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At the same time, it's because they don't care much. I'm quite sure that if Microsoft or Apple would change the way screen-sharing works between version of thei

by boudin 5y ago

At the same time, it's because they don't care much. I'm quite sure that if Microsoft or Apple would change the way screen-sharing works between version of their OS, Zoom wouldn't wait 2 years to look at it. I understand it's not as much market share, but it does make Zoom look really poor in tech companies where using Linux is more common. It's also quite shameful for a company where the main thing they do is video conference and screen sharing, it's not like it's a small side feature. Also you make it sounds like it changes every other day, but that's not the case. Screen sharing in wayland has been stable for a while now and it's adopted by all major compositors (mutter, kwin, wlroots). As you mentioned, it's pretty well supported by a lot of open source software other than Zoom, so there's plenty of implementation examples they can go through as well.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago
Even stuff such as OBS Studio was significantly slower on Wayland than on X11, at least until the efforts done _last year_ (e.g. https://feaneron.com/2021/03/30/obs-studio-on-wayland/ https://feaneron.com/2021/03/30/obs-studio-on-wayland/ ) . Single-Window support for screencast API is also only a couple years old! Before that it would just error out, even if the D-Bus interface was there ( https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/blob/b2b5ede150e7dd42361b9f9b7eccc056c188155c/src/screencast.c#L319 https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/blob/b2b5e... ). That's why I say that it just moves way too fast for the glacial speed that commercial houses normally have. For at least 2 years (thinking 2016-2018) some distros were even shipping Wayland _without_ an actual working screen capture API. How do you even support those ?
- boudin 5y ago
  We're not talking about supporting things years ago though, we're talking about supporting it now which is a few years after, when it's been stable and supported across the whole ecosystem for a quite a while. That's their job, providing multi-platform video-conferencing and screen sharing. If they can't do that they could chose to drop their app and try to build a decent web version instead because this thing is quite an horror show as well. Screen sharing works well in Chromium and Firefox.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Less than a year ago is NOT "quite a while". A couple years ago is also not quite a while. The fast distributions have a 2 year release cycle for their LTS releases; even longer on the slower distributions. When you have an API that has been stable and working on these distributions for _at least_ 2 of these releases, maybe I will consider using it. I'm not going to rewrite my core business every other year just to use today's API for it to change again by the next release. I blame the distributions that literally _break_ programs one release to the next without even bothering to ensure that the newer API is working. I will bet that most of Zoom's Linux-using enterprise customer base is still on Redhat6-7 or similarly old releases, and that is where most of their money likely comes from. Note their support pages explicitly claims they still support them.
    - boudin 5y ago
      You mean 3 years ago? It is a while. Definitely enough, lot of software implemented it in the meantime. Zoom is actually the only one I know that didn't LTS distribution before that are on X11, so this discussion doesn't even apply, supporting both is definitely possible since they already support X11.
      - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
        No, I mean last year. The current API for screencast (the only one which might work on anything other than Gnome) uses Pipewire and even OBS didn't support it until last year.
        boudin 5y ago
        No, Pipewire and xdg-desktop have been there for ~3 years. OBS supported Wayland for ~2 years (maybe more, but I've been using it for ~2 years), but you had to install a third party plugin for it, and the app itself was running in Xwayland. The Flatpak version did include the plugin for a while. And it's not MIGHT work on anything other than Gnome, it DOES.

by boudin 5y ago

AshamedCaptain 5y ago

Even stuff such as OBS Studio was significantly slower on Wayland than on X11, at least until the efforts done _last year_ (e.g. https://feaneron.com/2021/03/30/obs-studio-on-wayland/ https://feaneron.com/2021/03/30/obs-studio-on-wayland/ ) . Single-Window support for screencast API is also only a couple years old! Before that it would just error out, even if the D-Bus interface was there ( https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/blob/b2b5ede150e7dd42361b9f9b7eccc056c188155c/src/screencast.c#L319 https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/blob/b2b5e... ). That's why I say that it just moves way too fast for the glacial speed that commercial houses normally have. For at least 2 years (thinking 2016-2018) some distros were even shipping Wayland _without_ an actual working screen capture API. How do you even support those ?

boudin 5y ago
We're not talking about supporting things years ago though, we're talking about supporting it now which is a few years after, when it's been stable and supported across the whole ecosystem for a quite a while. That's their job, providing multi-platform video-conferencing and screen sharing. If they can't do that they could chose to drop their app and try to build a decent web version instead because this thing is quite an horror show as well. Screen sharing works well in Chromium and Firefox.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  Less than a year ago is NOT "quite a while". A couple years ago is also not quite a while. The fast distributions have a 2 year release cycle for their LTS releases; even longer on the slower distributions. When you have an API that has been stable and working on these distributions for _at least_ 2 of these releases, maybe I will consider using it. I'm not going to rewrite my core business every other year just to use today's API for it to change again by the next release. I blame the distributions that literally _break_ programs one release to the next without even bothering to ensure that the newer API is working. I will bet that most of Zoom's Linux-using enterprise customer base is still on Redhat6-7 or similarly old releases, and that is where most of their money likely comes from. Note their support pages explicitly claims they still support them.
  - boudin 5y ago
    You mean 3 years ago? It is a while. Definitely enough, lot of software implemented it in the meantime. Zoom is actually the only one I know that didn't LTS distribution before that are on X11, so this discussion doesn't even apply, supporting both is definitely possible since they already support X11.
    - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
      No, I mean last year. The current API for screencast (the only one which might work on anything other than Gnome) uses Pipewire and even OBS didn't support it until last year.
      - boudin 5y ago
        No, Pipewire and xdg-desktop have been there for ~3 years. OBS supported Wayland for ~2 years (maybe more, but I've been using it for ~2 years), but you had to install a third party plugin for it, and the app itself was running in Xwayland. The Flatpak version did include the plugin for a while. And it's not MIGHT work on anything other than Gnome, it DOES.