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Arcan versus Xorg – Approaching Feature Parity
- nerdponx 8y agoAs someone with limited knowledge of how graphics on Linux work, I have no idea what this is. Can someone explain?
- bluejekyll 8y agoFirst time I’ve heard of this project, so saving others a click: Arcan is a powerful development framework for creating virtually anything between user interfaces for specialised embedded applications all the way to full-blown standalone desktop environments. Boot splash screen? no problem. SCADA HMI for your home? easy peasy. Xorg backend? got you covered. Wayland compositor? sure thing. At its heart lies a robust and portable multimedia engine, with a well-tested and well-documented interface, programmable using Lua. At every step of the way, the underlying development emphasises security, performance and debugability guided by a principle of least surprise in terms of API design. From the about page, same site as OP.
- Y_Y 8y agoAnd how did it manage to stay under the radar for so long. I hear about Wayland all day.
- cnasc 8y agoSort of intentionally in stealth mode according to the dev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683186
- nickpsecurity 8y agoAuthor has been posting a lot about it over time on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=arcan+crazylogad&what=stories&order=relevance https://lobste.rs/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=arcan+crazylogad&w... Lots of interesting write-ups and comments. Check them out.
- chrissnell 8y agoCan I get a lobste.rs invite? First I've ever seen the site and I love it already.
- eitland 8y agoI have spent a few minutes looking for an email address to send it to. You can try contacting me on @eitland on twitter (I just followed your account I think). Edit, to clarify: The only way I know I can send an invite is to input the email address and an invite message into my settings page at that site. I'm not aware of another way to send it.
- nsomaru 8y agoCould you invite me? Hnusername at gmail
- codetrotter 8y agoAlternate summary, from https://arcan-fe.com/2018/05/31/revisiting-the-arcan-project/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/05/31/revisiting-the-arcan-project... > the ‘elevator- pitch’ to the modern tweet-length attention spanned reader goes as follows: > Arcan is a curious blend of a streaming multimedia processor, game engine and display server with a novel design that lends itself well for both complex and simple realtime interactive graphics projects alike, and goes well with anything from Sci-Fi UIs for some homegrown embedded project to full blown desktops. It is highly modular, low on dependencies, yet comes with all necessary batteries included.
- kbenson 8y agoSo, what's it not good at, that's what I'm wondering. That's generally what I look for after reading overviews and PR pieces from evangelists. Right now, if I take the copy at face value, if I'm programming anything with a visual component I should be using Arcan. Knowing where some people find it a poor fit (or just too complicated for a simple use case) helps provide nuance to the hype.
- Mmddla 8y agoThe actual linked article says it aims for very complex things and simple (one-function) things but not in-between. I haven't looked into what that means in practice, but that's what's written.
- infogulch 8y agoI'm pretty sure they intend the phrase "from A to B" (used in both texts) to mean the entire range between as well.
- chriswarbo 8y agoNope, parent is right. From the article: "The perspective is to instead emphasise the extremes, that is to focus on the small “one task” kind of clients and on integration with bigger “embedded universes” like virtual machines and web browsers, and leave the middle to fester and rot."
- c487bd62 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/user/arcanfrontend https://www.youtube.com/user/arcanfrontend
- snazz 8y agoIs there are a usable demo or reference implementation of a desktop environment based on Arcan? Something akin to Weston for Wayland?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoYes, it's called Durden [0]. There was also AWB, now defunct [1]. [0] https://github.com/letoram/durden https://github.com/letoram/durden [1] https://github.com/letoram/awb https://github.com/letoram/awb
- crazyloglad 8y agoYou have ~three working and the 'defunct' AWB one. Durden : http://durden.arcan-fe.com http://durden.arcan-fe.com is tiling, stacking, tabbed, and a few others rolled into one. Prio : https://arcan-fe.com/2017/04/17/one-night-in-rio-vacation-photos-from-plan9/ https://arcan-fe.com/2017/04/17/one-night-in-rio-vacation-ph... - much more simple one that builds on rio from plan9. Safespaces : https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr... - 3D/VR.
- kitotik 8y agoWow, this seems to be a critical step towards the truly modern, networked, multimedia terminal(not an emulator?!) I’ve been fantasizing about since 1995. I completely respect the project owners desire to fly under the radar, but man it sure seems like more contributors would be a good thing to help us finally move past the monstrous x11/xorg legacy.
- earenndil 8y agoI've been dreaming about that too, but the way I've thought about it is as built up from text terminals (perhaps starting with sixel?), also replacing the file i/o paradigm.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y agoIs “network terminal” still a useful target? Disregarding the “elegance” of the X model, isn’t there still merit to the integrated approach of Windows’ User32 and kernel-modec local high-performance, low-latency graphics? It’s not like Crysis players in 2007 were asking for remote terminal support then - or now.
- beagle3 8y agoWell, Citrix, Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, Rainway, various VNCs, AnyDesktop and a bunch of other systems show that remote access to desktops is an important requirement, for gamers as well. The lines between a "network terminal" and a "remote desktop" are essentially nonexistent.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y agoCitrix, MS RDP, TeamViewer, VNC and the majority of those other tools you mentioned use fundamentally different architectures to X: they’re based on either local framebuffer mirroring (VNC, TeamViewer, etc) or proxying the local (2D) graphics and windowing API (Citrix, MS RDP). All of those systems are still based on fast local-only graphics and windowing systems, not the “network-first” design that X brings.
- vfclists 8y agoThis project is one I have been watching for some time and want to see it succeed.
- newnewpdro 8y agoI'd appreciate a similar writeup comparing Arcan to Wayland... after a cursory read of the linked article it sounds like a major difference is how window decorations are handled (client vs. server side). Though my Wayland knowledge is probably rather stale by now.
- renox 8y agoYes, it tries to put complexity server side also if memory serves, it tries to be robust against various loss.
- zlynx 8y agoWayland is just a set of protocol definitions. You want to compare Arcan to a Wayland implementation. Like gnome-shell. Or weston. Or Arcan. Adding Wayland support to Arcan has been a thing.
- newnewpdro 8y agoJust having a thorough writeup describing how Arcan and Wayland differ in their overlapping areas would be useful in comparing how their architectures differ. I understand Arcan is larger in scope than Wayland, but Arcan must have a protocol and architecture behind said protocol that can be meaningfully compared to Wayland's.
- crazyloglad 8y agoThe closest you'll get is the the "Clients and Privileges" section, and I much prefer to spend time on "what is" and "what will it become" than comparisons. Part of the problem is that Xorg is much more well defined in that most can grok "what it is" so there is a point of reference to base an explanation from without 'too much' confusion, there's stuff to work on that isn't IRC logs or mailing list posts which is seriously 90% of Wayland right there. Wayland is not a "protocol" in the traditional RFC/Jon Postel sense. Heck, even the spec PDF itself referred to itself as a Display Server. There's single X extensions with far more coherent descriptions than all of the Wayland Ecosystem. It's full of overloaded terms and technical WTFs!?. If anything, its the worst parts of Micosoft COM resurrected. An asynchronous Object Oriented IDL. Run for the hills. Some say it'll fix security issues, it'll fix performance issues, it'll fix world peace -- with barely anyone answering or questioning "how", "why" or "why can't X?". When you counter-argue its feature anaemia it is "oh it's just a protocol, the compositor fixes that" and when you question the feature bulimia it is "oh that's compositor extensions, not the protocol". Neither position is substantiated by its technical underpinnings, the protocol parts itself, nor the documentation, nor any of the the 'project goals'.
- drewm1980 8y agoHopefully it is just the tone of the writing, but your description of how clipboards work makes it sound like clipboards will still be terrible in Arcan. As a user I no interest whatsoever in a clipboard managers. Basic usage (text from one window to another) is so often frustratingly broken, that if you can fix it, that alone is reason to switch to Arcan. Promise me that when I paste I will see whatever text I just copied, and I will praise your name forever.
- pedrocr 8y agoYou experience broken copy/paste in Xorg these days? I don't think I've had any issues in maybe 10 years.
- drewm1980 8y agoWell classic stuff like xterm and vim work great; it's the new stuff like browsers (or maybe the js heavy pages they run) that are flaky.
- crazyloglad 8y agoIt's up to the WM. In Durden, that's how the default works. Advanced management is if you are working with different security domains etc. and need to protect against other clients polluting the clipboard (classic bitcoin address replace attack for instance). Point being that clipboard behavior is WM controlled, not display-server+manager. http://durden.arcan-fe.com/clipboard http://durden.arcan-fe.com/clipboard