3 ms·

> in opposition to what the actual X maintainers say, who actually created wayland? [citation needed]

by destructionator 6y ago

kaba0 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ
- destructionator 6y ago
  First off, a 45 minute long video isn't much of a citation. Where, exactly, are you citing? Secondly, this isn't the first time I've had people point to this same video. It doesn't actually say what you claim it says. It says the creator of Wayland worked on X (though actually his core focus was DRI2, which btw, is not X), and the one individual speaker in that video worked on X a long time ago (specifically his focus was on keyboard input). Their claim is more "X is redundant" than "X is hopeless". They're wrong, of course, the video makes absurd claims like "nobody uses core X11". Maybe they don't since they work in niches, but in the real world, plenty of people do... and that's the part of the X server nobody actually complains about. Even Wayland are perfectly OK with that part! (See retaining it in XWayland. When these wayland devs complain about Xorg their focus is usually on the driver side. Well, hate to break it to them, drivers are always ugly. See the link we're commenting on, if Wayland actually works on all the devices Xorg works on, it'll be just as ugly.)
  - kaba0 6y ago
    How about the actual technical details in the video? With a compositor on top of X, what purpose does X actually serve other than being an unnecessary complicated IPC layer that duplicates many of the messages? Also, there have been another HN post with “X is abadonware” or similarly titled, which was written by another X maintainer. But feel free to check the mailing list as well looking at activity.
    - destructionator 6y ago
      > With a compositor on top of X I reject that premise. I've never used a compositor and I don't know why anyone would, they seem utterly useless. But even if you do, the compositor only does one job: layer graphics. Most X messages have nothing to do with graphics. They're more likely to be about clipboard, drag and drop, notification windows, taskbar panels, etc., etc., etc. Wayland either fragments this (saying it is all the compositor's problem or punts it to dbus or something), or ignores it (they feel about useful things the way I feel about compositors), and will likely reinvent it eventually anyway. And btw, what about X is unnecessarily complicated? I love the way the presenter claims the specs are impossible but I managed to implement them and so did a bunch of other people. So apparently it isn't actually that hard. and btw they aren't actually all that different than similar functionality in different operating systems, aside from things like asynchronous chunking... which is a good thing, since you don't want to block your UI event loop anyway! So it is what good programs ought to be already doing.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        > I reject that premise. I've never used a compositor and I don't know why anyone would, they seem utterly useless. Have you tried watching a video in full screen? > But even if you do, the compositor only does one job: layer graphics Yes, and this small little detail is not solved by X, but Wayland. > Most X messages have nothing to do with graphics. They're more likely to be about clipboard, drag and drop, notification windows, taskbar panels, etc., etc., etc. And it will live on in the form of XWayland. And I do dislike needlessly dropping backward compatibility, X’s APIs are globally broadcasted, and can’t really be retrofitted to an only server-client communication, so it makes sense to “reinvent” it. > I love the way the presenter claims the specs are impossible but I managed to implement them What part of it? I doubt you included the now removed printer part and the million other things the X developers had to cut out with hard work. And as I said, XWayland is made explicitly for this high level API of X, it is not going anywhere. And I’m not sure what you mean by asynchronous chunking. You mean tearing? You do have to synchronize somewhere.
        5y ago

> in opposition to what the actual X maintainers say, who actually created wayland? [citation needed]

kaba0 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ

destructionator 6y ago
First off, a 45 minute long video isn't much of a citation. Where, exactly, are you citing? Secondly, this isn't the first time I've had people point to this same video. It doesn't actually say what you claim it says. It says the creator of Wayland worked on X (though actually his core focus was DRI2, which btw, is not X), and the one individual speaker in that video worked on X a long time ago (specifically his focus was on keyboard input). Their claim is more "X is redundant" than "X is hopeless". They're wrong, of course, the video makes absurd claims like "nobody uses core X11". Maybe they don't since they work in niches, but in the real world, plenty of people do... and that's the part of the X server nobody actually complains about. Even Wayland are perfectly OK with that part! (See retaining it in XWayland. When these wayland devs complain about Xorg their focus is usually on the driver side. Well, hate to break it to them, drivers are always ugly. See the link we're commenting on, if Wayland actually works on all the devices Xorg works on, it'll be just as ugly.)
- kaba0 6y ago
  How about the actual technical details in the video? With a compositor on top of X, what purpose does X actually serve other than being an unnecessary complicated IPC layer that duplicates many of the messages? Also, there have been another HN post with “X is abadonware” or similarly titled, which was written by another X maintainer. But feel free to check the mailing list as well looking at activity.
  - destructionator 6y ago
    > With a compositor on top of X I reject that premise. I've never used a compositor and I don't know why anyone would, they seem utterly useless. But even if you do, the compositor only does one job: layer graphics. Most X messages have nothing to do with graphics. They're more likely to be about clipboard, drag and drop, notification windows, taskbar panels, etc., etc., etc. Wayland either fragments this (saying it is all the compositor's problem or punts it to dbus or something), or ignores it (they feel about useful things the way I feel about compositors), and will likely reinvent it eventually anyway. And btw, what about X is unnecessarily complicated? I love the way the presenter claims the specs are impossible but I managed to implement them and so did a bunch of other people. So apparently it isn't actually that hard. and btw they aren't actually all that different than similar functionality in different operating systems, aside from things like asynchronous chunking... which is a good thing, since you don't want to block your UI event loop anyway! So it is what good programs ought to be already doing.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      > I reject that premise. I've never used a compositor and I don't know why anyone would, they seem utterly useless. Have you tried watching a video in full screen? > But even if you do, the compositor only does one job: layer graphics Yes, and this small little detail is not solved by X, but Wayland. > Most X messages have nothing to do with graphics. They're more likely to be about clipboard, drag and drop, notification windows, taskbar panels, etc., etc., etc. And it will live on in the form of XWayland. And I do dislike needlessly dropping backward compatibility, X’s APIs are globally broadcasted, and can’t really be retrofitted to an only server-client communication, so it makes sense to “reinvent” it. > I love the way the presenter claims the specs are impossible but I managed to implement them What part of it? I doubt you included the now removed printer part and the million other things the X developers had to cut out with hard work. And as I said, XWayland is made explicitly for this high level API of X, it is not going anywhere. And I’m not sure what you mean by asynchronous chunking. You mean tearing? You do have to synchronize somewhere.
      - 5y ago