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The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

phoronix.com

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Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#691

Post by account42 »

renewiltord wrote: post #639
RedShift1 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if all the work that has gone into Wayland went into Xorg... We'd have a pretty sweet graphical server.

Sure, but that's not how hobbies work. You can't take someone's volunteer work and turn that into work on a thing that is not the thing they volunteered their work on and expect to get the same productivity. It's like saying "Imagine if all the time you, a software engineer, spent on taking care of your child was spent on making a graphical server". Sure, but I don't want to make a graphical server, I want to turn pe…

> Sure, but that's not how hobbies work.

We aren't talking about hobby work here.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#692

Post by sergeykish »

account42 wrote: post #689
sergeykish wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should fine community that shares your views. I don't use pulseaudio, networkmanager, desktop environment, works perfectly in Arch Linux [1]. Arch has great wiki, it is correct. System is quite transparent. I am fine with systemd but, for example, Void Linux [2] uses runit, Alpine Linux [3] uses OpenRC and is compiled statically. Arch Linux pacman serves my needs perfectly, it is quick, it shows only releva…

> Arch Linux [1], Void Linux [2], Alpine Linux [3] Gentoo is feeling left out. It's the OG distro for those who have strong opinions on how their system sould work but not strong enough to do eveything by hand.

wegs reminded me experience with Ubuntu. I've started with GNOME, tried XFCE, Openbox, system become brittle and it raised questions like "How to configure WiFi without DE?".

I've switched to Arch Linux, base install covers network configuration. It gave me stable platform, I can grow my knowledge, I can fix my system.

Void Linux and Alpine Linux are just examples of what could match voiced concerns. I lot of people recommend Manjaro, looks like a simple way to try Arch based distro. Some problems stem from upgrading release, Debian Testing could help. But I have not tried them.

I've tried Ubuntu, I don't like distribution upgrades, default theme, constant experiments on users. Gentoo is my first distro, as C++ dev at that time, compilation was fascinating. I still enjoy 3 commands joke [1], looks like it is possible to install binary packages these days. I've tried Alpine, I don't like apk, systemd and glibc are good enough for me. I've tried OpenBSD, hardware support was not as good as on Linux. I'm playing with NixOS but I am so used to Arch.

And I want to stress, each of these system has something I enjoy. It is just me who is driven by minimizing negative points.

[1] http://bash.org/?464385

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#693

Post by sergeykish »

eesmith wrote: post #684
sergeykish wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, like in "preach the end of the world", contribution and prediction requires intimate knowledge, preaching does not

My grandfather was a preacher and a millennialist, which means he thought the world would end soon. He based this out of his intimate knowledge of the Bible, spanning over 60 years of study. He was also a missionary who starting churches and had a radio show. Surely that fulfills both contribution and prediction. I therefore disagree with your characterization. Now, he appears to have been wrong, but just like preach…

I am sorry for your grandfather.

He knew Bible and he was right by his interpretation of Bible. In programming world word is reality, there is only one meaning. Those who know word forge reality. This requires knowledge.

Critics who do not posses knowledge appeal to emotions, spread FUD. They may be right by coincidence like standing clocks.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#694

Post by sergeykish »

account42 wrote: post #687
sergeykish wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect issues are not fixed, system is not stable. > The primary development code repository can be found at: > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver Quite a lot of issues.

Ah yes, such classic X11 issues as Google Sign in not working [0]. Everyone knows that only Wayland is webscale enough for Google. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1092

Quick glance shows real issues

> Xorg xserver above 1.20.8-3 crashes when using displaylink/evdi

> Applications do not repaint in a timely fashion, resulting in screen corruption

> xorg-x11-server quit unexpectedly on windows resize

> x11-base/xorg-server-1.20.8-r1 crashes

> Xorg crashes after unlocking with lightdm

> Input events can be sent for disabled device, crashing GTK and mutter

> when ubuntu runing Virtualbox, Ctal+Alt+F1 Ctal+Alt+F17 switch cause memleak

> Server crash at startup

> Delay and black screen when the screen is rotated.

> xorg-server-1.20.9 crash on startup

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#695

Post by account42 »

phkahler wrote: post #527
p_l wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to how XWayland works, a lot of applications (sometimes critical ones) won't work under XWayland ever (pretty much everything that works on interaction between X clients fails hard).

>> pretty much everything that works on interaction between X clients fails hard It's supposed to fail hard. That isnt just a security hole in X, it's a total lack of security. The notion that any app should be able to monitor or manipulate any other app is archaic and wrong from a security perspective.

> That isnt just a security hole in X, it's a total lack of security.

That "security" is useless on a Desktop where you run all programs as the same user. If you want a platform to run locked down "apps" that's fine, just don't expect others to be happy with the cost of that "security" when it provides no benefit for them.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#696

Post by account42 »

nsajko wrote: post #132

If Wayland is the future, the future is grim. People often complain that Wayland is taking a long time to catch up to X11, but that actually stems from a deeper issue: Wayland has a horrible design, for an X11 replacement, a design that leads to massive fragmentation issues across the graphical part of the Linux ecosystem. Implementing a Wayland compositor requires much more effort than implementing an X11 window man…

The real problem of this "security" nonsense isn't even existing use cases like screenshot or xdotool but rather the cost it imposes on any future power tool that someone might think of but can't implement witout getting every compositor on board.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#697

Post by account42 »

heftig wrote: post #545
nsajko wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more thing: the Wayland security model doesn't make much sense anyway, considering that running untrusted code over a large attack surface and without at least virtualization is probably a bad idea anyway nowadays (and even virtual machines can be escaped from).

The Wayland security model was designed with sandboxed applications in mind. X was not.

There is no reason you can't sandbox X11 clients - no need to break the protocol for that.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#698

Post by bitwize »

mattl wrote: post #662
bitwize wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What looks like "typical Linux geeks being geeks" with this situation: I call systems like this CADT-compliant after Jamie Zawinski's Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers idea. Wayland is a system for which CADT-compliance (and maybe security) trumps nearly all other concerns. No surprise, the primary use case for Wayland is and was always GNOME -- the very system for which Zawinski coined CADT.

> Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

I deliberately didn't link because jwz does not like hackernews linking to his site.

Re: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?

#700

Post by _abox »

danhor wrote: post #522
_abox wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it doesn't even mention the valuable features of X11 that were considered out of scope for wayland, such as network transparency. It's really super useful being able to just fire up a program on a remote SSH session and get the window on my local computer. Without having to set up VNC and a window manager etc etc on the remote computer. Of course this feature also needs a big review. It needs proper security (tho…

X (at least nowadays) isn't very network transparent. Most things are done via shared buffers (it's faster than shoving bitmaps down a socket), with special fallbacks implemented by the clients, so that x forwarding doesn't break.

I know, also font rendering with anti-aliasing is usually done on the client side now (though the old way with font servers was far from ideal, it was much more bandwidth efficient!).. I know it's not perfect but they do this because the protocol lacks support for smooth video.

I'm just advocating a modernised X over moving to Wayland altogether, like the poster I replied to.

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