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>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to. An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly under wayland, and never will due to wayland's security choices. So like, what am I supposed to do here? Not run android apps? Not use tools like barrier/synergy/x2x? This is one of many many frustrations I've had from this new generation of wayland/systemd/etc. Hopefully it gets better eventually but it does feel a lot like the rug is constantly being pulled out from under me for no good reason... Now I don't think a lisp machine is going to fix that mind you, but it is a concern.

zozbot234 5y ago
You can actually start a Wayland compositor/session in a X window. That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough.
- traverseda 5y ago
  That's what I'm doing now, but it's a pretty bad user experience and definitely isn't seamless. Also completely breaks any integration with my app menu meaning I have to rewrite all the desktop files to launch the app in cage. I imagine someone will eventually make a seamless wayland compositor for x though. >That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough. If you're saying it will fix my x2x use case, well it won't. Wayland's security model fundamentally prevents this use case. Maybe someone will add extensions to it eventually but right now the way compositors handle mouse capture seriously prevents this use case, and I'm skeptical that all the different compositors will agree on a solution any time in the next 10 years... So I'm stuck using X on both displays for the foreseeable future if I want to use x2x/synergy like functionality, and I'm certain that it's going to become harder and harder to keep using X over time...
  - 20after4 5y ago
    Wow and here I was hopeful that Wayland would actually make this kind of thing easier. I'm a big fan of synergy and all it's descendant. Apple just released a similar feature for iOS and OSX. Really surprised this is getting more difficult on Linux instead of easier.
sseagull 5y ago
I am finding that everything is just becoming more and more fragmented. Programming languages, ecosystems, frameworks, blah. I have had ideas for some applications, but can’t do them because the libraries I need are written in different languages, which don’t interoperate well (and one I am not familiar in). Every post here looking for recommendations has many responses with different packages/ecosystems doing the same thing. Sometimes I feel like there are too many developers and not enough of them really interested in the actual hard problems. So they just make another python package manager or webapp framework.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  So a perfect use-case for the obligatory XKCD post about "too many standards, invent one more to try to solve the issue => too many standards plus one".
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    I don't think standards are the problem. I think a wave of new standards causes issues like the above, and eventually this gets worked out. Not all "standards" in practice become standard. We learn a lot of "standards" were bad ideas, and they eventually get tossed out and most people forget anyone was ever trying to make that a thing.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      "Standards" in this case just means "things that I/we developed that we think should be adopted by lots of other people because it's awesome-sauce"
- pjmlp 5y ago
  It isn't nice? Back to the 8 and 16 bit home computers, when we had plenty of choice and real fights on the school playground about which were better.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I think they are too invested im hard problems, but not invested enough in tedious problems. I don't want a new language, or a new preprocesser, or a new way of thinking about programs... I just want a one click way to take a folder of HTML that looks like a static site, and package it up into cross platform apps with all the proper API access. I don't care about cryptocurrency and global decentralized databases, I just want to be able to run a site by buying a NAS appliances, putting files on it, and sharing the QR code on it without any signups and cloud accounts. The hard problems are mostly solved. There's probably some long dead random github repo that does anything you want. They're just not packaged for all platforms and maintained professionally. I don't need a phone without any binary blobs at all... I just want a mesh network feature and a fair trade stamp. Because... it sucks to maintain something novel even if it's all just pieced together from npm. It sucks to be the one responding to issues. It sucks to actually run a project and keep track of devops stuff. All the tech has been invented dozens of times over, but never polished, and always ruined with some unnecessary immutable log feature or performance destroying random access low latency routing thing like IPFS has.

zozbot234 5y ago

You can actually start a Wayland compositor/session in a X window. That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough.

traverseda 5y ago
That's what I'm doing now, but it's a pretty bad user experience and definitely isn't seamless. Also completely breaks any integration with my app menu meaning I have to rewrite all the desktop files to launch the app in cage. I imagine someone will eventually make a seamless wayland compositor for x though. >That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough. If you're saying it will fix my x2x use case, well it won't. Wayland's security model fundamentally prevents this use case. Maybe someone will add extensions to it eventually but right now the way compositors handle mouse capture seriously prevents this use case, and I'm skeptical that all the different compositors will agree on a solution any time in the next 10 years... So I'm stuck using X on both displays for the foreseeable future if I want to use x2x/synergy like functionality, and I'm certain that it's going to become harder and harder to keep using X over time...
- 20after4 5y ago
  Wow and here I was hopeful that Wayland would actually make this kind of thing easier. I'm a big fan of synergy and all it's descendant. Apple just released a similar feature for iOS and OSX. Really surprised this is getting more difficult on Linux instead of easier.

sseagull 5y ago

I am finding that everything is just becoming more and more fragmented. Programming languages, ecosystems, frameworks, blah. I have had ideas for some applications, but can’t do them because the libraries I need are written in different languages, which don’t interoperate well (and one I am not familiar in). Every post here looking for recommendations has many responses with different packages/ecosystems doing the same thing. Sometimes I feel like there are too many developers and not enough of them really interested in the actual hard problems. So they just make another python package manager or webapp framework.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
So a perfect use-case for the obligatory XKCD post about "too many standards, invent one more to try to solve the issue => too many standards plus one".
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  I don't think standards are the problem. I think a wave of new standards causes issues like the above, and eventually this gets worked out. Not all "standards" in practice become standard. We learn a lot of "standards" were bad ideas, and they eventually get tossed out and most people forget anyone was ever trying to make that a thing.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    "Standards" in this case just means "things that I/we developed that we think should be adopted by lots of other people because it's awesome-sauce"
pjmlp 5y ago
It isn't nice? Back to the 8 and 16 bit home computers, when we had plenty of choice and real fights on the school playground about which were better.
eternityforest 5y ago
I think they are too invested im hard problems, but not invested enough in tedious problems. I don't want a new language, or a new preprocesser, or a new way of thinking about programs... I just want a one click way to take a folder of HTML that looks like a static site, and package it up into cross platform apps with all the proper API access. I don't care about cryptocurrency and global decentralized databases, I just want to be able to run a site by buying a NAS appliances, putting files on it, and sharing the QR code on it without any signups and cloud accounts. The hard problems are mostly solved. There's probably some long dead random github repo that does anything you want. They're just not packaged for all platforms and maintained professionally. I don't need a phone without any binary blobs at all... I just want a mesh network feature and a fair trade stamp. Because... it sucks to maintain something novel even if it's all just pieced together from npm. It sucks to be the one responding to issues. It sucks to actually run a project and keep track of devops stuff. All the tech has been invented dozens of times over, but never polished, and always ruined with some unnecessary immutable log feature or performance destroying random access low latency routing thing like IPFS has.