9 ms·

As a complete outsider - ok, I'm a developer, but I haven't had the pleasure (?) of writing something that interfaces directly with Xorg yet - I have been readi

by rob74 6y ago

As a complete outsider - ok, I'm a developer, but I haven't had the pleasure (?) of writing something that interfaces directly with Xorg yet - I have been reading for years about Wayland being the way forward and how Xorg is dragged down by a long history of dubious design decisions and features nobody needs anymore, and I was secretly wondering: if this is really the future of desktop Linux, why doesn't it gain more momentum? This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have no monetary obligation to your "customers" (=users), there's not really a lot that forces you to maintain backwards compatibility. And because a Linux distro is made up of thousands of applications, many of them not in active development anymore, changing such a fundamental component (without providing a "compatibility layer", which I have no idea if it would be even possible) will break a lot of applications that may never be "fixed".

canofbars 6y ago
>if this is really the future of desktop Linux, why doesn't it gain more momentum? Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this. Fedora has actively discouraged using the proprietary nvidia driver for a while now and they ship wayland by default since the open source driver works fine. I saw that ubuntu is also shipping wayland by default soon for amd and intel users.
- Nursie 6y ago
  How is the open source driver when it comes to compute and 3d gaming? Just interested if it works OK.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    Its extremely slow and does not support CUDA. I think the problem is nvidia blocks them somehow from changing the clock speed on the gpu so it gets stuck running in its slowest speed.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      That's a shame, I enjoy playing with ML so having no CUDA available is a bit of a showstopper there. For graphics I'd like to switch to AMD, but right now you just can't buy their higher end consumer cards.
      - deadbunny 6y ago
        To be fair you can't buy any 3000 series Nvidia card either.
        Nursie 6y ago
        Quite true! Let's be balanced about it. In this case I already have a 2080Ti, which gives my previous comment context. If I was starting from scratch then, well, I'd be stuffed either way :)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- severino 6y ago
  > Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this I know, but it can be difficult to understand. I mean, how come we currently have Nvidia drivers for Linux, which work pretty well, and they can't be used for Wayland?
  - turminal 6y ago
    Because the entire linux graphics community uses the same API (GBM) and wayland is mostly built around that, but Nvidia insists on not using it for some reason.
    - mnd999 6y ago
      As I understand it, they’re not allowed to use it - the APIs are GPL only. They would have to open-source their entire driver.
    - severino 6y ago
      Yes, but why is it not a problem for X.org? Can't Wayland be made to work using whatever Nvidia is currently providing? I guess I read it is, and even something (KDE maybe?) made it possible to run Wayland under proprietary Nvidia, so I don't really understand what's the problem.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Aren't GTK and Qt the compatibility layers for most applications?
marcus_holmes 6y ago
How does the OS move forward then? When is it appropriate to say "this is so badly outdated that we need to throw it away and move to something new"?
vetinari 6y ago
> This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have no monetary obligation to your "customers" (=users), there's not really a lot that forces you to maintain backwards compatibility. And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then considered as it works, we don't have to fix anything, Ubuntu will keep things broken for us. Due to this attitude, they have slowed down Linux desktop by years, by not switching to Wayland by default in the past LTS release. Compare with Apple: in the same timeframe they've deprecated and removed support for entire architecture (i386) while Ubuntu just thinks about doing one step. Apple breaks compatibility at much faster rate than Linux world, and everyone is fine with it. The difference is in signaling: Apple decides and does. In Linux world, we have articles like these, that try to slow down everyone.
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  I don't know if everyone is fine with Apple making so many changes. I think it's because they have no choice, being stuck with whatever Apple decides. eg. for years you couldn't resize a window from the left edge and everybody was "fine" with it. When they actually bothered to implement it, it was astounding to think you couldn't do it before! As for me, I await each Apple release with trepidation and fear. Will my audio hardware continue to work? (They break the utilities most releases). Will I need to buy a new version of Parallels or VMWare because Apple changed the virtualisation API? (This happened a few years ago). Will my apps no longer work? (Goodbye useful 32 bit apps that I can't find a 64 bit version of). Will they just break random things? eg. PDF viewing, Quickview of multiple files (both of these happened to me). Will they change random things for the sake of it? eg. Giant spacing between icons on the menubar on Big Sur. Behaviour of the maximise button into "full screen" button just because they could (a few releases ago). Will my machine be slower for no apparent reason? HFS+ to APFS makes my machine start up TWICE AS SLOW. The best bits are due to the Objective-C message passing, old apps will make a "call" to a function that no longer exists and it won't break - it'll just do nothing. You literally have no idea if your app will continue to work between releases, even if it runs and the certificate for the app hasn't expired... And I say this as a daily user of macos! It just isn't reliable between releases.
adrusi 6y ago
why doesn't it gain more momentum? It has plenty of momentum. The two main desktop environments have wayland ports. Several distros ship wayland by default. without providing a compatibility layer Wayland does provide a compatibility layer, XWayland, which runs an X server that does all the internal processing that Xorg does, and then send the final frame to wayland to put on the screen. It works very well, just with some quirks around mixed-DPI setups, which X can't handle well to begin with. When people complain about wayland breaking their set-ups, they're talking about tools like xdotool, which Wayland deliberately does not allow because they're security risks. Old applications, the kind that put a window on the screen, rather than manipulating other applications' windows, work just fine.
- noobermin 6y ago
  xdotool isnt the only issue. FFS read the attached article.
  - adrusi 6y ago
    Screen capture is a recently solved problem on wayland. Yes, existing screen capture software that doesn't implement a new backend is broken, because the X model of screen capture was fundamentally broken, and one of main goals of Wayland to fix. But Firefox and OBS can do screen capture on wayland just fine, regardless of compositor. The gnome global menu thing is a problem with gnome's implementation of wayland. The functionality could surely work if Gnome decided to support the same standard as wlroots does for allowing custom panels like waybar. Perhaps the complaint is that wayland give the gnome despots too much power, but if you don't like gnome, then complain about gnome, not wayland. I don't know enough about KDE or AppImage to comment on those complaints.
- account42 6y ago
  > It has plenty of momentum. The two main desktop environments have wayland ports. Several distros ship wayland by default. Do they have a common screen capture and automation API yet?
  - 6y ago

by rob74 6y ago

canofbars 6y ago

>if this is really the future of desktop Linux, why doesn't it gain more momentum? Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this. Fedora has actively discouraged using the proprietary nvidia driver for a while now and they ship wayland by default since the open source driver works fine. I saw that ubuntu is also shipping wayland by default soon for amd and intel users.

Nursie 6y ago
How is the open source driver when it comes to compute and 3d gaming? Just interested if it works OK.
- canofbars 6y ago
  Its extremely slow and does not support CUDA. I think the problem is nvidia blocks them somehow from changing the clock speed on the gpu so it gets stuck running in its slowest speed.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    That's a shame, I enjoy playing with ML so having no CUDA available is a bit of a showstopper there. For graphics I'd like to switch to AMD, but right now you just can't buy their higher end consumer cards.
    - deadbunny 6y ago
      To be fair you can't buy any 3000 series Nvidia card either.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        Quite true! Let's be balanced about it. In this case I already have a 2080Ti, which gives my previous comment context. If I was starting from scratch then, well, I'd be stuffed either way :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
severino 6y ago
> Nvidia is the major blocker here and there is very little wayland devs can do to fix this I know, but it can be difficult to understand. I mean, how come we currently have Nvidia drivers for Linux, which work pretty well, and they can't be used for Wayland?
- turminal 6y ago
  Because the entire linux graphics community uses the same API (GBM) and wayland is mostly built around that, but Nvidia insists on not using it for some reason.
  - mnd999 6y ago
    As I understand it, they’re not allowed to use it - the APIs are GPL only. They would have to open-source their entire driver.
  - severino 6y ago
    Yes, but why is it not a problem for X.org? Can't Wayland be made to work using whatever Nvidia is currently providing? I guess I read it is, and even something (KDE maybe?) made it possible to run Wayland under proprietary Nvidia, so I don't really understand what's the problem.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

Aren't GTK and Qt the compatibility layers for most applications?

marcus_holmes 6y ago

How does the OS move forward then? When is it appropriate to say "this is so badly outdated that we need to throw it away and move to something new"?

vetinari 6y ago

> This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have no monetary obligation to your "customers" (=users), there's not really a lot that forces you to maintain backwards compatibility. And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then considered as it works, we don't have to fix anything, Ubuntu will keep things broken for us. Due to this attitude, they have slowed down Linux desktop by years, by not switching to Wayland by default in the past LTS release. Compare with Apple: in the same timeframe they've deprecated and removed support for entire architecture (i386) while Ubuntu just thinks about doing one step. Apple breaks compatibility at much faster rate than Linux world, and everyone is fine with it. The difference is in signaling: Apple decides and does. In Linux world, we have articles like these, that try to slow down everyone.

72deluxe 6y ago
I don't know if everyone is fine with Apple making so many changes. I think it's because they have no choice, being stuck with whatever Apple decides. eg. for years you couldn't resize a window from the left edge and everybody was "fine" with it. When they actually bothered to implement it, it was astounding to think you couldn't do it before! As for me, I await each Apple release with trepidation and fear. Will my audio hardware continue to work? (They break the utilities most releases). Will I need to buy a new version of Parallels or VMWare because Apple changed the virtualisation API? (This happened a few years ago). Will my apps no longer work? (Goodbye useful 32 bit apps that I can't find a 64 bit version of). Will they just break random things? eg. PDF viewing, Quickview of multiple files (both of these happened to me). Will they change random things for the sake of it? eg. Giant spacing between icons on the menubar on Big Sur. Behaviour of the maximise button into "full screen" button just because they could (a few releases ago). Will my machine be slower for no apparent reason? HFS+ to APFS makes my machine start up TWICE AS SLOW. The best bits are due to the Objective-C message passing, old apps will make a "call" to a function that no longer exists and it won't break - it'll just do nothing. You literally have no idea if your app will continue to work between releases, even if it runs and the certificate for the app hasn't expired... And I say this as a daily user of macos! It just isn't reliable between releases.

adrusi 6y ago

why doesn't it gain more momentum? It has plenty of momentum. The two main desktop environments have wayland ports. Several distros ship wayland by default. without providing a compatibility layer Wayland does provide a compatibility layer, XWayland, which runs an X server that does all the internal processing that Xorg does, and then send the final frame to wayland to put on the screen. It works very well, just with some quirks around mixed-DPI setups, which X can't handle well to begin with. When people complain about wayland breaking their set-ups, they're talking about tools like xdotool, which Wayland deliberately does not allow because they're security risks. Old applications, the kind that put a window on the screen, rather than manipulating other applications' windows, work just fine.

noobermin 6y ago
xdotool isnt the only issue. FFS read the attached article.
- adrusi 6y ago
  Screen capture is a recently solved problem on wayland. Yes, existing screen capture software that doesn't implement a new backend is broken, because the X model of screen capture was fundamentally broken, and one of main goals of Wayland to fix. But Firefox and OBS can do screen capture on wayland just fine, regardless of compositor. The gnome global menu thing is a problem with gnome's implementation of wayland. The functionality could surely work if Gnome decided to support the same standard as wlroots does for allowing custom panels like waybar. Perhaps the complaint is that wayland give the gnome despots too much power, but if you don't like gnome, then complain about gnome, not wayland. I don't know enough about KDE or AppImage to comment on those complaints.
account42 6y ago
> It has plenty of momentum. The two main desktop environments have wayland ports. Several distros ship wayland by default. Do they have a common screen capture and automation API yet?
- 6y ago