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The "creators of the new screen thing" are the same people that "maintained the old screen thing". And didn't want to do it anymore, because it was terrible.

The "creators of the new screen thing" are the same people that "maintained the old screen thing". And didn't want to do it anymore, because it was terrible. And nobody else wanted to do it either, because it was terrible. After 3 years someone finally stepped up to do an Xorg release and had to immediately roll back the main new feature because a massive security vulnerability was found. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Server-21.1.2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Se...

jrm4 4y ago
I've heard people say this and I don't understand the "terrible." What do they mean by that? In my experience, "terrible" is provably false, in that in my work I work with lots of differently skilled people using Linux for lots of different things. And I encounter ALL KINDS of Linux headaches, and exactly zero of them have ever been with X.
- dralley 4y ago
  I'm talking about maintaining Xorg, not using it. The people maintaining Xorg didn't want to do it anymore, and built Wayland. Very, very people wanted to step in and keep Xorg going.
kelnos 4y ago
In my experience, "I don't want to work on $SOFTWARE anymore because it's terrible" just means "I'm tired and would prefer to work on something greenfield". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that (I've succumbed to it myself), but consider how much toil Wayland has created for so many people, and for what benefit after all this time?
- wmf 4y ago
  You're not wrong, but if literally no one is willing to maintain X11 then your choices are (A) let them build Wayland or (B) just stay on bitrotted Xorg forever. For better or worse, users aren't paying even a small fraction of the development cost of the Linux desktop so the result is a volunteer hacker do-ocracy.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  The X windowing system is nearly 40 years old. A lot of its problems stem from design decisions that were made many years ago, and which are virtually impossible to fix. A replacement is overdue.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    Well Wayland 1.0 is 10 years old in October... Given how far away Wayland is from replacing Xorg for many, I wouldn't be surprised if it'll be replaced by something else before getting its time in the limelight. Wouldn't be the first time. Then again, never underestimate sunk cost I suppose...
  - uecker 4y ago
    Counter argument: In contrast to Wayland, X is well engineered with a beautiful core protocol and an extension scheme that let it evolve in a modular way for 40 years. I hate that Linux regresses since about a decade because people insist on rewriting the old stuff producing inferior, incompatible, and half-broken garbage. The arguments for replacing X were never good.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      How on Earth is X modular? Why is it a goddamn huge program with literally no reimplementations if it is so good?
  - jrm4 4y ago
    But I would argue that reality says that you're objectively wrong about "A replacement is overdue." In the real world, X has remained as good as, or better than Wayland this whole time. Proven by "people still use it, a LOT."
- kaba0 4y ago
  There are cases when a software’s basic abstractions/assumptions fundamentally change over time. It is more likely to happen if it is multi-decade old and was created before modern GPUs were even a thing. X’s basic primitives are simply bad for today’s hardware. It was inevitable to fix at some point. OSX changed to Quartz in 2001 I believe and windows quickly followed with their compositor based display manager. So no, your assumptions doesn’t hold here at all.

jrm4 4y ago

I've heard people say this and I don't understand the "terrible." What do they mean by that? In my experience, "terrible" is provably false, in that in my work I work with lots of differently skilled people using Linux for lots of different things. And I encounter ALL KINDS of Linux headaches, and exactly zero of them have ever been with X.

dralley 4y ago
I'm talking about maintaining Xorg, not using it. The people maintaining Xorg didn't want to do it anymore, and built Wayland. Very, very people wanted to step in and keep Xorg going.

kelnos 4y ago

In my experience, "I don't want to work on $SOFTWARE anymore because it's terrible" just means "I'm tired and would prefer to work on something greenfield". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that (I've succumbed to it myself), but consider how much toil Wayland has created for so many people, and for what benefit after all this time?

wmf 4y ago
You're not wrong, but if literally no one is willing to maintain X11 then your choices are (A) let them build Wayland or (B) just stay on bitrotted Xorg forever. For better or worse, users aren't paying even a small fraction of the development cost of the Linux desktop so the result is a volunteer hacker do-ocracy.
duskwuff 4y ago
The X windowing system is nearly 40 years old. A lot of its problems stem from design decisions that were made many years ago, and which are virtually impossible to fix. A replacement is overdue.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  Well Wayland 1.0 is 10 years old in October... Given how far away Wayland is from replacing Xorg for many, I wouldn't be surprised if it'll be replaced by something else before getting its time in the limelight. Wouldn't be the first time. Then again, never underestimate sunk cost I suppose...
- uecker 4y ago
  Counter argument: In contrast to Wayland, X is well engineered with a beautiful core protocol and an extension scheme that let it evolve in a modular way for 40 years. I hate that Linux regresses since about a decade because people insist on rewriting the old stuff producing inferior, incompatible, and half-broken garbage. The arguments for replacing X were never good.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    How on Earth is X modular? Why is it a goddamn huge program with literally no reimplementations if it is so good?
- jrm4 4y ago
  But I would argue that reality says that you're objectively wrong about "A replacement is overdue." In the real world, X has remained as good as, or better than Wayland this whole time. Proven by "people still use it, a LOT."
kaba0 4y ago
There are cases when a software’s basic abstractions/assumptions fundamentally change over time. It is more likely to happen if it is multi-decade old and was created before modern GPUs were even a thing. X’s basic primitives are simply bad for today’s hardware. It was inevitable to fix at some point. OSX changed to Quartz in 2001 I believe and windows quickly followed with their compositor based display manager. So no, your assumptions doesn’t hold here at all.