5 ms·

As long as it's optional for Gnome only as they say, that's fine. I just hope other DEs like Xfce don't simply rely on this being available like with Consolekit

by byuu 11y ago

As long as it's optional for Gnome only as they say, that's fine. I just hope other DEs like Xfce don't simply rely on this being available like with Consolekit, HAL, D-bus, etc that I now have to run on FreeBSD as well. I'm perfectly content ignoring Gnome, but if every full desktop environment starts relying on this because it's available, then it's not really so optional anymore. (and of course, if the alternative is guaranteed to be no major DE running on BSD at all without this, then we similarly have our hand forced. It depends on who would flinch first.)

generic_user 11y ago
You should try Lumina Desktop they are dedicated to a native BSD desktop experience and BSD technology, but it is also portable to Linux.
simoncion 11y ago
I could be very, very, very wrong, but I remember hearing a while back that both Wayland and KDE had plans to become dependant on systemd for its "guaranteed-race-free" startup process.
- navaati 11y ago
  Wayland is not a program, it's a protocol, so there is no way it could depend on systemd. Some compositors may choose to, some compositors may choose not to.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Compositors choose to, because they need a part of it, logind, to talk to polkit, to gain the proper access privileges to do what needs to be done. Basically, with Wayland the compositor/Window Manager/toolkit gets elevated to the same level as X11. Meaning that it has to do pretty much everything that X11 used to do for it. The alternative to using logind+polkit is to run the DE/WM/compositor as root. Not something often talked about, as wayland is supposed to be the secure choice vs X11. Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess, where stuff is being presented as one thing but is in essence something quite different for those in the know.
    - byuu 11y ago
      I would actually be somewhat okay with running the graphical stack as root inside a jail, if it meant bypassing all of the systemd emulation. > Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess I feel it's just been becoming a mess in general. They're trying too hard to cater to every possible use case, and there's nobody really in charge of the whole end-product to say "NO" to things. So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism. More and more, I feel the long-term solution for BSD is going to have to be a full split on the graphical stack. It's been lovely for transitioning to be able to take all of my Linux apps with me to BSD, and it's a huge hindrance to eg Haiku adoption, but ... with Linux becoming more and more insular with Linux-only dependencies all throughout the stack, it seems inevitable that this Frankenstein of Linux emulation is going to have to collapse at some point. We could still have GTK/Qt ports, so we could still run the truly portable stuff (Audacious, Pidgin, Transmission. etc.) Or as a nice alternative, dedicate a TTY to running a virtual machine of a full Linux OS for your graphical desktop.
      - toyg 11y ago
        >So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism For anyone following Linux since 2000 at least, this statement is so funny. X11 was never simple nor minimal. The various init daemons were never simple nor minimal. The mess that is the collection of kernel drivers has never been simple nor minimal. Linux has always been about choice: if you like stripped-down, you go and strip it down; if you like full-featured, you go and pack everything. There is no one-size-fits-all, no single design. Anything else would not be Linux. The un-linuxness of systemd is exactly that it's becoming less and less optional. We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap, and when it's finally seeing some competition, we're being saddled with a non-optional daemon that takes over the rest of your system -- and unlike X11, it's not even desktop-only.
        generic_user 11y ago
        Yes, I agree with this very much as a long time Linux and BSD user. Linux was never like a BSD. The only thing that 'IS' Linux is the kernel everything else is a choice. With BSD you get a kernel + system libraries + userland all in the base system. So linux has always been a mess but extremely flexible.
  - generic_user 11y ago
    The Wayland Protocol is simply a specification that is true. But there also has to be an actual implementation. The only implementation of Wayland Protocol at this point is the reference implementation that heavily uses Linux only system calls and is not practically portable to BSD or any other system. Therefor Compositors that use libwayland such as Weston and Gnome are also not portable. SystemD dependencies add another layer of incompatibility. So yes Wayland Like X is in theory OS agnostic but in practical terms they are only as portable as there specific implementation.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Hnnh. I see that the Wayland folks have -perhaps inadvertently- subjected us to another round of "Do you mean Java-the-language, Java-the-VM, or Java-the-Runtime-Environment?" style confusion. I've always heard things like "Wayland is going to be the replacement for X.org." and "Work on Wayland compositors is proceeding at pace.". Pardon my confusion. To address my claim, do you know if there is currently a functional, non-toy Wayland compositor that doesn't plan to add a dependency on systemd?
    - yrro 11y ago
      Perhaps it would clarify things if you knew that Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland that is presumably going to depend on logind.
digi_owl 11y ago
Best i can tell, the reason Xfce seems to assume it is there is because the developers are short on time and thus make use of low level Gnome libs to get things out the door. Essentially Gnome seem able to throw a whole lot more man hours at various topic than can the rest of the DEs, KDE included. This in turn seem to lever Freedesktop towards them (though Freedesktop may have overly favored Gnome from the get-go).
- byuu 11y ago
  Xfce already depends on it? :( I was under the impression they had FreeBSD users on their dev team, and kept it alive, just with some limited features (like automounting not really working) and only relying on a few Linuxisms like Consolekit. Still on 4.10 though, so perhaps that's no longer the case on the newer versions.
  - purpleorange 11y ago
    xfce will use systemd if it is available, but it can still be used without it http://xfce.org/about/tour http://xfce.org/about/tour the tour was taken using openbsd

by byuu 11y ago

generic_user 11y ago

You should try Lumina Desktop they are dedicated to a native BSD desktop experience and BSD technology, but it is also portable to Linux.

simoncion 11y ago

I could be very, very, very wrong, but I remember hearing a while back that both Wayland and KDE had plans to become dependant on systemd for its "guaranteed-race-free" startup process.

navaati 11y ago
Wayland is not a program, it's a protocol, so there is no way it could depend on systemd. Some compositors may choose to, some compositors may choose not to.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Compositors choose to, because they need a part of it, logind, to talk to polkit, to gain the proper access privileges to do what needs to be done. Basically, with Wayland the compositor/Window Manager/toolkit gets elevated to the same level as X11. Meaning that it has to do pretty much everything that X11 used to do for it. The alternative to using logind+polkit is to run the DE/WM/compositor as root. Not something often talked about, as wayland is supposed to be the secure choice vs X11. Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess, where stuff is being presented as one thing but is in essence something quite different for those in the know.
  - byuu 11y ago
    I would actually be somewhat okay with running the graphical stack as root inside a jail, if it meant bypassing all of the systemd emulation. > Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess I feel it's just been becoming a mess in general. They're trying too hard to cater to every possible use case, and there's nobody really in charge of the whole end-product to say "NO" to things. So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism. More and more, I feel the long-term solution for BSD is going to have to be a full split on the graphical stack. It's been lovely for transitioning to be able to take all of my Linux apps with me to BSD, and it's a huge hindrance to eg Haiku adoption, but ... with Linux becoming more and more insular with Linux-only dependencies all throughout the stack, it seems inevitable that this Frankenstein of Linux emulation is going to have to collapse at some point. We could still have GTK/Qt ports, so we could still run the truly portable stuff (Audacious, Pidgin, Transmission. etc.) Or as a nice alternative, dedicate a TTY to running a virtual machine of a full Linux OS for your graphical desktop.
    - toyg 11y ago
      >So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism For anyone following Linux since 2000 at least, this statement is so funny. X11 was never simple nor minimal. The various init daemons were never simple nor minimal. The mess that is the collection of kernel drivers has never been simple nor minimal. Linux has always been about choice: if you like stripped-down, you go and strip it down; if you like full-featured, you go and pack everything. There is no one-size-fits-all, no single design. Anything else would not be Linux. The un-linuxness of systemd is exactly that it's becoming less and less optional. We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap, and when it's finally seeing some competition, we're being saddled with a non-optional daemon that takes over the rest of your system -- and unlike X11, it's not even desktop-only.
      - generic_user 11y ago
        Yes, I agree with this very much as a long time Linux and BSD user. Linux was never like a BSD. The only thing that 'IS' Linux is the kernel everything else is a choice. With BSD you get a kernel + system libraries + userland all in the base system. So linux has always been a mess but extremely flexible.
- generic_user 11y ago
  The Wayland Protocol is simply a specification that is true. But there also has to be an actual implementation. The only implementation of Wayland Protocol at this point is the reference implementation that heavily uses Linux only system calls and is not practically portable to BSD or any other system. Therefor Compositors that use libwayland such as Weston and Gnome are also not portable. SystemD dependencies add another layer of incompatibility. So yes Wayland Like X is in theory OS agnostic but in practical terms they are only as portable as there specific implementation.
- simoncion 11y ago
  Hnnh. I see that the Wayland folks have -perhaps inadvertently- subjected us to another round of "Do you mean Java-the-language, Java-the-VM, or Java-the-Runtime-Environment?" style confusion. I've always heard things like "Wayland is going to be the replacement for X.org." and "Work on Wayland compositors is proceeding at pace.". Pardon my confusion. To address my claim, do you know if there is currently a functional, non-toy Wayland compositor that doesn't plan to add a dependency on systemd?
  - yrro 11y ago
    Perhaps it would clarify things if you knew that Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland that is presumably going to depend on logind.

digi_owl 11y ago

Best i can tell, the reason Xfce seems to assume it is there is because the developers are short on time and thus make use of low level Gnome libs to get things out the door. Essentially Gnome seem able to throw a whole lot more man hours at various topic than can the rest of the DEs, KDE included. This in turn seem to lever Freedesktop towards them (though Freedesktop may have overly favored Gnome from the get-go).

byuu 11y ago
Xfce already depends on it? :( I was under the impression they had FreeBSD users on their dev team, and kept it alive, just with some limited features (like automounting not really working) and only relying on a few Linuxisms like Consolekit. Still on 4.10 though, so perhaps that's no longer the case on the newer versions.
- purpleorange 11y ago
  xfce will use systemd if it is available, but it can still be used without it http://xfce.org/about/tour http://xfce.org/about/tour the tour was taken using openbsd