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Yet... it's still the only way I can use mixed DPI displays. I'm sure all of these concerns are justified in one way or the other, but no one's really given me

Yet... it's still the only way I can use mixed DPI displays. I'm sure all of these concerns are justified in one way or the other, but no one's really given me a lot of other options. A quick environmental scan reveals two serious contenders: Xorg and Wayland. Open source precludes the idea of a grand conspiracy, so I'm not sure why no one's working on an alternative if it's as bad as you say. It's a bit like complaining about factory conditions in China. I'd sure like to buy a computer from somewhere else, but I'm sort of left without a bunch of options so I shrug my shoulders and hold my nose and hope the market sorts it out. Ironically, this is one of the issues that puts me off upgrading to another HiDPI display, thus necessitating my need for Wayland...

smoldesu 4y ago
I'm not taking away any options from you, you're welcome to use whatever tools work for you. You shouldn't take it as a personal attack when someone suggests that one of your tools could use improvement, and by reaching consensus that Wayland needs more features and hardware support we can send a message to the community that work is far from done. Linux display servers need a lot of work. HDR content is right around the corner, and nobody in the Linux video stack is prepared. Wayland spends too much time twiddling their thumbs and making life hard on the rest of the Linux community, and Xorg's maintainers are gone. If you're going to use Linux, then by all means, use what works for you. That's the benefit of modular OSes! But we still need to push for more active development in this space. If Xorg is dead, then a lot of work needs to be done on Wayland to get them up to speed. If Xorg is not dead, then we need to find someone to fix it's longstanding issues. > It's a bit like complaining about factory conditions in China. Not really. It's more like complaining about a missing feature, say, thumbnails in the filepicker. At first it seems like such an egregious omission that it had to be a bug. But then people defend it, saying "it's not that big of a deal!" When you try to get people to corroborate your claims, people label it as hate speech. When users contribute code, fixes, patches and solutions, you see them all get turned down. The goals of commercial interests, Linux software developers and Linux desktop users have never been more at-odds. Without a clear path forwards, we can't expect anything to get done. I think it's okay to beat a drum about this stuff online, because it's completely germane on a subject like this.
syntheweave 4y ago
I don't think Wayland, or even GNOME is much of a conspiracy. The people who spearhead these kinds of consolidating efforts(udev, systemd were similar stories) are always going to fall more into the empire-builder category than most people. But it's open-source: to win the category you have to make a public good. So at the end of the process, you have working software and a standard. The standard has to be at least somewhat better for most people, or it falls into the bucket of dead standards. But Wayland's definitely a big one, touching really old assumptions around Linux desktops. There is plenty to start fights over. I still can't quite use it for all my apps because some stylus apps behave poorly. So I think I'll be in the latecomer camp. This is not a bad thing for me: it just means I've organized my life around using the tech to get a good result now, rather than putting my energy into developing the tech. I was on Windows for the longest time for the same reason.
lmm 4y ago
> Yet... it's still the only way I can use mixed DPI displays. I'm sure all of these concerns are justified in one way or the other, but no one's really given me a lot of other options. I believe you, but personally buying my monitors in matched sets is easier than giving up network transparency, and I don't think that's an outrageous position worthy of the scorn that the Wayland folks seem to have for it. > A quick environmental scan reveals two serious contenders: Xorg and Wayland. Open source precludes the idea of a grand conspiracy, so I'm not sure why no one's working on an alternative if it's as bad as you say. There's no money in it and it needs a lot of boring grunt work. RedHat may be half-assing Wayland but that's still 0.5 more asses than anyone else is putting into anything.

smoldesu 4y ago

I'm not taking away any options from you, you're welcome to use whatever tools work for you. You shouldn't take it as a personal attack when someone suggests that one of your tools could use improvement, and by reaching consensus that Wayland needs more features and hardware support we can send a message to the community that work is far from done. Linux display servers need a lot of work. HDR content is right around the corner, and nobody in the Linux video stack is prepared. Wayland spends too much time twiddling their thumbs and making life hard on the rest of the Linux community, and Xorg's maintainers are gone. If you're going to use Linux, then by all means, use what works for you. That's the benefit of modular OSes! But we still need to push for more active development in this space. If Xorg is dead, then a lot of work needs to be done on Wayland to get them up to speed. If Xorg is not dead, then we need to find someone to fix it's longstanding issues. > It's a bit like complaining about factory conditions in China. Not really. It's more like complaining about a missing feature, say, thumbnails in the filepicker. At first it seems like such an egregious omission that it had to be a bug. But then people defend it, saying "it's not that big of a deal!" When you try to get people to corroborate your claims, people label it as hate speech. When users contribute code, fixes, patches and solutions, you see them all get turned down. The goals of commercial interests, Linux software developers and Linux desktop users have never been more at-odds. Without a clear path forwards, we can't expect anything to get done. I think it's okay to beat a drum about this stuff online, because it's completely germane on a subject like this.

syntheweave 4y ago

I don't think Wayland, or even GNOME is much of a conspiracy. The people who spearhead these kinds of consolidating efforts(udev, systemd were similar stories) are always going to fall more into the empire-builder category than most people. But it's open-source: to win the category you have to make a public good. So at the end of the process, you have working software and a standard. The standard has to be at least somewhat better for most people, or it falls into the bucket of dead standards. But Wayland's definitely a big one, touching really old assumptions around Linux desktops. There is plenty to start fights over. I still can't quite use it for all my apps because some stylus apps behave poorly. So I think I'll be in the latecomer camp. This is not a bad thing for me: it just means I've organized my life around using the tech to get a good result now, rather than putting my energy into developing the tech. I was on Windows for the longest time for the same reason.

lmm 4y ago

> Yet... it's still the only way I can use mixed DPI displays. I'm sure all of these concerns are justified in one way or the other, but no one's really given me a lot of other options. I believe you, but personally buying my monitors in matched sets is easier than giving up network transparency, and I don't think that's an outrageous position worthy of the scorn that the Wayland folks seem to have for it. > A quick environmental scan reveals two serious contenders: Xorg and Wayland. Open source precludes the idea of a grand conspiracy, so I'm not sure why no one's working on an alternative if it's as bad as you say. There's no money in it and it needs a lot of boring grunt work. RedHat may be half-assing Wayland but that's still 0.5 more asses than anyone else is putting into anything.