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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 "bet

by 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.
  - sgtnoodle 3y ago
    I work on embedded systems that are rarely user facing, so ease of maintenance tends to directly improve the customer's experience for the overall system.
rektide 3y ago
This feels like a nightmare conflict. I would be so less interested in trying to drive open source tech forward if I had to actually deal with such as this. Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working? Which compositor were you try to use? This all reminds me so much of ESM Vs cjs. Tech sometimes direly needs a kick in the ass. The situation cannot hold with something old & not good & the new works for most people, but also there's 1% valid problems. The world deserves to be able to eventually move on. The world can be bold & progressive & make changes, it should, and we should expect more of each other about being timely, about doing thr right thing, about making shifts. But we become so trapped by such resistance & unadaption, by staying where we are. Progress is a spirit I think should be Integral to open society & especially open source, but people don't see themselves as part of the bigger thing, they view themselves as merely at ends.
- imiric 3y ago
  > Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working? No. Why should a user go hunting for bug reports, or make an effort in making them to begin with? Developers shouldn't expect users to report every issue they run into. Most users will see something not working as expected, and move on to something that does. Fighting with software to make it work, a.k.a. "dealing with it", is a behavior exclusive to technical users and tinkerers. And even this cohort won't be bothered to do so when they just want their machines to work. > Which compositor were you try to use? How should I know? All I know is that I selected "Wayland" in my login screen, and ran into a half-dozen UI issues in less than 5 minutes, which I can't be bothered to list now (I posted about it here a few weeks ago if you're interested to know the details). Switching back to Xorg fixed all of them. With the complexity of a DE like KDE, I, a technical user, wouldn't even know where to look for the culprit. Was it KWin, XWayland or Wayland? When Firefox had UI issues, is that because of Firefox, XWayland or Wayland? Or something with my combination of hardware and drivers? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Developers shouldn't expect users to debug their application issues. Users are not testers.
  - rektide 3y ago
    I feel like a commercial OS is a better fit for attitude/desires. You should know to be able to type `journalctl` which will almost certainly give you a report on what just happened. Filing a big report feels like a pretty low barrier to me. It's stunning to me to see such a strong rebuttal, expecting developers to mind read & inuit every possible thing a user might run into. To shun openness, to remain closed & curt & expectant, feels more like a consumer relationship, where you don't have any real ability to speak or be present. But do have that ability, you can provide info that would make things better for everyone, and to me that barrier to helping feels extremely low. Not a burden.

by imiric 3y ago

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.
- sgtnoodle 3y ago
  I work on embedded systems that are rarely user facing, so ease of maintenance tends to directly improve the customer's experience for the overall system.

rektide 3y ago

This feels like a nightmare conflict. I would be so less interested in trying to drive open source tech forward if I had to actually deal with such as this. Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working? Which compositor were you try to use? This all reminds me so much of ESM Vs cjs. Tech sometimes direly needs a kick in the ass. The situation cannot hold with something old & not good & the new works for most people, but also there's 1% valid problems. The world deserves to be able to eventually move on. The world can be bold & progressive & make changes, it should, and we should expect more of each other about being timely, about doing thr right thing, about making shifts. But we become so trapped by such resistance & unadaption, by staying where we are. Progress is a spirit I think should be Integral to open society & especially open source, but people don't see themselves as part of the bigger thing, they view themselves as merely at ends.

imiric 3y ago
> Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working? No. Why should a user go hunting for bug reports, or make an effort in making them to begin with? Developers shouldn't expect users to report every issue they run into. Most users will see something not working as expected, and move on to something that does. Fighting with software to make it work, a.k.a. "dealing with it", is a behavior exclusive to technical users and tinkerers. And even this cohort won't be bothered to do so when they just want their machines to work. > Which compositor were you try to use? How should I know? All I know is that I selected "Wayland" in my login screen, and ran into a half-dozen UI issues in less than 5 minutes, which I can't be bothered to list now (I posted about it here a few weeks ago if you're interested to know the details). Switching back to Xorg fixed all of them. With the complexity of a DE like KDE, I, a technical user, wouldn't even know where to look for the culprit. Was it KWin, XWayland or Wayland? When Firefox had UI issues, is that because of Firefox, XWayland or Wayland? Or something with my combination of hardware and drivers? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Developers shouldn't expect users to debug their application issues. Users are not testers.
- rektide 3y ago
  I feel like a commercial OS is a better fit for attitude/desires. You should know to be able to type `journalctl` which will almost certainly give you a report on what just happened. Filing a big report feels like a pretty low barrier to me. It's stunning to me to see such a strong rebuttal, expecting developers to mind read & inuit every possible thing a user might run into. To shun openness, to remain closed & curt & expectant, feels more like a consumer relationship, where you don't have any real ability to speak or be present. But do have that ability, you can provide info that would make things better for everyone, and to me that barrier to helping feels extremely low. Not a burden.