3 ms·

> Wayland is still being rolled out, it hasn't even managed to be the default compositor on any major Linux distros yet (though I heard that Fedora may choose t

> Wayland is still being rolled out, it hasn't even managed to be the default compositor on any major Linux distros yet (though I heard that Fedora may choose to default to Wayland for its next release). This is true on desktop systems. It's already running fine and dandy on many embedded systems, and it has been for a fairly long time. I have at least four or five boards in my office that are running it, for production purposes, i.e. real-life devices. Certainly it's going to see more adoption, including by KDE. But at the moment, its support in the desktop world is pretty much limited to Gnome and, uh, that i3-like compositor, I forgot its name. > What are you talking about? There's no closed source bias with Wayland. With Wayland itself, no, certainly. But one of the things that intrigues me is that somehow people would have you think that the open source community -- historically, one of the most security-conscious -- has managed to turn a blind eye to this elephant in the room, a frickin' walking keylogger, throughout the troubled 1990s and 2000s. You think we just somehow missed this disaster waiting to happen, and it took us 20 years to come with a contingency plan? It is not the only factor, nor the dominating one, but one of the significant reasons why some companies like Wayland is that it saves them a lot of headaches, including (potential) legal ones involved in selling equipment that has to run third party/OEM/crapware programs. Users of these systems may, and often will, input sensible stuff on their devices. You don't want every company who publishes an application to the app store to be able to read everything. Truth is, this has simply not been a major concern so far. It is becoming. I don't mean to say it's a bad thing, and like I said in my previous post, I certainly can't wait for when X11 will become history, but I think we need to keep a close eye on what's happening. It's important to understand that a need for device, software and user data control is a major driving factor behind much of today's technology, and it's worth keeping an eye on.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Certainly it's going to see more adoption, including by KDE. But at the moment, its support in the desktop world is pretty much limited to Gnome and, uh, that i3-like compositor, I forgot its name." I'm not sure which i3-like compositor has Wayland support, but I believe Enlightenment supports Wayland. > "But one of the things that intrigues me is that somehow people would have you think that the open source community -- historically, one of the most security-conscious -- has managed to turn a blind eye to this elephant in the room, a frickin' walking keylogger, throughout the troubled 1990s and 2000s. You think we just somehow missed this disaster waiting to happen, and it took us 20 years to come with a contingency plan?" A lot of Linux servers run without X installed, you don't need GUIs to administer a Linux server. Seeing as Linux first found major popularity as a server OS, the security risks of X weren't quite as major as they may seem. Also, whilst X has its issues, there were more fundamental issues that took precedence in the earlier years of Linux. I remember when I started playing with Linux in the early 2000s one of the main issues was drivers. If you've ever had the pleasure of trying to get Windows WiFi drivers working with ndiswrapper, you'll know what I mean. Lastly, it does appear that there were proposals to improve/replace X11 over the years, but proposals are easy. I'd say the growth of Wayland was a mix of the right people at the right time. We're still waiting on something similar to emerge for the audio stack (though I'm hoping the work to improve the VR experience will be the catalyst that helps to drive this forward).
- johnny22 10y ago
  sway is the i3-like: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway
- notalaser 10y ago
  > Seeing as Linux first found major popularity as a server OS, the security risks of X weren't quite as major as they may seem. X11 was, if not the most common, at least one of the most common workstation interface throughout the 1990s, when Linux, even on servers, was not as major a player as it is today, and most high-grade workstations ran a Unix variant. There were exceptions (some systems ran NeWS) but, by and large, if you did any important (so usually confidential) work back then, it was quite likely you would do it on something running X11. The risk was as major as it is today.
Alexqw85 10y ago
> and, uh, that i3-like compositor, I forgot its name. The i3-like compositor is called sway: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/ https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/ As an i3 user, I'm pretty happy to see it so far along in its development. ---Alex Edit: fixed link
- notalaser 10y ago
  YES! Sway! It's very nice, I played with it a little, and its author is present on HN as well.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "Certainly it's going to see more adoption, including by KDE. But at the moment, its support in the desktop world is pretty much limited to Gnome and, uh, that i3-like compositor, I forgot its name." I'm not sure which i3-like compositor has Wayland support, but I believe Enlightenment supports Wayland. > "But one of the things that intrigues me is that somehow people would have you think that the open source community -- historically, one of the most security-conscious -- has managed to turn a blind eye to this elephant in the room, a frickin' walking keylogger, throughout the troubled 1990s and 2000s. You think we just somehow missed this disaster waiting to happen, and it took us 20 years to come with a contingency plan?" A lot of Linux servers run without X installed, you don't need GUIs to administer a Linux server. Seeing as Linux first found major popularity as a server OS, the security risks of X weren't quite as major as they may seem. Also, whilst X has its issues, there were more fundamental issues that took precedence in the earlier years of Linux. I remember when I started playing with Linux in the early 2000s one of the main issues was drivers. If you've ever had the pleasure of trying to get Windows WiFi drivers working with ndiswrapper, you'll know what I mean. Lastly, it does appear that there were proposals to improve/replace X11 over the years, but proposals are easy. I'd say the growth of Wayland was a mix of the right people at the right time. We're still waiting on something similar to emerge for the audio stack (though I'm hoping the work to improve the VR experience will be the catalyst that helps to drive this forward).

johnny22 10y ago
sway is the i3-like: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway
notalaser 10y ago
> Seeing as Linux first found major popularity as a server OS, the security risks of X weren't quite as major as they may seem. X11 was, if not the most common, at least one of the most common workstation interface throughout the 1990s, when Linux, even on servers, was not as major a player as it is today, and most high-grade workstations ran a Unix variant. There were exceptions (some systems ran NeWS) but, by and large, if you did any important (so usually confidential) work back then, it was quite likely you would do it on something running X11. The risk was as major as it is today.

Alexqw85 10y ago

> and, uh, that i3-like compositor, I forgot its name. The i3-like compositor is called sway: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/ https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/ As an i3 user, I'm pretty happy to see it so far along in its development. ---Alex Edit: fixed link

notalaser 10y ago
YES! Sway! It's very nice, I played with it a little, and its author is present on HN as well.