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> But more to the point, that the problem is that moving away from Xorg as a display server really needs to happen eventually Yeah, to a "better Xorg". The pro

> But more to the point, that the problem is that moving away from Xorg as a display server really needs to happen eventually Yeah, to a "better Xorg". The problem is people don't believe Wayland is a "better Xorg".

jchw 6y ago
I don’t agree that what we need is better Xorg. Xorg was a client-server based display server design from back when bitmapped displays and their respective UIs were in their infancy. And although it was certainly good for a time, I really think the idea of client-server UI has aged about as well as Polio. Even at the time it was computationally expensive (especially compared to say, Windows basically just jamming the UI into the kernel) but now it’s just crufty, inefficient, and weird. I don’t think there are many design decisions from X11 that you really want to keep anymore. Seriously, dig into the X11 protocol, what would you want to keep? If you want it to be feature compatible, a lot of cruft is going to need to come along for the ride. There are some aspects of X11 that aren’t so bad, especially more recent bits. Personally, I think XI2 is relatively nicely designed. But on the whole, I just don’t think what we want is better Xorg.
bipson 6y ago
And for me, this is the main Issue: belief People are flaming and screaming about their beliefs, demonizing systemd, Wayland and what-not with FUD, baseless arguments and non-arguments, because they "believe" these things are bad and must die. If I want to talk about what runs on my workstation as if it was religion, I install Temple OS. If I want a modern (and basically following sane/safe architecture decisions) display protocol, I run Wayland. The linked post is just one thing: superfluous. It helps no-one, a waste of energy and time for everyone involved.
- vidarh 6y ago
  systemd adds a concrete and substantial set of features for me. I eagerly embraced systemd for that reason - there are things I don't like about it, but it gave me lots of new benefits that justified the effort. Moving to Wayland would force a bunch of changes on me for the sake of no functionality I care about. That's the big difference. Given it provides no benefits to me that I care about, I won't move until staying on Xorg is more effort than replicating my current setup on Wayland, and as it stands it seems that's likely still years away.
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    But that's the thing though. For _you_ systemd had a concrete and substantial set of features, while wayland doesn't for many others it was the other way around. (I don't mind either, but there are annoyances in both). The problem is that many are complaining that _their_ specific set of functionalities is no longer being catered for, or better not being actively developed. The great thing about linux is that you can do what you are doing and continue running Xorg as long as you want, it might be more work however. Regarding your wayland would force a bunch of changes on you for no functionality, what are those specifically? I would encourage you to try out wayland, for me moving from i3 to sway has largely been a seamless experience and I (tell myself that) see notable performance improvements for example.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      The point is not that nobody sees benefits in Wayland, but that the case for switching is a lot more ambiguous. There's a substantial proportion of people for whom it is a loss of functionality or effort for no benefits. With systemd there was no loss of functionality - it is compatible enough that if you don't make use of the new functionality you don't lose anything. With Wayland, if you depend on any number of different functionality aspects, you either lose functionality or have to pick specific compositors that implement additional protocols. With respect to my time investment, it's down to having to switch window manager. I'm using bspwm, and rely extensively on the API it provides. I could probably transition that to sway if I had to. But I have no incentive to. It gives me no new functionality and solves no problems I'm having. So I'll stay on Xorg until an incentive appears to justify the fairly significant time cost of reworking my workflows and/or a bspwm compatible compositor arrives (there's been an issue open for 5 years, and at least one - abandoned - attempt). The time investment required to switch also means I'd be prepared to invest quite a lot in getting Xorg running if the situation is the same down the line at a point where I can't get an "off the shelf" dpkg of Xorg. At the pace Wayland efforts are moving, I suspect I'll still be on Xorg in 5 years, and wouldn't be surprised if I still was on it in 10. But really, the main point of my earlier comment was that there are real, concrete reasons for people not to move to Wayland that has nothing to do with belief. It would take time I don't have to make the move, and it doesn't provide me any benefits to justify putting aside other things to invest that time. Maybe one day it will, but it won't be any time soon.

jchw 6y ago

I don’t agree that what we need is better Xorg. Xorg was a client-server based display server design from back when bitmapped displays and their respective UIs were in their infancy. And although it was certainly good for a time, I really think the idea of client-server UI has aged about as well as Polio. Even at the time it was computationally expensive (especially compared to say, Windows basically just jamming the UI into the kernel) but now it’s just crufty, inefficient, and weird. I don’t think there are many design decisions from X11 that you really want to keep anymore. Seriously, dig into the X11 protocol, what would you want to keep? If you want it to be feature compatible, a lot of cruft is going to need to come along for the ride. There are some aspects of X11 that aren’t so bad, especially more recent bits. Personally, I think XI2 is relatively nicely designed. But on the whole, I just don’t think what we want is better Xorg.

bipson 6y ago

And for me, this is the main Issue: belief People are flaming and screaming about their beliefs, demonizing systemd, Wayland and what-not with FUD, baseless arguments and non-arguments, because they "believe" these things are bad and must die. If I want to talk about what runs on my workstation as if it was religion, I install Temple OS. If I want a modern (and basically following sane/safe architecture decisions) display protocol, I run Wayland. The linked post is just one thing: superfluous. It helps no-one, a waste of energy and time for everyone involved.

vidarh 6y ago
systemd adds a concrete and substantial set of features for me. I eagerly embraced systemd for that reason - there are things I don't like about it, but it gave me lots of new benefits that justified the effort. Moving to Wayland would force a bunch of changes on me for the sake of no functionality I care about. That's the big difference. Given it provides no benefits to me that I care about, I won't move until staying on Xorg is more effort than replicating my current setup on Wayland, and as it stands it seems that's likely still years away.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  But that's the thing though. For _you_ systemd had a concrete and substantial set of features, while wayland doesn't for many others it was the other way around. (I don't mind either, but there are annoyances in both). The problem is that many are complaining that _their_ specific set of functionalities is no longer being catered for, or better not being actively developed. The great thing about linux is that you can do what you are doing and continue running Xorg as long as you want, it might be more work however. Regarding your wayland would force a bunch of changes on you for no functionality, what are those specifically? I would encourage you to try out wayland, for me moving from i3 to sway has largely been a seamless experience and I (tell myself that) see notable performance improvements for example.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    The point is not that nobody sees benefits in Wayland, but that the case for switching is a lot more ambiguous. There's a substantial proportion of people for whom it is a loss of functionality or effort for no benefits. With systemd there was no loss of functionality - it is compatible enough that if you don't make use of the new functionality you don't lose anything. With Wayland, if you depend on any number of different functionality aspects, you either lose functionality or have to pick specific compositors that implement additional protocols. With respect to my time investment, it's down to having to switch window manager. I'm using bspwm, and rely extensively on the API it provides. I could probably transition that to sway if I had to. But I have no incentive to. It gives me no new functionality and solves no problems I'm having. So I'll stay on Xorg until an incentive appears to justify the fairly significant time cost of reworking my workflows and/or a bspwm compatible compositor arrives (there's been an issue open for 5 years, and at least one - abandoned - attempt). The time investment required to switch also means I'd be prepared to invest quite a lot in getting Xorg running if the situation is the same down the line at a point where I can't get an "off the shelf" dpkg of Xorg. At the pace Wayland efforts are moving, I suspect I'll still be on Xorg in 5 years, and wouldn't be surprised if I still was on it in 10. But really, the main point of my earlier comment was that there are real, concrete reasons for people not to move to Wayland that has nothing to do with belief. It would take time I don't have to make the move, and it doesn't provide me any benefits to justify putting aside other things to invest that time. Maybe one day it will, but it won't be any time soon.