5 ms·

What compositor should be used? Never heard x.org doesn't have this problem with any.

jagrsw 5y ago
I'm not an expert on the wayland/xorg/xinput/gnome-shell stack, but unless someone smarter takes good measurements of various things (visual and input delays), I'd suggest 1). Xorg + gnome-flashback or Xorg + other non-compositing WM or 2). Non-gnome compositor under wayland As for 1). Xorg b/c it can provide pointer movements at ~native speed via xnput vs Gnome/Wayland 60-240Hz. And gnome-flashback b/c it's a non-compositing WM, so there's no frame buffering (unless you enable it in nvidia's panel, or via TearFree in amdgpu). As for 2). Sway, I suppose, doesn't aggregate mouse movements, but looking at https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-... the author used some hack to enable "immediate" "drawing" under KWin. I'm not sure what's the default behavior of e.g. Sway - does it buffer frames?
nicce 5y ago
X.org has many other problems, mostly related to screen tearing or security bugs. It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. Some list of Wayland compositors: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Compositors https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Compositors Personal recommendation goes for sway, once you understand it, there is no going back! On Gnome, you must use Mutter I guess.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  > X.org has many other problems, mostly related to screen tearing or security bugs. It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. That is FUD. Screen tearing is subjective issue, personally i never cared for it and my biggest annoyance with Windows is that its forced compositor also adds vsync which forces input lag across the desktop. X allowing me to not use that garbage is a big plus. With a fast refresh rate monitor tearing is practically invisible anyway. Also X11 applications can avoid screen tearing, if some do not then this is a bug in the application. Security bugs is overblown and Wayland security features are akin to keeping your computer turned off to get the best security. In practice if you do not trust an application you can isolate it, though it is really futile since applications can simply use other means than X to "spy" you. X already provide functionality for doing that but if you are really paranoid (why are you running untrusted applications in that case?) you can run a nested X... or even X under Wayland under X. Then once you notice the onionwrapped application launch your browser or any other application, you'll realize the futility of said onionwrapping but hey, until that moment you'll feel safe. > end of its life Xorg is an open source program, you can't "end of line" an open source program, it isn't Visual Basic 6 that died because Microsoft decided it should die. As long as someone wants to improve it, it will get improvements. Also a new version was released just a few weeks ago with a new maintainer that offered to make new releases. > being too complicated Have you actually checked the source code? If you ignore the drivers and all the satellite libraries (like Xt, Xaw, etc) the X server itself isn't really that big or complicated. > not well designed project This is irrelevant, it does what it is supposed to do.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I always hear these same talking point as well. Why do they want to say things that doom x.org so much? It is some sort of meme that's spewed out from people that want everyone to switch to wayland? I feel like everytime I hear a security issue almost anywhere its paranoia, overblown and generally so improbable that if I never heard of it I would be fine. I disabled spectre and meltdown and recommend everyone else who has an updated browser to as well.
  - nicce 5y ago
    > In practice if you do not trust an application you can isolate it, though it is really futile since applications can simply use other means than X to "spy" you. X already provide functionality for doing that but if you are really paranoid (why are you running untrusted applications in that case?) you can run a nested X... or even X under Wayland under X. This exactly is the point. Wouldn’t it be nice to just use apps without extra steps? It would make Linux better for non-experts. You can’t even isolate X applications without running other X.org because there is no permission control once the application has access into socket, and with socket it can see everything. And you can’t really rework that. Sometimes you need to rewrite whole thing. Applications cannot normally spy on you unless you run everything in root. It is X.org which provides access for keystrokes and windows. > Xorg is an open source program, you can't "end of line" an open source program, it isn't Visual Basic 6 that died because Microsoft decided it should die. As long as someone wants to improve it, it will get improvements. Because the design is bad, it gets harder and harder to add new features. Fixing bug introduces two new ones. Complexity makes it hard to approach project and control everything. Red Hat has maintained it so many years with proper funding, otherwise who knows what would have happened.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      > This exactly is the point. Wouldn’t it be nice to just use apps without extra steps? It would make Linux better for non-experts. non-experts won't use desktop linux regardless, give me back my power tools
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. X11 is 37 years old. Even taking at face value the rumors of its death, I'd say it was shockingly well designed if it's finally - maybe - starting to hit its limits.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    What is that limit?
  - shatteredgate 5y ago
    It's not really a rumor, if you check upstream you can see that nearly all work on new features is now happening in Wayland and Mesa and then eventually might get backported to X. That's what the article is about.

I'm not an expert on the wayland/xorg/xinput/gnome-shell stack, but unless someone smarter takes good measurements of various things (visual and input delays), I'd suggest 1). Xorg + gnome-flashback or Xorg + other non-compositing WM or 2). Non-gnome compositor under wayland As for 1). Xorg b/c it can provide pointer movements at ~native speed via xnput vs Gnome/Wayland 60-240Hz. And gnome-flashback b/c it's a non-compositing WM, so there's no frame buffering (unless you enable it in nvidia's panel, or via TearFree in amdgpu). As for 2). Sway, I suppose, doesn't aggregate mouse movements, but looking at https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-... the author used some hack to enable "immediate" "drawing" under KWin. I'm not sure what's the default behavior of e.g. Sway - does it buffer frames?

nicce 5y ago

X.org has many other problems, mostly related to screen tearing or security bugs. It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. Some list of Wayland compositors: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Compositors https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Compositors Personal recommendation goes for sway, once you understand it, there is no going back! On Gnome, you must use Mutter I guess.

badsectoracula 5y ago
> X.org has many other problems, mostly related to screen tearing or security bugs. It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. That is FUD. Screen tearing is subjective issue, personally i never cared for it and my biggest annoyance with Windows is that its forced compositor also adds vsync which forces input lag across the desktop. X allowing me to not use that garbage is a big plus. With a fast refresh rate monitor tearing is practically invisible anyway. Also X11 applications can avoid screen tearing, if some do not then this is a bug in the application. Security bugs is overblown and Wayland security features are akin to keeping your computer turned off to get the best security. In practice if you do not trust an application you can isolate it, though it is really futile since applications can simply use other means than X to "spy" you. X already provide functionality for doing that but if you are really paranoid (why are you running untrusted applications in that case?) you can run a nested X... or even X under Wayland under X. Then once you notice the onionwrapped application launch your browser or any other application, you'll realize the futility of said onionwrapping but hey, until that moment you'll feel safe. > end of its life Xorg is an open source program, you can't "end of line" an open source program, it isn't Visual Basic 6 that died because Microsoft decided it should die. As long as someone wants to improve it, it will get improvements. Also a new version was released just a few weeks ago with a new maintainer that offered to make new releases. > being too complicated Have you actually checked the source code? If you ignore the drivers and all the satellite libraries (like Xt, Xaw, etc) the X server itself isn't really that big or complicated. > not well designed project This is irrelevant, it does what it is supposed to do.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I always hear these same talking point as well. Why do they want to say things that doom x.org so much? It is some sort of meme that's spewed out from people that want everyone to switch to wayland? I feel like everytime I hear a security issue almost anywhere its paranoia, overblown and generally so improbable that if I never heard of it I would be fine. I disabled spectre and meltdown and recommend everyone else who has an updated browser to as well.
- nicce 5y ago
  > In practice if you do not trust an application you can isolate it, though it is really futile since applications can simply use other means than X to "spy" you. X already provide functionality for doing that but if you are really paranoid (why are you running untrusted applications in that case?) you can run a nested X... or even X under Wayland under X. This exactly is the point. Wouldn’t it be nice to just use apps without extra steps? It would make Linux better for non-experts. You can’t even isolate X applications without running other X.org because there is no permission control once the application has access into socket, and with socket it can see everything. And you can’t really rework that. Sometimes you need to rewrite whole thing. Applications cannot normally spy on you unless you run everything in root. It is X.org which provides access for keystrokes and windows. > Xorg is an open source program, you can't "end of line" an open source program, it isn't Visual Basic 6 that died because Microsoft decided it should die. As long as someone wants to improve it, it will get improvements. Because the design is bad, it gets harder and harder to add new features. Fixing bug introduces two new ones. Complexity makes it hard to approach project and control everything. Red Hat has maintained it so many years with proper funding, otherwise who knows what would have happened.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > This exactly is the point. Wouldn’t it be nice to just use apps without extra steps? It would make Linux better for non-experts. non-experts won't use desktop linux regardless, give me back my power tools
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> It is getting closer for the end of its life as being too complicated and not well designed project. X11 is 37 years old. Even taking at face value the rumors of its death, I'd say it was shockingly well designed if it's finally - maybe - starting to hit its limits.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  What is that limit?
- shatteredgate 5y ago
  It's not really a rumor, if you check upstream you can see that nearly all work on new features is now happening in Wayland and Mesa and then eventually might get backported to X. That's what the article is about.