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Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

phoronix.com

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Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#61

Post by vetinari »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #23
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the specific topic here, fractional scaling, macOS gets it disastrously wrong, only supporting downscaling, which means that it’s impossible to get pixel-perfect output on fractional scales, which are the norm on most of their devices. I seriously can’t comprehend how they ended up going that way, given that they were the ones in a position to force developers to get things right, far more than Windows, but no, th…

macOS got it "wrong" because their own displays were all integer scaled. They don't care about the rest.

They used to be, but not anymore. However, they switched, because even if not pixel perfect, it is good enough. At sizes used by their laptop, most users are not going to notice that it is not pixel perfect.

The system they use gets them something: 1) apps do not have bother with fractional scaling, so they do not get to bother about rounding errors and 2) they get to use output encoder for scaling, which is essentially for free, instead of GPU, which will take its toll on power consumption and GPU load.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#62

Post by vetinari »

grepfru_it wrote: post #18
bluedino wrote: post #12

I was going to say something about it being 10 years now since Apple made high DPI screens mainstream. Windows still doesn't have it working 100% yet.

Hmm maybe I'm missing something but I have not had any scaling problems in Windows. Maybe an argument could be made that adjusting DPI is as easy as MacOS as of Win 11 (maybe Win 10 too but I didn't use Windows too much then), but I've never had a problem increasing scaling on any of my 4k screens

It is easy to find windows app, that is either blurry (basically almost all installers), or is confused by hidpi (take any qt app and you have 1:1 chance it will get it wrong, like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ad0ZkmX).

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#63

Post by Ericson2314 »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #23
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the specific topic here, fractional scaling, macOS gets it disastrously wrong, only supporting downscaling, which means that it’s impossible to get pixel-perfect output on fractional scales, which are the norm on most of their devices. I seriously can’t comprehend how they ended up going that way, given that they were the ones in a position to force developers to get things right, far more than Windows, but no, th…

macOS got it "wrong" because their own displays were all integer scaled. They don't care about the rest.

This has nothing to do with device resolutions. This is about does one want UI elements to be scaled anywhere between 1x and 2x.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#64

Post by Ericson2314 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #21
bluedino wrote: post #12

I was going to say something about it being 10 years now since Apple made high DPI screens mainstream. Windows still doesn't have it working 100% yet.

On the specific topic here, fractional scaling, macOS gets it disastrously wrong, only supporting downscaling, which means that it’s impossible to get pixel-perfect output on fractional scales, which are the norm on most of their devices. I seriously can’t comprehend how they ended up going that way, given that they were the ones in a position to force developers to get things right, far more than Windows, but no, th…

Thank you for saying this. With Apple being the "UX" and "media users" company, this level of negligence and apathy shocks me so much I keep on self-doubting macOS actually works the way I remember. It's crazy, just crazy.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#65

Post by Sakos »

jpetso wrote: post #60
Sakos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xorg doesn't support his either. Your screenshotting tool runs the timer and takes the screenshot when the timer expires. You complaint is like saying "the Linux kernel won't render markdown for me". No, it won't, you're looking at the wrong part of the stack. Xorg also doesn't prevent you from using an application that does have these functions. Wayland does prevent you. > but it's perfectly possible to write with…

> Is that why they're so unresponsive to user needs? It's because Wayland is a set of protocols, rather than a single dominant implementation. In order to do it right, cross-compositor and flexible, you have to get different actors with different interests and bandwidth agree on a standard. This takes time. In order to get it working fast, developers need to make a compositor-specific implementation first and then pu…

Sounds like a terribly managed project that will never reach an acceptable state. Again, I don't know why people are so tolerant of it.

If the Linux kernel had worked the same way, we'd never have gotten Linux.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#66

Post by enriquto »

exitheone wrote: post #56
enriquto wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your answers! It's reassuring that most things will still be possible. Still, xeyes is the favorite program of my kid who is starting to learn linux... I'd have a hard time selling wayland to him. > to make key-loggers less trivial Really? Is that a serious reason? Key-loggers are still very much possible because any program can read the memory of all other running programs of the same user. This seems to…

> Really? Is that a serious reason? Key-loggers are still very much possible because any program can read the memory of all other running programs of the same user. That's not true. Reading other processes memory requires root even for processes of the same user.

I was going to reply in an impulsive manner (saying, derisively "so how does strace work, then? and why can you attach gdb to already running processes?").

But it turns out that you are right! Well, at least in modern ubuntu/fedora desktop installs, a few years ago they disabled the ptrace(2) system call. ("The maniacs! They did it!", I'm tempted to cry in anger.) You can still read children processes, but unless you change the yama defaults in the kernel, ptrace(2) no longer works for processes that are not children.

I didn't notice because I surely have changed this default in my old laptop because I use ptrace daily. But you are right that modern linuxes are likely thus crippled.

Still, it seems that an attack model based on defending against a rogue user process is quite doomed. Can't this process change the init files of other programs that will run, even if they aren't its children?

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#67

Post by hackyhacky »

jpetso wrote: post #60
Sakos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xorg doesn't support his either. Your screenshotting tool runs the timer and takes the screenshot when the timer expires. You complaint is like saying "the Linux kernel won't render markdown for me". No, it won't, you're looking at the wrong part of the stack. Xorg also doesn't prevent you from using an application that does have these functions. Wayland does prevent you. > but it's perfectly possible to write with…

> Is that why they're so unresponsive to user needs? It's because Wayland is a set of protocols, rather than a single dominant implementation. In order to do it right, cross-compositor and flexible, you have to get different actors with different interests and bandwidth agree on a standard. This takes time. In order to get it working fast, developers need to make a compositor-specific implementation first and then pu…

I acknowledge that the Wayland team is not responsible for the implementation decisions of the GNOME team.

However, the Wayland team is responsible for the set of protocols that they've developed and that they've asked others to implement. The Wayland team has failed to define protocols that are flexible enough to provide basic functionality that users expect, even if they were implemented perfectly.

This should not be a process that depends on individual developers building compositor-specific remote-desktop tools first, then praying that someone likes them enough to put it in the standard. Wayland built the standard, they just built an insufficient one.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#68

Post by seba_dos1 »

Sakos wrote: post #48
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, my favorite screenshot tool supports automatic timed screenshots, of particular windows or the whole screen or of a specified region, of one desktop or several, and various customizations. Those features aren't supported by my compositor, and I don't have a choice. So Wayland limits my options. Xorg doesn't support his either. Your screenshotting tool runs the timer and takes the screenshot when the ti…

> Xorg doesn't support his either. Your screenshotting tool runs the timer and takes the screenshot when the timer expires. You complaint is like saying "the Linux kernel won't render markdown for me". No, it won't, you're looking at the wrong part of the stack. Xorg also doesn't prevent you from using an application that does have these functions. Wayland does prevent you. > but it's perfectly possible to write with…

> The necessary APIs don't exist, so it isn't possible to write the extra functionality without changing the compositor.

Except they do exist and do work.

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#69

Post by robotnikman »

hackyhacky wrote: post #37
Aardwolf wrote: post #3

I still use X11, where and rely on the following features (amongst others): -taking screenshots -auto keyboard/mouse scripting with xdotool -not have unnecessary mouse/keyboard to monitor delay -4K fullscreen, windowed fullscreen and windowed gaming with nvidia drivers, for native and steam proton games -choosing to have vsync enabled or disabled in games -EDIT: I should another important one for me: xclip, read from…

People are responding to this comment by saying "Screenshots work," and yes, they do, somewhat. However, you're limited to using the screenshot tool built in to your Wayland compositor, rather than any third-party tool. For example, my favorite screenshot tool supports automatic timed screenshots, of particular windows or the whole screen or of a specified region, of one desktop or several, and various customizations…

One of my favorite remote viewing tools, Anydesk, has no plans to support wayland, which is unfortunate...

Re: Wayland Protocol Finally Ready for Fractional Scaling

#70

Post by seba_dos1 »

enriquto wrote: post #66
exitheone wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? Is that a serious reason? Key-loggers are still very much possible because any program can read the memory of all other running programs of the same user. That's not true. Reading other processes memory requires root even for processes of the same user.

I was going to reply in an impulsive manner (saying, derisively "so how does strace work, then? and why can you attach gdb to already running processes?"). But it turns out that you are right! Well, at least in modern ubuntu/fedora desktop installs, a few years ago they disabled the ptrace(2) system call. ("The maniacs! They did it!", I'm tempted to cry in anger.) You can still read children processes, but unless you…

> Still, it seems that an attack model based on defending against a rogue user process is quite doomed. Can't this process change the init files of other programs that will run, even if they aren't its children?

No, they often can't. Things like Flatpak make it so apps have no unnecessary access to the filesystem.

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