5 ms·

I can't say it any better than JWZ did over 15 years ago. This is the result of the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model and is why Linux will not appro

I can't say it any better than JWZ did over 15 years ago. This is the result of the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model and is why Linux will not approach Windows or OSX in usability. Cannot link to his site: JWZ dot org /doc/cadt.html A complete teardown and rebuild of the whole ecosystem (because X succccckkks) is fun! Making something backwards-compatible, or standardized, or polished that "last 90%" so it works on everybody's environment... is not.

Sebb767 7y ago
https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html <- works for me
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Well that's because if you click on that link from HN it uses the referrer details provided by your browser to show quite a rude message and picture ;)
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    Wow, never seen this before. I don’t get the animosity HN sometimes revives. I don’t really care for startup stuff and I just ignore it, but the average level of discussion here is extremely high. One of the best in the web. Compare HN to Twitter or Reddit and it’s night and day, and it has been for years.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      This particular juvenile humor says more about JWZ than about HN. Just look at the example ITT. The "CADT" metaphor doesn't have much to do with the developers either of X or of Wayland.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
_emacsomancer_ 7y ago
Four or five years ago I had contacted jwz about what seemed to be a glitch in the Pac-Man Xscreensaver (sometimes the blue maze and dots wouldn't appear). He suggested it was likely a video-driver issue, potentially tied to hardware acceleration. I had replied something along the lines of "oh well, probably things like this will get better with Wayland, even if it introduces other issues". His response was: "LOL! Yeah you can't even imagine how much worse it's gonna get. Pretty soon the Linux desktop will just be a little hammer that pops up and smashes your knuckles at random."
xorcist 7y ago
The CADT development model is very real, but it's not really a good description of the Xorg situation. The most active Wayland developers are not only also Xorg developers but have been so for a very long time. They know their history. X11 has some fundamental problems. It's not fun using a modern desktop where it is impossible to sandbox individual applications. Firefox frequently processes untrusted data and is run with a dedicated uid, but it is also an interactive application and can suddenly listen in on all my passwords entered in other applications. Virtualized appliations are referred to using dumber protocols like VNC and SPICE which isn't always ideal. Wayland has some interesting design issues on its own but that doesn't make the developers ignorant. XWayland will stick around for the foreseeable future.
- southerndrift 7y ago
  Can't you use ssh and connect to localhost with the -Y option to sandbox an X app?
  - tlb 7y ago
    No. An X11 connection forwarded with -Y can receive all keyboard events, capture all screen pixels, inject mouse/keyboard events and read/write the clipboard. A malicious X11 client app can totally pwn you, forwarded or not.
  - aswellian 7y ago
    A bit more involved, but seems to achieve the desired result: https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/RunSecureBrowser/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/RunSecureBrowser/
- altfredd 7y ago
  > The most active Wayland developers are not only also Xorg developers but have been so for a very long time Amusingly, I often hear this argument from Wayland proponents. Do they realize, that those very same developers have failed at maintaining Xorg code base and fixing it's bugs in backward compatible way? To run a project into the ground and wash one's hands of it... is not worthy of endorsement.
soulofmischief 7y ago
X does suck, it's incredibly insecure and the workarounds for regaining some sense of application isolation are obtuse and resource-draining. I could go into all the little technical details but the fact is, X has been around for decades and its core was made for much simpler machines. It's time for something new. This isn't attention-deficit developers at play. People have spent a lot of time on the Wayland ecosystem. This isn't just some kids hacking away in their basements ignorant of better development practices. You argument holds up for many Linux components, but not for X/Wayland. It's preposterous to take the stance that no component in the entire Linux ecosystem ever needs to be replaced.
- sprash 7y ago
  > it's incredibly insecure I hear this all the time. But so far there was not even one incident where major hack was done via X11. The reason for that is that people who use X also exclusively use trusted apps. The Wayland security model makes many generic tasks insanely complicated. The real world security gains will be zero. Security through obscurity never worked.
  - brohee 7y ago
    You only have to ssh to a compromised machine with X11 forwarding enabled to be quite exposed...
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    Poison a single common open-source daemon which is used in a lot of systems; That daemon will have access to all keystrokes, window content, etc. > The reason for that is that people who use X also exclusively use trusted apps. Well that's just not true. What does trusted mean? Most of the software on our desktops is unaudited. We don't have insight into the entire chain of deployment for more than a handful of applications we feel like keeping up with. On a side note, that would be a wonderful service; A man-like utility which simply displays change-logs coupled with relevant source-code diffs. Reduces the surface of trust down to one party. Something like that would require financial backing, however.
- 7y ago
dredmorbius 7y ago
Wayback is HN-safe: https://web.archive.org/web/20030912064745/https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030912064745/https://www.jwz.o...
_emacsomancer_ 7y ago
> This is the result of the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model and is why Linux will not approach Windows or OSX in usability. While I definitely agree with the CADT issue; despite it, the Linux desktop experience still beats the Windows or OSX one. If the Linux desktop is "a little hammer that pops up and smashes your knuckles at random", the Windows and Mac desktops are big hammers that smash various body parts at random.
jcranmer 7y ago
Windows and OS X are well-known for constantly deprecating APIs and replacing them with new ones. So clearly the best way to compete with them is to insist on dogmatic adherence to 30-40-year old APIs that are known to be horrible matches for how modern software stacks (including competitor OSes) actually work.
- p_l 7y ago
  Windows supports core APIs for longer than Linux, or in fact, X11 exists. It's actually possible (and was demonstrated) to upgrade from 1985 Windows 1.01 all the way up to 32bit Windows 10 and run windows 1.01 application without changes. Arguably backward compatibility is the true reason how MS got to dominate OS market - you had good chance your software was just going to work on new OS version.
  - i386 7y ago
    MacOS recently rewrote their window manager and apps still work. That’s the last 10%.

Sebb767 7y ago

https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html <- works for me

claudiawerner 7y ago
Well that's because if you click on that link from HN it uses the referrer details provided by your browser to show quite a rude message and picture ;)
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  Wow, never seen this before. I don’t get the animosity HN sometimes revives. I don’t really care for startup stuff and I just ignore it, but the average level of discussion here is extremely high. One of the best in the web. Compare HN to Twitter or Reddit and it’s night and day, and it has been for years.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    This particular juvenile humor says more about JWZ than about HN. Just look at the example ITT. The "CADT" metaphor doesn't have much to do with the developers either of X or of Wayland.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

_emacsomancer_ 7y ago

Four or five years ago I had contacted jwz about what seemed to be a glitch in the Pac-Man Xscreensaver (sometimes the blue maze and dots wouldn't appear). He suggested it was likely a video-driver issue, potentially tied to hardware acceleration. I had replied something along the lines of "oh well, probably things like this will get better with Wayland, even if it introduces other issues". His response was: "LOL! Yeah you can't even imagine how much worse it's gonna get. Pretty soon the Linux desktop will just be a little hammer that pops up and smashes your knuckles at random."

xorcist 7y ago

The CADT development model is very real, but it's not really a good description of the Xorg situation. The most active Wayland developers are not only also Xorg developers but have been so for a very long time. They know their history. X11 has some fundamental problems. It's not fun using a modern desktop where it is impossible to sandbox individual applications. Firefox frequently processes untrusted data and is run with a dedicated uid, but it is also an interactive application and can suddenly listen in on all my passwords entered in other applications. Virtualized appliations are referred to using dumber protocols like VNC and SPICE which isn't always ideal. Wayland has some interesting design issues on its own but that doesn't make the developers ignorant. XWayland will stick around for the foreseeable future.

southerndrift 7y ago
Can't you use ssh and connect to localhost with the -Y option to sandbox an X app?
- tlb 7y ago
  No. An X11 connection forwarded with -Y can receive all keyboard events, capture all screen pixels, inject mouse/keyboard events and read/write the clipboard. A malicious X11 client app can totally pwn you, forwarded or not.
- aswellian 7y ago
  A bit more involved, but seems to achieve the desired result: https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/RunSecureBrowser/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/RunSecureBrowser/
altfredd 7y ago
> The most active Wayland developers are not only also Xorg developers but have been so for a very long time Amusingly, I often hear this argument from Wayland proponents. Do they realize, that those very same developers have failed at maintaining Xorg code base and fixing it's bugs in backward compatible way? To run a project into the ground and wash one's hands of it... is not worthy of endorsement.

soulofmischief 7y ago

X does suck, it's incredibly insecure and the workarounds for regaining some sense of application isolation are obtuse and resource-draining. I could go into all the little technical details but the fact is, X has been around for decades and its core was made for much simpler machines. It's time for something new. This isn't attention-deficit developers at play. People have spent a lot of time on the Wayland ecosystem. This isn't just some kids hacking away in their basements ignorant of better development practices. You argument holds up for many Linux components, but not for X/Wayland. It's preposterous to take the stance that no component in the entire Linux ecosystem ever needs to be replaced.

sprash 7y ago
> it's incredibly insecure I hear this all the time. But so far there was not even one incident where major hack was done via X11. The reason for that is that people who use X also exclusively use trusted apps. The Wayland security model makes many generic tasks insanely complicated. The real world security gains will be zero. Security through obscurity never worked.
- brohee 7y ago
  You only have to ssh to a compromised machine with X11 forwarding enabled to be quite exposed...
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  Poison a single common open-source daemon which is used in a lot of systems; That daemon will have access to all keystrokes, window content, etc. > The reason for that is that people who use X also exclusively use trusted apps. Well that's just not true. What does trusted mean? Most of the software on our desktops is unaudited. We don't have insight into the entire chain of deployment for more than a handful of applications we feel like keeping up with. On a side note, that would be a wonderful service; A man-like utility which simply displays change-logs coupled with relevant source-code diffs. Reduces the surface of trust down to one party. Something like that would require financial backing, however.
7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

Wayback is HN-safe: https://web.archive.org/web/20030912064745/https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030912064745/https://www.jwz.o...

_emacsomancer_ 7y ago

> This is the result of the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model and is why Linux will not approach Windows or OSX in usability. While I definitely agree with the CADT issue; despite it, the Linux desktop experience still beats the Windows or OSX one. If the Linux desktop is "a little hammer that pops up and smashes your knuckles at random", the Windows and Mac desktops are big hammers that smash various body parts at random.

jcranmer 7y ago

Windows and OS X are well-known for constantly deprecating APIs and replacing them with new ones. So clearly the best way to compete with them is to insist on dogmatic adherence to 30-40-year old APIs that are known to be horrible matches for how modern software stacks (including competitor OSes) actually work.

p_l 7y ago
Windows supports core APIs for longer than Linux, or in fact, X11 exists. It's actually possible (and was demonstrated) to upgrade from 1985 Windows 1.01 all the way up to 32bit Windows 10 and run windows 1.01 application without changes. Arguably backward compatibility is the true reason how MS got to dominate OS market - you had good chance your software was just going to work on new OS version.
- i386 7y ago
  MacOS recently rewrote their window manager and apps still work. That’s the last 10%.