4 ms·

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 rewritt

by 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.

by corty 6y ago

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.