> Is X another example of "worse is better"? It's a prime example of survivorship bias. I.e. all the problems and shortcomings "identified" with X11 apparently

> Is X another example of "worse is better"? It's a prime example of survivorship bias. I.e. all the problems and shortcomings "identified" with X11 apparently have little impact on how well/bad it behaves. But no mistake, there have been numerous attempts to replace X11: Fresco, Y Windows, Pico (IIRC) and so on. If you want to identify what impairs a graphics and windowing system's design you should look at these. And IMHO Wayland, too, since, despite being in development for over 7 years it still didn't manage to find widespread adoption; compare that to X11 for which there existed a thriving ecosystem of software after just half the time. IMHO something is done right by X11. Yes there are a lot of warts in and around it. But don't focus on those. Or do and see how "well" other systems deal with it. One part of X11 that often receives HUGE criticism is the whole HID input infrastructure. Among other things this was one of the main reasons for developing Wayland. And now, years later the whole HID input infrastructure of Wayland is still in its infancy and hardly useable. The developers have practically given up and tell people, "uhh, use libinput", which is hardly a bandaid: There is "some" support for input events in the Wayland protocol. But it's quite narrow, so libinput is now directly accessing /dev/input/… which opens a huge can of worms in how to properly distribute events and assign/revoke user access.