8 ms·

> It's fine to have the "works on my machine" attitude for a user discussing this on the web. I just hope the devs of what is being pushed as a replacement for

by growse 3y ago

> It's fine to have the "works on my machine" attitude for a user discussing this on the web. I just hope the devs of what is being pushed as a replacement for what works don't have it. (and the signals aren't good) The people "pushing" Wayland are the people who previously worked on X. They stopped because it's ancient, broken and untenable.

orbital-decay 3y ago
If Wayland just existed on its own, nobody would have had a problem. The people pushing Wayland are not just its authors, but the distro devs, and the entire fuss is about Wayland being declared as the "future" by certain distro developers recently. This future has an issue - it only supports an opinionated subset of maybe 3/4 use cases of the "past". However broken the past was, replacing it with something that is similarly broken but in different non-overlapping ways is not the proper way forward.
- growse 3y ago
  I disagree. The distro devs are pushing it because it furthers their mission, which on the face of it (for a lot of them) seems to be "ship software that works for people and have them stop bugging us". > However broken the past was, replacing it with something that is similarly broken but in different non-overlapping ways is not the proper way forward. That "opinion" is well founded. Most people don't care about network transparency (to pick one example), and those that do can club together and keep X alive. Or write an extension for Wayland. Open source is easy in that it gives you many chances and ways to contribute! Personally, I'd prefer those "LOOK IT'S MY DESKTOP OVER THE INTERNET" people kept their weirdness out of my compositor, but that's just my take.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    Many, many people care about: - Screenshots and sharing the screen; - Global hotkeys; - Alternative / switchable / tunable keyboard layouts and input methods. Not fancy stuff, just, say, typing Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Japanese characters. All these things are is some sort of disarray under Wayland currently. Once they are properly implemented, I may consider switching. I want Wayland to succeed. But it's not entirely there yet.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      > Screenshots and sharing the screen Works for years. And global hotkeys are not trivial - no, that “everything listens to everything” that X did is not a proper solution.
      - bandrami 3y ago
        It's worked fine for X for decades now, so simply claiming "it's not a solution" is kind of silly. I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. Also do keep in mind this is about more than global hotkeys; there are several accessibility paradigms that simply don't and can't work on Wayland.
        sobkas 3y ago
        > It's worked fine for X for decades now, so simply claiming "it's not a solution" is kind of silly. It never worked "fine", it was always a failure from security and usability perspective. > I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. You know that apps have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited over the network? Screen grabbing, keyloggers, input injection(you have open root terminal? let's type some commands there). And more.
        babypuncher 3y ago
        > I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. Do you personally audit the source code to every piece of software you run on your computer? Do you have the expertise necessary to even do that if you wanted to? FOSS isn't magically immune to security exploits. Everything we build should assume any other software it interfaces with might be defective or even hostile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed
        3y ago
  - orbital-decay 3y ago
    This is a strawman. There's a reason I mentioned color management in particular. Most people who aren't aware (even software developers) tend to make two assumptions: - that color management is needed for a tiny subset of users (those weird guys with printers and calibrators...). - that it can be delegated to 3rd parties or implemented later when the time comes. Neither of that is true. Color management is just another word for correct rendering of everything that comes through your stuff. Every pixel must have a well defined path from the physical input to the application to the physical output, you can't just implement a part of it and move everything else out of scope. To display anything in HDR, you have to build your entire pipeline around color management from the ground up. The reason you are ignoring it is that you're using an sRGB display, in any other case it would be immediately apparent to you. sRGB also needs color management but everything assumes sRGB so you're able to mostly get away with it. This no longer holds in the modern hardware. You need a properly managed pipeline for gaming, movies, web, YouTube, GUI, smartphone family photos, and basically everything else. Wayland developers actually found it the hard way, and are trying to implement it for, what, 3 years? That this wasn't a feature of a display server protocol from the start is a massive design flaw. Same with the input methods handling being forced to be lumped up together in the downstream software, without at least specifying how it should be done. They took a well understood problem, and moved it out of scope; it might not have been an issue, but the lack of a spec will lead to fragmentation and less options. This affects most of the userbase, not "weirdos with remote desktops".
    - growse 3y ago
      The vast majority of linux desktop computer users are likely using sRGB displays to look at things in the sRGB colourspace. Should colour management be in Wayland? Sure. Could it have been designed better to cater for it? Absolutely. Wayland's got its warts, sure. But for most people it's good enough, and that's what matters in software. It'll get fixed, and the more people who care about it actually contribute, the faster it'll get fixed. Open source is amazing!
    - ranixon 3y ago
      > that color management is needed for a tiny subset of users (those weird guys with printers and calibrators...). Color management is need for full HDR support, it uses Wide Color Gamut instead of sRGB
- mort96 3y ago
  The problem is, X is terrible. It's janky as hell, screen tearing is everywhere unless you're running extremely particular driver + hardware + X configurations, the screen locker doesn't even engage if you have a context menu open, vital things like compositing are hacked on in janky ways. For some people, Wayland isn't there yet. For a whole lot of other people, Wayland is already better than X. Are distro developers supposed to ignore that and keep pushing X, despite it being the worse option for most of their users? Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Plus, Wayland is getting better, X isn't.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    > Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Maybe. I just hope the transition is more smooth, and the wayland fanboi don't try to belittle X users.
  - Monsterovich 3y ago
    > It's janky as hell, screen tearing is everywhere unless you're running extremely particular driver + hardware + X configurations There you go again with your mythical screen tearing that I've never seen. You should learn to enable V-Sync in your compositor or in xorg.conf (the option is called Tearfree in Mesa). > the screen locker doesn't even engage if you have a context menu open For some reason, it worked for me. sleep 5 && xflock4 then I open the context menu and wait 5 seconds. After 5 seconds the screen locks successfully. > vital things like compositing are hacked on in janky ways Bullshit. Compositing in Xorg is done properly and it's not mandatory in cases where it's not needed. Besides, the compositor in Xorg can be changed to any other compositor regardless of the window manager (exceptions - compiz). > For some people, Wayland isn't there yet. Essentially all people who use their computer for more than just a Google Chrome launcher. > Are distro developers supposed to ignore that and keep pushing X, despite it being the worse option for most of their users? The only thing that works in all use-cases is Xorg. > Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Thank you, but no. > Plus, Wayland is getting better, X isn't. No, it's not improving. It's adding more crutches, we haven't seen such crutches even in Xorg.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  The existence of Wayland does nothing to detract from the existence of X or its users or developers. Nothing stops anybody from maintaining and developing X. You can download and install X for your Wayland distro. Not sure that anybody who "has a problem" has stepped up to really do much about it (most X development in the past few years is to support Xwayland), so it can't be that much of a problem.
  - bandrami 3y ago
    This is about OpenBSD, whose team continues to maintain and update Xenocara. If I had to guess I would guess that when Linux distro grow tired of the new shiny they will switch to a port of Xenocara for their display systems.
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      > This is about OpenBSD, whose team continues to maintain and update Xenocara. Did you reply to the wrong comment? How does this address what I wrote? > If I had to guess I would guess that when Linux distro grow tired of the new shiny they will switch to a port of Xenocara for their display systems. Linux distros are not going back to Xorg. Xenocara is basically just that adapted to OpenBSD, but all the Xorg developers remaining pretty much work for Linux distros so if they did go back they would just switch to what they already package and ship today.
      - bandrami 3y ago
        > Linux distros are not going back to Xorg. There never going to fully "leave" Xorg (Debian still ships token ring software FFS so the idea that they'll stop shipping X is just a weird fantasy some people have for some reason) so in that sense they won't "go back". Void is already working on packaging Xenocara and I doubt they'll be the last one; OpenBSD will just become the team that provides both a display server and a secure remote shell for lots of the Linux ecosystem.
        throwawaylinux 3y ago
- kaba0 3y ago
  No one “pushes” wayland, it is just infeasible to make people work on a legacy and fundamentally broken codebase in their spare time. Feel free to set up a fund and sponsor X11 maintenance - there is surely a price where people will start working on it.
  - account42 3y ago
    > in their spare time Most Linux graphics development is not unpaid.

by growse 3y ago

orbital-decay 3y ago

If Wayland just existed on its own, nobody would have had a problem. The people pushing Wayland are not just its authors, but the distro devs, and the entire fuss is about Wayland being declared as the "future" by certain distro developers recently. This future has an issue - it only supports an opinionated subset of maybe 3/4 use cases of the "past". However broken the past was, replacing it with something that is similarly broken but in different non-overlapping ways is not the proper way forward.

growse 3y ago
I disagree. The distro devs are pushing it because it furthers their mission, which on the face of it (for a lot of them) seems to be "ship software that works for people and have them stop bugging us". > However broken the past was, replacing it with something that is similarly broken but in different non-overlapping ways is not the proper way forward. That "opinion" is well founded. Most people don't care about network transparency (to pick one example), and those that do can club together and keep X alive. Or write an extension for Wayland. Open source is easy in that it gives you many chances and ways to contribute! Personally, I'd prefer those "LOOK IT'S MY DESKTOP OVER THE INTERNET" people kept their weirdness out of my compositor, but that's just my take.
- nine_k 3y ago
  Many, many people care about: - Screenshots and sharing the screen; - Global hotkeys; - Alternative / switchable / tunable keyboard layouts and input methods. Not fancy stuff, just, say, typing Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Japanese characters. All these things are is some sort of disarray under Wayland currently. Once they are properly implemented, I may consider switching. I want Wayland to succeed. But it's not entirely there yet.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    > Screenshots and sharing the screen Works for years. And global hotkeys are not trivial - no, that “everything listens to everything” that X did is not a proper solution.
    - bandrami 3y ago
      It's worked fine for X for decades now, so simply claiming "it's not a solution" is kind of silly. I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. Also do keep in mind this is about more than global hotkeys; there are several accessibility paradigms that simply don't and can't work on Wayland.
      - sobkas 3y ago
        > It's worked fine for X for decades now, so simply claiming "it's not a solution" is kind of silly. It never worked "fine", it was always a failure from security and usability perspective. > I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. You know that apps have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited over the network? Screen grabbing, keyloggers, input injection(you have open root terminal? let's type some commands there). And more.
      - babypuncher 3y ago
        > I get that people pretend they are afraid some nefarious program is going to scrape their screen, but since I don't use closed source software this just isn't a real worry. Do you personally audit the source code to every piece of software you run on your computer? Do you have the expertise necessary to even do that if you wanted to? FOSS isn't magically immune to security exploits. Everything we build should assume any other software it interfaces with might be defective or even hostile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed
        3y ago
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  This is a strawman. There's a reason I mentioned color management in particular. Most people who aren't aware (even software developers) tend to make two assumptions: - that color management is needed for a tiny subset of users (those weird guys with printers and calibrators...). - that it can be delegated to 3rd parties or implemented later when the time comes. Neither of that is true. Color management is just another word for correct rendering of everything that comes through your stuff. Every pixel must have a well defined path from the physical input to the application to the physical output, you can't just implement a part of it and move everything else out of scope. To display anything in HDR, you have to build your entire pipeline around color management from the ground up. The reason you are ignoring it is that you're using an sRGB display, in any other case it would be immediately apparent to you. sRGB also needs color management but everything assumes sRGB so you're able to mostly get away with it. This no longer holds in the modern hardware. You need a properly managed pipeline for gaming, movies, web, YouTube, GUI, smartphone family photos, and basically everything else. Wayland developers actually found it the hard way, and are trying to implement it for, what, 3 years? That this wasn't a feature of a display server protocol from the start is a massive design flaw. Same with the input methods handling being forced to be lumped up together in the downstream software, without at least specifying how it should be done. They took a well understood problem, and moved it out of scope; it might not have been an issue, but the lack of a spec will lead to fragmentation and less options. This affects most of the userbase, not "weirdos with remote desktops".
  - growse 3y ago
    The vast majority of linux desktop computer users are likely using sRGB displays to look at things in the sRGB colourspace. Should colour management be in Wayland? Sure. Could it have been designed better to cater for it? Absolutely. Wayland's got its warts, sure. But for most people it's good enough, and that's what matters in software. It'll get fixed, and the more people who care about it actually contribute, the faster it'll get fixed. Open source is amazing!
  - ranixon 3y ago
    > that color management is needed for a tiny subset of users (those weird guys with printers and calibrators...). Color management is need for full HDR support, it uses Wide Color Gamut instead of sRGB
mort96 3y ago
The problem is, X is terrible. It's janky as hell, screen tearing is everywhere unless you're running extremely particular driver + hardware + X configurations, the screen locker doesn't even engage if you have a context menu open, vital things like compositing are hacked on in janky ways. For some people, Wayland isn't there yet. For a whole lot of other people, Wayland is already better than X. Are distro developers supposed to ignore that and keep pushing X, despite it being the worse option for most of their users? Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Plus, Wayland is getting better, X isn't.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  > Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Maybe. I just hope the transition is more smooth, and the wayland fanboi don't try to belittle X users.
- Monsterovich 3y ago
  > It's janky as hell, screen tearing is everywhere unless you're running extremely particular driver + hardware + X configurations There you go again with your mythical screen tearing that I've never seen. You should learn to enable V-Sync in your compositor or in xorg.conf (the option is called Tearfree in Mesa). > the screen locker doesn't even engage if you have a context menu open For some reason, it worked for me. sleep 5 && xflock4 then I open the context menu and wait 5 seconds. After 5 seconds the screen locks successfully. > vital things like compositing are hacked on in janky ways Bullshit. Compositing in Xorg is done properly and it's not mandatory in cases where it's not needed. Besides, the compositor in Xorg can be changed to any other compositor regardless of the window manager (exceptions - compiz). > For some people, Wayland isn't there yet. Essentially all people who use their computer for more than just a Google Chrome launcher. > Are distro developers supposed to ignore that and keep pushing X, despite it being the worse option for most of their users? The only thing that works in all use-cases is Xorg. > Isn't it enough to provide X as an option for people who need something Wayland doesn't do yet? Thank you, but no. > Plus, Wayland is getting better, X isn't. No, it's not improving. It's adding more crutches, we haven't seen such crutches even in Xorg.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
The existence of Wayland does nothing to detract from the existence of X or its users or developers. Nothing stops anybody from maintaining and developing X. You can download and install X for your Wayland distro. Not sure that anybody who "has a problem" has stepped up to really do much about it (most X development in the past few years is to support Xwayland), so it can't be that much of a problem.
- bandrami 3y ago
  This is about OpenBSD, whose team continues to maintain and update Xenocara. If I had to guess I would guess that when Linux distro grow tired of the new shiny they will switch to a port of Xenocara for their display systems.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    > This is about OpenBSD, whose team continues to maintain and update Xenocara. Did you reply to the wrong comment? How does this address what I wrote? > If I had to guess I would guess that when Linux distro grow tired of the new shiny they will switch to a port of Xenocara for their display systems. Linux distros are not going back to Xorg. Xenocara is basically just that adapted to OpenBSD, but all the Xorg developers remaining pretty much work for Linux distros so if they did go back they would just switch to what they already package and ship today.
    - bandrami 3y ago
      > Linux distros are not going back to Xorg. There never going to fully "leave" Xorg (Debian still ships token ring software FFS so the idea that they'll stop shipping X is just a weird fantasy some people have for some reason) so in that sense they won't "go back". Void is already working on packaging Xenocara and I doubt they'll be the last one; OpenBSD will just become the team that provides both a display server and a secure remote shell for lots of the Linux ecosystem.
      - throwawaylinux 3y ago
kaba0 3y ago
No one “pushes” wayland, it is just infeasible to make people work on a legacy and fundamentally broken codebase in their spare time. Feel free to set up a fund and sponsor X11 maintenance - there is surely a price where people will start working on it.
- account42 3y ago
  > in their spare time Most Linux graphics development is not unpaid.