Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only real option for a high-end Unix workstation with heavily integrated software that still exists seems to be the Mac Pro. Linux is really not comparable to IRIX. People keep saying that Wayland needs to be more of an X replacement but it's never clear what that means. You want 3D graphics over the network, that currently means Vulkan, and if you were going to do that, there doesn't seem to be much reason to ti…
I do not know what it means either. I am just gonna think out loud a bit, because I do care about this stuff. But, am also not currently impacted much. Nice place to be for me at least! In a general sense, Wayland is not Unix like, in the same way systemd isn't. X11 is, as were various init systems. And fact is, at the time those things were done, multi user computing was a thing, and it was all done with those ideas…
I remember my early encounters driving me absolutely mad because I did cut my teeth on that 1 seat 1 user environment.I think where I've ended up going in a different way than most is that over the years I keep cracking away at it because I want to understand it. It's an intuition thing, and you never really appreciate the miracle of it until you sit down and come to terms with what X really did. It was the glue between app logic, state, and a constantly floating set of goalposts represented by every possible set of different hardware.
I haven't even torn into the source. It's taken me so long just to grok the other layers of the problem space. Personally, I think the space X11 occupied is one of the most enticing areas of research open to me, even if I never seem to make the time for it.
Abstraction-wise, we assume we carry context with us everywhere, but an X environment driven over a network breaks you of that quite handily, and I don't think the "Cloud"/SOA solves the real life dilemma jist by lifting everything into a browser.