8 ms·

Hi, I'm the release manager responsible for this X release seeing the light. This release would not have happened if an effort to improve touchpad support in L

by p12tic 5y ago

Hi, I'm the release manager responsible for this X release seeing the light. This release would not have happened if an effort to improve touchpad support in Linux was not funded for the past year and half. X server 21.1 makes touchpad gesture functionality support universal so it's much easier to offer consistent user experience for everyone and downstream developers are less reluctant to accept contributions. Thanks a lot to all the sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. If you think you could contribute, maybe write here and if there's enough interest maybe it's possible to crowd fund something.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. If you think you could contribute, maybe write here and if there's enough interest maybe it's possible to crowd fund something. Are we talking money, time, tooling, etc.? I'm rather attached to Xorg and would like it to keep going; what would be the most helpful?
- p12tic 5y ago
  All of these are great, but perhaps the most important would be money as it's the only thing that clearly indicates the level of community support. Once there's funding it's much easier to prioritize the work. I've setup Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/p12tic https://www.patreon.com/p12tic
mrweasel 5y ago
So if the touchpad funding had failed there would have been no more Xorg release?
- p12tic 5y ago
  At least I would not have been driving this release. Maybe someone else would have stepped up, it's hard to say. However there was no release manager for the last several years, so the likelihood of this outcome would have been small.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    That seems to be very much in line with previous statements from Redhat and others that X is almost abandoned.
    - wott 5y ago
      The statements that they took the keys and then abandoned it.
      - dralley 5y ago
        You would be hard pressed to find any current-or-former Xorg developer who actually wants to work on Xorg anymore, regardless of their employer. The intersection between long-time core Xorg maintainers and people-who-started-the-Wayland project is nearly 100%. The fact that Red Hat doesn't see much future in Xorg reflects this, rather than the other way around. The other historically important corporate sponsor of Xorg development is Intel, and they seem to have reached the same conclusion. (I work for Red Hat, but not on anything graphics related)
        hulitu 5y ago
        I'll bite. If wayland is so great why do we need X11 ? Last i heard wayland had no window manager.
      - happymellon 5y ago
        Other sponsors could have done the work, I haven't heard of a long term X11 dev that didn't switch because they enjoyed working on X11.
_abox 5y ago
Thanks for your efforts! In my view there's absolutely space for Xorg in the future. Not every OS can run Wayland well and Wayland lacks some X features like network transparency. I kinda hope it'll be backed by an organisation that's really keen on taking it forward. Augmenting the security model for example. And going back to some client rendering enabling features like anti-aliasing. I really think there's a lack of a viable remote display tool in Linux, where Windows has RDP. Block pushers are just too slow. VDI usecases are picking up again heavily, as do other security based techniques which could benefit, like remote browser isolation. Filling up my desktop with Windows running on a bunch of other computers is just so powerful. So in other words I'd love to see an X12 that really moves towards the future. As I understand it, it's currently with RedHat which only sees future in Wayland and X is just on life support. I regret that because I see a lot of concepts in it that are still very valid and that have been lost in current alternatives.
- markstos 5y ago
  Which OSes can't run Wayland well?
  - ch_123 5y ago
    The last I checked, the BSDs and most other Unix-likes (and genuine Unix™ variants) don't support Wayland. In fact, Wayland is pretty much Linux-only in practice.
    - amarshall 5y ago
      Wayland is viable on FreeBSD, at least. It is very much not “Linux-only”.
      - ch_123 5y ago
        From the FreeBSD wiki: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Wayland https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Wayland > While Wayland isn't ready for general use. I can't readily find anything to indicate that this claim is out of date. I am aware that Wayland has been ported, but I have not heard of it being widely used, or being "production ready" as per se.
eddieh 5y ago
Hi, I was recently trying to make some improvements to the build for XQuartz, which in turn was so I could make some changes to XQuartz and fix some issues with recent macOS changes too. While I made some progress, it took much longer than I anticipated. I wonder if there's demand enough for X server on macOS to justify this work? Additionally, I'd have to find some funds to support my work as well, if I were to continue.
- ace2358 5y ago
  Yes there is! XQuartz is so important to keep going as there are a few beautiful tools that run on it that would be sad to see go.
- __d 5y ago
  Anecdata: I use and appreciate it every day. I'd be happy to contribute to sponsoring further development.
znpy 5y ago
> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. Hello and thank you for your work! I'd love to see Xorg maintained at least. It seems to me there still is dust to settle around wayland and xorg os getting little to no development. Honestly, I'd just like xorg to keep working until the rest of the ecosystem has native wayland support. Taking myself as an example: i just like xfce. Xfce is not on wayland yet. I don't care how buggy xorg is or how better wayland is, I won't switch if I can't run xfce.
zbuf 5y ago
> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. Certainly interested in that, though you're not clear whether it's time, money or community you're asking for. Whatever happens, at some point momentum would have to gather outside of RedHat. Still very happy with X here, and mainly running X applications across network rather than Qt/GTK toolkits and desktop environments.
- p12tic 5y ago
  > though you're not clear whether it's time, money or community you're asking for All of these, but perhaps the most important would be money as it's the only thing that clearly indicates the level of community support. Once there's funding it's much easier to prioritize the work.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    What kind of money are you looking for? You mention crowdfunding, but it's not clear to me if you're looking from tens or perhaps hundreds from individual users, or tens of hundreds of thousands from institutions/corporations. If it's the former then yes I'd back it depending on the price and what you're planning. With the latter I'm not in a position to influence my employer to participate.
    - p12tic 5y ago
      I think something around $4000 monthly would be enough for release management duties and minimal maintenance. Of course just one person part-time is not enough for large-scale changes, but for resolving regressions and just making sure contributions of other people are being merged, it's enough. I've been doing exactly that for the last half year.
      - __d 5y ago
        So perhaps you could consider publicizing a suitable mechanism? GitHub sponsorship? Patreon? Something else? Is X.org interested in administering this process?
sheepdestroyer 5y ago
Hi, I am crowdfunding the Barrier effort [0] that would finally make Wayland usable for me. In the meantime, I do need continuous Xorg updates. It's not by choice, Wayland just doesn't do the trick and is unusable on my machines until workflows like Synergy/Barrier are supported. I really hope that there is an awareness in the DE communities that, for some use cases, Wayland is still not able to replace X and that left behind users are stuck with it until then. [0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/109 https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/109

by p12tic 5y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. If you think you could contribute, maybe write here and if there's enough interest maybe it's possible to crowd fund something. Are we talking money, time, tooling, etc.? I'm rather attached to Xorg and would like it to keep going; what would be the most helpful?

p12tic 5y ago
All of these are great, but perhaps the most important would be money as it's the only thing that clearly indicates the level of community support. Once there's funding it's much easier to prioritize the work. I've setup Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/p12tic https://www.patreon.com/p12tic

mrweasel 5y ago

So if the touchpad funding had failed there would have been no more Xorg release?

p12tic 5y ago
At least I would not have been driving this release. Maybe someone else would have stepped up, it's hard to say. However there was no release manager for the last several years, so the likelihood of this outcome would have been small.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  That seems to be very much in line with previous statements from Redhat and others that X is almost abandoned.
  - wott 5y ago
    The statements that they took the keys and then abandoned it.
    - dralley 5y ago
      You would be hard pressed to find any current-or-former Xorg developer who actually wants to work on Xorg anymore, regardless of their employer. The intersection between long-time core Xorg maintainers and people-who-started-the-Wayland project is nearly 100%. The fact that Red Hat doesn't see much future in Xorg reflects this, rather than the other way around. The other historically important corporate sponsor of Xorg development is Intel, and they seem to have reached the same conclusion. (I work for Red Hat, but not on anything graphics related)
      - hulitu 5y ago
        I'll bite. If wayland is so great why do we need X11 ? Last i heard wayland had no window manager.
    - happymellon 5y ago
      Other sponsors could have done the work, I haven't heard of a long term X11 dev that didn't switch because they enjoyed working on X11.

_abox 5y ago

Thanks for your efforts! In my view there's absolutely space for Xorg in the future. Not every OS can run Wayland well and Wayland lacks some X features like network transparency. I kinda hope it'll be backed by an organisation that's really keen on taking it forward. Augmenting the security model for example. And going back to some client rendering enabling features like anti-aliasing. I really think there's a lack of a viable remote display tool in Linux, where Windows has RDP. Block pushers are just too slow. VDI usecases are picking up again heavily, as do other security based techniques which could benefit, like remote browser isolation. Filling up my desktop with Windows running on a bunch of other computers is just so powerful. So in other words I'd love to see an X12 that really moves towards the future. As I understand it, it's currently with RedHat which only sees future in Wayland and X is just on life support. I regret that because I see a lot of concepts in it that are still very valid and that have been lost in current alternatives.

markstos 5y ago
Which OSes can't run Wayland well?
- ch_123 5y ago
  The last I checked, the BSDs and most other Unix-likes (and genuine Unix™ variants) don't support Wayland. In fact, Wayland is pretty much Linux-only in practice.
  - amarshall 5y ago
    Wayland is viable on FreeBSD, at least. It is very much not “Linux-only”.
    - ch_123 5y ago
      From the FreeBSD wiki: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Wayland https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Wayland > While Wayland isn't ready for general use. I can't readily find anything to indicate that this claim is out of date. I am aware that Wayland has been ported, but I have not heard of it being widely used, or being "production ready" as per se.

eddieh 5y ago

Hi, I was recently trying to make some improvements to the build for XQuartz, which in turn was so I could make some changes to XQuartz and fix some issues with recent macOS changes too. While I made some progress, it took much longer than I anticipated. I wonder if there's demand enough for X server on macOS to justify this work? Additionally, I'd have to find some funds to support my work as well, if I were to continue.

ace2358 5y ago
Yes there is! XQuartz is so important to keep going as there are a few beautiful tools that run on it that would be sad to see go.
__d 5y ago
Anecdata: I use and appreciate it every day. I'd be happy to contribute to sponsoring further development.

znpy 5y ago

> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. Hello and thank you for your work! I'd love to see Xorg maintained at least. It seems to me there still is dust to settle around wayland and xorg os getting little to no development. Honestly, I'd just like xorg to keep working until the rest of the ecosystem has native wayland support. Taking myself as an example: i just like xfce. Xfce is not on wayland yet. I don't care how buggy xorg is or how better wayland is, I won't switch if I can't run xfce.

zbuf 5y ago

> By the way, I wonder if there is demand for long-term maintenance of X server specifically. Certainly interested in that, though you're not clear whether it's time, money or community you're asking for. Whatever happens, at some point momentum would have to gather outside of RedHat. Still very happy with X here, and mainly running X applications across network rather than Qt/GTK toolkits and desktop environments.

p12tic 5y ago
> though you're not clear whether it's time, money or community you're asking for All of these, but perhaps the most important would be money as it's the only thing that clearly indicates the level of community support. Once there's funding it's much easier to prioritize the work.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  What kind of money are you looking for? You mention crowdfunding, but it's not clear to me if you're looking from tens or perhaps hundreds from individual users, or tens of hundreds of thousands from institutions/corporations. If it's the former then yes I'd back it depending on the price and what you're planning. With the latter I'm not in a position to influence my employer to participate.
  - p12tic 5y ago
    I think something around $4000 monthly would be enough for release management duties and minimal maintenance. Of course just one person part-time is not enough for large-scale changes, but for resolving regressions and just making sure contributions of other people are being merged, it's enough. I've been doing exactly that for the last half year.
    - __d 5y ago
      So perhaps you could consider publicizing a suitable mechanism? GitHub sponsorship? Patreon? Something else? Is X.org interested in administering this process?

sheepdestroyer 5y ago

Hi, I am crowdfunding the Barrier effort [0] that would finally make Wayland usable for me. In the meantime, I do need continuous Xorg updates. It's not by choice, Wayland just doesn't do the trick and is unusable on my machines until workflows like Synergy/Barrier are supported. I really hope that there is an awareness in the DE communities that, for some use cases, Wayland is still not able to replace X and that left behind users are stuck with it until then. [0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/109 https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/109