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In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. There is significant overlap between former X11 developers and Wayland developers. They didn't

In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. There is significant overlap between former X11 developers and Wayland developers. They didn't drop it because they are incompetent which seems to be what your are implying. The people that decided to drop it are probably the people that know X11 the best.

pengaru 3y ago
It didn't work poorly back when X clients were actually using Xlib for drawing primitives performed by the display server. It started working poorly when X clients started rendering everything locally in the client and simply pushing pixels to the display server.
- bitwize 3y ago
  > It started working poorly when X clients started rendering everything locally in the client and simply pushing pixels to the display server. Which means it works poorly for modern apps. Modern apps use the GPU for client-side rendering. And it absolutely worked poorly even in the 90s. It was virtually impossible to run X apps over anything but a fast local LAN. That's what "Broadway"/LBX was about. It was kind of a failure. RDP has been a better networked display protocol than X for a couple decades now. Let's not fool ourselves that X isn't obsolete on every axis.
  - pengaru 3y ago
    > Let's not fool ourselves that X isn't obsolete on every axis. I'm not sure who you're replying to here, because it certainly isn't me.
jmclnx 3y ago
>In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. Well in my experience, running X11 applications using network transparency works perfectly fine. It can be a life saver when your server is a proprietary UNIX, these are still in many Fortune 500 companies. I have/still use network transparency as: Linux/BSDs <-> BSDs/Linux and Linux <-> AIX. I even ran a few (Xlib/Motif) applications as "Linux <-> Linux <-> AIX" where the middle Linux was a pass through server without any issues. So, No issues with network transparency, that is why I will avoid Wayland as long as I can. To the article, Wayland on OpenBSD looks like a very extremely project, wish you luck.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  I haven't tried it (because i do not really need network transparency and i'm using Xorg anyway) but supposedly this project[0] implements the Wayland protocol on top of Xorg in a way that integrates mostly seamlessly with X11-based desktops (instead of creating a window and running Wayland inside it as if it was a monitor isolated from the rest of the desktop). It might be useful to be able to run Wayland applications remotely. [0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/twelveto11/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/twelveto11/
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Waypipe can run Wayland applications remotely in a more modern fashion that doesn't suck ass on all but the fastest network links. But this will be a useful stopgap for those who stubbornly cling to X11 (or are forced to, e.g. by NVIDIA hardware) as more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only.
    - gpderetta 3y ago
      Which useful software is Wayland-only?
    - badsectoracula 3y ago
      > more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only. I can't think of any such case, any example? Besides even if X support is dropped by an application, 12to11 - or any other Wayland implementation that runs under X - will keep it working. It isn't like most programs use X directly anyway.
      - marcthe12 3y ago
        Well I believe there is foot. GTK devs ae planning to drop X11 support in gtk5 and they will start work on that after gnome 45 release so in a couple of years, all gnome apps
        3y ago
zajio1am 3y ago
> In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. In my experience, when combined with SSH compression (ssh -XC) it works well enough that even running Firefox over Internet is usable (although with noticeable latency). Without compression, it is unusable (for Firefox) even on gigabit LAN.
- yakubin 3y ago
  In my experience running Firefox over X11 remotely is fine as long as you only use X11 and don’t wrap it in SSH, i.e. instead you expose your local X11 server port to the computer running Firefox and use the DISPLAY environment variable to point it at you local X11 server. Secure the connection with Wireguard and it’s fine. With SSH I’d see frame tearing all the time, regardless of compression options.
  - anthk 3y ago
    x2go/freenx it's must better than the old X11 protocol. OFC, if you use legacy systems, no problems using your old Irix machine or similar, but from modern *BSD's/GNU's, you can compile x2go in a breeze and get a much better support on rendering/speed and detaching.
shrubble 3y ago
I didn't say anything about competence, just that it seems an odd design choice. Back when X11 was gaining traction the LAN was 10mbps and WAN was 1.5mbps. Now people have true 1Gbit connections to the WAN and can easily have 10gbit or much more on the LAN...
- zokier 3y ago
  Back then people actually used X11 primitives to draw stuff, these days you get surface and render stuff on gpu yourself.
mrweasel 3y ago
X11 over a network, even a LAN is a "last resort" kinda thing for me. It's neat an all, but as much as I dislike remote desktop and VNC, it's still better than X11. The last time I had it working well was in 2005 using a full desktop session across a local network. The bit about only getting the one application across has always been a bit wonky. That's not to say that you can't do it, but it's not really a daily driver sort of thing.
pravus 3y ago
It has worked great for me for decades and I currently stream live video over X11 on my LAN. And no, I don't think the developers are incompetent, they obviously have different priorities than I do. Being able to shift an entire desktop environment over a network is something I've done since I started using the internet in various ways and I'll echo the sentiment that it seems incredibly useless to remove this feature in today's world. To be quite honest I'm tired of this holier-than-though attitude. They dropped it because they are lazy or just don't want to support it and they should just be honest about that. They certainly didn't do it because it makes my life easier and I wish they would stop telling me I'm in the wrong.
pmontra 3y ago
It worked well for me at my university in 1990. We had a large room full of 1024x1024 X terminals. We run our programs on some HP-UX shared server and displayed the pixels on those terminals over a 1 Mb/s LAN. No glitches.

pengaru 3y ago

It didn't work poorly back when X clients were actually using Xlib for drawing primitives performed by the display server. It started working poorly when X clients started rendering everything locally in the client and simply pushing pixels to the display server.

bitwize 3y ago
> It started working poorly when X clients started rendering everything locally in the client and simply pushing pixels to the display server. Which means it works poorly for modern apps. Modern apps use the GPU for client-side rendering. And it absolutely worked poorly even in the 90s. It was virtually impossible to run X apps over anything but a fast local LAN. That's what "Broadway"/LBX was about. It was kind of a failure. RDP has been a better networked display protocol than X for a couple decades now. Let's not fool ourselves that X isn't obsolete on every axis.
- pengaru 3y ago
  > Let's not fool ourselves that X isn't obsolete on every axis. I'm not sure who you're replying to here, because it certainly isn't me.

jmclnx 3y ago

>In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. Well in my experience, running X11 applications using network transparency works perfectly fine. It can be a life saver when your server is a proprietary UNIX, these are still in many Fortune 500 companies. I have/still use network transparency as: Linux/BSDs <-> BSDs/Linux and Linux <-> AIX. I even ran a few (Xlib/Motif) applications as "Linux <-> Linux <-> AIX" where the middle Linux was a pass through server without any issues. So, No issues with network transparency, that is why I will avoid Wayland as long as I can. To the article, Wayland on OpenBSD looks like a very extremely project, wish you luck.

badsectoracula 3y ago
I haven't tried it (because i do not really need network transparency and i'm using Xorg anyway) but supposedly this project[0] implements the Wayland protocol on top of Xorg in a way that integrates mostly seamlessly with X11-based desktops (instead of creating a window and running Wayland inside it as if it was a monitor isolated from the rest of the desktop). It might be useful to be able to run Wayland applications remotely. [0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/twelveto11/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/twelveto11/
- bitwize 3y ago
  Waypipe can run Wayland applications remotely in a more modern fashion that doesn't suck ass on all but the fastest network links. But this will be a useful stopgap for those who stubbornly cling to X11 (or are forced to, e.g. by NVIDIA hardware) as more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only.
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    Which useful software is Wayland-only?
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    > more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only. I can't think of any such case, any example? Besides even if X support is dropped by an application, 12to11 - or any other Wayland implementation that runs under X - will keep it working. It isn't like most programs use X directly anyway.
    - marcthe12 3y ago
      Well I believe there is foot. GTK devs ae planning to drop X11 support in gtk5 and they will start work on that after gnome 45 release so in a couple of years, all gnome apps
      - 3y ago

zajio1am 3y ago

> In my experience, running X11 over a network worked very poorly. In my experience, when combined with SSH compression (ssh -XC) it works well enough that even running Firefox over Internet is usable (although with noticeable latency). Without compression, it is unusable (for Firefox) even on gigabit LAN.

yakubin 3y ago
In my experience running Firefox over X11 remotely is fine as long as you only use X11 and don’t wrap it in SSH, i.e. instead you expose your local X11 server port to the computer running Firefox and use the DISPLAY environment variable to point it at you local X11 server. Secure the connection with Wireguard and it’s fine. With SSH I’d see frame tearing all the time, regardless of compression options.
- anthk 3y ago
  x2go/freenx it's must better than the old X11 protocol. OFC, if you use legacy systems, no problems using your old Irix machine or similar, but from modern *BSD's/GNU's, you can compile x2go in a breeze and get a much better support on rendering/speed and detaching.

shrubble 3y ago

I didn't say anything about competence, just that it seems an odd design choice. Back when X11 was gaining traction the LAN was 10mbps and WAN was 1.5mbps. Now people have true 1Gbit connections to the WAN and can easily have 10gbit or much more on the LAN...

zokier 3y ago
Back then people actually used X11 primitives to draw stuff, these days you get surface and render stuff on gpu yourself.

mrweasel 3y ago

X11 over a network, even a LAN is a "last resort" kinda thing for me. It's neat an all, but as much as I dislike remote desktop and VNC, it's still better than X11. The last time I had it working well was in 2005 using a full desktop session across a local network. The bit about only getting the one application across has always been a bit wonky. That's not to say that you can't do it, but it's not really a daily driver sort of thing.

pravus 3y ago

It has worked great for me for decades and I currently stream live video over X11 on my LAN. And no, I don't think the developers are incompetent, they obviously have different priorities than I do. Being able to shift an entire desktop environment over a network is something I've done since I started using the internet in various ways and I'll echo the sentiment that it seems incredibly useless to remove this feature in today's world. To be quite honest I'm tired of this holier-than-though attitude. They dropped it because they are lazy or just don't want to support it and they should just be honest about that. They certainly didn't do it because it makes my life easier and I wish they would stop telling me I'm in the wrong.

pmontra 3y ago

It worked well for me at my university in 1990. We had a large room full of 1024x1024 X terminals. We run our programs on some HP-UX shared server and displayed the pixels on those terminals over a 1 Mb/s LAN. No glitches.