11 ms·

GTK 5 might drop X11 support

75 points by raybb 4y ago

TheChaplain 4y ago
I guess that means GTK-based apps will not be able to run on the BSDs?
- jeppesen-io 4y ago
  I know that FreeBSD has some wayland support already and wayland 1.20+ can build on BSD Also, this is only for GTK 5, so by the time that even comes out (years) and apps switch to it, we could see widespread wayland support in BSD
- wmf 4y ago
  More likely BSDs will finally get Wayland working.
- vetinari 4y ago
  By the time that GTK5 would be a thing, and going by the current level of effort to maintain X.org, it won't really matter by then.
- hexo 4y ago
  or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs
  - phkahler 4y ago
    Gtk 2/3/4 programs. Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome. Systems can run multiple versions of GTK at the same time, and gnome will still use xwayland for older x-apps. There really is no problem with this move.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      > Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome Yes and no. The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. Other non-GNOME uses of GTK work through coincidence, and won't be supported or considered as they evolve the GNOME platform. We can already see this with the removal of several features from GTK4 (that were present in GTK3). GTK5 will just be more of the same, and will leave more non-GNOME people behind. Sure, apps won't have to move from GTK3 or GTK4 to GTK5, but some will. And will someone step up to fork and maintain GTK3 and/or GTK4 when the GTK developers are focused on GTK5 and don't care about the older versions anymore? Alternatively, maybe we'll see a new toolkit start to gain prominence. After all, GTK5 is many years away, and GTK5-only apps are even further out. There's plenty of time for something new to take the stage. Maybe a Rust-based toolkit will become popular enough to be considered on similarly-equal footing to GTK and Qt. (Certainly the non-Rust binding story would have to be really good for this to be viable, as I can't imagine all those C, C++, Python, etc. devs who use GTK to all become Rust developers.) That would be my hope, but we'll see. There's a lot of time for this to unfold.
      - Crysstalis 4y ago
        >The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. I don't know where you heard this, but it's not at all true. This is actually the complete opposite of what they did in GTK4. A lot of the features that were removed were actually GNOME specific features that were simply moved into libadwaita, the thinking was that anyone building a platform on GTK4 can create their own library and put the themes/widgets they want there. Elementary OS also did exactly this with libgranite. The rest of your comment stems from this false assumption, so I think you can retract it.
        kelnos 4y ago
        I believe I read it in an article quite a few years ago. I'm near 100% certain that's what the article said, though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. I don't see a need to retract most of my comment; the second and third paragraphs still hold. I still see little need to migrate to GTK4 (and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed), and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. The libadwaita stuff is also super weird and IMO implemented poorly, and in a way that basically says "if you aren't using GNOME we don't care about you". Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme.
        Crysstalis 4y ago
        >though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. Yes, they were, that is the opposite of what actually happened. The real rationale is explained in the libadwaita release announcement: https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwaita.html https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwa... >and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed Yes, they also deprecated/removed some features that were just broken or not so useful. That's not a GNOME issue. >the second and third paragraphs still hold This is just my prediction from looking at some of the existing Rust libraries: There will not be any viable toolkit for general use written in pure Rust. To do so would require a giant investment. If it ever happened, any interested party would want it to be cross-platform because Rust is primarily used as a cross-platform language. And because of that, at best it would become a poor approximation of Qt without any of the benefits. The closest I could ever see conceivably happening would be some WASM-based thing that you can then deploy inside Electron. And I say this as someone who rather dislikes C++ and (in theory) prefers Rust. >and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. I don't know why you wouldn't bother with it. The code will probably not ever completely disappear, but X11 itself has already been obsolete for a number of years. >Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme. I don't see how this is even a problem. The point of the GNOME app is to follow the GNOME HIG and design patterns. The point of libadwaita is to provide prefab implementations of the GNOME HIG. You can't make an app that follows two design styles at the same time. Like, think about this. Motif or KDE apps also don't look anything like GNOME apps and they look out of place. Windows apps also look completely out of place on GNOME if you run them in Wine, etc. On an open platform nobody can enforce a certain look for any applications. Eventually they will all look weird and out of place somewhere.
hexo 4y ago
I guess, we'll drop GTK 5 support.
ciupicri 4y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31971819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31971819 from a couple of days ago.
guerrilla 4y ago
Seems pretty consistent with GNOME dropping valuable features everyone uses... I say this as someone who just switched back to GNOME on Wayland (since 42), but it always seems like they're trying to lose users. At least it seems like a non-goal to grow their base, so it always loses out to any other concerns.
- larrik 4y ago
  There's a lot less substance to this than the article title makes it seem.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    I don't think so. I think the title is perfectly accurate. I read the issue and it's comments. As I said, this seems very typical for GNOME. We've seen the same kind of thing a lot.
- mnd999 4y ago
  They also still haven’t fixed the file picker.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    What do you mean? Ctrl-L works and thumbnails kind of work now (I don't know why but only on some images, even of the same type, even form the same roll.)
dabber21 4y ago
Isn't Wayland already standard on Linux except on Desktop?
- wmf 4y ago
  Servers don't have GUIs and Android doesn't use Wayland so do you mean cars?
  - pvorb 4y ago
    I guess it was meant as a joke.
  - Kudos 4y ago
    It's the compositor used on the Steam Deck.
  - dabber21 4y ago
    if you'd develop an embedded OS e.g. for cars, why would you use X11 in this day and age?
    - wmf 4y ago
      I would expect them to invent some janky custom thing running on fbdev.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Not sure whether you are aware, but car manufacturers were one of the earliest adapters of Wayland for embedded use cases.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Many servers have guis.
- agilob 4y ago
  Every year I read a comment saying Wayland is standard, I try to switch to it and always regret. Literally most day to day functionality doesn't work, electron only recently added screen capture ability, and that's only for current window, not full screenshare or another window, so pair programming is pain, running Java or C# desktop programs is pain or impossible due to scaling issues. Vulkan/OpenGL programs can crash after restoring from minimised state... Switching from multiscreen(docked) to single screen(laptop) doesn't restore windows in their position, oh even dragging windows between monitors doesn't work well as the window on a new screen is different size, eg. just the top bar with the window content gone until minimized and maximized again
dyingkneepad 4y ago
By the time GTK5 arrives Wayland will probably be old enough to drive or maybe even drink in the US. And, as much as I hate to say it, I believe it will still not be omnipresent in the Linux desktop. I really want to see Wayland move forward and succeed, but there are so few companies injecting money on it, they get to dictate how things move. Red Hat is one of the main contributors, and they only seem to care about Gnome working on Wayland (as much as I don't like their direction, I can't really blame them for following it, it just sucks that I don't like the product they're developing). The landscape is extremely fragmented and everybody who is not on the Gnome garden will suffer a lot. I really wish some other non-Gnome-favoring company would find a reason to dump a lot more money into Wayland and help move it forward in the not-only-gnome-favorable path. This is not a thing that will move forward without full-time workers. X has always had a lot of paid people contributing to it. That is, if IBM doesn't decide to throw a bigger wrench at the problem.
- pkulak 4y ago
  What about all the portals built by Redhat that allow kde and wlroots to tap into screen recording, audio, and soon even key captures? I get that Redhat doesn't actively submit patches to wlroots, but they also seem to be making stuff as open as seems reasonable. As a Sway user, I haven't noticed anything that works on Gnome but not Sway, except for stuff like Zoom, which hasn't, until recently, used the portals.
  - rektide 4y ago
    wlroots & kde both have their own xdg-desktop-portal-*[1][2]'s, which don't seem to be built by Red Hat. xdg-desktop-portal itself originates from Flatpak[3], which makes me think it's more like to related to Canonical/Ubuntu rather than being something RH drove. [1] https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32008412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32008412 (2 pts, 30 min ago) [2] https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde [3] https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal
superkuh 4y ago
Most linux software still uses gtk3 and the docs for gtk4 aren't even finished. Hopefully slating this for 5 will give GNOME the decade it needs to realize X11 isn't going away until wayland is actually at feature parity. And I'm fairly confident it still won't be in any one implementation because there'll be dozens of different waylands now and 10 years from now. Just like 10 years in the past.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  GNOME doesn't care if wayland is at feature parity. They can require it for GNOME by fiat. They also don't need to care about supporting multiple compositors; they can require all GNOME users to use theirs.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    It's not really a "fiat". There just aren't any GNOME developers left that are interested in maintaining the X11 parts of the stack. The Mutter developers are actively working on making the remaining X11 parts optional. Xorg itself is not getting any new extensions, all feature work on display protocols relevant to Mutter is currently happening in Wayland extensions and in Mesa. The major problems left there that involve X are related to XWayland. The GTK developers already redesigned the whole client back end to match Wayland. The other pieces of GNOME have long since moved into protocol-agnostic dbus interfaces. What incentive do they have left to maintain X11 support? There just isn't much there besides legacy compatibility.
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Perhaps "fiat" was too loaded of a term. What I mean to say is that, since GNOME is an integrated system, there is no particular need for it to depend on Wayland implementing some random feature that X11 has. On top of that, since so much of Wayland is implemented in the compositor, it's likely that Mutter can make up for any missing features in Wayland. Therefore, as you say, there's no incentive for the GNOME developers to support X11, and the devs are free to say "Use GNOME on wayland, implement an X11 backend for GNOME/GTK yourself, or don't use GNOME" which, in practice, boils down to "Use GNOME on Wayland, or don't use GNOME" and is, effectively, a fiat to use Wayland if you want to continue using newer versions of GNOME. I also didn't intend this to be judgemental; GNOME is almost certainly the most complete desktop environment for linux. I personally use KDE as my desktop, but most applications I use are not part of KDE (or even built using Qt). Conversely, a typical desktop user could probably get by using just GNOME applications (plus maybe libre-office for opening MS documents that can't be handled within GNOME). IMO a large part of what makes this possible is by being judicious in what is supported.
failuser 4y ago
If you want a picture of the future, imagine X11 stamping on a Linux user interface —forever.
- spacemanmatt 4y ago
  I think I still like that better than anything I recall from the past of X servers running on Windows or OSX.
pvorb 4y ago
I won't give Wayland another try until I absolutely have to. And I might even consider going back to Windows before doing so. Every attempt to do the switch (sometimes forced by bad decisions of distributions) broke essential functionality without any workarounds, so I had to switch back to X11 eventually. I expect this to happen again if I give it another try - be it 1 or 10 years from now. So I'm sorry, but Wayland is not for me.
- drdo 4y ago
  Do you have an example of something that does not work? I'm using Fedora 36 and everything that I can think of works well.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    At this point, we are talking about spacebar heating (https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/)
    - pvorb 4y ago
      Possibly the situation is better today and it might be even better once GTK5 will make it to end users. But if Wayland folks think that having two external displays and screen sharing is an esoteric workflow, I know that my decision was correct.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        What gives you the impression they think that? There is quite a lot going on before your google meets displays a popup of what you want to share and the display manager initiating screen sharing. For what it worth, Wayland has really good externel screen support (mixed-DPI even), so it is likely just a not-yet-supported feature, nothing inherently problematic.
      - vetinari 4y ago
        > two external displays and screen sharing is an esoteric workflow that one works better with wayland than with x11. Especially if the monitors are different dpi.
mgbmtl 4y ago
It's funny how they made an article about 4 short comments between 2 devs. People sure like to hate on change. Rather odd for a forum about disruptive startups. Might be worth thinking about where Wayland was 5 years ago, and where it is now, and where it will be in 5-10 years. That's basically what the conversation was about.
- spacemanmatt 4y ago
  Pretty much agreed. And we should also be projecting Wayland's future on a non-linear basis. Lets of groundwork has gone into it, similar to pipewire, and that will create a tipping point for the project in terms of stability and feature delivery rate.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    That's a weird comparison. The first time I heard about pipewire it replaced both pa and Jack for me without sacrificing anything and actually improved everything. And that was before it was picked up by distros. Wayland on the other hand is widely deployed and I still can't always use it for basic use cases like screen sharing.
    - mgbmtl 4y ago
      systemd then :) but such comparisons will always have shortcomings. For what it's worth, screensharing works fine for me. I use it with Zoom and Mattermost (webrtc). Are you on an old version? I'm on 1.18 I think (Debian 11) Screen-recording is still a bit cringe. The builtin Gnome tool is OK, but a bit clunky. I miss Kazam.
    - spacemanmatt 4y ago
      I'd argue pipewire is a much smaller scope and has had better collaboration from everyone involved. You got in when the distros quite reasonably made the switch on your behalf and it was not an especially difficult call for them. Wayland has a bit more baggage, bad actors in the video hardware/driver territory, etc. Distros are facing a way harder decision on Wayland to make on your behalf, especially as Wayland starts to support some use cases fully while still not hitting others.
low_tech_punk 4y ago
GTA 5 would never drop support for DirectX 11.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Maybe they will switch to DirectWay Land?
rvz 4y ago
And this is why Desktop Linux is a running joke with devs fighting with each other's solutions to a re-implementation of an old problem and they still can't do it right to the level of desktops like Windows, and macOS. The fragmentation and alternatives of alternatives mess of the Linux Desktop has turned it into a giant contraption full of inconsistency and tons of unnecessary in-fighting between a bunch of devs due to UNIX philosophy or a desktop that simply just works. It is not early days anymore and it has been over 20 years and the Linux Desktop still has the same problems already present today and is a solution in search of an (already solved) problem at this point. No wonder that explains why Google was so fed up with desktop Linux they decided to replace it with their own OS (Fuchsia).
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  Almost nothing you've said here is correct. The Unix philosophy has very little to do with desktop fragmentation and everything to do with the fact that unlike macos and windows: it's not that commercial an endeavor. A common employer is a main reason many work on someone else's ideas when they can just work on their own ideas. Even when there are commercialization efforts: investment and adoption circular. The challenges are much much bigger than just the desktop fragmentation. See: ChromeOS. Investment can solve these problems. Similarly, Fuchsia is a much bigger effort about the future of operating systems and not about just desktop environment quirkiness. Again, they have ChromeOS for that. Don't get me wrong, I agree this all hurts Linux adoption, and as a user I wish it were different.
  - rvz 4y ago
    Everything I said is the brutal, hard, evergreen truth. > The Unix philosophy has very little to do with desktop fragmentation and everything to do with the fact that unlike macos and windows: it's not that commercial an endeavor. A common employer is a main reason many work on someone else's ideas when they can just work on their own ideas. It is part of the in-fighting, which contributes to the whole desktop fragmentation issues, distro forks and chaos around it and its frankly an unsolvable disaster. The whole debating between system components such as systemd vs init.d, X11 vs Wayland, Pulseaudio vs Portaudio vs Pipewire have further contributed to the alternatives of alternatives desktop fragmentation and it is a tug of war between UNIX philosophy greybeards and other devs attempting to solve the fragmentation for years. Due to this failure of consensus: No app developer can 'define Linux support' and cater to all desktop Linux users 100% of the time, unlike Windows, and macOS. > See: ChromeOS. Investment can solve these problems. Only for Google. They already have learned from the mistakes of these distros and are going to replace it with Fuchsia. ChromeOS is still a mostly closed-source system despite using a Linux kernel, just exactly like Android still is, which isn't the same thing as the chaos you see in many open-source full Linux distros. > Similarly, Fuchsia is a much bigger effort about the future of operating systems and not about just desktop environment quirkiness. Again, they have ChromeOS for that. Hence why Google is replacing ChromeOS with Fuchsia, which includes and avoids all of the above.
jklinger410 4y ago
Can't you just run the whole session on xwayland? lol
bitwize 4y ago
"X11 is dead, Summer. Gotta rip that band-aid off now; you'll thank me later."
rayiner 4y ago
I don't understand all of the hate around Wayland. X is fine for what it is, but Wayland enables the flicker-free, nicely-animated experience most users want from their desktops, and also better reflects how modern hardware works. GTK4 on Wayland is actually a pretty nice API to program with, which remedies a lot of warts in GTK/X11. Even Emacs runs X11-free these days: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure_gtk_branch_was_merged https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure.... What's so wrong with declaring that X11 support will be dropped years from now?
- thriftwy 4y ago
  I'm not even sure how to do anything with Wayland. I have kubuntu and at no point has it suggested Wayland to me. The stuff from comments about screen capture not working reliably does not inspire much confidence. I remember X11 taking decades to fix rough edges and surely don't want to go over it again. Much like IPv6, it seems to be real old now, still not adopted and not really working, definitely not hip anymore.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    > capture not working properly This has changed. As a daily Wayland user, the only thing that Wayland can't do is networked sessions, and I have never needed that. > suggested Wayland Ubuntu slated it for default in 22.04, but reverted due to a bug. I expect them to try again during the next release. If you want to try it then it's typically selected in the login manager. > don't want to go over it again Or don't try it, the grandparent comment was talking about "hate" not "disinterest".
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  X isn't to blame for screen flicker. That's all Nvidia's fault. Every other video driver on Xorg works correctly. Every other X server works correctly. X is just a collection of protocols and data structures. It can run on top of anything. It isn't to blame for low level hardware issues from poorly implemented drivers.
  - 4y ago
lizardactivist 4y ago
I've never understood why 'desktop' is such a difficult and heated topic in the Linux sphere. Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome etc. things that "just work", and if it does, why isn't everyone liking and using it?
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome etc. things that "just work" that's pretty much what the latest Ubuntu LTS or Fedora release is. And I think most people are using it, but they're just silent about it. I think the linux community just has some uniquely vocal folks on the other end.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    I think a large portion if not the majority of the Linux community is just one that prefers choice and customizability over being given whatever that "just works", but not exactly to one's preference. Loss of choice is a loss. For example, there may be users that use WMs like Blackbox, StumpWM, or Xmonad that they've heavily customized throughout many years, and now they're essentially being told that their setups will eventually be incompatible with the changing ecosystem. i3 users got lucky for getting a port (sway), but there are lots of other WMs, and lots of other related tools useful for customization like xdotool, perhaps not all portable to Wayland.
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      > For example, there may be users that use WMs like Blackbox, StumpWM, or Xmonad that they've heavily customized throughout many years, and now they're essentially being told that their setups will eventually be incompatible with the changing ecosystem. Yes. You got a wonderful set of tools as a result of all the work and time folks put into X. The problem is that the folks doing most of the lifting in this space right now, the ones still giving their free time and effort, have decided that they'd rather be developing Wayland (it's not all of them, X is still kicking, but it's a lot of them). You, as a user of the free software produced by real people putting in time and effort, absolutely don't get to bitch about "Loss of choice is a loss" when what you're really saying is "I'd like to force the people working on wayland to continue working on X, because it's beneficial to me".
seba_dos1 4y ago
The opposite of XWayland (a Wayland server that outputs to X11 windows) will be much easier to implement than XWayland itself and won't require integration in window manager, so that won't even be as disruptive as it sounds.
thompson1 4y ago
[dead]

75 points by raybb 4y ago

TheChaplain 4y ago

I guess that means GTK-based apps will not be able to run on the BSDs?

jeppesen-io 4y ago
I know that FreeBSD has some wayland support already and wayland 1.20+ can build on BSD Also, this is only for GTK 5, so by the time that even comes out (years) and apps switch to it, we could see widespread wayland support in BSD
wmf 4y ago
More likely BSDs will finally get Wayland working.
vetinari 4y ago
By the time that GTK5 would be a thing, and going by the current level of effort to maintain X.org, it won't really matter by then.
hexo 4y ago
or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs
- phkahler 4y ago
  Gtk 2/3/4 programs. Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome. Systems can run multiple versions of GTK at the same time, and gnome will still use xwayland for older x-apps. There really is no problem with this move.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome Yes and no. The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. Other non-GNOME uses of GTK work through coincidence, and won't be supported or considered as they evolve the GNOME platform. We can already see this with the removal of several features from GTK4 (that were present in GTK3). GTK5 will just be more of the same, and will leave more non-GNOME people behind. Sure, apps won't have to move from GTK3 or GTK4 to GTK5, but some will. And will someone step up to fork and maintain GTK3 and/or GTK4 when the GTK developers are focused on GTK5 and don't care about the older versions anymore? Alternatively, maybe we'll see a new toolkit start to gain prominence. After all, GTK5 is many years away, and GTK5-only apps are even further out. There's plenty of time for something new to take the stage. Maybe a Rust-based toolkit will become popular enough to be considered on similarly-equal footing to GTK and Qt. (Certainly the non-Rust binding story would have to be really good for this to be viable, as I can't imagine all those C, C++, Python, etc. devs who use GTK to all become Rust developers.) That would be my hope, but we'll see. There's a lot of time for this to unfold.
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      >The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. I don't know where you heard this, but it's not at all true. This is actually the complete opposite of what they did in GTK4. A lot of the features that were removed were actually GNOME specific features that were simply moved into libadwaita, the thinking was that anyone building a platform on GTK4 can create their own library and put the themes/widgets they want there. Elementary OS also did exactly this with libgranite. The rest of your comment stems from this false assumption, so I think you can retract it.
      - kelnos 4y ago
        I believe I read it in an article quite a few years ago. I'm near 100% certain that's what the article said, though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. I don't see a need to retract most of my comment; the second and third paragraphs still hold. I still see little need to migrate to GTK4 (and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed), and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. The libadwaita stuff is also super weird and IMO implemented poorly, and in a way that basically says "if you aren't using GNOME we don't care about you". Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme.
        Crysstalis 4y ago
        >though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. Yes, they were, that is the opposite of what actually happened. The real rationale is explained in the libadwaita release announcement: https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwaita.html https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwa... >and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed Yes, they also deprecated/removed some features that were just broken or not so useful. That's not a GNOME issue. >the second and third paragraphs still hold This is just my prediction from looking at some of the existing Rust libraries: There will not be any viable toolkit for general use written in pure Rust. To do so would require a giant investment. If it ever happened, any interested party would want it to be cross-platform because Rust is primarily used as a cross-platform language. And because of that, at best it would become a poor approximation of Qt without any of the benefits. The closest I could ever see conceivably happening would be some WASM-based thing that you can then deploy inside Electron. And I say this as someone who rather dislikes C++ and (in theory) prefers Rust. >and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. I don't know why you wouldn't bother with it. The code will probably not ever completely disappear, but X11 itself has already been obsolete for a number of years. >Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme. I don't see how this is even a problem. The point of the GNOME app is to follow the GNOME HIG and design patterns. The point of libadwaita is to provide prefab implementations of the GNOME HIG. You can't make an app that follows two design styles at the same time. Like, think about this. Motif or KDE apps also don't look anything like GNOME apps and they look out of place. Windows apps also look completely out of place on GNOME if you run them in Wine, etc. On an open platform nobody can enforce a certain look for any applications. Eventually they will all look weird and out of place somewhere.

hexo 4y ago

I guess, we'll drop GTK 5 support.

ciupicri 4y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31971819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31971819 from a couple of days ago.

guerrilla 4y ago

Seems pretty consistent with GNOME dropping valuable features everyone uses... I say this as someone who just switched back to GNOME on Wayland (since 42), but it always seems like they're trying to lose users. At least it seems like a non-goal to grow their base, so it always loses out to any other concerns.

larrik 4y ago
There's a lot less substance to this than the article title makes it seem.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  I don't think so. I think the title is perfectly accurate. I read the issue and it's comments. As I said, this seems very typical for GNOME. We've seen the same kind of thing a lot.
mnd999 4y ago
They also still haven’t fixed the file picker.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  What do you mean? Ctrl-L works and thumbnails kind of work now (I don't know why but only on some images, even of the same type, even form the same roll.)

dabber21 4y ago

Isn't Wayland already standard on Linux except on Desktop?

wmf 4y ago
Servers don't have GUIs and Android doesn't use Wayland so do you mean cars?
- pvorb 4y ago
  I guess it was meant as a joke.
- Kudos 4y ago
  It's the compositor used on the Steam Deck.
- dabber21 4y ago
  if you'd develop an embedded OS e.g. for cars, why would you use X11 in this day and age?
  - wmf 4y ago
    I would expect them to invent some janky custom thing running on fbdev.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Not sure whether you are aware, but car manufacturers were one of the earliest adapters of Wayland for embedded use cases.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Many servers have guis.
agilob 4y ago
Every year I read a comment saying Wayland is standard, I try to switch to it and always regret. Literally most day to day functionality doesn't work, electron only recently added screen capture ability, and that's only for current window, not full screenshare or another window, so pair programming is pain, running Java or C# desktop programs is pain or impossible due to scaling issues. Vulkan/OpenGL programs can crash after restoring from minimised state... Switching from multiscreen(docked) to single screen(laptop) doesn't restore windows in their position, oh even dragging windows between monitors doesn't work well as the window on a new screen is different size, eg. just the top bar with the window content gone until minimized and maximized again

dyingkneepad 4y ago

By the time GTK5 arrives Wayland will probably be old enough to drive or maybe even drink in the US. And, as much as I hate to say it, I believe it will still not be omnipresent in the Linux desktop. I really want to see Wayland move forward and succeed, but there are so few companies injecting money on it, they get to dictate how things move. Red Hat is one of the main contributors, and they only seem to care about Gnome working on Wayland (as much as I don't like their direction, I can't really blame them for following it, it just sucks that I don't like the product they're developing). The landscape is extremely fragmented and everybody who is not on the Gnome garden will suffer a lot. I really wish some other non-Gnome-favoring company would find a reason to dump a lot more money into Wayland and help move it forward in the not-only-gnome-favorable path. This is not a thing that will move forward without full-time workers. X has always had a lot of paid people contributing to it. That is, if IBM doesn't decide to throw a bigger wrench at the problem.

pkulak 4y ago
What about all the portals built by Redhat that allow kde and wlroots to tap into screen recording, audio, and soon even key captures? I get that Redhat doesn't actively submit patches to wlroots, but they also seem to be making stuff as open as seems reasonable. As a Sway user, I haven't noticed anything that works on Gnome but not Sway, except for stuff like Zoom, which hasn't, until recently, used the portals.
- rektide 4y ago
  wlroots & kde both have their own xdg-desktop-portal-*[1][2]'s, which don't seem to be built by Red Hat. xdg-desktop-portal itself originates from Flatpak[3], which makes me think it's more like to related to Canonical/Ubuntu rather than being something RH drove. [1] https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32008412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32008412 (2 pts, 30 min ago) [2] https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde [3] https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal

superkuh 4y ago

Most linux software still uses gtk3 and the docs for gtk4 aren't even finished. Hopefully slating this for 5 will give GNOME the decade it needs to realize X11 isn't going away until wayland is actually at feature parity. And I'm fairly confident it still won't be in any one implementation because there'll be dozens of different waylands now and 10 years from now. Just like 10 years in the past.

aidenn0 4y ago
GNOME doesn't care if wayland is at feature parity. They can require it for GNOME by fiat. They also don't need to care about supporting multiple compositors; they can require all GNOME users to use theirs.
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  It's not really a "fiat". There just aren't any GNOME developers left that are interested in maintaining the X11 parts of the stack. The Mutter developers are actively working on making the remaining X11 parts optional. Xorg itself is not getting any new extensions, all feature work on display protocols relevant to Mutter is currently happening in Wayland extensions and in Mesa. The major problems left there that involve X are related to XWayland. The GTK developers already redesigned the whole client back end to match Wayland. The other pieces of GNOME have long since moved into protocol-agnostic dbus interfaces. What incentive do they have left to maintain X11 support? There just isn't much there besides legacy compatibility.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Perhaps "fiat" was too loaded of a term. What I mean to say is that, since GNOME is an integrated system, there is no particular need for it to depend on Wayland implementing some random feature that X11 has. On top of that, since so much of Wayland is implemented in the compositor, it's likely that Mutter can make up for any missing features in Wayland. Therefore, as you say, there's no incentive for the GNOME developers to support X11, and the devs are free to say "Use GNOME on wayland, implement an X11 backend for GNOME/GTK yourself, or don't use GNOME" which, in practice, boils down to "Use GNOME on Wayland, or don't use GNOME" and is, effectively, a fiat to use Wayland if you want to continue using newer versions of GNOME. I also didn't intend this to be judgemental; GNOME is almost certainly the most complete desktop environment for linux. I personally use KDE as my desktop, but most applications I use are not part of KDE (or even built using Qt). Conversely, a typical desktop user could probably get by using just GNOME applications (plus maybe libre-office for opening MS documents that can't be handled within GNOME). IMO a large part of what makes this possible is by being judicious in what is supported.

failuser 4y ago

If you want a picture of the future, imagine X11 stamping on a Linux user interface —forever.

spacemanmatt 4y ago
I think I still like that better than anything I recall from the past of X servers running on Windows or OSX.

pvorb 4y ago

I won't give Wayland another try until I absolutely have to. And I might even consider going back to Windows before doing so. Every attempt to do the switch (sometimes forced by bad decisions of distributions) broke essential functionality without any workarounds, so I had to switch back to X11 eventually. I expect this to happen again if I give it another try - be it 1 or 10 years from now. So I'm sorry, but Wayland is not for me.

drdo 4y ago
Do you have an example of something that does not work? I'm using Fedora 36 and everything that I can think of works well.
- vetinari 4y ago
  At this point, we are talking about spacebar heating (https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/)
  - pvorb 4y ago
    Possibly the situation is better today and it might be even better once GTK5 will make it to end users. But if Wayland folks think that having two external displays and screen sharing is an esoteric workflow, I know that my decision was correct.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      What gives you the impression they think that? There is quite a lot going on before your google meets displays a popup of what you want to share and the display manager initiating screen sharing. For what it worth, Wayland has really good externel screen support (mixed-DPI even), so it is likely just a not-yet-supported feature, nothing inherently problematic.
    - vetinari 4y ago
      > two external displays and screen sharing is an esoteric workflow that one works better with wayland than with x11. Especially if the monitors are different dpi.

mgbmtl 4y ago

It's funny how they made an article about 4 short comments between 2 devs. People sure like to hate on change. Rather odd for a forum about disruptive startups. Might be worth thinking about where Wayland was 5 years ago, and where it is now, and where it will be in 5-10 years. That's basically what the conversation was about.

spacemanmatt 4y ago
Pretty much agreed. And we should also be projecting Wayland's future on a non-linear basis. Lets of groundwork has gone into it, similar to pipewire, and that will create a tipping point for the project in terms of stability and feature delivery rate.
- viraptor 4y ago
  That's a weird comparison. The first time I heard about pipewire it replaced both pa and Jack for me without sacrificing anything and actually improved everything. And that was before it was picked up by distros. Wayland on the other hand is widely deployed and I still can't always use it for basic use cases like screen sharing.
  - mgbmtl 4y ago
    systemd then :) but such comparisons will always have shortcomings. For what it's worth, screensharing works fine for me. I use it with Zoom and Mattermost (webrtc). Are you on an old version? I'm on 1.18 I think (Debian 11) Screen-recording is still a bit cringe. The builtin Gnome tool is OK, but a bit clunky. I miss Kazam.
  - spacemanmatt 4y ago
    I'd argue pipewire is a much smaller scope and has had better collaboration from everyone involved. You got in when the distros quite reasonably made the switch on your behalf and it was not an especially difficult call for them. Wayland has a bit more baggage, bad actors in the video hardware/driver territory, etc. Distros are facing a way harder decision on Wayland to make on your behalf, especially as Wayland starts to support some use cases fully while still not hitting others.

low_tech_punk 4y ago

GTA 5 would never drop support for DirectX 11.

cowtools 4y ago
Maybe they will switch to DirectWay Land?

rvz 4y ago

And this is why Desktop Linux is a running joke with devs fighting with each other's solutions to a re-implementation of an old problem and they still can't do it right to the level of desktops like Windows, and macOS. The fragmentation and alternatives of alternatives mess of the Linux Desktop has turned it into a giant contraption full of inconsistency and tons of unnecessary in-fighting between a bunch of devs due to UNIX philosophy or a desktop that simply just works. It is not early days anymore and it has been over 20 years and the Linux Desktop still has the same problems already present today and is a solution in search of an (already solved) problem at this point. No wonder that explains why Google was so fed up with desktop Linux they decided to replace it with their own OS (Fuchsia).

kjeetgill 4y ago
Almost nothing you've said here is correct. The Unix philosophy has very little to do with desktop fragmentation and everything to do with the fact that unlike macos and windows: it's not that commercial an endeavor. A common employer is a main reason many work on someone else's ideas when they can just work on their own ideas. Even when there are commercialization efforts: investment and adoption circular. The challenges are much much bigger than just the desktop fragmentation. See: ChromeOS. Investment can solve these problems. Similarly, Fuchsia is a much bigger effort about the future of operating systems and not about just desktop environment quirkiness. Again, they have ChromeOS for that. Don't get me wrong, I agree this all hurts Linux adoption, and as a user I wish it were different.
- rvz 4y ago
  Everything I said is the brutal, hard, evergreen truth. > The Unix philosophy has very little to do with desktop fragmentation and everything to do with the fact that unlike macos and windows: it's not that commercial an endeavor. A common employer is a main reason many work on someone else's ideas when they can just work on their own ideas. It is part of the in-fighting, which contributes to the whole desktop fragmentation issues, distro forks and chaos around it and its frankly an unsolvable disaster. The whole debating between system components such as systemd vs init.d, X11 vs Wayland, Pulseaudio vs Portaudio vs Pipewire have further contributed to the alternatives of alternatives desktop fragmentation and it is a tug of war between UNIX philosophy greybeards and other devs attempting to solve the fragmentation for years. Due to this failure of consensus: No app developer can 'define Linux support' and cater to all desktop Linux users 100% of the time, unlike Windows, and macOS. > See: ChromeOS. Investment can solve these problems. Only for Google. They already have learned from the mistakes of these distros and are going to replace it with Fuchsia. ChromeOS is still a mostly closed-source system despite using a Linux kernel, just exactly like Android still is, which isn't the same thing as the chaos you see in many open-source full Linux distros. > Similarly, Fuchsia is a much bigger effort about the future of operating systems and not about just desktop environment quirkiness. Again, they have ChromeOS for that. Hence why Google is replacing ChromeOS with Fuchsia, which includes and avoids all of the above.

jklinger410 4y ago

Can't you just run the whole session on xwayland? lol

bitwize 4y ago

"X11 is dead, Summer. Gotta rip that band-aid off now; you'll thank me later."

rayiner 4y ago

I don't understand all of the hate around Wayland. X is fine for what it is, but Wayland enables the flicker-free, nicely-animated experience most users want from their desktops, and also better reflects how modern hardware works. GTK4 on Wayland is actually a pretty nice API to program with, which remedies a lot of warts in GTK/X11. Even Emacs runs X11-free these days: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure_gtk_branch_was_merged https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure.... What's so wrong with declaring that X11 support will be dropped years from now?

thriftwy 4y ago
I'm not even sure how to do anything with Wayland. I have kubuntu and at no point has it suggested Wayland to me. The stuff from comments about screen capture not working reliably does not inspire much confidence. I remember X11 taking decades to fix rough edges and surely don't want to go over it again. Much like IPv6, it seems to be real old now, still not adopted and not really working, definitely not hip anymore.
- zamalek 4y ago
  > capture not working properly This has changed. As a daily Wayland user, the only thing that Wayland can't do is networked sessions, and I have never needed that. > suggested Wayland Ubuntu slated it for default in 22.04, but reverted due to a bug. I expect them to try again during the next release. If you want to try it then it's typically selected in the login manager. > don't want to go over it again Or don't try it, the grandparent comment was talking about "hate" not "disinterest".
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
X isn't to blame for screen flicker. That's all Nvidia's fault. Every other video driver on Xorg works correctly. Every other X server works correctly. X is just a collection of protocols and data structures. It can run on top of anything. It isn't to blame for low level hardware issues from poorly implemented drivers.
- 4y ago

lizardactivist 4y ago

I've never understood why 'desktop' is such a difficult and heated topic in the Linux sphere. Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome etc. things that "just work", and if it does, why isn't everyone liking and using it?

Barrin92 4y ago
>Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome etc. things that "just work" that's pretty much what the latest Ubuntu LTS or Fedora release is. And I think most people are using it, but they're just silent about it. I think the linux community just has some uniquely vocal folks on the other end.
- jolmg 4y ago
  I think a large portion if not the majority of the Linux community is just one that prefers choice and customizability over being given whatever that "just works", but not exactly to one's preference. Loss of choice is a loss. For example, there may be users that use WMs like Blackbox, StumpWM, or Xmonad that they've heavily customized throughout many years, and now they're essentially being told that their setups will eventually be incompatible with the changing ecosystem. i3 users got lucky for getting a port (sway), but there are lots of other WMs, and lots of other related tools useful for customization like xdotool, perhaps not all portable to Wayland.
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    > For example, there may be users that use WMs like Blackbox, StumpWM, or Xmonad that they've heavily customized throughout many years, and now they're essentially being told that their setups will eventually be incompatible with the changing ecosystem. Yes. You got a wonderful set of tools as a result of all the work and time folks put into X. The problem is that the folks doing most of the lifting in this space right now, the ones still giving their free time and effort, have decided that they'd rather be developing Wayland (it's not all of them, X is still kicking, but it's a lot of them). You, as a user of the free software produced by real people putting in time and effort, absolutely don't get to bitch about "Loss of choice is a loss" when what you're really saying is "I'd like to force the people working on wayland to continue working on X, because it's beneficial to me".

seba_dos1 4y ago

The opposite of XWayland (a Wayland server that outputs to X11 windows) will be much easier to implement than XWayland itself and won't require integration in window manager, so that won't even be as disruptive as it sounds.

thompson1 4y ago

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