6 ms·

When Time Comes for GTK5, It Might Be Wayland-Only on Linux

21 points by akvadrako 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago
That's fine, I hadn't even gotten around to adopting GTK4 yet. > extant issues of Wayland clients and compositors have no bearing with whether GTK5 should drop the X11 backend; file bugs for toolkits, compositors, and the protocols... Ah yes, that does seem like a sane way to address concerns with dropping Xorg entirely. Even the Titanic shipped with lifeboats, they'd be wise to have a backup in case their "unsinkable" window server breaks on many people's configurations.
- hulitu 4y ago
  Your OSS attitude is so nineties ( when people actually built things who did not break every other year). Their idea of SW is a Titanic with some handles on the side instead of boats.
jrm4 4y ago
As a long-time Linux user, I do not understand how everyone still tolerates how Gnome (and Wayland) do things. Breaking backward compatibility ought to be considered the cardinal sin of open source/free software, and they get away with it too much.
- rishflab 4y ago
  > Breaking backward compatibility ought to be considered the cardinal sin of open source/free software, and they get away with it too much. It depends? It's not like there is any apps for linux desktop. Who cares if you break backward compatibility.
- Latty 4y ago
  X is 40 years old. Talking about Wayland breaking compatibility there like it's a JS toolkit being dropped after 6 months is a bit silly. Yeah, compatibility is nice, but not when it means you have security flaws innate to the system, bloat and stuff you never want but have to keep around, etc... Sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Who should be the one who decides this? Nothing personal to you, sir, madame, or they, but I don't want it to be someone with this attitude. Wayland breaks a huge amount of apps, with no good porting story. Most of us just want our apps to be able to keep working. Linux is not a place for a wizard in the high castle to disconnectedly architect the future of Linux GUIs.
    - akvadrako 4y ago
      Mostly, it's the developers and those who pay them. Almost nobody is developing X11 anymore, they've moved on to Wayland. And GTK devs don't want to support it.
    - ssivark 4y ago
      The code is still there (FOSS), so you can continue using it as long as you want — and even maintain/sponsor if you like. None of us is entitled to developer time (from others), so if the ecosystem moves and they wish to invest their effort on different endeavors or approaches, we can’t hold them back.
      - jrm4 4y ago
        But I've said this elsewhere. Yes, we can criticize what they are doing even if we are not paying them. We can't sue them, we can't take way their money, and that is 100% fair, of course we shouldn't be able to do that. But yes, I can absolutely say "Y'all are wasting a ton of time with this Wayland way y'all are doing things, you should go fix X instead."
        Latty 4y ago
        So the answer to "who gets to be the one who decides this", remains "the one writing the code" and "the one choosing what to install", independent of each other. While it's true no one can stop you telling people they should be working on what you want and not what they find valuable, you sound like a petulant child demanding people do things for you.
- mkj 4y ago
  There's nothing stopping motivated developers forking and continuing the backwards compatible version. If there isn't anyone willing to do that then perhaps it's an indication that backwards compatibility isn't the most important thing, but other concerns are also factors.
- bitwize 4y ago
  The standard response to comments of this type is to urge the commenter to watch this talk by Daniel Stone: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
- pengaru 4y ago
  > As a long-time Linux user, I do not understand how everyone still tolerates how Gnome (and Wayland) do things. Considering how many people have abandoned the GNU/Linux desktop in favor of MacOS, I'm not convinced "everyone" tolerates it. But it's also unclear to me how you would even quantify this. What does being intolerant in this context look like, other than just not using gnome? Do you expect gnome users to picket and/or burn down the homes of the developers? It's kind of a ridiculous statement, and I feel like it's demonstrative of the kind of asshole entitlement FOSS users often exhibit instead of say, getting involved to influence the direction of upstream development.
  - pxc 4y ago
    > Considering how many people have abandoned the GNU/Linux desktop in favor of MacOS, I'm not convinced "everyone" tolerates it. Abandoning GNU/Linux in favor of macOS for political reasons, specifically as a reaction to Gnome, makes no sense to me. The things that frustrate people about Gnome (low configurability, highly opinionated design, low interoperability or deliberate incompatibility with other ecosystems) are all things that are very much present in Apple software. Even other parts of this stack, which it is insinuated emanate from the same overbearing Red Hat influence (systemd, PulseAudio), were inspired by macOS on a technical level. I understand macOS has other strengths, but idk why anyone would see it as a refuge from the perceived problems with Gnome, systemd, Wayland, etc.
    - orbifold 4y ago
      Gnome has become objectively worse, much worse in fact compared to the version that I have used regularly. My desktop runs Windows now and if I happen to use it for work I will prefer to remotely connect to it, so that I don’t have to deal with whatever the Linux desktop has become.
      - blinzy 4y ago
        It has become worse for you; for me as a user it has become incredibly smooth for my use case, requiring literally no tweaking/toggling whatsoever to have a decent experience out of the box, which definitely wasn't the case for me 10 years ago. So what I want to say is that it's subjective, don't say it's worse like some objective fact, when there are many people who don't share your opinion, just like there are many people that never liked Gnome (not now, not before), and they're all correct in that it's mostly about what works for each individual and that's it.
eternityforest 4y ago
This might be Wayland's killer app. I usually say the only reason I'd ever use wayland is when Mint makes it default. Otherwise, it's cool and all, but it's not a complete spec by itself since it leaves stuff like screen recording to implementations. When distros are confident enough to say their implementation is ready, I'll accept it, till then, it doesn't seem to have any real big new features besides the secure isolation.
- ungamedplayer 4y ago
  Isn't all screen recording an implementation ? Edit: I do OBS screen recording.. didnt know it was such a big deal. Fedora 34,35, 36 ish ? has it working, but I imagine that is pipewire + obs. Its pretty easy.
  - pxc 4y ago
    Wayland doesn't specify the APIs required to support screen recording, so each Wayland server implementation has to decide if/how to offer its own such interfaces. This basically means it's up to each desktop environment, although there are now some shared implmentations of this and other features in wlroots.
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      Screen recording is out of scope for wayland. Each server doesn't have to decide anything, basically every desktop working on this has converged on using pipewire for screen recording.
shrubble 4y ago
Ready to just move away, wholesale, from anything these developers are doing, at this point. Dropping features, ruining backwards compatibility, etc. should be seen as instability and unreliability.
dadoum 4y ago
Actually, GTK 4 is already a mess on X11, try to move/resize the window to see the window tear, flicker and misrender.
josephcsible 4y ago
Are there any important programs that rely on GTK for their GUIs? We should probably start porting them to Qt or something now, since I think there's a pretty good chance that Wayland still doesn't get full feature parity with X11 by the time all prior versions of GTK are EOL'd.
- bitwize 4y ago
  GIMP still does. But it was on GTK 2 until fairly recently.
dekhn 4y ago
Ok, I'll stick to qt then.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Who's to say Qt won't drop X11 functionality also? Wayland is the go-forward display stack for Linux. Get with the program or get left behind.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > Who's to say Qt won't drop X11 functionality also? Corporate users. There's zero incentive to cut functionality out of a commercial library, so they'll probably gladly support Xorg until their customers stop paying for it.
    - eliaspro 4y ago
      Their big corporate users (mostly automotive) are on Wayland since ages, which is far easier for them than for a regular desktop user as they have a very narrow feature-set to support and have full control over what's required.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        I think you grossly misunderstand who's paying for the Qt library.
        Crysstalis 4y ago
        Obviously it's not anyone who is willing to pay for maintenance of the X server and all the X libraries. If those stagnate and become broken, then they will likely remove the X backend.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Qts design supports many window targets and they're not going to desupport one with millions of users.
etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
I don't see why we wouldn't make a Wayland server that runs on top of X, as a compatibility layer. It seems like it would be the target of a lot of disapproval, though.
nuc1e0n 4y ago
If it were to be, GTK5 would be de-facto GNOME only. At that point GTK development would become forked.

21 points by akvadrako 4y ago

That's fine, I hadn't even gotten around to adopting GTK4 yet. > extant issues of Wayland clients and compositors have no bearing with whether GTK5 should drop the X11 backend; file bugs for toolkits, compositors, and the protocols... Ah yes, that does seem like a sane way to address concerns with dropping Xorg entirely. Even the Titanic shipped with lifeboats, they'd be wise to have a backup in case their "unsinkable" window server breaks on many people's configurations.

hulitu 4y ago
Your OSS attitude is so nineties ( when people actually built things who did not break every other year). Their idea of SW is a Titanic with some handles on the side instead of boats.

jrm4 4y ago

As a long-time Linux user, I do not understand how everyone still tolerates how Gnome (and Wayland) do things. Breaking backward compatibility ought to be considered the cardinal sin of open source/free software, and they get away with it too much.

rishflab 4y ago
> Breaking backward compatibility ought to be considered the cardinal sin of open source/free software, and they get away with it too much. It depends? It's not like there is any apps for linux desktop. Who cares if you break backward compatibility.
Latty 4y ago
X is 40 years old. Talking about Wayland breaking compatibility there like it's a JS toolkit being dropped after 6 months is a bit silly. Yeah, compatibility is nice, but not when it means you have security flaws innate to the system, bloat and stuff you never want but have to keep around, etc... Sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives.
- metadat 4y ago
  Who should be the one who decides this? Nothing personal to you, sir, madame, or they, but I don't want it to be someone with this attitude. Wayland breaks a huge amount of apps, with no good porting story. Most of us just want our apps to be able to keep working. Linux is not a place for a wizard in the high castle to disconnectedly architect the future of Linux GUIs.
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    Mostly, it's the developers and those who pay them. Almost nobody is developing X11 anymore, they've moved on to Wayland. And GTK devs don't want to support it.
  - ssivark 4y ago
    The code is still there (FOSS), so you can continue using it as long as you want — and even maintain/sponsor if you like. None of us is entitled to developer time (from others), so if the ecosystem moves and they wish to invest their effort on different endeavors or approaches, we can’t hold them back.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      But I've said this elsewhere. Yes, we can criticize what they are doing even if we are not paying them. We can't sue them, we can't take way their money, and that is 100% fair, of course we shouldn't be able to do that. But yes, I can absolutely say "Y'all are wasting a ton of time with this Wayland way y'all are doing things, you should go fix X instead."
      - Latty 4y ago
        So the answer to "who gets to be the one who decides this", remains "the one writing the code" and "the one choosing what to install", independent of each other. While it's true no one can stop you telling people they should be working on what you want and not what they find valuable, you sound like a petulant child demanding people do things for you.
mkj 4y ago
There's nothing stopping motivated developers forking and continuing the backwards compatible version. If there isn't anyone willing to do that then perhaps it's an indication that backwards compatibility isn't the most important thing, but other concerns are also factors.
bitwize 4y ago
The standard response to comments of this type is to urge the commenter to watch this talk by Daniel Stone: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
pengaru 4y ago
> As a long-time Linux user, I do not understand how everyone still tolerates how Gnome (and Wayland) do things. Considering how many people have abandoned the GNU/Linux desktop in favor of MacOS, I'm not convinced "everyone" tolerates it. But it's also unclear to me how you would even quantify this. What does being intolerant in this context look like, other than just not using gnome? Do you expect gnome users to picket and/or burn down the homes of the developers? It's kind of a ridiculous statement, and I feel like it's demonstrative of the kind of asshole entitlement FOSS users often exhibit instead of say, getting involved to influence the direction of upstream development.
- pxc 4y ago
  > Considering how many people have abandoned the GNU/Linux desktop in favor of MacOS, I'm not convinced "everyone" tolerates it. Abandoning GNU/Linux in favor of macOS for political reasons, specifically as a reaction to Gnome, makes no sense to me. The things that frustrate people about Gnome (low configurability, highly opinionated design, low interoperability or deliberate incompatibility with other ecosystems) are all things that are very much present in Apple software. Even other parts of this stack, which it is insinuated emanate from the same overbearing Red Hat influence (systemd, PulseAudio), were inspired by macOS on a technical level. I understand macOS has other strengths, but idk why anyone would see it as a refuge from the perceived problems with Gnome, systemd, Wayland, etc.
  - orbifold 4y ago
    Gnome has become objectively worse, much worse in fact compared to the version that I have used regularly. My desktop runs Windows now and if I happen to use it for work I will prefer to remotely connect to it, so that I don’t have to deal with whatever the Linux desktop has become.
    - blinzy 4y ago
      It has become worse for you; for me as a user it has become incredibly smooth for my use case, requiring literally no tweaking/toggling whatsoever to have a decent experience out of the box, which definitely wasn't the case for me 10 years ago. So what I want to say is that it's subjective, don't say it's worse like some objective fact, when there are many people who don't share your opinion, just like there are many people that never liked Gnome (not now, not before), and they're all correct in that it's mostly about what works for each individual and that's it.

eternityforest 4y ago

This might be Wayland's killer app. I usually say the only reason I'd ever use wayland is when Mint makes it default. Otherwise, it's cool and all, but it's not a complete spec by itself since it leaves stuff like screen recording to implementations. When distros are confident enough to say their implementation is ready, I'll accept it, till then, it doesn't seem to have any real big new features besides the secure isolation.

ungamedplayer 4y ago
Isn't all screen recording an implementation ? Edit: I do OBS screen recording.. didnt know it was such a big deal. Fedora 34,35, 36 ish ? has it working, but I imagine that is pipewire + obs. Its pretty easy.
- pxc 4y ago
  Wayland doesn't specify the APIs required to support screen recording, so each Wayland server implementation has to decide if/how to offer its own such interfaces. This basically means it's up to each desktop environment, although there are now some shared implmentations of this and other features in wlroots.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    Screen recording is out of scope for wayland. Each server doesn't have to decide anything, basically every desktop working on this has converged on using pipewire for screen recording.

shrubble 4y ago

Ready to just move away, wholesale, from anything these developers are doing, at this point. Dropping features, ruining backwards compatibility, etc. should be seen as instability and unreliability.

dadoum 4y ago

Actually, GTK 4 is already a mess on X11, try to move/resize the window to see the window tear, flicker and misrender.

josephcsible 4y ago

Are there any important programs that rely on GTK for their GUIs? We should probably start porting them to Qt or something now, since I think there's a pretty good chance that Wayland still doesn't get full feature parity with X11 by the time all prior versions of GTK are EOL'd.

bitwize 4y ago
GIMP still does. But it was on GTK 2 until fairly recently.

dekhn 4y ago

Ok, I'll stick to qt then.

bitwize 4y ago
Who's to say Qt won't drop X11 functionality also? Wayland is the go-forward display stack for Linux. Get with the program or get left behind.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Who's to say Qt won't drop X11 functionality also? Corporate users. There's zero incentive to cut functionality out of a commercial library, so they'll probably gladly support Xorg until their customers stop paying for it.
  - eliaspro 4y ago
    Their big corporate users (mostly automotive) are on Wayland since ages, which is far easier for them than for a regular desktop user as they have a very narrow feature-set to support and have full control over what's required.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      I think you grossly misunderstand who's paying for the Qt library.
      - Crysstalis 4y ago
        Obviously it's not anyone who is willing to pay for maintenance of the X server and all the X libraries. If those stagnate and become broken, then they will likely remove the X backend.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Qts design supports many window targets and they're not going to desupport one with millions of users.

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago

I don't see why we wouldn't make a Wayland server that runs on top of X, as a compatibility layer. It seems like it would be the target of a lot of disapproval, though.

nuc1e0n 4y ago

If it were to be, GTK5 would be de-facto GNOME only. At that point GTK development would become forked.