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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

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Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#371

Post by jml7c5 »

QuercusMax wrote: post #356
wincy wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Wayland scared me off of Linux when I tried to switch to Ubuntu a few years ago. I couldn’t watch a movie without jiggling my mouse every few minutes. At the time I feel like it was like “yeah that feature doesn’t exist yet” or something. So I switched back to Windows. It looks like there’s workarounds now but I’ve mostly switch to my fantastic M1 MacBook Air at this point.

Wayland still doesn't support screensavers last I checked, which is wild to me. Truly bizarre that such longstanding feature is just absent.

It's a matter of designing and proprosing a protocol for it. X11's screensaver support was also a protocol extension.

There probably hasn't been much interest in it because screens can easily be powered off remotely, which was not the case in 1992.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#372

Post by noosphr »

grim_io wrote: post #76
iamnothere wrote: post #34

This is the kind of initiative I’d prefer to see from X preservationists. Great job, I hope it succeeds. I prefer Wayland, but there’s still a place in the world for X; it just needs new dev teams to shoulder the burden.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

Sound like you should use a BSD instead of Linux if you don't like choice.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#373

Post by vladvasiliu »

mihular wrote: post #301
vladvasiliu wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, isn't this compositor related? I've never had any window placement issues running Sway (i3 for Wayland). I never used night light on that machine, so I can't comment on that particular point, but the thing seems to work just as well as i3. The only problem I have is with JetBrains IDEs, which seem to have shaky support. They're usable (meaning you can code), but the experience is so wonky that I basically consi…

Wayland intellij ide support is in the works, IDEs support X11 out of the box, but you can enable Wayland support explicitly (just search for it). As per Windows placement, Firefox won't restore windows on original positions supposedly because of Wayland, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

Intellij kinda supports Wayland, but it gets confused when using scaling, at least when not all screens have the same factor. It's not blurry or anything, but it's slower, and the menus sometimes appear in random places.

When I only use a scaling factor of 1 on all the screens, it's usable enough, although it still feels sluggish.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#374

Post by cycomanic »

coryrc wrote: post #365
cycomanic wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now I am not sure if these posts can stil be given the benefit of the doubt or are just dishonest. Who were the developers pushing wayland because of their employers? Kristian Høgsberg (who was a significant xorg developer, because people always deny that wayland was written by xorg guys) originally developed wayland in his free time, it then became a freedesktop project (I would argue not a group run by corporate…

I didn't think my explanation implied how you interpreted it. I thought everybody knew Wayland was started by some people working on Xorg already; I did not mean to imply otherwise. Many or all were paid for their work. They believed Wayland was a better approach, and, AFAIK, at some point switched to be paid full-time to work on Wayland instead of X. Which, sounds a lot like they convinced their employer (or a new e…

> I didn't think my explanation implied how you interpreted it. > > I thought everybody knew Wayland was started by some people working on Xorg already; I did not mean to imply otherwise. Many or all were paid for their work. They believed Wayland was a better approach, and, AFAIK, at some point switched to be paid full-time to work on Wayland instead of X. Which, sounds a lot like they convinced their employer (or a new employer) to pay them to work on Wayland instead of X. Do you believe this is a fair summary of the situation?

Sorry for my combatitive before. I definitely interpreted your previous post differently and I think your clarification is a fairer assessment of the situation. I would still argue that the majority of people implementing the wayland protocol are not paid by their employers to do so (this might now have changed a bit with smithay, which is sponsored by system76 I believe).

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#375

Post by gldrk »

gooberman wrote: post #296
gldrk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It talks about trimming 'legacy' features and specifically says they are omitting 'font-related' operations. That obviously means no useful core X11 application will work (unless you count xlogo and xeyes). Whether the XRender glyph cache mechanism is included is unclear. It also says only DRI is *currently* supported, but maybe that's incidental?

XRender isn't part of the core protocol so it should be implemented in the future. There is already some xrender code in there. Almost no applications use x11 core protocol font, except for cursor. Since the x11 core protocol font (on xorg server at least) is rendered without anti aliasing and doesn't really support unicode.

Core fonts absolutely support Unicode. My (non-Xft) xterm windows are full of Unicode characters right now. It is true that anti-aliasing is not supported by the X.Org server, although scalable fonts have been for a while (https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/fonts/fonts.html#AEN49...). But you don't need anti-aliasing on a high-DPI display, and on a low-DPI display you can use any of the many beautiful bitmap fonts, unlike a lot of ‘modern apps’ these days.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#376

Post by ndiddy »

sho_hn wrote: post #26
vzaliva wrote: post #24

Multiple screens support is listed as non-goal. Would that prevent its usage with window managers which support virtiaul desktops? I am i3 user and it is a critical feature for me.

In short: No. In X11 "screen" has a particular meaning, and only supporting a single screen doesn't preclude multi-monitor support or virtual desktops.

Given that they're fine with adding breaking changes to the protocol, I think it's a shame that they're not supporting multi-screen. This will lead to the same problem with Xrandr based multi-monitor where you get screen tearing with mixed refresh rate displays. I would prefer to see "traditional X11 multihead but you can move programs between screens" as the solution for multiple monitors. Even if it worked like Mac OS X where you can't have a single window span across multiple monitors, it would still be better than the current state of X11.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#377

Post by mihular »

yxhuvud wrote: post #323
mihular wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland intellij ide support is in the works, IDEs support X11 out of the box, but you can enable Wayland support explicitly (just search for it). As per Windows placement, Firefox won't restore windows on original positions supposedly because of Wayland, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

You are not wrong. But there is a new extension protocol on the way (dunno if done, very probably not rolled out if it is) that let programs solve this problem.

Uh, there are plenty of extensions. Session management perhaps? In experimental state.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#378

Post by morshu9001 »

ori_b wrote: post #132
grim_io wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

Which one? The Gnome Wayland, the KDE Wayland, the xroots wayland, Weston, or one of the others? Each one is an independent implementation of a Wayland compositor, with a differing, incompatible set of extensions. X11 was a single, pretty janky implementation. Wayland is the worst of both worlds -- it's cleaned up a little, but it's still kinda janky. In exchange for a little bit of cleanup, mainly around bitmap font…

The answer has been Gnome Wayland for years

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#379

Post by morshu9001 »

noosphr wrote: post #372
grim_io wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

Sound like you should use a BSD instead of Linux if you don't like choice.

FreeBSD is indeed nicer to use than your average Linux distro, and has a really good manual. The blocker is that everything is made for Linux.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#380

Post by morshu9001 »

nish__ wrote: post #84
grim_io wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

This is the worst argument ever. The choices in the Linux community is what's made it the best OS in the world today.

There isn't a successful Linux desktop OS. The Linux kernel is successful on servers and appliances, but only the kernel. And there aren't many even-split choices on your typical server. Like yeah zsh has a bit of a following, but everyone assumes you use bash, which is a good thing.
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