4 ms·

Maybe a dumb question but why do people want to use Wayland if it's that horrible?

IshKebab 7y ago
X is horrible in many other ways.
p_l 7y ago
For a bunch of stupid, hysterical reasons, the Open Source X11 server still has all the warts of early-1990s release. XFree86 used the MIT X.Org core dump to implement open X11 on Linux, but outside of certain new things (DRI, XRender extension) it remained stuck in "world is dumb framebuffers with optional bitter" design. Over time, a lot of useful stuff was broken and supported less and less, then reimplemented in bad way over compositors, instead of having composting Xserver like Xsgi. Security extensions or even basic security tools (private input grab) got waylaid because toolkits didn't implement them (try running GTK3 on hardware without 32bit color GL or on system that defaults to lower bit depth than 32/24). Generally, after letting it get more and more broken, the suggestion for big rewrite arrived. Said suggestion often results in something that resembles "devs first graphic stack", with a lot of basic, important features for daily life relegated to "someone will make an extension for it later" or "use D-bus to implement it elsewhere, and who cares about compatibility".
- vondur 7y ago
  I wonder why the SGI stuff for X was not open sourced?
  - p_l 7y ago
    very tightly integrated with Irix and SGI MIPS hardware, from my understanding. A bit like IRIS GL never getting open sourced, because it wouldn't be of much use without matching hardware exposed over /dev/GL interface.
roenxi 7y ago
X.org is more horrible and also impossible to maintain. It would have been given the boot over a decade ago except for the fact that AMD/then ATI and Nvidia only supported X and video drivers were incorporated into X directly. There was a big push starting in ~2008 where AMD started open sourcing their drivers. Infrastructure started developing in the kernel where it makes sense instead of in X. Now we've reached the point where there are almost two parallel stacks - linux's graphics infrastructure; and Nvidia's. The developers don't have any patience for the one holdout against the new system. It is unfortunate for the people buying Nvidia cards because they are now starting to be labeled as 'using the legacy systems'. Presumably there is some reason why they have no choice in their purchases, but the cost of maintaining systems to work with closed source drivers appears to be too high. My views here aren't exactly current - I've stayed a long way away from Nvidia since ~2009 - but they are probably sill somewhat on target. It is likely that a better designed alternative to Wayland will crop up. It is much easier to compete with than X - there are no drivers that only support Wayland.
- robocat 7y ago
  For laptops with top-end CPU and screen spec etc, they mostly have nVidia chipsets from what I have seen. I would have slightly preferred AMD, but I wanted an i9 in a laptop that had good Linux support, and so nVidia was all I could get (XPS15).
  - mnm1 7y ago
    Are there any decent high end laptops that use AMD? I haven't seen anything. Not Lenovo. Not Dell. Not system 76 or any other Linux vendors. I prefer one too considering what shit nvidia drivers are. So the Redhat/wayland people are essentially saying all powerful laptops that have a chance of running Linux are already obsolete even ones not released yet? Redhat is powerful but not powerful enough to decide that. Fuck wayland if they refuse to support virtually the entire market for pro laptops. It certainly isn't the future without that. That's just delusional.
    - robocat 7y ago

X is horrible in many other ways.

p_l 7y ago

For a bunch of stupid, hysterical reasons, the Open Source X11 server still has all the warts of early-1990s release. XFree86 used the MIT X.Org core dump to implement open X11 on Linux, but outside of certain new things (DRI, XRender extension) it remained stuck in "world is dumb framebuffers with optional bitter" design. Over time, a lot of useful stuff was broken and supported less and less, then reimplemented in bad way over compositors, instead of having composting Xserver like Xsgi. Security extensions or even basic security tools (private input grab) got waylaid because toolkits didn't implement them (try running GTK3 on hardware without 32bit color GL or on system that defaults to lower bit depth than 32/24). Generally, after letting it get more and more broken, the suggestion for big rewrite arrived. Said suggestion often results in something that resembles "devs first graphic stack", with a lot of basic, important features for daily life relegated to "someone will make an extension for it later" or "use D-bus to implement it elsewhere, and who cares about compatibility".

vondur 7y ago
I wonder why the SGI stuff for X was not open sourced?
- p_l 7y ago
  very tightly integrated with Irix and SGI MIPS hardware, from my understanding. A bit like IRIS GL never getting open sourced, because it wouldn't be of much use without matching hardware exposed over /dev/GL interface.

roenxi 7y ago

X.org is more horrible and also impossible to maintain. It would have been given the boot over a decade ago except for the fact that AMD/then ATI and Nvidia only supported X and video drivers were incorporated into X directly. There was a big push starting in ~2008 where AMD started open sourcing their drivers. Infrastructure started developing in the kernel where it makes sense instead of in X. Now we've reached the point where there are almost two parallel stacks - linux's graphics infrastructure; and Nvidia's. The developers don't have any patience for the one holdout against the new system. It is unfortunate for the people buying Nvidia cards because they are now starting to be labeled as 'using the legacy systems'. Presumably there is some reason why they have no choice in their purchases, but the cost of maintaining systems to work with closed source drivers appears to be too high. My views here aren't exactly current - I've stayed a long way away from Nvidia since ~2009 - but they are probably sill somewhat on target. It is likely that a better designed alternative to Wayland will crop up. It is much easier to compete with than X - there are no drivers that only support Wayland.

robocat 7y ago
For laptops with top-end CPU and screen spec etc, they mostly have nVidia chipsets from what I have seen. I would have slightly preferred AMD, but I wanted an i9 in a laptop that had good Linux support, and so nVidia was all I could get (XPS15).
- mnm1 7y ago
  Are there any decent high end laptops that use AMD? I haven't seen anything. Not Lenovo. Not Dell. Not system 76 or any other Linux vendors. I prefer one too considering what shit nvidia drivers are. So the Redhat/wayland people are essentially saying all powerful laptops that have a chance of running Linux are already obsolete even ones not released yet? Redhat is powerful but not powerful enough to decide that. Fuck wayland if they refuse to support virtually the entire market for pro laptops. It certainly isn't the future without that. That's just delusional.
  - robocat 7y ago