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I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X in exactly the same way. It's not, that's the e

I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X in exactly the same way. It's not, that's the entire point. As an end-user you can continue to use what works for you. Yes X is much more flexible at some things (and Wayland is more flexible at others) but it comes at a cost which is expounded on by the article.

CarelessExpert 6y ago
> I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X in exactly the same way. It's not, that's the entire point. Ahh, classic: blame the user. You are wrong for expecting things to work in a way that's familiar! Global hotkey bindings? Sure, that works on Windows, macOS, and X, but it doesn't on Wayland and its your fault for expecting it. The beatings will continue until morale improves! > As an end-user you can continue to use what works for you. LOL, Wayland is literally being marketed as the replacement for X. It's even the default display server in Debian, Ubuntu, and (I think?) Fedora. Why are you surprised that people therefore expect stuff that works in X to work in Wayland?
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Please tone down the rhetoric, I'm not blaming anybody. X is still included on those distros as a fallback option in case you have something that doesn't work. Re global hotkey bindings: Can you please describe your setup to me? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, global hotkeys were supported in all the Wayland implementations I tried recently. (KDE, GNOME, Sway, Wayfire)
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    > Please tone down the rhetoric, I'm not blaming anybody. I understand that's not your intention, but that's effectively what you're doing. I'm a former developer who moved into product management a long time ago, and I've seen the syndrome. "I understand what you want, but we didn't build it that way, so you need to change your expectations" places the onus on the user to change their behaviour, instead of on the developer to build the thing the user actually wants. > X is still included on those distros as a fallback option in case you have something that doesn't work. The trouble is, a neophyte will a) have no idea what the difference is between Wayland and Xorg, and b) not realize that switching might fix whatever issue they're encountering. And BTW, this all presumes that a distro installs Xorg at all. If not, you've gotta dive into the package manager, which adds an additional barrier since you need to know what to look for and install. > Re global hotkey bindings: Can you please describe your setup to me? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, global hotkeys were supported in all the Wayland implementations I tried recently. (KDE, GNOME, Sway, Wayfire) It certainly doesn't. Two examples that immediately spring to mind: Guake, a handy pop-up terminal. In X I can press F12 anywhere and it opens. Super handy for quick terminal interactions, always-on commandline tools, etc. Gnome Do or equivalent. Basically Quicksilver for Linux. Fast search, command execution, etc, from the keyboard. Hit a hotkey and it pops up. Right now the way this works is that the compositor binds the key and then... does stuff. But that requires these applications to be redesigned to support that. For example, guake added a whole separate binary, 'guake-toggle', and it's only job is to toggle visibility. Unfortunately, that requires the user to know that they need to go into their compositor settings, bind the key, and set it to run that application. Meanwhile, on literally any other OS, this would be handled with a config setting right in the application. Maybe eventually be addressed with yet-another-dbus-protocol, but right now it's just a gaping functional regression.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      >I'm a former developer who moved into product management a long time ago, and I've seen the syndrome. I'll repeat: please tone it down, this is not the way to contribute to open source. I'm not a developer on any of these projects and you aren't my project manager. If you intend to try to step up to manage this as a work project then that's fine but this is not the place to do it. Save it for your own employees that you're hiring. Re user confusion: If you know enough to write scripts using xdotool you can probably figure out how to use a package manager and switch a machine over to X. Re global hotkeys: I still don't understand your complaint. You just described two applications that didn't work and then went on to explain how one of them was made to work on Wayland. Yes, applications need to be ported, no solution on the Wayland side will ever change that. If the complaint is that the chosen method adds latency, or that the config setting has moved, those are vastly different than your original complaint which is that it doesn't work.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        > I'll repeat: please tone it down, this is not the way to contribute to open source. I don’t have a dog in the Wayland-X fight, but I don’t see any excess or unproductive rhetoric in GP’s contributions here. They seem factual and specific with some background thrown in. When you twice asked for it to be toned down, I went looking to find offense and couldn’t. Contributing to open-source by stating concerns as a user of the system is a minor positive way to contribute. Writing docs for workarounds is a greater positive. Contributing code patches is a yet greater way, but those don’t take away from the fact the filing bugs (literally or conversationally) is still a positive action.
        CarelessExpert 6y ago
        In their defense, my first comment in this subthread wasn't great. I'll own that. In the second one, the one phrase I probably could've phrased differently was "I've seen the syndrome". I could see reading that as a personal attack. I have good days and bad. This hasn't been one of my best. But I appreciate your being generous to my motivations.
- bitwize 6y ago
  > Global hotkey bindings? Sure, that works on Windows, macOS, and X, but it doesn't on Wayland and its your fault for expecting it. It's not that. It's that global hotkey bindings are out of scope for a Wayland compositor. But don't worry. An API for such things for the crufty d-bus broker should be dropping aaaaaaany minute now... then all you have to do is wait for your compositor to support it!
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Wayland is not currently the default on Ubuntu.
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    Doh, my bad, you're right. I... think? they were planning to make it the default in 20.04 and then they backed off.
jolmg 6y ago
> I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X This entire post is about Xorg becoming abandonware. People are expressing why they're not willing to switch to Wayland, citing lack of features they use. > As an end-user you can continue to use what works for you. Until Xorg becomes unmaintained and eventually breaks. Wayland is not being put forth as an option. The idea is that X will eventually be unsupported.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  The article also includes a call for developers that want to help support X.
  - jolmg 6y ago
    Yes it does, but that's not going to stop people from expressing themselves online or discuss the disadvantages of what's coming. Besides, realistically speaking, not everyone is capable enough to do that. Their only way to contribute is to let the web know that not everyone prefers Wayland and why. Discussions like these are like feature requests and bug reports, only broader, encompassing multiple projects. Some people might interpret that as entitled b____ing, but then apparently so are feature requests and bug reports sometimes.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      It does nothing good. It is not Wayland fault that distribution decided to switch. It is not Wayland fault that no one wants to maintain X.Org. The right call would be kickstarter, patreon, any kind of sponsorship.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"it comes at a cost which is expounded on by the article." I would appreciate it if you could quote the article where it expounds on the cost. I've read through it a few times, and could only find two very brief, vague, handwavy complaints against X: 1 - "the code happens to implement an unfortunate specification" 2 - "You can only apply so much thrust to the pig before you question why you're trying to make it fly at all." As an end-user, I don't find these to be particularly convincing. Moreover, X works for me now and does everything I need.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Those are all quotes that are referring to it, as well as this one: >But using it to drive your display hardware and multiplex your input devices is choosing to make your life worse. If X continues to work for you and you don't find it makes your life worse, then... keep using it?
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Daniel Stone, The real story behind Wayland and X (Or, 'Why Everything You've Read in LWN and Phoronix Comments is Untrue') https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ And directly from ajaxnwnk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24925189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24925189 > Moreover, X works for me now and does everything I need. Someone makes pig fly all these years.

CarelessExpert 6y ago

> I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X in exactly the same way. It's not, that's the entire point. Ahh, classic: blame the user. You are wrong for expecting things to work in a way that's familiar! Global hotkey bindings? Sure, that works on Windows, macOS, and X, but it doesn't on Wayland and its your fault for expecting it. The beatings will continue until morale improves! > As an end-user you can continue to use what works for you. LOL, Wayland is literally being marketed as the replacement for X. It's even the default display server in Debian, Ubuntu, and (I think?) Fedora. Why are you surprised that people therefore expect stuff that works in X to work in Wayland?

cycloptic 6y ago
Please tone down the rhetoric, I'm not blaming anybody. X is still included on those distros as a fallback option in case you have something that doesn't work. Re global hotkey bindings: Can you please describe your setup to me? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, global hotkeys were supported in all the Wayland implementations I tried recently. (KDE, GNOME, Sway, Wayfire)
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > Please tone down the rhetoric, I'm not blaming anybody. I understand that's not your intention, but that's effectively what you're doing. I'm a former developer who moved into product management a long time ago, and I've seen the syndrome. "I understand what you want, but we didn't build it that way, so you need to change your expectations" places the onus on the user to change their behaviour, instead of on the developer to build the thing the user actually wants. > X is still included on those distros as a fallback option in case you have something that doesn't work. The trouble is, a neophyte will a) have no idea what the difference is between Wayland and Xorg, and b) not realize that switching might fix whatever issue they're encountering. And BTW, this all presumes that a distro installs Xorg at all. If not, you've gotta dive into the package manager, which adds an additional barrier since you need to know what to look for and install. > Re global hotkey bindings: Can you please describe your setup to me? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, global hotkeys were supported in all the Wayland implementations I tried recently. (KDE, GNOME, Sway, Wayfire) It certainly doesn't. Two examples that immediately spring to mind: Guake, a handy pop-up terminal. In X I can press F12 anywhere and it opens. Super handy for quick terminal interactions, always-on commandline tools, etc. Gnome Do or equivalent. Basically Quicksilver for Linux. Fast search, command execution, etc, from the keyboard. Hit a hotkey and it pops up. Right now the way this works is that the compositor binds the key and then... does stuff. But that requires these applications to be redesigned to support that. For example, guake added a whole separate binary, 'guake-toggle', and it's only job is to toggle visibility. Unfortunately, that requires the user to know that they need to go into their compositor settings, bind the key, and set it to run that application. Meanwhile, on literally any other OS, this would be handled with a config setting right in the application. Maybe eventually be addressed with yet-another-dbus-protocol, but right now it's just a gaping functional regression.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    >I'm a former developer who moved into product management a long time ago, and I've seen the syndrome. I'll repeat: please tone it down, this is not the way to contribute to open source. I'm not a developer on any of these projects and you aren't my project manager. If you intend to try to step up to manage this as a work project then that's fine but this is not the place to do it. Save it for your own employees that you're hiring. Re user confusion: If you know enough to write scripts using xdotool you can probably figure out how to use a package manager and switch a machine over to X. Re global hotkeys: I still don't understand your complaint. You just described two applications that didn't work and then went on to explain how one of them was made to work on Wayland. Yes, applications need to be ported, no solution on the Wayland side will ever change that. If the complaint is that the chosen method adds latency, or that the config setting has moved, those are vastly different than your original complaint which is that it doesn't work.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      > I'll repeat: please tone it down, this is not the way to contribute to open source. I don’t have a dog in the Wayland-X fight, but I don’t see any excess or unproductive rhetoric in GP’s contributions here. They seem factual and specific with some background thrown in. When you twice asked for it to be toned down, I went looking to find offense and couldn’t. Contributing to open-source by stating concerns as a user of the system is a minor positive way to contribute. Writing docs for workarounds is a greater positive. Contributing code patches is a yet greater way, but those don’t take away from the fact the filing bugs (literally or conversationally) is still a positive action.
      - CarelessExpert 6y ago
        In their defense, my first comment in this subthread wasn't great. I'll own that. In the second one, the one phrase I probably could've phrased differently was "I've seen the syndrome". I could see reading that as a personal attack. I have good days and bad. This hasn't been one of my best. But I appreciate your being generous to my motivations.
bitwize 6y ago
> Global hotkey bindings? Sure, that works on Windows, macOS, and X, but it doesn't on Wayland and its your fault for expecting it. It's not that. It's that global hotkey bindings are out of scope for a Wayland compositor. But don't worry. An API for such things for the crufty d-bus broker should be dropping aaaaaaany minute now... then all you have to do is wait for your compositor to support it!
umanwizard 6y ago
Wayland is not currently the default on Ubuntu.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  Doh, my bad, you're right. I... think? they were planning to make it the default in 20.04 and then they backed off.

jolmg 6y ago

> I don't understand where you're getting this idea that Wayland is or was supposed to do all the same things as X This entire post is about Xorg becoming abandonware. People are expressing why they're not willing to switch to Wayland, citing lack of features they use. > As an end-user you can continue to use what works for you. Until Xorg becomes unmaintained and eventually breaks. Wayland is not being put forth as an option. The idea is that X will eventually be unsupported.

cycloptic 6y ago
The article also includes a call for developers that want to help support X.
- jolmg 6y ago
  Yes it does, but that's not going to stop people from expressing themselves online or discuss the disadvantages of what's coming. Besides, realistically speaking, not everyone is capable enough to do that. Their only way to contribute is to let the web know that not everyone prefers Wayland and why. Discussions like these are like feature requests and bug reports, only broader, encompassing multiple projects. Some people might interpret that as entitled b____ing, but then apparently so are feature requests and bug reports sometimes.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    It does nothing good. It is not Wayland fault that distribution decided to switch. It is not Wayland fault that no one wants to maintain X.Org. The right call would be kickstarter, patreon, any kind of sponsorship.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"it comes at a cost which is expounded on by the article." I would appreciate it if you could quote the article where it expounds on the cost. I've read through it a few times, and could only find two very brief, vague, handwavy complaints against X: 1 - "the code happens to implement an unfortunate specification" 2 - "You can only apply so much thrust to the pig before you question why you're trying to make it fly at all." As an end-user, I don't find these to be particularly convincing. Moreover, X works for me now and does everything I need.

cycloptic 6y ago
Those are all quotes that are referring to it, as well as this one: >But using it to drive your display hardware and multiplex your input devices is choosing to make your life worse. If X continues to work for you and you don't find it makes your life worse, then... keep using it?
sergeykish 6y ago
Daniel Stone, The real story behind Wayland and X (Or, 'Why Everything You've Read in LWN and Phoronix Comments is Untrue') https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ And directly from ajaxnwnk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24925189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24925189 > Moreover, X works for me now and does everything I need. Someone makes pig fly all these years.