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Can I just say that I think it's great that we now ceased to have a monoculture in display servers for Unix-based systems? It was the last one, I believe. I me

by jolmg 8y ago

Can I just say that I think it's great that we now ceased to have a monoculture in display servers for Unix-based systems? It was the last one, I believe. I mean, we've had choices for text-editors, for shells, for programming languages, for GUI toolkits, for desktop environments, for window managers, for remote-desktop servers and viewers, for ssl/tls implementations, for web browsers, and even for kernels. The only thing everyone using Unix-based systems all had in common was that they had to use X for graphics. I think we had choices for implementations for X (Xf86?) before we ended up just using Xorg, but now we even have the choice to not use the X protocol. Having choices is good. Having diversity is good. I hope we stop trying to see this one as everyone converging to using only one. We can have both, like we do now. I think that's the best.

gpderetta 8y ago
Exactly, I mean, there was one thing that all the various slightly incompatible Linux distros agreed on. Finally we have fixed that.
DonHopkins 8y ago
Why not just use a full screen direct-to-hardware web browser as the window manager, and talk to clients, servers and other screens via HTTP, WebSockets, two-way streaming video and screen sharing via RTP, etc? The reason X-Windows sucks is that it's not extensible, and Wayland is only incrementally and quantitatively better than X11 (like X12 or Y), not radically and qualitatively better (like NeWS or AJAX). Wayland has the exact same fundamental problem that X-Windows suffers from. It's not extensible, so it misses the mark, just like X-Windows did, for the same reason. So there's not a good enough reason to switch, because Wayland failed to apply the lessons of Emacs and NeWS and AJAX. It should have been designed from the ground up around an extension language. Web browsers are extensible in JavaScript and WebAssembly. And they have a some nice 2D and 3D graphics libraries too. Problem solved. No need for un-extensible Wayland.
- quink 8y ago
  > The reason X-Windows sucks is that it's not extensible Years of configuring modules in XF86Config and matching things up between the server and the client and that thankfully going away quite a bit with Xorg would make my conclusion the opposite and yet also suggests it didn’t really matter as much.

by jolmg 8y ago

gpderetta 8y ago

Exactly, I mean, there was one thing that all the various slightly incompatible Linux distros agreed on. Finally we have fixed that.

DonHopkins 8y ago

Why not just use a full screen direct-to-hardware web browser as the window manager, and talk to clients, servers and other screens via HTTP, WebSockets, two-way streaming video and screen sharing via RTP, etc? The reason X-Windows sucks is that it's not extensible, and Wayland is only incrementally and quantitatively better than X11 (like X12 or Y), not radically and qualitatively better (like NeWS or AJAX). Wayland has the exact same fundamental problem that X-Windows suffers from. It's not extensible, so it misses the mark, just like X-Windows did, for the same reason. So there's not a good enough reason to switch, because Wayland failed to apply the lessons of Emacs and NeWS and AJAX. It should have been designed from the ground up around an extension language. Web browsers are extensible in JavaScript and WebAssembly. And they have a some nice 2D and 3D graphics libraries too. Problem solved. No need for un-extensible Wayland.

quink 8y ago
> The reason X-Windows sucks is that it's not extensible Years of configuring modules in XF86Config and matching things up between the server and the client and that thankfully going away quite a bit with Xorg would make my conclusion the opposite and yet also suggests it didn’t really matter as much.