11 ms·

Wayland Core Protocol Is Tailored Only for Gnome and That’s Not a Good Thing

56 points by FreeFull 4y ago

79a6ed87 4y ago
I'm not surprised. Both Wayland and GNOME are pushed by Red Hat.
- thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
  Red Hat has been slowly becoming more like Microsoft used to be. I have to use RHEL at work and since RHEL 8 the desktop experience is just painful: GNOME 3 is the only desktop offered. Our IT team hates third-party repos, so EPEL and any chance at an alternative are right out. I tried to use GNOME 3, but I really do not understand what the designers were thinking and how they intend for it to work. How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? There are no buttons that seem to do this without using tweaks or extensions. When using two or more monitors, why does only one monitor switch to a different virtual desktop while the other does not? Trying to use GNOME 3 is frustrating and I would rather use pratically anything else (Windows, MacOS, KDE, CDE, Xfce, WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, etc.) because at least they would follow some of the last 40 years of desktop environment conventions that GNOME 3 seems to have completely discarded.
  - ricktdotorg 4y ago
    agree re: many of your gripes, but specifically re: > How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? i use Alt+X for this, mapped via Settings --> Keyboard --> Shortcuts --> Windows --> Hide Window
    - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
      Ok, but how do you do it with the mouse? This is GNOME, not ratposion WM (https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/). There should be a way to minimize using the mouse.
      - d_tr 4y ago
        Don't windows in GNOME have a minimize button by default? And then you use the overview to bring the window back if you want? Am I missing something?
        thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
        >> Don't windows in GNOME have a minimize button by default? And then you use the overview to bring the window back if you want? Am I missing something? No. By default there are no maximize and minimize buttons. They were explicitly removed: https://digitizor.com/gnome-3-maximize-minimize-buttons/ https://digitizor.com/gnome-3-maximize-minimize-buttons/ You can add them back with gsettings changes or "tweaks": https://trendoceans.com/how-to-get-minimize-and-maximize-button-in-gnome/ https://trendoceans.com/how-to-get-minimize-and-maximize-but...
      - imtringued 4y ago
        You right click on the title bar like windows.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    > IT team hates third-party repos Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this. Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL? I just switched from Pop OS to Fedora 36 on my laptop and am getting the hang of pure GNOME 3 quickly. Other than Guale not working for some reason, Vivaldi and terminal and python run just fine. Hotkeys are abundant.
    - 3836293648 4y ago
      Tweaks shouldn't exist and it should all be in control centre
      - unethical_ban 4y ago
        Agreed, really. Doing things like modifying system fonts should not be an obscure setting.
    - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
      >> Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this. Agreed, but I have little control over IT policies. Third-party repos are strictly prohibited unless there is a compelling reason and they are blessed by IT. >> Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL? Tweaks help, but it is still terrible compared to the customizations that GNOME 2 offered "in the box".
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      *Guake - I can't edit my comment.
  - sph 4y ago
    Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition. Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free.
    - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
      >> Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition. No, Red Hat is like Microsoft because they made the same mistakes with GNOME 3 that Microsoft made with Windows 8--they gave designers free reign to do whatever they wanted and did not listen to user feedback. The changes from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 were jarring enough for many users to abandon it (https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4-to-be-a-total-user-experience-design-failure/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...) and for the MATE fork of GNOME 2. Forcing those jarring changes on all users was a mistake: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fedora-16-gnome-3-review,3155-27.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fedora-16-gnome-3-revie... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8kn9t4/why_does_gnome_3_get_so_much_hate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8kn9t4/why_does_gnom... https://www.datamation.com/open-source/the-gnome-3-meltdown/ https://www.datamation.com/open-source/the-gnome-3-meltdown/ https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-people-hate-GNOME-3?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-people-hate-GNOME-3?sha... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869157 >> Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free. Probably not, but given the choice I would select KDE over GNOME 3 simply because it offers a more customizable user experience that does not require "tweaks" and "extensions" to get the desktop setup that some users want. What's next? Removing Emacs and Vim and only offering GNOME Text Editor? Supporting more text editors doesn't come for free.
- thrillgore 4y ago
  I stopped actively using GNOME long before 3.x was an idea. Xfce has remained consistent, performant, and beautiful. GNOME has become a victim of mismanagement, trends, and monoculture. Remember that Ubuntu spurned GNOME for a long time because they had their own monoculture issues.
csdvrx 4y ago
Maybe it's time to give up on Wayland and write something better? Just like how pipewire did all that pulseaudio was trying to achieve, and some more, while also fixing all the rough issues. Iteration seems to be the key to perfection
- euclaise 4y ago
  Arcan has been in works since even before Wayland iirc, but frankly nothing has a chance without the big-name support that wayland gets
- amluto 4y ago
  Pipewire is compatible with the Pulseaudio protocol, so Pulseaudio clients work on Pipewire. In contrast, Wayland is a protocol. A Wayland-compatible compositor that also speaks something else would still be a Wayland compositor. I think the fact that Wayland isn’t a program is a big part of the problem. The dominant Wayland compositor in use is gnome-shell, and it’s obviously extremely GNOME centric. With X11, the interaction between clients and gnome-shell was intermediated by Xorg, so, if gnome-shell wanted to support Xorg (which it did), it had to support relevant features of Xorg. Xorg supported server side decorations, so gnome-shell did too. But gnome-shell as a Wayland compositor supports whatever set of features it likes, and clients that require additional features don’t work on GNOME, so they largely don’t get written, so there is little pressure on gnome-shell to support them. A Wayland competitor won’t help here. An alternate Wayland server that sits in front of gnome-shell might, but it would be a mess. Ultimately the best solution would be to break GNOME’s mindshare dominance. If enough users demanded something better/different, then IT departments and sales would notice, and GNOME would need to either catch up or get left behind.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  I’ve never had any real issues with wayland. It supports high DPI, fractional scaling, and high refresh rates very well — couldn’t say the same about X! All of my struggles with wayland were adoption. It’s a struggle to force every older electron app to use wayland via CLI flags because the authors, even big ones, haven’t bothered. I guess there are some unsupported things — like screen control. (If you wanted to control another person’s screen over a video call, it’s unsupported in wayland.) But it also actually sandboxes a lot of things which should be (like screen control!) Adoption would be a problem with a different system as well, unless it was fully compatible with X. Which defeats at least part of the problem wayland solves.
EddieDante 4y ago
I think this is a good thing. The more tightly coupled with GNOME Wayland becomes, the more useless it will be for everybody else. X11 will remain relevant and useful for everybody who thinks the GNOME environment is crap.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  For x11 to survive it needs people motivated to maintain it
  - EddieDante 4y ago
    If Wayland is useless without GNOME, that's reason enough to maintain it.
    - distances 4y ago
      What do you mean? Wayland obviously isn't useless without GNOME.
      - EddieDante 4y ago
        On my Thinkpad T60, Wayland is useless with and without GNOME. It just doesn't work, and nobody on the project gives a shit. So, instead of shelling out for a new computer when the one I have works fine, I stick with X11. Fuck Wayland.
        brnt 4y ago
        Everytime I ask for help with broken Wayland (which it is OOB across hardware and distros), I'm told it can only be me, because it works for some. Apparently Wayland is worth shilling over for some. Fortunately Xorg works splendidly.
        bitwize 4y ago
        Forces far greater than you have decided that Wayland is the go-forward solution. Therefore, you will live in the pod, eat the bugs, and use the compositor because all the maintenance and advancement effort is behind Wayland.
majewsky 4y ago
The core protocol is minimal because it considers not only PCs and laptops as a target, but also smartphones and tablets (where supporting xdg-shell is usually not desired because it breaks the UI paradigm), IoT and embedded usecases. In particular, IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) was a hot area that every hardware vendor was trying to get into at the time (around 2010), including companies like Intel that contributed to the Wayland spec. Source: I was active in KDE development around the time when the Wayland core protocol was defined, and followed the discussions on the side lines.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Then there should have been a set of core protocols, so for example, something like core-desktop. Going for the bare minimum just to be super flexible and support desktops, phones, tablets, fridges and graphics cards with RGB lighting is the typical overthinking that hurts everyone and slows adoption. Wayland was conceived in 2008, and has had paid full time devs working on it. For that, the current state is pretty pathetic.
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    The xdg-shell protocol is a sort of core desktop protocol. It has an opinion about everyone's favorite Wayland topic (server-side decorations), and if you have a different opinion, you need to use the xdg-decoration-unstable-v1 (as it still seems to be called) protocol. Fortunately, it seems like the Wayland desktop scene is converging on that one now. There are still some missing pieces, but the situation isn't disastrous anymore.
jrm4 4y ago
Maybe I'm old, but it's just stunning to me how many pro Wayland people seem to strongly miss this general point. Whatever good things Wayland's been up to, it's been historically dismissive if not outright hostile to backward compatibility and integration, and that's not acceptable. I keep hearing, well it's what the old X people want, and I don't care. Similarly, don't come with the goofy "It's open source so you don't have the right to criticize." False false false. That wrongly implies it's a bunch of plucky happy-go-lucky volunteers doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Nope. It's companies with agendas and they need to do better.
- bitwize 4y ago
  I can't say whether Wayland was specifically designed for GNOME or not. There seems to be evidence that it was also designed for the use cases of mobile devices and embedded applications like in-car entertainment systems. (Let's leave aside the fact that Nokia designed a beautiful mobile interface built on X, in-plane entertainment systems have been running on Linux and X for over a decade, and X servers were historically implemented on 286 hardware for use as dedicated X terminals.) What I can say is Wayland was developed and promoted with a GNOME developer mentality, which is a combination of: * CADT (jwz dot org slash doc slash cadt dot html) * What you're using sucks! Here, adopt my shiny new thing to make your environment not suck! (literally dates back to GNOME's inception, see: https://qodsec.blogspot.com/2004/06/unix-lets-make-unix-not-suck.html https://qodsec.blogspot.com/2004/06/unix-lets-make-unix-not-... ) * We've built a solution for what we have determined to be the common use case. Why should we care about your obscure, niche use case that absolutely nobody (that matters) uses? With a heaping side of "it's from Red Hat, so it's the standard" and "it's open source so you don't have the right to criticize". Basically, what happens when young, eager developers are given the opportunity to implement and potentially standardize core desktop features (and thus build what they think is "a better Windows" or "a better Mac") but don't have the advantage of experience of previous software designs in the Unix/Linux workstation space and their benefits and drawbacks. If people keep staying on X11, I suspect that the next phase will be "refusal to adopt Wayland is a strong indicator of racism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia".
  - 4y ago
vfclists 4y ago
Sounds like https://github.com/thestinger/termite https://github.com/thestinger/termite, the vte-ng issue, the https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658 issue which goes as far back as https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78291 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78291. Yes that is 2002, over 20 years old. I guess GNOME never stops being GNOME. Isn't Redhat IBM now?
- vfclists 4y ago
from 4y ago
Wayland's protocol is basically an isolation prison that requires "big DE's" and destroys choice. The protocol moves everything into one central place called the "compositor.” This machinery must provide: - the window manager - the hotkey daemon - the compositing effects - the windowing server - screen reading tools - screenshots - screen casting magnifying glass tools global dictionary tools etc etc etc everything. Wayland's design makes it impossible to write a portable hotkey daemon for instance. Supposedly for "security reasons.” Wayland is a GNOME dev's dream, it kills the ability of people to control their own system. If you're actually excited for Wayland you either thoroughly misunderstand what it brings and just like it because it's new or you're a GNOME-lover who hates customization. And don’t get me started on the security argument. If someone has arbitrary code execution on your machine, you’re already toast. I’ve yet to see an example of malware that can use xlib to read keyboard inputs on X (the supposed vulnerability Wayland was made to stop) but can’t just write some LD_PRELOAD hook to .profile or bashrc to make the compositor keylog on Wayland too. Is there a real world example where this supposedly great isolation that is easily circumventable actually prevented any security issue? None of this is to say that X.org isn’t the accumulation of 30 years of cruft and technical debt but I don’t think Wayland is the right alternative.
- tadfisher 4y ago
  The protocol says nothing about the compositor implementation, because it is a protocol. X11 is the same way; ICCCM and EWMH are protocols that use X11 as an IPC mechanism. There is nothing stopping you from writing a multi-process compositor swarm with all the traditional pieces broken out using an IPC channel of your choice. The fact is, given that a compositor must necessarily handle display and input, it is much more convenient (and secure) to centralize display and input dispatch in a single process. This is also how X11 works, except it dispatches all display and output to any process that asks nicely.
- _abox 4y ago
  But simple window managers for Wayland exist. Like sway (i3 clone for Wayland) Personally I also still use X11. Mainly because KDE on Wayland is currently broken on FreeBSD. And I'm not in a hurry anyway.
mariusor 4y ago
I can't really tell for sure, but it seems the author makes the confusion that the authors of the Wayland protocol are GNOME developers. That, of course, is not true. Wayland has it's origins in members of the X11 developer team, and AFAIR Kristian Høgsberg is the sole author of the original protocol spec. At present the protocols and extensions are discussed and merged by a group that, as far as I know, includes GNOME developers, but they are not in majority nor can they do as they wish overruling the other stake holders (wlroots, KDE, etc). Now, to the main premise of the article: plenty of applications (at present) make use of client decorations vs. compositor decorations, and it can be easily experienced with Chrom[e|ium] in sway, by enabling/disabling "Use system title bar and borders". I think the whole piece is a misinformed piece that builds on top of a faulty premise, and the author didn't bother to do minimal research before putting words to paper. I would expect more judgement on the part of the HN crowd instead of accepting it on the idea that conforms their biases towards Wayland being somehow "bad".
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It’s beyond misinformation now. These same incorrect statements get made again and again. It’s an actively malicious campaign from a group of trolls spreading fud.

56 points by FreeFull 4y ago

79a6ed87 4y ago

I'm not surprised. Both Wayland and GNOME are pushed by Red Hat.

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
Red Hat has been slowly becoming more like Microsoft used to be. I have to use RHEL at work and since RHEL 8 the desktop experience is just painful: GNOME 3 is the only desktop offered. Our IT team hates third-party repos, so EPEL and any chance at an alternative are right out. I tried to use GNOME 3, but I really do not understand what the designers were thinking and how they intend for it to work. How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? There are no buttons that seem to do this without using tweaks or extensions. When using two or more monitors, why does only one monitor switch to a different virtual desktop while the other does not? Trying to use GNOME 3 is frustrating and I would rather use pratically anything else (Windows, MacOS, KDE, CDE, Xfce, WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, etc.) because at least they would follow some of the last 40 years of desktop environment conventions that GNOME 3 seems to have completely discarded.
- ricktdotorg 4y ago
  agree re: many of your gripes, but specifically re: > How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? i use Alt+X for this, mapped via Settings --> Keyboard --> Shortcuts --> Windows --> Hide Window
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    Ok, but how do you do it with the mouse? This is GNOME, not ratposion WM (https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/). There should be a way to minimize using the mouse.
    - d_tr 4y ago
      Don't windows in GNOME have a minimize button by default? And then you use the overview to bring the window back if you want? Am I missing something?
      - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
        >> Don't windows in GNOME have a minimize button by default? And then you use the overview to bring the window back if you want? Am I missing something? No. By default there are no maximize and minimize buttons. They were explicitly removed: https://digitizor.com/gnome-3-maximize-minimize-buttons/ https://digitizor.com/gnome-3-maximize-minimize-buttons/ You can add them back with gsettings changes or "tweaks": https://trendoceans.com/how-to-get-minimize-and-maximize-button-in-gnome/ https://trendoceans.com/how-to-get-minimize-and-maximize-but...
    - imtringued 4y ago
      You right click on the title bar like windows.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  > IT team hates third-party repos Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this. Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL? I just switched from Pop OS to Fedora 36 on my laptop and am getting the hang of pure GNOME 3 quickly. Other than Guale not working for some reason, Vivaldi and terminal and python run just fine. Hotkeys are abundant.
  - 3836293648 4y ago
    Tweaks shouldn't exist and it should all be in control centre
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      Agreed, really. Doing things like modifying system fonts should not be an obscure setting.
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    >> Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this. Agreed, but I have little control over IT policies. Third-party repos are strictly prohibited unless there is a compelling reason and they are blessed by IT. >> Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL? Tweaks help, but it is still terrible compared to the customizations that GNOME 2 offered "in the box".
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    *Guake - I can't edit my comment.
- sph 4y ago
  Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition. Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free.
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    >> Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition. No, Red Hat is like Microsoft because they made the same mistakes with GNOME 3 that Microsoft made with Windows 8--they gave designers free reign to do whatever they wanted and did not listen to user feedback. The changes from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 were jarring enough for many users to abandon it (https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4-to-be-a-total-user-experience-design-failure/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...) and for the MATE fork of GNOME 2. Forcing those jarring changes on all users was a mistake: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fedora-16-gnome-3-review,3155-27.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fedora-16-gnome-3-revie... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8kn9t4/why_does_gnome_3_get_so_much_hate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8kn9t4/why_does_gnom... https://www.datamation.com/open-source/the-gnome-3-meltdown/ https://www.datamation.com/open-source/the-gnome-3-meltdown/ https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-people-hate-GNOME-3?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-people-hate-GNOME-3?sha... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869157 >> Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free. Probably not, but given the choice I would select KDE over GNOME 3 simply because it offers a more customizable user experience that does not require "tweaks" and "extensions" to get the desktop setup that some users want. What's next? Removing Emacs and Vim and only offering GNOME Text Editor? Supporting more text editors doesn't come for free.
thrillgore 4y ago
I stopped actively using GNOME long before 3.x was an idea. Xfce has remained consistent, performant, and beautiful. GNOME has become a victim of mismanagement, trends, and monoculture. Remember that Ubuntu spurned GNOME for a long time because they had their own monoculture issues.

csdvrx 4y ago

Maybe it's time to give up on Wayland and write something better? Just like how pipewire did all that pulseaudio was trying to achieve, and some more, while also fixing all the rough issues. Iteration seems to be the key to perfection

euclaise 4y ago
Arcan has been in works since even before Wayland iirc, but frankly nothing has a chance without the big-name support that wayland gets
amluto 4y ago
Pipewire is compatible with the Pulseaudio protocol, so Pulseaudio clients work on Pipewire. In contrast, Wayland is a protocol. A Wayland-compatible compositor that also speaks something else would still be a Wayland compositor. I think the fact that Wayland isn’t a program is a big part of the problem. The dominant Wayland compositor in use is gnome-shell, and it’s obviously extremely GNOME centric. With X11, the interaction between clients and gnome-shell was intermediated by Xorg, so, if gnome-shell wanted to support Xorg (which it did), it had to support relevant features of Xorg. Xorg supported server side decorations, so gnome-shell did too. But gnome-shell as a Wayland compositor supports whatever set of features it likes, and clients that require additional features don’t work on GNOME, so they largely don’t get written, so there is little pressure on gnome-shell to support them. A Wayland competitor won’t help here. An alternate Wayland server that sits in front of gnome-shell might, but it would be a mess. Ultimately the best solution would be to break GNOME’s mindshare dominance. If enough users demanded something better/different, then IT departments and sales would notice, and GNOME would need to either catch up or get left behind.
noahtallen 4y ago
I’ve never had any real issues with wayland. It supports high DPI, fractional scaling, and high refresh rates very well — couldn’t say the same about X! All of my struggles with wayland were adoption. It’s a struggle to force every older electron app to use wayland via CLI flags because the authors, even big ones, haven’t bothered. I guess there are some unsupported things — like screen control. (If you wanted to control another person’s screen over a video call, it’s unsupported in wayland.) But it also actually sandboxes a lot of things which should be (like screen control!) Adoption would be a problem with a different system as well, unless it was fully compatible with X. Which defeats at least part of the problem wayland solves.

EddieDante 4y ago

I think this is a good thing. The more tightly coupled with GNOME Wayland becomes, the more useless it will be for everybody else. X11 will remain relevant and useful for everybody who thinks the GNOME environment is crap.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
For x11 to survive it needs people motivated to maintain it
- EddieDante 4y ago
  If Wayland is useless without GNOME, that's reason enough to maintain it.
  - distances 4y ago
    What do you mean? Wayland obviously isn't useless without GNOME.
    - EddieDante 4y ago
      On my Thinkpad T60, Wayland is useless with and without GNOME. It just doesn't work, and nobody on the project gives a shit. So, instead of shelling out for a new computer when the one I have works fine, I stick with X11. Fuck Wayland.
      - brnt 4y ago
        Everytime I ask for help with broken Wayland (which it is OOB across hardware and distros), I'm told it can only be me, because it works for some. Apparently Wayland is worth shilling over for some. Fortunately Xorg works splendidly.
        bitwize 4y ago
        Forces far greater than you have decided that Wayland is the go-forward solution. Therefore, you will live in the pod, eat the bugs, and use the compositor because all the maintenance and advancement effort is behind Wayland.

majewsky 4y ago

The core protocol is minimal because it considers not only PCs and laptops as a target, but also smartphones and tablets (where supporting xdg-shell is usually not desired because it breaks the UI paradigm), IoT and embedded usecases. In particular, IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) was a hot area that every hardware vendor was trying to get into at the time (around 2010), including companies like Intel that contributed to the Wayland spec. Source: I was active in KDE development around the time when the Wayland core protocol was defined, and followed the discussions on the side lines.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
Then there should have been a set of core protocols, so for example, something like core-desktop. Going for the bare minimum just to be super flexible and support desktops, phones, tablets, fridges and graphics cards with RGB lighting is the typical overthinking that hurts everyone and slows adoption. Wayland was conceived in 2008, and has had paid full time devs working on it. For that, the current state is pretty pathetic.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  The xdg-shell protocol is a sort of core desktop protocol. It has an opinion about everyone's favorite Wayland topic (server-side decorations), and if you have a different opinion, you need to use the xdg-decoration-unstable-v1 (as it still seems to be called) protocol. Fortunately, it seems like the Wayland desktop scene is converging on that one now. There are still some missing pieces, but the situation isn't disastrous anymore.

jrm4 4y ago

Maybe I'm old, but it's just stunning to me how many pro Wayland people seem to strongly miss this general point. Whatever good things Wayland's been up to, it's been historically dismissive if not outright hostile to backward compatibility and integration, and that's not acceptable. I keep hearing, well it's what the old X people want, and I don't care. Similarly, don't come with the goofy "It's open source so you don't have the right to criticize." False false false. That wrongly implies it's a bunch of plucky happy-go-lucky volunteers doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Nope. It's companies with agendas and they need to do better.

bitwize 4y ago
I can't say whether Wayland was specifically designed for GNOME or not. There seems to be evidence that it was also designed for the use cases of mobile devices and embedded applications like in-car entertainment systems. (Let's leave aside the fact that Nokia designed a beautiful mobile interface built on X, in-plane entertainment systems have been running on Linux and X for over a decade, and X servers were historically implemented on 286 hardware for use as dedicated X terminals.) What I can say is Wayland was developed and promoted with a GNOME developer mentality, which is a combination of: * CADT (jwz dot org slash doc slash cadt dot html) * What you're using sucks! Here, adopt my shiny new thing to make your environment not suck! (literally dates back to GNOME's inception, see: https://qodsec.blogspot.com/2004/06/unix-lets-make-unix-not-suck.html https://qodsec.blogspot.com/2004/06/unix-lets-make-unix-not-... ) * We've built a solution for what we have determined to be the common use case. Why should we care about your obscure, niche use case that absolutely nobody (that matters) uses? With a heaping side of "it's from Red Hat, so it's the standard" and "it's open source so you don't have the right to criticize". Basically, what happens when young, eager developers are given the opportunity to implement and potentially standardize core desktop features (and thus build what they think is "a better Windows" or "a better Mac") but don't have the advantage of experience of previous software designs in the Unix/Linux workstation space and their benefits and drawbacks. If people keep staying on X11, I suspect that the next phase will be "refusal to adopt Wayland is a strong indicator of racism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia".
- 4y ago

vfclists 4y ago

Sounds like https://github.com/thestinger/termite https://github.com/thestinger/termite, the vte-ng issue, the https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658 issue which goes as far back as https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78291 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78291. Yes that is 2002, over 20 years old. I guess GNOME never stops being GNOME. Isn't Redhat IBM now?

vfclists 4y ago

from 4y ago

Wayland's protocol is basically an isolation prison that requires "big DE's" and destroys choice. The protocol moves everything into one central place called the "compositor.” This machinery must provide: - the window manager - the hotkey daemon - the compositing effects - the windowing server - screen reading tools - screenshots - screen casting magnifying glass tools global dictionary tools etc etc etc everything. Wayland's design makes it impossible to write a portable hotkey daemon for instance. Supposedly for "security reasons.” Wayland is a GNOME dev's dream, it kills the ability of people to control their own system. If you're actually excited for Wayland you either thoroughly misunderstand what it brings and just like it because it's new or you're a GNOME-lover who hates customization. And don’t get me started on the security argument. If someone has arbitrary code execution on your machine, you’re already toast. I’ve yet to see an example of malware that can use xlib to read keyboard inputs on X (the supposed vulnerability Wayland was made to stop) but can’t just write some LD_PRELOAD hook to .profile or bashrc to make the compositor keylog on Wayland too. Is there a real world example where this supposedly great isolation that is easily circumventable actually prevented any security issue? None of this is to say that X.org isn’t the accumulation of 30 years of cruft and technical debt but I don’t think Wayland is the right alternative.

tadfisher 4y ago
The protocol says nothing about the compositor implementation, because it is a protocol. X11 is the same way; ICCCM and EWMH are protocols that use X11 as an IPC mechanism. There is nothing stopping you from writing a multi-process compositor swarm with all the traditional pieces broken out using an IPC channel of your choice. The fact is, given that a compositor must necessarily handle display and input, it is much more convenient (and secure) to centralize display and input dispatch in a single process. This is also how X11 works, except it dispatches all display and output to any process that asks nicely.
_abox 4y ago
But simple window managers for Wayland exist. Like sway (i3 clone for Wayland) Personally I also still use X11. Mainly because KDE on Wayland is currently broken on FreeBSD. And I'm not in a hurry anyway.

mariusor 4y ago

I can't really tell for sure, but it seems the author makes the confusion that the authors of the Wayland protocol are GNOME developers. That, of course, is not true. Wayland has it's origins in members of the X11 developer team, and AFAIR Kristian Høgsberg is the sole author of the original protocol spec. At present the protocols and extensions are discussed and merged by a group that, as far as I know, includes GNOME developers, but they are not in majority nor can they do as they wish overruling the other stake holders (wlroots, KDE, etc). Now, to the main premise of the article: plenty of applications (at present) make use of client decorations vs. compositor decorations, and it can be easily experienced with Chrom[e|ium] in sway, by enabling/disabling "Use system title bar and borders". I think the whole piece is a misinformed piece that builds on top of a faulty premise, and the author didn't bother to do minimal research before putting words to paper. I would expect more judgement on the part of the HN crowd instead of accepting it on the idea that conforms their biases towards Wayland being somehow "bad".

Gigachad 4y ago
It’s beyond misinformation now. These same incorrect statements get made again and again. It’s an actively malicious campaign from a group of trolls spreading fud.