6 ms·

> Perhaps we did need a new display server, perhaps Wayland is conceptually better than Xorg, but it'll be many years before it reaches feature parity, if it ev

by yoz-y 6y ago

> Perhaps we did need a new display server, perhaps Wayland is conceptually better than Xorg, but it'll be many years before it reaches feature parity, if it ever does. I haven't followed the development at all but, Xorg is 16 years old and Wayland is 12. It seems counterintuitive that feature parity could not be attained in this time unless it's for philosophical reasons. Edit: Thanks for pointing out that Xorg is actually much older. My argument indeed doesn't hold.

rmu09 6y ago
Xorg was kind-of forked from a working solution (XFree) whereas wayland started from scratch.
jchw 6y ago
Ahh, 2004 is when Xorg forked off of XFree86, but XFree86 had already been going on since 1991, and already that was an implementation of X which already existed since 1984, and you can trace back even further than that if you want. It’s been a long ride home.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Xorg development largely halted circa 2008 though, since then most of the "Xorg" features have been deleting code in X and moving it to Mesa/libdrm/the kernel. Wayland's latest release "mostly contains bug fixes and minor protocol updates." [0]. That is ~12 months worth of changes. Pretty similar to 1.18. It isn't like the protocol is a hotbed of massive changes, it looks largely complete according to the release notes. [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2021-January/041692.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2021-Ja...
mschuster91 6y ago
> I haven't followed the development at all but, Xorg is 16 years old and Wayland is 12. It seems counterintuitive that feature parity could not be attained in this time unless it's for philosophical reasons. Xorg is a fork of Xfree86, which was released in 1991 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brmgb 6y ago
> Xorg is 16 years old Xorg is a fork of Xfree86 which started in 1991 but feature parity minus the cruft has been reached years ago. Some people disagree about what is cruft however. For example, I view 90% of the list in the posted articles to be minor softwares relying on undesirable behaviour and unwilling to adapt (the remaining 10% being misrepresentation of actually solved issues listed in bad faith). The original author would obviously disagree. Then again, I consider X.org to be and always have been completely unusable. How can people accept to use a display manager with constant screen tearing is beside me.
- noname120 6y ago
  > How can people accept to use a display manager with constant screen tearing is beside me That's solved by using a compositing window manager such as Compton.
  - brmgb 6y ago
    That's also solved by using Wayland with Gnome 3 which comes by default and doesn't require me to tweak anything.
  - scarygliders 6y ago
    You don't even need a compositor. Just activate Force Full Composition Pipeline if you have an nvidia card. see: https://imgur.com/a/lDfObqw https://imgur.com/a/lDfObqw It's in the advanced settings. Silky smooth Xorg web browsing and video at no extra compositor cost.
    - account42 6y ago
      Or `Option "TearFree" "on"` in your xorg.conf for AMD users. Might even be the default by now.
    - oceliker 6y ago
      Thank you so much for this! I've been looking for a solution in picom config for way, way too long.
willbudd 6y ago
X as a display server is over three decades old, the popular incarnation in the nineties being XFree86, which devs abandoned in 2004 to form Xorg due to licensing issues. Most of the code itself really is ancient.

by yoz-y 6y ago

rmu09 6y ago

Xorg was kind-of forked from a working solution (XFree) whereas wayland started from scratch.

jchw 6y ago

Ahh, 2004 is when Xorg forked off of XFree86, but XFree86 had already been going on since 1991, and already that was an implementation of X which already existed since 1984, and you can trace back even further than that if you want. It’s been a long ride home.

roenxi 6y ago
Xorg development largely halted circa 2008 though, since then most of the "Xorg" features have been deleting code in X and moving it to Mesa/libdrm/the kernel. Wayland's latest release "mostly contains bug fixes and minor protocol updates." [0]. That is ~12 months worth of changes. Pretty similar to 1.18. It isn't like the protocol is a hotbed of massive changes, it looks largely complete according to the release notes. [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2021-January/041692.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2021-Ja...

mschuster91 6y ago

> I haven't followed the development at all but, Xorg is 16 years old and Wayland is 12. It seems counterintuitive that feature parity could not be attained in this time unless it's for philosophical reasons. Xorg is a fork of Xfree86, which was released in 1991 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

brmgb 6y ago

> Xorg is 16 years old Xorg is a fork of Xfree86 which started in 1991 but feature parity minus the cruft has been reached years ago. Some people disagree about what is cruft however. For example, I view 90% of the list in the posted articles to be minor softwares relying on undesirable behaviour and unwilling to adapt (the remaining 10% being misrepresentation of actually solved issues listed in bad faith). The original author would obviously disagree. Then again, I consider X.org to be and always have been completely unusable. How can people accept to use a display manager with constant screen tearing is beside me.

noname120 6y ago
> How can people accept to use a display manager with constant screen tearing is beside me That's solved by using a compositing window manager such as Compton.
- brmgb 6y ago
  That's also solved by using Wayland with Gnome 3 which comes by default and doesn't require me to tweak anything.
- scarygliders 6y ago
  You don't even need a compositor. Just activate Force Full Composition Pipeline if you have an nvidia card. see: https://imgur.com/a/lDfObqw https://imgur.com/a/lDfObqw It's in the advanced settings. Silky smooth Xorg web browsing and video at no extra compositor cost.
  - account42 6y ago
    Or `Option "TearFree" "on"` in your xorg.conf for AMD users. Might even be the default by now.
  - oceliker 6y ago
    Thank you so much for this! I've been looking for a solution in picom config for way, way too long.

willbudd 6y ago

X as a display server is over three decades old, the popular incarnation in the nineties being XFree86, which devs abandoned in 2004 to form Xorg due to licensing issues. Most of the code itself really is ancient.