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Fedora 40 Eyes Dropping Gnome X11 Session Support

Boogie_Man 3y ago
The first thing that comes to my mind when reading this article is: "Does Wayland have something like "ssh -x""? After a bit of looking, it seems to me that Waypipe[0] is the successor to remote xorg sessions. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has used it if the functionality is truly comparable. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe
- kevincox 3y ago
  I'm looking forward to the same. The fact is that `ssh -x` and remote-X in general was really shitty with modern applications (basically sending uncompressed bitmaps and 2 round-trips for every input and output event) but it does work and is easy to set up thanks to SSH. Things like waypipe and VNC work much better, but they aren't as easy to get set up yet. Edit: I just tried waypipe again and it worked perfectly. I couldn't even tell the other device was remote (although it was on a fast local connection). Other than needing a separate tool rather than being built into ssh it seems pretty seamless.
  - Boogie_Man 3y ago
    Hey thank you for giving it a try, I'm happy to hear it works that well. Here's to the past in the future.
tcbawo 3y ago
This has probably been asked dozens of times, but honest question: how much of a technological dead end is the X11 architecture? Perhaps this ship has sailed, but what were the impediments to modernization? Lack of developer interest? Lack of consensus between stakeholders to make significant changes? I worry that other critical open source software projects will go through a similar lifecycle as it matures and the original developers retire. Considering the lineage of virtual consoles going back to physical teletype machines, it makes sense to preserve some form of feature compatibility with current software.
- kevincox 3y ago
  The problem is that the X11 architecture has been dead for a decade. The X11 architecture was network-transparent drawing primitives. Almost all of modern X is done via extensions. Your drawing is done using OpenGL or some similar interface, buffers are passed using shared memory, lots of display metadata and configuration is done via extensions as well. The actual rendering is done by the window manager (assuming you are doing compositing). As Daniel Stone said, all that is left of "Core X11" is really bad IPC. (As the client talks to X which talks to the window manager which talks to X which talks to the client, requiring 2 round-trips for every request) https://youtu.be/RIctzAQOe44?t=1037 https://youtu.be/RIctzAQOe44?t=1037 So saving Core X11 is a dead end. All you have is a basic IPC system with unnecessary round-trips. So all that is left to save is the extensions. You can save GLX and the Vulkan equivalent but tearing them from the IPC is leaving not much behind. So really, no. The things that could be saved are so basic (like feeding input events) that it is better to just re-implement them using a better IPC protocol. For clients that need backwards compatibility there is XWayland (although it is limited for security reasons).
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    Everyone defending the X11 protocol nowadays should be forced to write at least one GUI app using just Xlib and Xt. I don't believe people are invested in the X protocol per se, but more the Xorg implementation that still offers a few interesting features not ported to Wayland yet. But allowing people to choose will mean any urgency of porting those features will diminish and you don't get feedback on Wayland from all those people who switch to X11. Linux users seem to be overrepresented at both ends of the conservative/progressive spectrum.
atemerev 3y ago
Well, if they can make CUDA and Wayland work simultaneously... (Baseline Nvidia drivers without CUDA already work fine with Wayland).
- westurner 3y ago
  From "Wayland does not support screen savers" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385627 : > the NVIDIA proprietary Linux module for NVIDIA GPUs hardware video decode doesn't work on Wayland; along with a number of other things: "NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver README and Installation Guide > Appendix L. Wayland Known Issues" https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/535.54.03/README/wayland-issues.html https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/535.54.03/R... What is NVIDIA's annual developer salary commitment to non-HPC Linux compared to AMD with ROCm and Intel? (EDIT) Most nvidia driver Linux kernel module re-packaging projects are not on GitHub which supports Sponsors.yml for specifying how to donate.
  - westurner 3y ago
    Trusted builds of the GPU modules are necessary; To run with SecureBoot on and the Silverblue Fedora ostree distribution requires local module signing after every upgrade of the GPU modules and adding an additional local key to the SecureBoot BIOS keystore. I don't think this is a https://SLSA.dev https://SLSA.dev -compliant GPU module software supply chain: NVIDIA Src -> RPMfusion pkg & builder -> rpm-ostree toolbox dnf install && Local_module_signing_with_local_secureboot_key
  - atemerev 3y ago
    I don’t know, but ROCm is a joke and unusable. 1200 lines of some very complicated C++ for a simple FFT… That’s ridiculous. And nobody seems to be doing anything about it — and then they wonder, why they have 1% or so market share in AI. It’s not a hardware problem, it is an API design problem.
    - gyrovagueGeist 3y ago

The first thing that comes to my mind when reading this article is: "Does Wayland have something like "ssh -x""? After a bit of looking, it seems to me that Waypipe[0] is the successor to remote xorg sessions. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has used it if the functionality is truly comparable. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe

kevincox 3y ago
I'm looking forward to the same. The fact is that `ssh -x` and remote-X in general was really shitty with modern applications (basically sending uncompressed bitmaps and 2 round-trips for every input and output event) but it does work and is easy to set up thanks to SSH. Things like waypipe and VNC work much better, but they aren't as easy to get set up yet. Edit: I just tried waypipe again and it worked perfectly. I couldn't even tell the other device was remote (although it was on a fast local connection). Other than needing a separate tool rather than being built into ssh it seems pretty seamless.
- Boogie_Man 3y ago
  Hey thank you for giving it a try, I'm happy to hear it works that well. Here's to the past in the future.

tcbawo 3y ago

This has probably been asked dozens of times, but honest question: how much of a technological dead end is the X11 architecture? Perhaps this ship has sailed, but what were the impediments to modernization? Lack of developer interest? Lack of consensus between stakeholders to make significant changes? I worry that other critical open source software projects will go through a similar lifecycle as it matures and the original developers retire. Considering the lineage of virtual consoles going back to physical teletype machines, it makes sense to preserve some form of feature compatibility with current software.

kevincox 3y ago
The problem is that the X11 architecture has been dead for a decade. The X11 architecture was network-transparent drawing primitives. Almost all of modern X is done via extensions. Your drawing is done using OpenGL or some similar interface, buffers are passed using shared memory, lots of display metadata and configuration is done via extensions as well. The actual rendering is done by the window manager (assuming you are doing compositing). As Daniel Stone said, all that is left of "Core X11" is really bad IPC. (As the client talks to X which talks to the window manager which talks to X which talks to the client, requiring 2 round-trips for every request) https://youtu.be/RIctzAQOe44?t=1037 https://youtu.be/RIctzAQOe44?t=1037 So saving Core X11 is a dead end. All you have is a basic IPC system with unnecessary round-trips. So all that is left to save is the extensions. You can save GLX and the Vulkan equivalent but tearing them from the IPC is leaving not much behind. So really, no. The things that could be saved are so basic (like feeding input events) that it is better to just re-implement them using a better IPC protocol. For clients that need backwards compatibility there is XWayland (although it is limited for security reasons).
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Everyone defending the X11 protocol nowadays should be forced to write at least one GUI app using just Xlib and Xt. I don't believe people are invested in the X protocol per se, but more the Xorg implementation that still offers a few interesting features not ported to Wayland yet. But allowing people to choose will mean any urgency of porting those features will diminish and you don't get feedback on Wayland from all those people who switch to X11. Linux users seem to be overrepresented at both ends of the conservative/progressive spectrum.

atemerev 3y ago

Well, if they can make CUDA and Wayland work simultaneously... (Baseline Nvidia drivers without CUDA already work fine with Wayland).

westurner 3y ago
From "Wayland does not support screen savers" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385627 : > the NVIDIA proprietary Linux module for NVIDIA GPUs hardware video decode doesn't work on Wayland; along with a number of other things: "NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver README and Installation Guide > Appendix L. Wayland Known Issues" https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/535.54.03/README/wayland-issues.html https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/535.54.03/R... What is NVIDIA's annual developer salary commitment to non-HPC Linux compared to AMD with ROCm and Intel? (EDIT) Most nvidia driver Linux kernel module re-packaging projects are not on GitHub which supports Sponsors.yml for specifying how to donate.
- westurner 3y ago
  Trusted builds of the GPU modules are necessary; To run with SecureBoot on and the Silverblue Fedora ostree distribution requires local module signing after every upgrade of the GPU modules and adding an additional local key to the SecureBoot BIOS keystore. I don't think this is a https://SLSA.dev https://SLSA.dev -compliant GPU module software supply chain: NVIDIA Src -> RPMfusion pkg & builder -> rpm-ostree toolbox dnf install && Local_module_signing_with_local_secureboot_key
- atemerev 3y ago
  I don’t know, but ROCm is a joke and unusable. 1200 lines of some very complicated C++ for a simple FFT… That’s ridiculous. And nobody seems to be doing anything about it — and then they wonder, why they have 1% or so market share in AI. It’s not a hardware problem, it is an API design problem.
  - gyrovagueGeist 3y ago