21 ms·

I suspect trying to maintain a remote-X11-based workflow is going to become increasingly annoying as more applications prioritize the Wayland / Xwayland use-cas

by yissp 5y ago

I suspect trying to maintain a remote-X11-based workflow is going to become increasingly annoying as more applications prioritize the Wayland / Xwayland use-case like Firefox has done here.

1MachineElf 5y ago
I worry about how this trend could impact BSDs which typically rely more on FireFox (and derivatives) as a modern browser. Neither Wayland nor Dbus are native to those systems.
- md8z 5y ago
  What exactly does "native" mean on BSD here? In my experience, that usually just means something that is written in C, uses BSD make, uses the BSD license, and follows some patterns used in the BSD libc. Which seems to apply to very little popular desktop software including Firefox and all other web browsers. BSD users seem to be fine with running ports though, which include Firefox, D-Bus and Wayland.
azalemeth 5y ago
I'm very ignorant about Xwayland – but I frequently use "ssh -Y" or "ssh -X". Is there a simple alternative? Will this move break lots of things needlessly? The wayland / X debate is one of those things that I fear will become a bit like vim vs emacs...
- capitainenemo 5y ago
  I'm still a big fan, personally, of ssh -YC - it works pretty efficiently with Eclipse and other simple GTK text based apps. With Firefox, it doesn't work as well, and I can understand why. Browsers demand a lot of graphics acceleration. That said, you can still get decent performance by force-enabling xrender as long as they still support it.gfx.xrender.enabled;true Personally, gonna be a bit sad when Wayland breaks all my things (my xdotool scripts, my ssh -YC, my XSDL on Android)
  - chousuke 5y ago
    I've run Wayland Firefox over waypipe. It's a bit finicky to set up, but fast enough that you can play videos with no trouble.
  - md8z 5y ago
    Xdotool is actually (yet another) one of those things in X11 that is somewhat broken and due for a redesign. The APIs that it uses are not really safe for applications to use, they're meant for window managers, so in some situations your scripts can get overridden by the window manager and they just won't work. For remoting to a smartphone you can just use any old VNC client.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > vim vs emacs Is that actually something to fear? They're both available and active, and systems don't depend on either of them being installed.
- amarshall 5y ago
  Waypipe https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/
  - md8z 5y ago
    Waypipe isn't relevant in this case, this post is about remotely invoking an RPC call over D-Bus. It's actually pretty trivial to forward a D-Bus socket using ssh -L.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - gspr 5y ago
    It's lovely. Some elaboration: Waypipe takes a completely different approach from X forwarding. X forwarding entails shipping a bunch of X drawing commands across the network. This is incredibly inefficient for modern use-cases, where local rendering would be done through direct rendering instead (more details here: https://superuser.com/a/1217295/58251 https://superuser.com/a/1217295/58251). Waypipe takes a step back and instead just renders a low-latency H264 video stream that it ships across the network. It won't be pixel-perfect, but a lot snappier! (In principle there's no obstacle to doing it pixel-perfect either, at the expense of bandwidth)
    - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
      Wtf? Sending drawing commands over the wire is WAY more efficient for the vast majority of cases than sending compressed H264 video, and DEFINITELY much lower latency no matter what the codec latency is! It was even mentioned as a con of Wayland in the recent story "What is wrong with desktop Linux" right here on HN.
      - dyingkneepad 5y ago
        The problem with X11 drawing commands is that there are a lot of round-trips over the network. Client asks for something, has to wait for the server response before proceeding, then it asks something else, etc. XCB tries to help mitigate problems that Xlib created that were not in the X11 protocol, but it's still highly inefficient. In practice, running everything locally and then just streaming the framebuffer ends up being faster. Not that we couldn't come up with a fast-over-the-network protocol. It's just that it's not really here.
b112 5y ago
Firefox cares little for user experience, constantly alienating its user base over, and over again. They are notorious for being the least user friendly of browsers, and that is surely saying a lot. So taking this as any sort of trend, isn't prudent.
- tannhaeuser 5y ago
  Idk if you can say that. Using Wayland may very well give better UX after all. My prob with Wayland is more like, as shitty and 80s X may be, it's the one stable API that almost all F/OSS desktop apps and quite a couple highly specialized apps are developed against. The risk is loosing it all, especially as new desktop aren't coming in this millennium.
  - md8z 5y ago
    That's what XWayland is for, those clients probably will be able to keep working. As long as those clients exist then we'll be able to keep having things like XWayland and XQuartz, it's just translating X11 to the underlying window system after all.
    - tannhaeuser 5y ago
      Yes, probably. But still, what's the point of pulling support out from all apps if there are exactly zero new apps forthcoming? With getting hardware support/drivers for X already problematic, Wayland-native apps never able to run on non-Linuxen, and extant desktop app developers not even having capacity to qa apps on XWayland, the whole thing doesn't look like so good an idea on balance.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        Most apps just use a framework, and those frameworks more than likely already have a wayland backend, so you just automatically have a wayland-native app with proper hdpi, multi-monitor, etc support!
      - md8z 5y ago

by yissp 5y ago

I suspect trying to maintain a remote-X11-based workflow is going to become increasingly annoying as more applications prioritize the Wayland / Xwayland use-case like Firefox has done here.

1MachineElf 5y ago

I worry about how this trend could impact BSDs which typically rely more on FireFox (and derivatives) as a modern browser. Neither Wayland nor Dbus are native to those systems.

md8z 5y ago
What exactly does "native" mean on BSD here? In my experience, that usually just means something that is written in C, uses BSD make, uses the BSD license, and follows some patterns used in the BSD libc. Which seems to apply to very little popular desktop software including Firefox and all other web browsers. BSD users seem to be fine with running ports though, which include Firefox, D-Bus and Wayland.

azalemeth 5y ago

I'm very ignorant about Xwayland – but I frequently use "ssh -Y" or "ssh -X". Is there a simple alternative? Will this move break lots of things needlessly? The wayland / X debate is one of those things that I fear will become a bit like vim vs emacs...

capitainenemo 5y ago
I'm still a big fan, personally, of ssh -YC - it works pretty efficiently with Eclipse and other simple GTK text based apps. With Firefox, it doesn't work as well, and I can understand why. Browsers demand a lot of graphics acceleration. That said, you can still get decent performance by force-enabling xrender as long as they still support it.gfx.xrender.enabled;true Personally, gonna be a bit sad when Wayland breaks all my things (my xdotool scripts, my ssh -YC, my XSDL on Android)
- chousuke 5y ago
  I've run Wayland Firefox over waypipe. It's a bit finicky to set up, but fast enough that you can play videos with no trouble.
- md8z 5y ago
  Xdotool is actually (yet another) one of those things in X11 that is somewhat broken and due for a redesign. The APIs that it uses are not really safe for applications to use, they're meant for window managers, so in some situations your scripts can get overridden by the window manager and they just won't work. For remoting to a smartphone you can just use any old VNC client.
pessimizer 5y ago
> vim vs emacs Is that actually something to fear? They're both available and active, and systems don't depend on either of them being installed.
amarshall 5y ago
Waypipe https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/
- md8z 5y ago
  Waypipe isn't relevant in this case, this post is about remotely invoking an RPC call over D-Bus. It's actually pretty trivial to forward a D-Bus socket using ssh -L.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- gspr 5y ago
  It's lovely. Some elaboration: Waypipe takes a completely different approach from X forwarding. X forwarding entails shipping a bunch of X drawing commands across the network. This is incredibly inefficient for modern use-cases, where local rendering would be done through direct rendering instead (more details here: https://superuser.com/a/1217295/58251 https://superuser.com/a/1217295/58251). Waypipe takes a step back and instead just renders a low-latency H264 video stream that it ships across the network. It won't be pixel-perfect, but a lot snappier! (In principle there's no obstacle to doing it pixel-perfect either, at the expense of bandwidth)
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Wtf? Sending drawing commands over the wire is WAY more efficient for the vast majority of cases than sending compressed H264 video, and DEFINITELY much lower latency no matter what the codec latency is! It was even mentioned as a con of Wayland in the recent story "What is wrong with desktop Linux" right here on HN.
    - dyingkneepad 5y ago
      The problem with X11 drawing commands is that there are a lot of round-trips over the network. Client asks for something, has to wait for the server response before proceeding, then it asks something else, etc. XCB tries to help mitigate problems that Xlib created that were not in the X11 protocol, but it's still highly inefficient. In practice, running everything locally and then just streaming the framebuffer ends up being faster. Not that we couldn't come up with a fast-over-the-network protocol. It's just that it's not really here.

b112 5y ago

Firefox cares little for user experience, constantly alienating its user base over, and over again. They are notorious for being the least user friendly of browsers, and that is surely saying a lot. So taking this as any sort of trend, isn't prudent.

tannhaeuser 5y ago
Idk if you can say that. Using Wayland may very well give better UX after all. My prob with Wayland is more like, as shitty and 80s X may be, it's the one stable API that almost all F/OSS desktop apps and quite a couple highly specialized apps are developed against. The risk is loosing it all, especially as new desktop aren't coming in this millennium.
- md8z 5y ago
  That's what XWayland is for, those clients probably will be able to keep working. As long as those clients exist then we'll be able to keep having things like XWayland and XQuartz, it's just translating X11 to the underlying window system after all.
  - tannhaeuser 5y ago
    Yes, probably. But still, what's the point of pulling support out from all apps if there are exactly zero new apps forthcoming? With getting hardware support/drivers for X already problematic, Wayland-native apps never able to run on non-Linuxen, and extant desktop app developers not even having capacity to qa apps on XWayland, the whole thing doesn't look like so good an idea on balance.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Most apps just use a framework, and those frameworks more than likely already have a wayland backend, so you just automatically have a wayland-native app with proper hdpi, multi-monitor, etc support!
    - md8z 5y ago