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I think the problem is mostly that mass popularity is sort of at odds with the cowboy attitude of a lot of Linux desktop users. Creating a "standardized experi

by from 5y ago

I think the problem is mostly that mass popularity is sort of at odds with the cowboy attitude of a lot of Linux desktop users. Creating a "standardized experience" like Windows usually means that configurability goes right out the window. It's how you get abominations like dconf or the GNOME music player that won't let you change the directory to read your mp3s from. And a lot of people see things like Wayland this way. Sure, maybe its easier for the average user to have all these formerly separate components like hotkey daemons or screenshot software integrated into one compositor. But why shouldn't I be able to run xbindkeys or sxhkd or whatever hotkey dameon I want? (I know there are reasons for/against, I'm just summarizing the argument.)

kaba0 5y ago
Wayland doesn’t prevent you from doing that. It just prevents you from doing that without privilege, because let’s be honest, who thought it was a good idea to let any random program snoop every single keypress?!
shatteredgate 5y ago
>Creating a "standardized experience" like Windows usually means that configurability goes right out the window. It's how you get abominations like dconf or the GNOME music player I don't understand how you connected these dots and I'd suggest against calling things abominations. You don't have to use dconf or the GNOME music player, those aren't standardized. If someone does like them I think they're perfectly fine, they do exactly what they're advertised to do and nothing more than that. It's also fine if you don't like them, they're just two options from the many configuration databases and media players that you can choose from. >But why shouldn't I be able to run xbindkeys or sxhkd or whatever hotkey dameon I want? In some ways you actually can but it depends on the hotkey daemon and how it's implemented. The reason for that is technical, those are implemented with X grabs which are an X11-only API and they have a number of usability and security issues. There are a few key rebinding daemons that use evdev directly so they work with both X11 and Wayland, and also on the console: https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct https://github.com/snyball/Hawck https://github.com/snyball/Hawck But these also do have similar security issues to X key grabs, in that they effectively operate as keyloggers. If you're looking for an API that works purely within Wayland and lets unprivileged clients request key rebinding, that doesn't exist yet. Somebody would need to specify what that API looks like and figure out a good way to make it secure. What would the end goal of the API be, and how could the system (and by extension, the user) tell the difference between a legitimate hotkey daemon and a malicious keylogger? And would it actually be any better than the approach of snooping evdev? I don't know the answer to these questions but you may have more experience with this than I do.

by from 5y ago

kaba0 5y ago

Wayland doesn’t prevent you from doing that. It just prevents you from doing that without privilege, because let’s be honest, who thought it was a good idea to let any random program snoop every single keypress?!

shatteredgate 5y ago

>Creating a "standardized experience" like Windows usually means that configurability goes right out the window. It's how you get abominations like dconf or the GNOME music player I don't understand how you connected these dots and I'd suggest against calling things abominations. You don't have to use dconf or the GNOME music player, those aren't standardized. If someone does like them I think they're perfectly fine, they do exactly what they're advertised to do and nothing more than that. It's also fine if you don't like them, they're just two options from the many configuration databases and media players that you can choose from. >But why shouldn't I be able to run xbindkeys or sxhkd or whatever hotkey dameon I want? In some ways you actually can but it depends on the hotkey daemon and how it's implemented. The reason for that is technical, those are implemented with X grabs which are an X11-only API and they have a number of usability and security issues. There are a few key rebinding daemons that use evdev directly so they work with both X11 and Wayland, and also on the console: https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct https://github.com/snyball/Hawck https://github.com/snyball/Hawck But these also do have similar security issues to X key grabs, in that they effectively operate as keyloggers. If you're looking for an API that works purely within Wayland and lets unprivileged clients request key rebinding, that doesn't exist yet. Somebody would need to specify what that API looks like and figure out a good way to make it secure. What would the end goal of the API be, and how could the system (and by extension, the user) tell the difference between a legitimate hotkey daemon and a malicious keylogger? And would it actually be any better than the approach of snooping evdev? I don't know the answer to these questions but you may have more experience with this than I do.