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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

#201

Post by pabs3 »

o11c wrote: post #194
pabs3 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found Xorg crashyness depends on how shitty your drivers are. Agreed that merging the components is a bad idea. Under KDE, there is more of a split, kwin does compositing and WM stuff, and plasmashell does the shell and other UI bits. In theory they don't need to all be in one process either. I also found that kwin crashing doesn't bring down apps these days, haven't tested that theory with X11 Xwayland apps though. Also see my other comment about Arcan for proper crash resilience.

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

#202

Post by pabs3 »

lousken wrote: post #140
prmoustache wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps running in xwayland run the same way as on X11, xwayland being an xserver. Also I don't understand your relation between a vpn and a graphic protocol.

These apps do have GUI, don't you know? Xwayland doesn't solve their issues. Imagine you have Cisco VPN and you want to connect - you connect and then close the dialog. It is just gone. Why? On wayland no tray icon is shown. Now imagine you have Fortigate VPN and you want to connect - you enter the IP address and click connect but nothing really happens. Why? No confirmation dialog was ever displayed in wayland. Now…

KDE Wayland has tray icons for X11 apps, I use one for Pidgin.

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

#204

Post by account42 »

prmoustache wrote: post #166
lousken wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These apps do have GUI, don't you know? Xwayland doesn't solve their issues. Imagine you have Cisco VPN and you want to connect - you connect and then close the dialog. It is just gone. Why? On wayland no tray icon is shown. Now imagine you have Fortigate VPN and you want to connect - you enter the IP address and click connect but nothing really happens. Why? No confirmation dialog was ever displayed in wayland. Now…

If you can use the cli, it is at best mildly annoying but not critical. Having said that, deprecating x11 completely is the one motivation for dev to fix bugs and/or find ways. Wayland really started to catch up with missing features when some distros like Fedora started using it by default. If you want to stay on legacy stuff such as x11 while the remaining stuff is fixed, there are plenty of long term support distr…

> Having said that, deprecating x11 completely is the one motivation for dev to fix bugs and/or find ways.

It's the most user hostile way to accomplish that, and it won't even work as many things will just remain broken.

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

#205

Post by wltr »

aidenn0 wrote: post #89
willis936 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had good luck with Ubuntu 25.10's builtin remote desktop RDP server. I think it's gnome remote desktop, but I'm not certain. https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop

I will build or buy an IP-based kvm that plugs into my hdmi port and has passthrough for the local monitor before I use GNOME. I used GNOME for many years, but nearly every UX decision they have made in the past 20 years has been the polar opposite of my desires. I have come to the conclusion that the developers in the GNOME project don't want me using their software and I'm happy to oblige them.

I’m a pro user with over two decades of experience, I don’t use Gnome all the time (I prefer Sway these days), but I’m all-in for having a nice DE that would embrace regular people with its simplicity. IMO Gnome does that very well. Yet, I am, as a pro-user can use that almost as good as I use my sway desktop. At home, our shared guest room computer runs default Fedora, and I don’t feel any limitations with it (it has almost none of my configs), and can do most of my work when I’m up to it. The only real difference is when I want to spend like a whole day working with it. An hour or two, no real difference.

Saying that, why won’t you just use the DE targeted at you, as a pro user? With Gnome, I rather afraid they might mess the simplicity at some point and start doing features features features for the sake of them. See KDE Plasma with their settings. I used it since KDE2, and while I rather like it, I am still getting lost in all the bells and whistles. They are too many, and I’ve been around for a really long time.

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

#206

Post by wltr »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #70
aidenn0 wrote: post #51

Wayland is missing one thing still for me. Perhaps someone can tell me there is a way to do this: 1. ssh into a machine with a running session 2. start (something) that lets me remotely connect to it Right now I have two working solutions for X11 (x11vnc, freerdp-shadow) but zero for Wayland. I think this is intentional because the venn diagram of remote-access-tools and malware has a large intersection, but it's ver…

RustDesk might do the job, but I haven't used it on Linux, so I can't tell you for sure.

It works for me, and I see little difference with AnyDesk I used before. However, I’m not a frequent user, just a very occasional one to troubleshoot some of elderly friends, parents, etc. I’d love to have my own relay for it, but I never managed to find my time to do that.

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

#207

Post by account42 »

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, passwords, or the contents of any other window. Fixing this would break all existing X11 applications.

This is a feature not an issue. And it's how every computer that hasn't tried to take away control from its users has worked. I WANT my programs to be empowered to act on my behalf. If you want a gimped platform to run untrusted apps go buy a phone.

> 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.

It works very well in fact. What you call hacks is something you probably cannot comprehend: Actual long term backwards compatibility. All programs should strive to have more of that, but especially central ones like the display server.

> The ground-up re-design of X11 to fix those two issues is Wayland.

It does limit what programs can do and breaks backwards compatibility, yes. That's the problem.

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

#208

Post by account42 »

surajrmal wrote: post #178
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…

The fact that desktop Linux is all or nothing in terms of privilege escalation is a design issue, however arguably Wayland gives us the tools to be more granular. Android has a permission system that makes sense can it's display manager is definitely closer in design to Wayland than it is to x11.

Android is the antithesis of an open computing platform and if anything the Linux desktop should use it as an example of what not to do.

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

#209

Post by account42 »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #68
gary_0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> X11's client-server model doesn't work with hardware accelerated graphics I really wish they would figure this out. It just feels like with Threadripper etc the time is perfect for a return of thin-clients/not-so-dummy terminals running X11-like applications over the network on a server. Especially for development where many of us are running under-powered laptops and could use the boost to compilation from a beefy…

It has already been figured out long ago, which is how we have hardware acceleration on X today. Wayland fanboys calling it a "workaround" does not change that it works.

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

#210

Post by gary_0 »

account42 wrote: post #207
gary_0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, passwords, or the contents of any other window. Fixing this would break all existing X11 applications. This is a feature not an issue. And it's how every computer that hasn't tried to take away control from its users has worked. I WANT my programs to be empowered to act on my behalf. If you want a gimped platform to run untrusted apps go buy a phone. > 2. Per…

While Wayland has kind of been a disaster I disagree with your premise.

> 1. Security

Linux (and Unix before it) has always had security mechanisms built in. File permissions, setuid bits, namespaces. Any old program shouldn't be able to access /etc/passwd, and likewise the `` in my browser should be protected. Wayland's problem isn't that it tried to add security, but that the design and development process went horrifically wrong so that 17 years after the first release, people still have trouble with screen sharing.

> 2. Performance

The client-server model is obsolete and unsupported by modern applications (and nowadays there are easier ways to do remote GUI access) and keeping it was just a big pile of tech debt.

The problem wasn't that Wayland tried to fix things, it's that the process took 17 years and still isn't finished or particularly successful. My uneducated guess at why Wayland failed to succeed is that it went for extreme modularity and refused to say (back in like 2009) "Here's the security mechanism everyone has to use to take screenshots, etc. If this breaks your spacebar heater, sucks to be you." Rather than just define a single API where 99% of graphical applications and desktop utilities can do the sorts of things they already do on Windows and MacOS, and call it 1.0, instead they built a sprawling monument to bikeshedding and over-engineering.

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