5 ms·

In terms of usability - definitely. But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses VS X11 is unmaintainable legacy full

In terms of usability - definitely. But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses VS X11 is unmaintainable legacy full of security bugs. 20 years later IPv4 is still dominant, Wayland is still unusable and X11 just works.

minitech 4y ago
> Wayland is still unusable Wait, what have I been doing my work on then? Someone should inform Ubuntu and Fedora, too. Who knew it hasn’t been possible to use the most popular Linux distro out of the box for two years?
- oleg_antonyan 4y ago
  YMMV. When it reaches the level of X11 that "just works for everyone without preconditions" it will become usable in my coordinate system
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    X11 is not usable for everybody without preconditions though.
    - rekoil 4y ago
      Exactly, there's hundreds of lines of illegible X configuration for every such "just works" setup. There's a difference between "the community has learned to deal with it" and "just works".
    - kaba0 4y ago
      I honestly don’t get people, like were these people just extremely lucky and never had to tweak anything? Like, I remember times when I had to blindly log into my user and try to fix my setup from there, purely by muscle memory.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        > I honestly don’t get people, like were these people just extremely lucky and never had to tweak anything? Yeah, that's about how I feel about Wayland. I'm not sure quite why there are two groups of people with such wildly different experiences talking past each other, but I suspect it comes down to what each user wants the software to do and what hardware they're running on.
  - saturn_vk 4y ago
    I remember in the early 2000s still needing to write to a config file to get X to work on my desktops at the time. Was it 30 years old at that time? I've been running Wayland crash free for a few years already, without the need to touch a single config file. Does that mean it reached better usability at least twice as fast compared to X?
    - messe 4y ago
      I remember having to tweak Xorg.conf in the late 00s. The X11 xkcd[1] is from 2011. [1]: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/
sgjohnson 4y ago
> But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses. It’s not an unfulfilled promise. We’re out of IPv4 addresses and have been for almost a decade. NAT444444444444444444444 is not the solution.
- ddtaylor 4y ago
  Sure, but the end result is that nobody can host a service with an ipv4 address only. You would be missing out on the majority of your audience.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    You absolutely can. I’m single stacking IPv6 on my fresh hetzner box. Cloudflare in front of web services and it just works(tm). For everything else - Argo can do arbitrary TCP (requires cloudflared though) and then you can start bugging your ISP about the very real need for IPv6.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > Cloudflare in front of web services and it just works(tm). Well... yeah? That's adding support for both stacks; just because you farmed it out to a middle-man doesn't mean that it's not there.
      - sgjohnson 4y ago
        > Well... yeah? That's adding support for both stacks; just because you farmed it out to a middle-man doesn't mean that it's not there. Not strictly true. It means that you only have to worry about IPv6 addresses in Layer 7, and you can forget about layers 2 and 3 altogether. And Layer 7 isn’t a problem for people who should be deploying IPv6 right now because https://ipv6bingo.com/ https://ipv6bingo.com/
- oleg_antonyan 4y ago
  Well, most providers worldwide still use IPv4 which means that cost of switching to IPv6 is higher than cost of maintaining workarounds for 10 years, and who knows, maybe it will be the same for another 10 years
fsh 4y ago
X11 cannot handle the average user connecting an average laptop to an average external monitor (no usable per-screen scaling). Maybe this was good enough in the 80s, but today it is seriously holding back the platform.
- mnd999 4y ago
  This is my situation. I use sway for this reason and it’s just about okay if you’re not on Nvidia. Screen sharing is the main gripe, it’s a pain to configure, involves a lot of different bits of software which have to be orchestrated and none of them are mature enough not to break occasionally in an unexpected fashion.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Sigh. X11 actually can. Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays. But a lot of Linux programs (especially GTK ones) will flat out assume the specified monitor PPIs are just wrong and will use 96 PPI. Plus with the way modern multi-monitor usage works with X11 by faking one giant single screen that doesn't work anymore. But when it works, it works. But even with that it's STILL possible with the right setup using xrandr where you essentially render at a higher res and then downscale. Ubuntu's X11 version of Gnome has had this out of the box since I think 20.04 and it works very well. IIRC upstream Gnome refused it because that's what Wayland is supposed to do...
  - vetinari 4y ago
    > Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays Yes and no. X11 screens could have different resolutions, color modes and pixel density, but windows could not span over multiple screens, or moved from one screen to another. The only way the user/the application could move window to a different screen would be to open a new connection to the screen (denoted by that familiar DISPLAY:0.x environment variable) and recreate all the resources there. There was exactly one application that was capable of doing that at runtime (XEmacs). For all the others it meant restarting the application with a new DISPLAY env var. Hence Xinerama. It joined all the different physical displays into a single screen, which allowed to move windows around, but came with limitations, like the same color modes or DPI for all displays -- since it was single screen logically.
trissylegs 4y ago
> YMMV. When it reaches the level of X11 that "just works for everyone without preconditions" it will become usable in my coordinate system I don't think X11 ever "just worked" for me. Every computer I installed Linux on had X11 problems. The XKCD about Xorg.conf was very relatable back then: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/
deleted 4y ago
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minitech 4y ago

> Wayland is still unusable Wait, what have I been doing my work on then? Someone should inform Ubuntu and Fedora, too. Who knew it hasn’t been possible to use the most popular Linux distro out of the box for two years?

oleg_antonyan 4y ago
YMMV. When it reaches the level of X11 that "just works for everyone without preconditions" it will become usable in my coordinate system
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  X11 is not usable for everybody without preconditions though.
  - rekoil 4y ago
    Exactly, there's hundreds of lines of illegible X configuration for every such "just works" setup. There's a difference between "the community has learned to deal with it" and "just works".
  - kaba0 4y ago
    I honestly don’t get people, like were these people just extremely lucky and never had to tweak anything? Like, I remember times when I had to blindly log into my user and try to fix my setup from there, purely by muscle memory.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > I honestly don’t get people, like were these people just extremely lucky and never had to tweak anything? Yeah, that's about how I feel about Wayland. I'm not sure quite why there are two groups of people with such wildly different experiences talking past each other, but I suspect it comes down to what each user wants the software to do and what hardware they're running on.
- saturn_vk 4y ago
  I remember in the early 2000s still needing to write to a config file to get X to work on my desktops at the time. Was it 30 years old at that time? I've been running Wayland crash free for a few years already, without the need to touch a single config file. Does that mean it reached better usability at least twice as fast compared to X?
  - messe 4y ago
    I remember having to tweak Xorg.conf in the late 00s. The X11 xkcd[1] is from 2011. [1]: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/

sgjohnson 4y ago

> But it's built on top of similar unfulfilled promise: we're running out IPv4 addresses. It’s not an unfulfilled promise. We’re out of IPv4 addresses and have been for almost a decade. NAT444444444444444444444 is not the solution.

ddtaylor 4y ago
Sure, but the end result is that nobody can host a service with an ipv4 address only. You would be missing out on the majority of your audience.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  You absolutely can. I’m single stacking IPv6 on my fresh hetzner box. Cloudflare in front of web services and it just works(tm). For everything else - Argo can do arbitrary TCP (requires cloudflared though) and then you can start bugging your ISP about the very real need for IPv6.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > Cloudflare in front of web services and it just works(tm). Well... yeah? That's adding support for both stacks; just because you farmed it out to a middle-man doesn't mean that it's not there.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      > Well... yeah? That's adding support for both stacks; just because you farmed it out to a middle-man doesn't mean that it's not there. Not strictly true. It means that you only have to worry about IPv6 addresses in Layer 7, and you can forget about layers 2 and 3 altogether. And Layer 7 isn’t a problem for people who should be deploying IPv6 right now because https://ipv6bingo.com/ https://ipv6bingo.com/
oleg_antonyan 4y ago
Well, most providers worldwide still use IPv4 which means that cost of switching to IPv6 is higher than cost of maintaining workarounds for 10 years, and who knows, maybe it will be the same for another 10 years

fsh 4y ago

X11 cannot handle the average user connecting an average laptop to an average external monitor (no usable per-screen scaling). Maybe this was good enough in the 80s, but today it is seriously holding back the platform.

mnd999 4y ago
This is my situation. I use sway for this reason and it’s just about okay if you’re not on Nvidia. Screen sharing is the main gripe, it’s a pain to configure, involves a lot of different bits of software which have to be orchestrated and none of them are mature enough not to break occasionally in an unexpected fashion.
goosedragons 4y ago
Sigh. X11 actually can. Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays. But a lot of Linux programs (especially GTK ones) will flat out assume the specified monitor PPIs are just wrong and will use 96 PPI. Plus with the way modern multi-monitor usage works with X11 by faking one giant single screen that doesn't work anymore. But when it works, it works. But even with that it's STILL possible with the right setup using xrandr where you essentially render at a higher res and then downscale. Ubuntu's X11 version of Gnome has had this out of the box since I think 20.04 and it works very well. IIRC upstream Gnome refused it because that's what Wayland is supposed to do...
- vetinari 4y ago
  > Even in its original release it supported different PPIs for different displays Yes and no. X11 screens could have different resolutions, color modes and pixel density, but windows could not span over multiple screens, or moved from one screen to another. The only way the user/the application could move window to a different screen would be to open a new connection to the screen (denoted by that familiar DISPLAY:0.x environment variable) and recreate all the resources there. There was exactly one application that was capable of doing that at runtime (XEmacs). For all the others it meant restarting the application with a new DISPLAY env var. Hence Xinerama. It joined all the different physical displays into a single screen, which allowed to move windows around, but came with limitations, like the same color modes or DPI for all displays -- since it was single screen logically.

trissylegs 4y ago

> YMMV. When it reaches the level of X11 that "just works for everyone without preconditions" it will become usable in my coordinate system I don't think X11 ever "just worked" for me. Every computer I installed Linux on had X11 problems. The XKCD about Xorg.conf was very relatable back then: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/

deleted 4y ago

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