

X11 can't recover from an Xorg crash though.

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#194

Post by o11c »

pabs3 wrote: post #193
o11c wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Wayland is broken by design, since a single crash takes down the whole desktop; unlike other Wayland complaints, this one fundamentally will never be fixed. This is unlike X11, where it was very common to recover from the inevitable single-component crashes.

X11 can't recover from an Xorg crash though.

That's okay since X11 is stable and not very crash prone for the last few decades.

The WM and Shell are far more likely to crash, which is it's completely fucking retarded to move any of their logic into the display server.

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#195

Post by pabs3 »

gary_0 wrote: post #61
ferguess_k wrote: post #52

I live in a cave and am not a system programmer -- what's so wrong with X11 so people need to replace it with something else instead of improving it? Or, what's so wrong with anything so people need to replace it with something else instead of improving it? Let's say I'm an old man favoring improving existing stuffs instead of starting from scratch. I like debugging and wish to work as a sys programmer specialized in…

> what's so wrong with X11 so people need to replace it 1. Security - Any program using X11 can read keystrokes, passwords, or the contents of any other window. Fixing this would break all existing X11 applications. 2. Performance - X11's client-server model doesn't work with hardware accelerated graphics, requiring hacks to get around. X11 is basically stuck with this legacy. The ground-up re-design of X11 to fix th…

> 1. Security - Any program using X11 can read keystrokes ...

IIRC: this isn't quite correct, there was an extension called XACE that can block this. Probably Xorg didn't implement it and desktops didn't have support for it though.

https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/security/XACE-Spec.htm...

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#196

Post by pabs3 »

estebank wrote: post #164
ottah wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree with the performance improvement goals, but I think the security claims are overblown, and overly cautious. I honestly don't understand the point of trying to implement the security boundary in the display manager. It solves one class of security issues, while breaking a lot of accessibility and automation. The display manager just shouldn't be enforcing rigid per processes security controls, that's bett…

Where in the stack should it be enforced that my cute desktop clock doesn't pull a Copilot and takes a screenshot of the entire desktop every 15 seconds to send to a remote service?

In Xorg and the WM, using the XACE extension.

https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/security/XACE-Spec.htm...

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#197

Post by TiredOfLife »

npteljes wrote: post #130

This is interesting to me, because SteamOS, so Steam Deck uses KDE. I really wonder how they are going to tackle going from X to Wayland on 4 million machines, and what that will bring.

Steamdeck uses snapshots of Arch that are a year or two behind. That means if 6.8 will come to SD it will be in 5-10 years

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#198

Post by pabs3 »

jmclnx wrote: post #14

As a fvwm user, if Linux forces Wayland on me, I guess my 30 year use of Linux may be coming to an end. Oh well.

IIRC GTK is dropping their X11 support too, so you will need some sort of X11 to Wayland proxy to run GTK apps, including Firefox.

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#199

Post by pabs3 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #77
BlitzGeology91 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your perspective, what would Linux forcing Wayland on you look like?

There are 3 ways I see it happening: 1. Applications or toolkits only supporting Wayland. An example of this is Waydroid, though thankfully that's the only example I'm currently aware of. 2. Desktop Environments only supporting Wayland. Examples now include GNOME and KDE. 3. Drivers only supporting Wayland. I think this may be the case of some "exotic" systems; I believe there are some postmarketos systems that don't…

1. GTK is going this way IIRC.

Re: KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

#200

Post by TiredOfLife »

estebank wrote: post #164
ottah wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree with the performance improvement goals, but I think the security claims are overblown, and overly cautious. I honestly don't understand the point of trying to implement the security boundary in the display manager. It solves one class of security issues, while breaking a lot of accessibility and automation. The display manager just shouldn't be enforcing rigid per processes security controls, that's bett…

Where in the stack should it be enforced that my cute desktop clock doesn't pull a Copilot and takes a screenshot of the entire desktop every 15 seconds to send to a remote service?

Neither Copilot or Recall do or did this.
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