7 ms·

The choices of architecture seem to reflect different priorities, there are things that the Wayland architecture does better than X and vice versa, aren't there

The choices of architecture seem to reflect different priorities, there are things that the Wayland architecture does better than X and vice versa, aren't there? Hard to say X11 is ahead architecturally if you pick features that Wayland may not consider important. I've seen commentary from people who have worked intimately on both protocols and implementations of both who consider Wayland to have the better architecture.

vetinari 4y ago
> I've seen commentary from people who have worked intimately on both protocols and implementations of both who consider Wayland to have the better architecture. For those interested in details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ
- sprash 4y ago
  Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3. Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works on Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11. This is not a neutral source.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    > Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3 Not true. > Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works an Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11. Maybe his employer works on Wayland because there are no X11 jobs? > This is not a neutral source. He has experience with both, and he presents his arguments.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Right? I really feel like not enough attention is paid to the question of: Who is paid to work on "the successor to X" and what influences are at work there? Seems to me that would be an obvious place to look for "why Wayland sucks," given that unfortunately, "paid" sometimes leads one to "exclusivity."
    - jrm4 4y ago
      Seriously, if you downvoted this without replying, you're a coward. At LEAST answer the question. Maybe I'm wrong?
- destructionator 4y ago
  This link comes up in literally every Wayland thread and it is even more bullshit now than it was in 2013 when it was first posted (and it was bullshit then too). It is titled "the real story" but it is quite the opposite. A few key points: 1) he laughs at how X has a bunch of extensions. https://wayland.app/protocols/ https://wayland.app/protocols/ hypocrites much. In 2013, since it was completely unusable, it probably didn't have many. But turns out real world use leads to "useless" features being reimplemented. 2) he complains about how X.org has broad hardware compatibility. As if that's a bad thing. Meanwhile wayland, even now it still doesn't work reliably on half the graphics chips on the market. 3) It complains that certain X features are not fully network transparent. True, but most are and you can detect at runtime and gracefully degrade. Wayland "fixes" this by just dropping the whole feature. 4) it flat-out lies saying the X server does nothing yet it is so much hard to maintain code. The core X protocol provides backward compatibility and is rock solid (and really easy to impelment from scratch btw, someone did it in Javascript for a tutorial for crying out loud). Meanwhile the Wayland compositor keeps accumulating everything because of point 1. Need a screenshot? Add it it the compositor. Need a hotkey? Add it to the compositor. Need drag and drop? Add it to the compositor. Need a notification icon? Add it to the compositor. In X, all those are peer to peer. Graphics are actually a relatively small part of a graphical user interface, something Wayland is still slow to learn. 5) He complains that certain applications are written inefficiently with blocking calls which is inefficient over a network connection. Wayland's calls are ALL blocking and just has no network connection. 6) Complains that X may draw things unnecessarily. Indeed... but there's an extension to disable that. Easy fix. Wayland even uses the same drivers!
  - vetinari 4y ago
    1) no, he complains that X11 has a big core and then extensions. Extensions are fine, but they were unable to kick out parts of the core, because it is the core and something somewhere assumes it is there. So they had to maintain it, despite not being used in practice, except by that little something that nobody can point their fingers at. 2) he talks about obsolete hardware. There's no really a point to support s3 trio, at the expense of support for modern hardware, which works ink wastly different way. 3) That graceful degradation is in practice the same, as just using Wayland. Ever tried to use modern X11 app over network? RDP is vastly better experience, (and RDP support is wip in wayland). 4) This is so wrong so I won't even react to it. 5) Wayland calls do not wait for reply. You rapid fire requests and then collect responses as they come. Heck, you can even get a response you didn't ask for ;)

vetinari 4y ago

> I've seen commentary from people who have worked intimately on both protocols and implementations of both who consider Wayland to have the better architecture. For those interested in details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ

sprash 4y ago
Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3. Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works on Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11. This is not a neutral source.
- vetinari 4y ago
  > Most of the criticisms in this talk are solved with DRI3 Not true. > Also this guy makes money with a consultant agency that mainly works an Wayland and indirectly profits from shitting on X11. Maybe his employer works on Wayland because there are no X11 jobs? > This is not a neutral source. He has experience with both, and he presents his arguments.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Right? I really feel like not enough attention is paid to the question of: Who is paid to work on "the successor to X" and what influences are at work there? Seems to me that would be an obvious place to look for "why Wayland sucks," given that unfortunately, "paid" sometimes leads one to "exclusivity."
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Seriously, if you downvoted this without replying, you're a coward. At LEAST answer the question. Maybe I'm wrong?
destructionator 4y ago
This link comes up in literally every Wayland thread and it is even more bullshit now than it was in 2013 when it was first posted (and it was bullshit then too). It is titled "the real story" but it is quite the opposite. A few key points: 1) he laughs at how X has a bunch of extensions. https://wayland.app/protocols/ https://wayland.app/protocols/ hypocrites much. In 2013, since it was completely unusable, it probably didn't have many. But turns out real world use leads to "useless" features being reimplemented. 2) he complains about how X.org has broad hardware compatibility. As if that's a bad thing. Meanwhile wayland, even now it still doesn't work reliably on half the graphics chips on the market. 3) It complains that certain X features are not fully network transparent. True, but most are and you can detect at runtime and gracefully degrade. Wayland "fixes" this by just dropping the whole feature. 4) it flat-out lies saying the X server does nothing yet it is so much hard to maintain code. The core X protocol provides backward compatibility and is rock solid (and really easy to impelment from scratch btw, someone did it in Javascript for a tutorial for crying out loud). Meanwhile the Wayland compositor keeps accumulating everything because of point 1. Need a screenshot? Add it it the compositor. Need a hotkey? Add it to the compositor. Need drag and drop? Add it to the compositor. Need a notification icon? Add it to the compositor. In X, all those are peer to peer. Graphics are actually a relatively small part of a graphical user interface, something Wayland is still slow to learn. 5) He complains that certain applications are written inefficiently with blocking calls which is inefficient over a network connection. Wayland's calls are ALL blocking and just has no network connection. 6) Complains that X may draw things unnecessarily. Indeed... but there's an extension to disable that. Easy fix. Wayland even uses the same drivers!
- vetinari 4y ago
  1) no, he complains that X11 has a big core and then extensions. Extensions are fine, but they were unable to kick out parts of the core, because it is the core and something somewhere assumes it is there. So they had to maintain it, despite not being used in practice, except by that little something that nobody can point their fingers at. 2) he talks about obsolete hardware. There's no really a point to support s3 trio, at the expense of support for modern hardware, which works ink wastly different way. 3) That graceful degradation is in practice the same, as just using Wayland. Ever tried to use modern X11 app over network? RDP is vastly better experience, (and RDP support is wip in wayland). 4) This is so wrong so I won't even react to it. 5) Wayland calls do not wait for reply. You rapid fire requests and then collect responses as they come. Heck, you can even get a response you didn't ask for ;)