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> Yes, not every random app and feature you use on Xorg will have a Wayland equivalent. Deal with it. In general this sentence is why the Year of Desktop Linux

> Yes, not every random app and feature you use on Xorg will have a Wayland equivalent. Deal with it. In general this sentence is why the Year of Desktop Linux won't come in this millennia. Not only XOrg vs Wayland. Many such cases. Sad!

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
Xorg vs Wayland isn't a thing because Wayland is the replacement for Xorg.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- c4mpute 3y ago
  Wayland doesn't really replace Xorg, tons of things are nonworking, downright weird, stupid or neglected in Wayland. The original article even says so.
  - rascul 3y ago
    I read the article four times and didn't find a reference to tons of things not working, weird, stupid, or neglected in Wayland.
  - mort96 3y ago
    The people who used to work on X now work on Wayland. It is the way forward for graphics on Linux as Xorg is unmaintained. How does that not mean that Wayland replaces X?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- bombolo 3y ago
  Except a lot of things don't work with it. For example shortcuts. Which is why people keep using xorg… wayland is NOT a drop in replacement.
  - ZiiS 3y ago
    Keyboard shortcuts? I have only really used Sway but it just kept my i3 shortcuts working; never noticed any change?
    - bombolo 3y ago
      a completely different software reimplemented the same shortcuts. This is not the same as having an existing software keep working with the same shortcuts.
  - 0beef 3y ago
    Keyboard shortcuts or desktop shortcuts? my experience with kwyboard shortcuts on sway/gnome is that they're implemented differently on a wm-by-wm basis
    - bombolo 3y ago
      what's a desktop shortcut? keyboard shortcuts is what I'm referring to
samwillis 3y ago
No, the reason "Linux on the Desktop" won't happen is that it's not shipped by any (significant) hardware manufacturer for general desktop use. No one (in the scheme of things) installs an OS that didn't come with their hardware, and they never will. Open source developers, contributors and purists can't change that, no matter how hard they try. But, Android is a thing, and Linux is literally everywhere. OS has won, even if the mythical "Desktop Linux" didn't.
- not_your_vase 3y ago
  In 2023 I have to push back on this. Installing one of the the mainline distros is easier, user-friendlier and faster than installing a random soundcard driver on windows. After installing their first distro, most people have a good experience. Then they install an update, that causes some ridiculous regression. At this time they have 2 choices: spend 2 weeks on reading all kind of arcane documentation, or go back to whatever they were using before. Or ask the maintainer, who responds "deal with it". Just as another, fresh example, look at this: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2023/05/10/gnome-core-apps-update/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2023/05/10/gnome-core-app... - Gnome finally has thumbnails in the file picker, but they removed the music player. You can't have everything, I guess. This kind of attitude why the Year of Desktop Linux will not be seen by our generation, not evil manufacturers.
  - protonbob 3y ago
    > faster than installing a random soundcard driver on windows. Do you have to burn a flashdrive image, navigate through odd commands to disable secure boot, and find the magical incantation to boot from USB to install a soundcard driver?
    - rascul 3y ago
      Which mainstream distros still don't work with secure boot?
  - samwillis 3y ago
    Oh, I'm not denying that the UX is there, it has been at par or better for 20 years. It's just no one will ever do it - except for developers, enthusiasts, or people in specific industries. I would love it to happen but the suggestion that there is anything the developer community can do is wrong. This isn't like the move to get friends and family to swap to Firefox in 2004, that was easy, it was in parallel with no data or app loss. With no new UX to learn. I can get my parents to change to a different web browser. I could never get them to swap to Linux. I doubt I could get them to reinstall the os they currently use!
tremon 3y ago
> Yes, not every random expansion card or peripheral you use on Windows XP will have a Windows Vista/7 driver. Deal with it. That doesn't seem to have hurt the year of Desktop Windows too much.
- temac 3y ago
  The graphic stack did not broke application and workflow compat between the two, though. Neither did it incitate to couple the desktop to the graphic server, on the contrary it even made the system resilient to graphic driver crashes.
- ziml77 3y ago
  The difference is that going forward, people will target the latest changes to Windows because the previous versions will decline in usage since they are seeing no more effort put in by MS. With a situation like Xorg vs Wayland people will have two targets going into the foreseeable future because both still have active development.
0beef 3y ago
I think that the ability to depreciate aspects of the OS is one of GNU-Linux's greatest strengths. For example, look how saddled MS Windows is by the burden of binary reverse-compatibility. It makes the leap to other arches like ARM nearly impossible. Yes, some features of X11 are not present in Wayland. But the incomplete reverse-compatibility allows us to decide if those features are worth it in the first place. And if you don't like it you can patch it yourself.
imiric 3y ago
That quote is exactly why Linux will never reach mainstream adoption. Arrogant Linux developers who pick a hill to die on because they feel technology X is "better". They refuse to acknowledge that none of it matters if it negatively impacts user experience. This "deal with it" attitude is beyond obnoxious. User experience is ALL that matters. Apple has this ingrained in their ethos. While the OSS communities are bickering over X vs Y, they chose to pick what's usable and polish it until it delivered great UX. Last time I checked, Wayland was broken in fundamental ways on my NixOS/KDE machine. So I went back to Xorg, that for all its ancient faults, delivers a better UX _today_. I'll keep trying Wayland every few months, and when it becomes an improvement, I'll consider switching to it. No, I won't "deal with it". Why don't YOU fix it?* *If you tell me that it's not up to you, but to application developers to add support for Wayland, I'll drop kick your sticker-infested laptop, and curse whoever came up with this ridiculous system.
- sgtnoodle 3y ago
  I thought the last paragraph of the main article was interesting. They admit that they chose to default to xorg over wayland in the distro because it worked better without hardware acceleration. Now they're ranting that their users are using xorg? At work I have deprecated many older software components in favor of implementing newer, less painful to maintain ones. Lots of other software engineers use those components, so a big part of it is documentation or training. Rather than harp on the flaws of the old thing, I try to objectively present the lessons learned from it, with an emphasis on all the good aspects of the original that carried forward into the replacement. That generally makes the transition smoother, especially for getting buy-in from the folk that were involved with developing the original implementation. I also wouldn't tell someone not to use an existing component that works, unless I have a concrete recommendation for a better alternative.
  - imiric 3y ago
    > At work I have deprecated many older software components in favor of implementing newer, less painful to maintain ones. That's great, but know that you're optimizing your QoL over the users'. If and when that new shiny thing becomes an objective improvement of the user experience, only then will users share your joy of switching to something easier to maintain. Just don't expect, or even worse, force users to switch just because it makes life easier for you. > I also wouldn't tell someone not to use an existing component that works, unless I have a concrete recommendation for a better alternative. Yes, this is key. And precisely what the person in TFA is failing to do. UX >>> DX, always.
rascul 3y ago
> In general this sentence is why the Year of Desktop Linux won't come in this millennia. It came in the '90s. Not sure what people keep going on about.
qbasic_forever 3y ago
No you won't be able to control auto updates anymore on Windows 10. Deal with it. No you won't be able to edit system files on Mac OSX without rebooting into the bios effectively. Deal with it. Every platform does dumb, annoying stuff. Deal with it.
roenxi 3y ago
I'd go a bit further and say that is also why Wayland in particular has struggled with adoption given the lack of anyone maintaining X and the general support of maintainers for Wayland. It was a bad sign when screenshots required major architecture changes to how a linux system was expected to run. Still, X.org is terrible and can be reasonably called the Internet Explorer 6 of the linux desktop. At least Wayland will be easier to displace if anyone comes up with something better. This is a step forward.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  The Internet Explorer 6? IE6 is 17 years newer than X11.
- kaba0 3y ago
  > It was a bad sign when screenshots required major architecture changes That’s FUD. The reason around the controversy about screenshots is as simple as gnome wanting to do it right from first principles, that is to also include proper support for taking video recordings/streaming, which is much more complex, while wlroots were looking for a simple “take a picture” mode at first. They couldn’t come to agreement on a common protocol for a time, end of story. This is due to the bazaar style of development, has no technical reason. Apple can just say they will switch to this new tech in x time, linux can’t really.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    It is obvious there is no technical reason - computers have been able to take screenshots for around 40 years. The issue is the Wayland protocol thought it could get away with no provisions for sharing buffers and so its adoption was crippled while people discovered that they needed to implement a new Wayland+ standard or live without screenshots. We're probably never going to be in a situation where someone can "implement Wayland" and have an acceptable desktop. The real standard to be implemented was written as part of the sway team circa 2018 (eg, https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlr-protocols/-/commit/75f284b64fe7fddbd165123e0430fa1c162350bf https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlr-protocols/-/commi...).

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago

Xorg vs Wayland isn't a thing because Wayland is the replacement for Xorg.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
c4mpute 3y ago
Wayland doesn't really replace Xorg, tons of things are nonworking, downright weird, stupid or neglected in Wayland. The original article even says so.
- rascul 3y ago
  I read the article four times and didn't find a reference to tons of things not working, weird, stupid, or neglected in Wayland.
- mort96 3y ago
  The people who used to work on X now work on Wayland. It is the way forward for graphics on Linux as Xorg is unmaintained. How does that not mean that Wayland replaces X?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bombolo 3y ago
Except a lot of things don't work with it. For example shortcuts. Which is why people keep using xorg… wayland is NOT a drop in replacement.
- ZiiS 3y ago
  Keyboard shortcuts? I have only really used Sway but it just kept my i3 shortcuts working; never noticed any change?
  - bombolo 3y ago
    a completely different software reimplemented the same shortcuts. This is not the same as having an existing software keep working with the same shortcuts.
- 0beef 3y ago
  Keyboard shortcuts or desktop shortcuts? my experience with kwyboard shortcuts on sway/gnome is that they're implemented differently on a wm-by-wm basis
  - bombolo 3y ago
    what's a desktop shortcut? keyboard shortcuts is what I'm referring to

samwillis 3y ago

No, the reason "Linux on the Desktop" won't happen is that it's not shipped by any (significant) hardware manufacturer for general desktop use. No one (in the scheme of things) installs an OS that didn't come with their hardware, and they never will. Open source developers, contributors and purists can't change that, no matter how hard they try. But, Android is a thing, and Linux is literally everywhere. OS has won, even if the mythical "Desktop Linux" didn't.

not_your_vase 3y ago
In 2023 I have to push back on this. Installing one of the the mainline distros is easier, user-friendlier and faster than installing a random soundcard driver on windows. After installing their first distro, most people have a good experience. Then they install an update, that causes some ridiculous regression. At this time they have 2 choices: spend 2 weeks on reading all kind of arcane documentation, or go back to whatever they were using before. Or ask the maintainer, who responds "deal with it". Just as another, fresh example, look at this: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2023/05/10/gnome-core-apps-update/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2023/05/10/gnome-core-app... - Gnome finally has thumbnails in the file picker, but they removed the music player. You can't have everything, I guess. This kind of attitude why the Year of Desktop Linux will not be seen by our generation, not evil manufacturers.
- protonbob 3y ago
  > faster than installing a random soundcard driver on windows. Do you have to burn a flashdrive image, navigate through odd commands to disable secure boot, and find the magical incantation to boot from USB to install a soundcard driver?
  - rascul 3y ago
    Which mainstream distros still don't work with secure boot?
- samwillis 3y ago
  Oh, I'm not denying that the UX is there, it has been at par or better for 20 years. It's just no one will ever do it - except for developers, enthusiasts, or people in specific industries. I would love it to happen but the suggestion that there is anything the developer community can do is wrong. This isn't like the move to get friends and family to swap to Firefox in 2004, that was easy, it was in parallel with no data or app loss. With no new UX to learn. I can get my parents to change to a different web browser. I could never get them to swap to Linux. I doubt I could get them to reinstall the os they currently use!

tremon 3y ago

> Yes, not every random expansion card or peripheral you use on Windows XP will have a Windows Vista/7 driver. Deal with it. That doesn't seem to have hurt the year of Desktop Windows too much.

temac 3y ago
The graphic stack did not broke application and workflow compat between the two, though. Neither did it incitate to couple the desktop to the graphic server, on the contrary it even made the system resilient to graphic driver crashes.
ziml77 3y ago
The difference is that going forward, people will target the latest changes to Windows because the previous versions will decline in usage since they are seeing no more effort put in by MS. With a situation like Xorg vs Wayland people will have two targets going into the foreseeable future because both still have active development.

0beef 3y ago

I think that the ability to depreciate aspects of the OS is one of GNU-Linux's greatest strengths. For example, look how saddled MS Windows is by the burden of binary reverse-compatibility. It makes the leap to other arches like ARM nearly impossible. Yes, some features of X11 are not present in Wayland. But the incomplete reverse-compatibility allows us to decide if those features are worth it in the first place. And if you don't like it you can patch it yourself.

imiric 3y ago

That quote is exactly why Linux will never reach mainstream adoption. Arrogant Linux developers who pick a hill to die on because they feel technology X is "better". They refuse to acknowledge that none of it matters if it negatively impacts user experience. This "deal with it" attitude is beyond obnoxious. User experience is ALL that matters. Apple has this ingrained in their ethos. While the OSS communities are bickering over X vs Y, they chose to pick what's usable and polish it until it delivered great UX. Last time I checked, Wayland was broken in fundamental ways on my NixOS/KDE machine. So I went back to Xorg, that for all its ancient faults, delivers a better UX _today_. I'll keep trying Wayland every few months, and when it becomes an improvement, I'll consider switching to it. No, I won't "deal with it". Why don't YOU fix it?* *If you tell me that it's not up to you, but to application developers to add support for Wayland, I'll drop kick your sticker-infested laptop, and curse whoever came up with this ridiculous system.

sgtnoodle 3y ago
I thought the last paragraph of the main article was interesting. They admit that they chose to default to xorg over wayland in the distro because it worked better without hardware acceleration. Now they're ranting that their users are using xorg? At work I have deprecated many older software components in favor of implementing newer, less painful to maintain ones. Lots of other software engineers use those components, so a big part of it is documentation or training. Rather than harp on the flaws of the old thing, I try to objectively present the lessons learned from it, with an emphasis on all the good aspects of the original that carried forward into the replacement. That generally makes the transition smoother, especially for getting buy-in from the folk that were involved with developing the original implementation. I also wouldn't tell someone not to use an existing component that works, unless I have a concrete recommendation for a better alternative.
- imiric 3y ago
  > At work I have deprecated many older software components in favor of implementing newer, less painful to maintain ones. That's great, but know that you're optimizing your QoL over the users'. If and when that new shiny thing becomes an objective improvement of the user experience, only then will users share your joy of switching to something easier to maintain. Just don't expect, or even worse, force users to switch just because it makes life easier for you. > I also wouldn't tell someone not to use an existing component that works, unless I have a concrete recommendation for a better alternative. Yes, this is key. And precisely what the person in TFA is failing to do. UX >>> DX, always.

rascul 3y ago

> In general this sentence is why the Year of Desktop Linux won't come in this millennia. It came in the '90s. Not sure what people keep going on about.

qbasic_forever 3y ago

No you won't be able to control auto updates anymore on Windows 10. Deal with it. No you won't be able to edit system files on Mac OSX without rebooting into the bios effectively. Deal with it. Every platform does dumb, annoying stuff. Deal with it.

roenxi 3y ago

I'd go a bit further and say that is also why Wayland in particular has struggled with adoption given the lack of anyone maintaining X and the general support of maintainers for Wayland. It was a bad sign when screenshots required major architecture changes to how a linux system was expected to run. Still, X.org is terrible and can be reasonably called the Internet Explorer 6 of the linux desktop. At least Wayland will be easier to displace if anyone comes up with something better. This is a step forward.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
The Internet Explorer 6? IE6 is 17 years newer than X11.
kaba0 3y ago
> It was a bad sign when screenshots required major architecture changes That’s FUD. The reason around the controversy about screenshots is as simple as gnome wanting to do it right from first principles, that is to also include proper support for taking video recordings/streaming, which is much more complex, while wlroots were looking for a simple “take a picture” mode at first. They couldn’t come to agreement on a common protocol for a time, end of story. This is due to the bazaar style of development, has no technical reason. Apple can just say they will switch to this new tech in x time, linux can’t really.
- roenxi 3y ago
  It is obvious there is no technical reason - computers have been able to take screenshots for around 40 years. The issue is the Wayland protocol thought it could get away with no provisions for sharing buffers and so its adoption was crippled while people discovered that they needed to implement a new Wayland+ standard or live without screenshots. We're probably never going to be in a situation where someone can "implement Wayland" and have an acceptable desktop. The real standard to be implemented was written as part of the sway team circa 2018 (eg, https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlr-protocols/-/commit/75f284b64fe7fddbd165123e0430fa1c162350bf https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlr-protocols/-/commi...).