5 ms·

> but it does show how much time and energy such an endeavor takes. The reason it takes so much time is not that is requires a lot of "energy" or that the prob

by sprash 5y ago

> but it does show how much time and energy such an endeavor takes. The reason it takes so much time is not that is requires a lot of "energy" or that the problem in general is particular hard to solve. Wayland is fundamentally flawed at the concept level and the only way for it to get to a usable state is to turn it essentially into another X. Combine this with general stubbornness of all involved parties and the extreme hesitancy to standardize essential things you get a recipe for disaster.

headsoup 5y ago
This is what I don't get. Wayland seems not to have started with solving some of the X11 problems first but on a strong framework, it seems to just be reinventing the wheel and hoping to catch up and fix the problems somewhere along the way. So users just wait for that moment and X11 works 'fine' for the majority in the meantime.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Why do you say that? What even gives you the credentials to make a claim like that?
  - lamp987 5y ago
    >What even gives you the credentials to make a claim like that? This is a fallacy.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      wtf? it's absolutely not, when making wild claims about the inner workings of a project in a field where very few people are competent. If I start making wild claims about cardiology, you'd be correct to ask me for some credentials.
      - headsoup 5y ago
        What credentials do I need to state and opinion on how it seems to have evolved? I'm not stating a scientific truth. And yes, it is the fallacy of credentialism to attempt to use that as a measure of authority to make a statement. I could be a kernel developer of 20 years experience and have been terrible for all of them.
        seba_dos1 5y ago
        That's right - you're not stating a scientific truth, you're just stating falsehoods. It's pretty much enough to look at how any non-trivial X11 client looks like these days to understand the reason for Wayland's existence. Wayland, while not perfect, offers an incredibly clean and extendable design when compared to X11. Whether the whole ecosystem is already in place to move regular users over is another matter (I'm developing a Wayland compositor at work and even I am still using X11 on my workstation), although with this kind of project I guess you just need to face the chicken-and-egg problem at some point to actually move things forward.
        headsoup 5y ago
        You just explained exactly what I assumed is going on. Great, Wayland has a bright extensible future, but right now it doesn't solve anything so special that common users (or distro owners) desire moving over, hence the low usage of Wayland. Not a problem with Wayland, it's just as you say, not there yet.
boudin 5y ago
What is flawed? The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve. In a x11 world, the assumption is that everything that a user runs is fully trusted, any software has access all the inputs, all the audio, everything that is displayed without any restriction. This wasn't a problem 30 years ago, but is quite a blocker for modern approach to security with granular permissions. The architecture of x11 itself does not fit a modern graphical stack, some problem cannot be solved properly like monitors with different framerates, fractional scaling etc... Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing to address those issues. This impact the whole desktop ecosystem, it's a massive effort. Wayland will replace X though indeed (coupled with other things) that's the intent.
- nsajko 5y ago
  > The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve. What problems are those exactly? It's my impression that Wayland (the protocol) just creates problems without solving any. > Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing Yes. The anti-user anti-general-purpose-computing anti-freedom efforts. Trying to create a world where device owners may use their devices only for a set of approved actions such as browsing Instagram and Tiktok. When someone speaks against it, they are attacked with FUD, and "security" is called upon. Does that remind you of anything? Some relevant past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758945
  - boudin 5y ago
    None of those comments have an actual example. I still have no idea what you complain about, there's really not much difference between using gnome on wayland and gnome on X11 or Sway and I3. In the wayland counterparts though some of the security problems at the core of x11 have been addressed, and input and display just works better. There's no-one forcing you to do anything or forbiding you to do anything.
kaba0 5y ago
I’ve seen it so many times.. what is flawed with Wayland? Do you even have sufficient knowledge on the topic to have a fact-based opinion on it? Because 1) wayland is made by the very people who maintained X for decades, 2) it is a deliberately small-core protocol which is extensible - which allows future growth. That small core is quite easy and elegant, it can hardly be flawed, unless you have something concrete to say about that. It is pretty much “display this buffer of type X” and that’s it.
- nsajko 5y ago
  > what is flawed with Wayland? The protocol doesn't support most essential features, leaving them up to "compositors" to implement mutually incompatibly. Screenshots, accessibility, etc. Thus Wayland promotes fragmentation and death of the Linux desktop. On top of not actually solving problems, the protocol manages to be too opinionated, forcing compositing on the user.
  - bzzzt 5y ago
    You're joking about 'forcing' right? There are so many decisions in modern operating systems that are not easy to change. Are you mad at Linux for 'forcing' you into 'rwx' filesystem security? Or 'forcing' you to use iptables for configuring your firewall? Other desktop environments shifted to compositing 15 years or longer ago since it performs better on modern GPU's than the old 'damage check and repaint' algorithms. I don't think it's impossible to do that with Wayland, but since nobody tried to build that I think interest is very low.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      Most X11 clients that had anything to gain from it also moved to bypassing the legacy X11 drawing primitives about a decade ago.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    > Thus Wayland promotes fragmentation and death of the Linux desktop. First of all, what is dead may never die. Second of all, no, it is false. The core protocol is indeed small (unix philosophy ain’t a good thing now for some reason I guess?), but the extensions are easily queriable and they undergo standardization if they are deemed useful. Would you prefer a single entity giving directions on what has to be included? That would seem pretty antithetical to the whole bazaar style of development.

by sprash 5y ago

headsoup 5y ago

This is what I don't get. Wayland seems not to have started with solving some of the X11 problems first but on a strong framework, it seems to just be reinventing the wheel and hoping to catch up and fix the problems somewhere along the way. So users just wait for that moment and X11 works 'fine' for the majority in the meantime.

scrollaway 5y ago
Why do you say that? What even gives you the credentials to make a claim like that?
- lamp987 5y ago
  >What even gives you the credentials to make a claim like that? This is a fallacy.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    wtf? it's absolutely not, when making wild claims about the inner workings of a project in a field where very few people are competent. If I start making wild claims about cardiology, you'd be correct to ask me for some credentials.
    - headsoup 5y ago
      What credentials do I need to state and opinion on how it seems to have evolved? I'm not stating a scientific truth. And yes, it is the fallacy of credentialism to attempt to use that as a measure of authority to make a statement. I could be a kernel developer of 20 years experience and have been terrible for all of them.
      - seba_dos1 5y ago
        That's right - you're not stating a scientific truth, you're just stating falsehoods. It's pretty much enough to look at how any non-trivial X11 client looks like these days to understand the reason for Wayland's existence. Wayland, while not perfect, offers an incredibly clean and extendable design when compared to X11. Whether the whole ecosystem is already in place to move regular users over is another matter (I'm developing a Wayland compositor at work and even I am still using X11 on my workstation), although with this kind of project I guess you just need to face the chicken-and-egg problem at some point to actually move things forward.
        headsoup 5y ago
        You just explained exactly what I assumed is going on. Great, Wayland has a bright extensible future, but right now it doesn't solve anything so special that common users (or distro owners) desire moving over, hence the low usage of Wayland. Not a problem with Wayland, it's just as you say, not there yet.

boudin 5y ago

What is flawed? The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve. In a x11 world, the assumption is that everything that a user runs is fully trusted, any software has access all the inputs, all the audio, everything that is displayed without any restriction. This wasn't a problem 30 years ago, but is quite a blocker for modern approach to security with granular permissions. The architecture of x11 itself does not fit a modern graphical stack, some problem cannot be solved properly like monitors with different framerates, fractional scaling etc... Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing to address those issues. This impact the whole desktop ecosystem, it's a massive effort. Wayland will replace X though indeed (coupled with other things) that's the intent.

nsajko 5y ago
> The difficulty arise from the complexity of the problems to solve. What problems are those exactly? It's my impression that Wayland (the protocol) just creates problems without solving any. > Wayland is just one part of the big efforts that are ongoing Yes. The anti-user anti-general-purpose-computing anti-freedom efforts. Trying to create a world where device owners may use their devices only for a set of approved actions such as browsing Instagram and Tiktok. When someone speaks against it, they are attacked with FUD, and "security" is called upon. Does that remind you of anything? Some relevant past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758945
- boudin 5y ago
  None of those comments have an actual example. I still have no idea what you complain about, there's really not much difference between using gnome on wayland and gnome on X11 or Sway and I3. In the wayland counterparts though some of the security problems at the core of x11 have been addressed, and input and display just works better. There's no-one forcing you to do anything or forbiding you to do anything.

kaba0 5y ago

I’ve seen it so many times.. what is flawed with Wayland? Do you even have sufficient knowledge on the topic to have a fact-based opinion on it? Because 1) wayland is made by the very people who maintained X for decades, 2) it is a deliberately small-core protocol which is extensible - which allows future growth. That small core is quite easy and elegant, it can hardly be flawed, unless you have something concrete to say about that. It is pretty much “display this buffer of type X” and that’s it.

nsajko 5y ago
> what is flawed with Wayland? The protocol doesn't support most essential features, leaving them up to "compositors" to implement mutually incompatibly. Screenshots, accessibility, etc. Thus Wayland promotes fragmentation and death of the Linux desktop. On top of not actually solving problems, the protocol manages to be too opinionated, forcing compositing on the user.
- bzzzt 5y ago
  You're joking about 'forcing' right? There are so many decisions in modern operating systems that are not easy to change. Are you mad at Linux for 'forcing' you into 'rwx' filesystem security? Or 'forcing' you to use iptables for configuring your firewall? Other desktop environments shifted to compositing 15 years or longer ago since it performs better on modern GPU's than the old 'damage check and repaint' algorithms. I don't think it's impossible to do that with Wayland, but since nobody tried to build that I think interest is very low.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Most X11 clients that had anything to gain from it also moved to bypassing the legacy X11 drawing primitives about a decade ago.
- kaba0 5y ago
  > Thus Wayland promotes fragmentation and death of the Linux desktop. First of all, what is dead may never die. Second of all, no, it is false. The core protocol is indeed small (unix philosophy ain’t a good thing now for some reason I guess?), but the extensions are easily queriable and they undergo standardization if they are deemed useful. Would you prefer a single entity giving directions on what has to be included? That would seem pretty antithetical to the whole bazaar style of development.