7 ms·

Yes, I agree. X11 is a historic artifact that is supposed to be honored in the museum now. The C/S architecture of X11 hits the spot when terminals and thin cl

by stevefan1999 6y ago

Yes, I agree. X11 is a historic artifact that is supposed to be honored in the museum now. The C/S architecture of X11 hits the spot when terminals and thin client are the norm, that means 20-30 years ago, but today, we all have dedicated graphics display devices (GPU, monitors) even in our pocket smartphone, and the way X11 works is holding Linux desktop scene back. But without X11 there you can't show how much improvement Wayland has. We shall not forget X11.

corty 6y ago
Where is that supposed Wayland progress after a decade? Input is broken and inconsistent, screenshots don't work, remoting is broken, every WM has to be rewritten or abandoned, trivialities like c&p handling are not yet there. Wayland is still in the early phase of catching up to X11, for any progress it will take another decade or maybe even a Wayland replacement. We should face it, Wayland is a dead end.
- nsajko 6y ago
  Yeah, but Wayland won't ever be able to "catch up to X11", because it's broken by design. (See my next comment.)
  - corty 6y ago
    Waylands design is even more broken and leads to common functionality being duplicated and broken all over the place. Each app has to do input handling on its own? Comeon, a 5yearold could tell you that that is a huge design flaw. There are equally problematic design flaws in X11, just less of them and in different areas. Where Wayland tries to get rendering right and botches all the rest, X11 is weird for rendering, but at least has kind-of-ok answers for remoting, input, clipboard, screenshots, etc.
    - diegocg 6y ago
      There is no reason why window managers can't share functionality via libraries. In fact, some do (wlroots). X11 and its separation of graphic server and window manager encouraged code reuse by placing it in the server, but with Wayland that separation (and the extra context switches) are gone so there is less incentive to share code.
      - p_l 6y ago
        Which would be fine if we had something like COM to enable portable interfacing between libraries and certain level of separation, especially when a library plonks something breaking your runtime by messing with global resources (for example, threads and signals). But we don't, and the libraries push other issues into your design as you often are forced to follow their specific idiosyncracies.
- lloydatkinson 6y ago
  It’s this kind of endless stream of broken and incompatible technologies that makes me use Linux in server and embedded scenarios only. Every time I’ve had to use desktop Linux it’s just been one problem after another.
  - s1k3s 6y ago
    Not sure what you're trying to use it for but I've been on Mint for the past 4 years and I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution. I'm using it for development, I also have a personal Mac and my work PC is Windows and I can say the Linux is miles ahead of both of them. And the Mac and Windows computers have been $1500 and $700 respectively, while the one that runs Mint cost me $300. Linux is #1 for me for development just because of how fast and non intrusive it is, no resources spent on user tracking, no unwanted updates shoved down your throat and so on.
    - MontyCarloHall 6y ago
      > I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution I can’t tell if this post is a parody or not. The fact that it’s 2020 and minor annoyances like this are still fairly common in desktop Linux is telling. macOS SSHing into a Linux VM (either locally hosted or on the cloud) is the sweet spot for me.
      - iso1210 6y ago
        I have far more issues with my OSX laptop than having to run a script once every few months (presumably that script is called automatically) I've just had another popup from OSX wanting a password for google, sophos pops up saying it's upset a fair bit, on occasion the entire machine just hangs, and wireguard doesn't set my search domain. There are other niggles but those are the ones that have affected me in the last 30 minutes. On the other hand the biggest hassle from my desktop is ssh connections time out if I suspend the machine overnight. (I've used ubuntu LTS on the desktop since 2006, before then it was debian testing since 1999)
- akvadrako 6y ago
  If those are your best arguments against Wayland you are making a good case for it because: input is broken and inconsistent – what? screenshots don't work – they do. I use them all the time. remoting is broken – I know it's supported but I've never wanted to do it. every WM has to be rewritten or abandoned – of course, that's by design. Wayland doesn't even have WMs. c&p handling are not yet there – do you mean copy and paste? That works fine; it also has a clipboard manager protocol.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    > screenshots don't work – they do. I use them all the time. they don't work on wayland, they work on specific compositors that implement an extension.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Are there even any Wayland compositors in actual use that don't support that extension?
      - jcelerier 6y ago
        if you go to r/unixporn there are a ton of custom X11 WMs with very very small userbase - sometimes a dozen individuals. Screenshotting works with all of them.
        akvadrako 6y ago
        WMs are not compositors. Compositors are more like a WM combined with X.org.
        jcelerier 6y ago
        yes, that's the issue - writing a different desktop metaphor like the various tiling WMs was something that took as few as a couple hundred lines of C. Now with Wayland the person who wants to write his own desktop environment has to rewrite much more to get to something that doesn't even provide half of what Xorg gives. Also, compositors are not mandatory anyways on X (I don't use one personnally and prefer it like that) so it's a weird remark to make.
- isaac21259 6y ago
  Not sure what you referring to with regards to screenshots as they're working fine for me. I've been using Wayland for a few months now (wayfire which I switched to from bspwm) and overall it's seemed like a huge improvement in terms of smoothness and I have yet to run into any issues. Input seems to work fine even with things like multitouch gestures. I've never tried remoting into my machine graphically but there seem to be working vnc servers for Wayland.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I've been using Wayland for 4 years now. I haven't encountered any of those issues.
aldanor 6y ago
What about e.g., being able to run guis like pycharm/clion that run on Linux in corporate environments where you only have direct access to a windows box?
- raesene9 6y ago
  Microsoft's Wayland based Linux GUI support with WSL2 is in development (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-in-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-september-2020/#gui-apps https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-in-the-...) . That'll hopefully be a good solution for that usecase in the not too distant future.
simias 6y ago
Counterpoint: while I would've jumped ship from X to Wayland or anything else 15 years ago because I kept having to mess with my Xorg.conf every other week to resolve some breakage or tweak anything, I haven't really had any significant issue with Xorg in the past 5 years at the very least. It just works for me. I think X11 not seeing a lot of development doesn't necessarily mean that it's abandonware, it's probably more that people like me who still use it feel like it's effectively feature-complete. And I won't take the word from some graphics hardware vendor that it is abandonned. Over the years they've always done the bare minimum to support the Linux desktop so of course they'll take the first opportunity to claim that X is "abandonware" so that they have a plausible excuse for dropping support.
jcelerier 6y ago
> The C/S architecture of X11 hits the spot when terminals and thin client are the norm, that means 20-30 years ago, but today, we all have dedicated graphics display devices (GPU, monitors) even in our pocket smartphone, and the way X11 works is holding Linux desktop scene back. I used X11 forwarding just yesterday to open & control my linux desktop's music player from my mac - which other 2020 technology allows me to just run $ ssh -Y my_desktop > my_music_player& and being able to do that without lag (scrolling through the list views was much more fluid that my experiences with e.g. RDP or VNC even though it's a Qt 5 app, strawberry, which likely does most of the drawing server-side) or blurry jpeg-compressed pixmaps, and with the ability to resize, minimize, etc this individual window without any issue ?
- znpy 6y ago
  good luck doing that with wayland
  - emersion 6y ago
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/

corty 6y ago

Where is that supposed Wayland progress after a decade? Input is broken and inconsistent, screenshots don't work, remoting is broken, every WM has to be rewritten or abandoned, trivialities like c&p handling are not yet there. Wayland is still in the early phase of catching up to X11, for any progress it will take another decade or maybe even a Wayland replacement. We should face it, Wayland is a dead end.

nsajko 6y ago
Yeah, but Wayland won't ever be able to "catch up to X11", because it's broken by design. (See my next comment.)
- corty 6y ago
  Waylands design is even more broken and leads to common functionality being duplicated and broken all over the place. Each app has to do input handling on its own? Comeon, a 5yearold could tell you that that is a huge design flaw. There are equally problematic design flaws in X11, just less of them and in different areas. Where Wayland tries to get rendering right and botches all the rest, X11 is weird for rendering, but at least has kind-of-ok answers for remoting, input, clipboard, screenshots, etc.
  - diegocg 6y ago
    There is no reason why window managers can't share functionality via libraries. In fact, some do (wlroots). X11 and its separation of graphic server and window manager encouraged code reuse by placing it in the server, but with Wayland that separation (and the extra context switches) are gone so there is less incentive to share code.
    - p_l 6y ago
      Which would be fine if we had something like COM to enable portable interfacing between libraries and certain level of separation, especially when a library plonks something breaking your runtime by messing with global resources (for example, threads and signals). But we don't, and the libraries push other issues into your design as you often are forced to follow their specific idiosyncracies.
lloydatkinson 6y ago
It’s this kind of endless stream of broken and incompatible technologies that makes me use Linux in server and embedded scenarios only. Every time I’ve had to use desktop Linux it’s just been one problem after another.
- s1k3s 6y ago
  Not sure what you're trying to use it for but I've been on Mint for the past 4 years and I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution. I'm using it for development, I also have a personal Mac and my work PC is Windows and I can say the Linux is miles ahead of both of them. And the Mac and Windows computers have been $1500 and $700 respectively, while the one that runs Mint cost me $300. Linux is #1 for me for development just because of how fast and non intrusive it is, no resources spent on user tracking, no unwanted updates shoved down your throat and so on.
  - MontyCarloHall 6y ago
    > I've had no problem with it, other than the fact that every time I turn on the computer I have to run a shell script that fixes my resolution I can’t tell if this post is a parody or not. The fact that it’s 2020 and minor annoyances like this are still fairly common in desktop Linux is telling. macOS SSHing into a Linux VM (either locally hosted or on the cloud) is the sweet spot for me.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      I have far more issues with my OSX laptop than having to run a script once every few months (presumably that script is called automatically) I've just had another popup from OSX wanting a password for google, sophos pops up saying it's upset a fair bit, on occasion the entire machine just hangs, and wireguard doesn't set my search domain. There are other niggles but those are the ones that have affected me in the last 30 minutes. On the other hand the biggest hassle from my desktop is ssh connections time out if I suspend the machine overnight. (I've used ubuntu LTS on the desktop since 2006, before then it was debian testing since 1999)
akvadrako 6y ago
If those are your best arguments against Wayland you are making a good case for it because: input is broken and inconsistent – what? screenshots don't work – they do. I use them all the time. remoting is broken – I know it's supported but I've never wanted to do it. every WM has to be rewritten or abandoned – of course, that's by design. Wayland doesn't even have WMs. c&p handling are not yet there – do you mean copy and paste? That works fine; it also has a clipboard manager protocol.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > screenshots don't work – they do. I use them all the time. they don't work on wayland, they work on specific compositors that implement an extension.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Are there even any Wayland compositors in actual use that don't support that extension?
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      if you go to r/unixporn there are a ton of custom X11 WMs with very very small userbase - sometimes a dozen individuals. Screenshotting works with all of them.
      - akvadrako 6y ago
        WMs are not compositors. Compositors are more like a WM combined with X.org.
        jcelerier 6y ago
        yes, that's the issue - writing a different desktop metaphor like the various tiling WMs was something that took as few as a couple hundred lines of C. Now with Wayland the person who wants to write his own desktop environment has to rewrite much more to get to something that doesn't even provide half of what Xorg gives. Also, compositors are not mandatory anyways on X (I don't use one personnally and prefer it like that) so it's a weird remark to make.
isaac21259 6y ago
Not sure what you referring to with regards to screenshots as they're working fine for me. I've been using Wayland for a few months now (wayfire which I switched to from bspwm) and overall it's seemed like a huge improvement in terms of smoothness and I have yet to run into any issues. Input seems to work fine even with things like multitouch gestures. I've never tried remoting into my machine graphically but there seem to be working vnc servers for Wayland.
imtringued 6y ago
I've been using Wayland for 4 years now. I haven't encountered any of those issues.

aldanor 6y ago

What about e.g., being able to run guis like pycharm/clion that run on Linux in corporate environments where you only have direct access to a windows box?

raesene9 6y ago
Microsoft's Wayland based Linux GUI support with WSL2 is in development (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-in-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-september-2020/#gui-apps https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-in-the-...) . That'll hopefully be a good solution for that usecase in the not too distant future.

simias 6y ago

Counterpoint: while I would've jumped ship from X to Wayland or anything else 15 years ago because I kept having to mess with my Xorg.conf every other week to resolve some breakage or tweak anything, I haven't really had any significant issue with Xorg in the past 5 years at the very least. It just works for me. I think X11 not seeing a lot of development doesn't necessarily mean that it's abandonware, it's probably more that people like me who still use it feel like it's effectively feature-complete. And I won't take the word from some graphics hardware vendor that it is abandonned. Over the years they've always done the bare minimum to support the Linux desktop so of course they'll take the first opportunity to claim that X is "abandonware" so that they have a plausible excuse for dropping support.

jcelerier 6y ago

> The C/S architecture of X11 hits the spot when terminals and thin client are the norm, that means 20-30 years ago, but today, we all have dedicated graphics display devices (GPU, monitors) even in our pocket smartphone, and the way X11 works is holding Linux desktop scene back. I used X11 forwarding just yesterday to open & control my linux desktop's music player from my mac - which other 2020 technology allows me to just run $ ssh -Y my_desktop > my_music_player& and being able to do that without lag (scrolling through the list views was much more fluid that my experiences with e.g. RDP or VNC even though it's a Qt 5 app, strawberry, which likely does most of the drawing server-side) or blurry jpeg-compressed pixmaps, and with the ability to resize, minimize, etc this individual window without any issue ?

znpy 6y ago
good luck doing that with wayland
- emersion 6y ago
  https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/