8 ms·

X.org Alternatives? MicroXWin, Wayland, Y, DFB, Xynth, Fresco, etc. (2009)

39 points by whereistimbo 3y ago

re-lre-l 3y ago
About 20 years ago I used some early version of KDE on Linux as my desktop environment and it was great - comparable and even better than Windows that times. Nowadays I still struggle to use any kind of Linux GUI first of all because of poor fonts rendering. Don't get me wrong - it's pretty OK, but comparing with MacOS or Windows - ah, still to bad. Have been waiting for improvements for decades.
- worksonmine 3y ago
  I see so many complaints about font rendering on Linux but I don't really understand the issue and what you're experiencing. I use a window manager, no desktop environment and zero configuration for fonts other than what comes with the distributions minimal/server release. Have I just been using Linux so long that I'm ignorant of what's possible on other systems? What am I missing?
  - seszett 3y ago
    I very rarely notice it, but this very article to me is displayed in Bitstream Charter (I think because it contains one character somewhere that isn't present in Georgia) and Bitstream Charter is awfully bad for some reason, probably because I have it in PCF format. My package manager describes it as A serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for low resolution devices. You are probably blessed with not having this font installed on your system, which prevents your browser from choosing it instead of Georgia. I rarely encounter this problem though, I suppose there aren't many fonts that are only available as bitmap on most systems, and even fewer of them get used by websites.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t... There is a section on font rendering, here is a copy. Font rendering (which is implemented via high level GUI libraries) issues: ! ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly. Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings. Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs. This issue is impossible to solve unless there's a common GUI library/API which is shared between all tooklits and desktop environments. !! The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry. Edit following worksonmine response: I pasted the part related to font rendering here for convenience, but note that the article is much more complete and has a page-long preface explaining the context, and answers to the most common objections. The article is not a suggestion that you should use Windows instead, in fact the author also has a "Windows 10 sucks" article.
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      > ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly. How is Windows font not rendering properly in Linux a Linux problem? Do we blame Windows for not supporting Linux specific software? Even so it seems to be possible to enable. > Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings. Highly opinionated, just change it, and the source is a slashdot comment from 2012? Really? > Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs Okay, use one that supports it if that's the problem. > The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry. Haven't made the switch yet, so can't say much about it. All of these are very weird gripes and I'm even more confused that people don't use Linux because "fonts". Are these really the problems that make people stay on spyware OS?
- alyandon 3y ago
  Can you give some specific examples that bother you? I honestly just don't notice much of a difference these days with font rendering in Linux + X11 vs Windows/MacOS. I do usually select different fonts/sizes instead of relying on distro defaults though.
- class4behavior 3y ago
  Is it the rendering or the selection of fonts?
- Aardwolf 3y ago
  KDE 3.5 was its peak for me. KDE 4 changed everything around completely, in a worse way (like no more multiple task bars, no more easy launcher icons, introduction of hard to disable CPU hogging background processes like baloo, less configuration, degradation in contrast of scrollbars in the theme choices, etc...).
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    KDE3.5 was forked at the time and still exists as Trinity Desktop https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/
  - ACS_Solver 3y ago
    If you haven't, try KDE 5 as well. I also found KDE 3.5 to be an amazing desktop and was then very disappointed by KDE 4, one of the worst software released I've used. But it was pretty much abandoned relatively quickly and KDE 5 is once again an excellent environment.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- prmoustache 3y ago
  For me it is the opposite, I can't stand the font rendering on windows.
- hollerith 3y ago
  I prefer the way text looks on my Linux install over the way it looks on MacOS or Windows.
- ink_13 3y ago
  Modern font rendering seems OK to me but I have given up on trying to figure out how to get a web browser to scroll without tearing
  - andrewshadura 3y ago
    You need a compositor.
- oooyay 3y ago
  You would need to select a font that supports FreeType instead of ClearType. Here's a good thread on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528605 Anecdotally, I use PopOS as my daily driver and the fonts and DE are beautiful. I prefer it to the Mac workstation I use for work. When I flip my KVM I'm often reminded of the contrast. I use open source ligature enabled FreeType fonts and they are all exceedingly sharp. http://freetype.org/ http://freetype.org/
- Roark66 3y ago
  You know what is my pet peeve with Linux guis? Mouse movement. Why is it that despite spending a collective week of work hours on it and testing every single acceleration band speed setting it still feels like my mouse is imprecise and slow at the same time I use windows for a while and then go back to Linux?
  - trealira 3y ago
    Could it be that you have mouse acceleration turned off on Linux? Mouse acceleration makes the mouse pointer move further if you move the mouse faster. It's an option to turn on/off on KDE, and it's the way GNOME is set up unless you install GNOME Tweaks.
    - Roark66 3y ago
      I've tried, with and without, I tried various settings (there are quite a few mouse acceleration related settings). But I could never find something that even approximated windows speed of movement and precision at the same time. I wish someone finds out why this is at some point. I'm a 90% Linux 10% windows user and I've been for many years. I've accepted the inferior mouse experience on Linux (not just one mouse, all mice I ever had on a number of pcs and laptops), but I hope it gets sorted at some point.
elitepleb 3y ago
see also: https://arcan-fe.com https://arcan-fe.com
jrm4 3y ago
Glad to see this; the whole "shut up and use Wayland" attitude of many is offputting. Let's at least see what else is out there.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  And from what is out there, since 2009, how many of those are still relevant 14 years later? How many of Wayland haters have put the effort to make them happen?
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Of the 7 non-Wayland systems linked in the opening post, two still have a working web page. KDrive gave me a TLS error (the certificate is misconfigured) but ignoring it brings me to a web page that states the information is obsolete and hasn't been updated in about 7 years according to the page info. Everybody online talks about KDrive in the past tense it seems. Y-windows.org works, but the homepage only shows two entries written in 2004. It seems to be the product of a thesis that never received any development. I think it's safe to say from the listed post, only Wayland survived. I think of all the other alternatives, Mir had the best change at succeeding, but that died half a decade ago.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    It's not listed in the OP, but Arcan ( www.arcan-fe.com ) is alive and architecturally compares favorably to Wayland. Only problem is that letoram actively avoids bringing popular attention to the project to the point that he deliberately writes his blog posts on it in a very dense style. I think he's just doing it til 1.0 though. I really hope Arcan takes off; it's a much more elegant system than Wayland's XML-based crap whose main defense is "just use a toolkit!".
    - goku12 3y ago
      Arcan has been around for a long time. At one time, it showed more promise than Wayland as a successor of X11. Is there a chance that it will come back and succeed? (I'm a Wayland fan. But I had high hopes for Arcan and still wish to see it succeed). > Wayland's XML-based crap What is that? Do you mean the protocol definition? Why is that a big issue?
shinjitsu 3y ago
Wayland has struck me for years as being the new IPv6, the tech that the deep technical people tell me needs to come and replace the old thing that "doesn't work any more" and yet never quite takes over. maybe the year of critical mass switchover will be soon?
- tuetuopay 3y ago
  Major graphical distributions are now using wayland by default. So the time has indeed come.
- kllrnohj 3y ago
  I mean, insert any "year of linux on the desktop joke here" In terms of usage numbers, X is very, very dead. Android uses something that looks a lot more like Wayland than X (or arguably Wayland looks a lot more like Android's SurfaceFlinger than X, but whatever), and ChromeOS is Wayland as well. I'm pretty sure Steam Deck is also Wayland.
  - tuetuopay 3y ago
    steam deck is indeed wayland with their own compositor called gamescope[1] for low-latency gaming (they target the fewest buffer copies as possible). Another nice side-effect it has is hdr support on AMD GPUs. 1: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope
  - blueflow 3y ago
    > In terms of usage numbers, X is very, very dead Thats wishful thinking. Citation needed.
    - kllrnohj 3y ago
      Citation was in my post if you read it more carefully. Android+ChromeOS is easily the 90%+ of the "Linux" market that cares about having a GUI, and even omitting Android then ChromeOS is still more market share than desktop linux is ( https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide )
user3939382 3y ago
XFree86
teunispeters 3y ago
I liked Fresco - but CORBA was kind of going the wrong direction it turned out in time. I'm still not convinced on Wayland. Does it solve X's security issues? https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ oh and this for X11 security issues as it's a nice summary : https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4641/why-are-people-saying-that-the-x-window-system-is-not-secure https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4641/why-are-pe...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Of the problems in that SO link, I believe only "Isolation between apps" is an ongoing concern; Xorg (at least) hasn't listened to the network by default for a long time (as noted in that answer), but these days it doesn't run the X server as root either. That said, AFAIK yes Wayland does an excellent job of limiting the access that programs have.

39 points by whereistimbo 3y ago

About 20 years ago I used some early version of KDE on Linux as my desktop environment and it was great - comparable and even better than Windows that times. Nowadays I still struggle to use any kind of Linux GUI first of all because of poor fonts rendering. Don't get me wrong - it's pretty OK, but comparing with MacOS or Windows - ah, still to bad. Have been waiting for improvements for decades.

worksonmine 3y ago
I see so many complaints about font rendering on Linux but I don't really understand the issue and what you're experiencing. I use a window manager, no desktop environment and zero configuration for fonts other than what comes with the distributions minimal/server release. Have I just been using Linux so long that I'm ignorant of what's possible on other systems? What am I missing?
- seszett 3y ago
  I very rarely notice it, but this very article to me is displayed in Bitstream Charter (I think because it contains one character somewhere that isn't present in Georgia) and Bitstream Charter is awfully bad for some reason, probably because I have it in PCF format. My package manager describes it as A serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for low resolution devices. You are probably blessed with not having this font installed on your system, which prevents your browser from choosing it instead of Georgia. I rarely encounter this problem though, I suppose there aren't many fonts that are only available as bitmap on most systems, and even fewer of them get used by websites.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t... There is a section on font rendering, here is a copy. Font rendering (which is implemented via high level GUI libraries) issues: ! ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly. Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings. Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs. This issue is impossible to solve unless there's a common GUI library/API which is shared between all tooklits and desktop environments. !! The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry. Edit following worksonmine response: I pasted the part related to font rendering here for convenience, but note that the article is much more complete and has a page-long preface explaining the context, and answers to the most common objections. The article is not a suggestion that you should use Windows instead, in fact the author also has a "Windows 10 sucks" article.
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    > ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly. How is Windows font not rendering properly in Linux a Linux problem? Do we blame Windows for not supporting Linux specific software? Even so it seems to be possible to enable. > Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings. Highly opinionated, just change it, and the source is a slashdot comment from 2012? Really? > Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs Okay, use one that supports it if that's the problem. > The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry. Haven't made the switch yet, so can't say much about it. All of these are very weird gripes and I'm even more confused that people don't use Linux because "fonts". Are these really the problems that make people stay on spyware OS?
alyandon 3y ago
Can you give some specific examples that bother you? I honestly just don't notice much of a difference these days with font rendering in Linux + X11 vs Windows/MacOS. I do usually select different fonts/sizes instead of relying on distro defaults though.
class4behavior 3y ago
Is it the rendering or the selection of fonts?
Aardwolf 3y ago
KDE 3.5 was its peak for me. KDE 4 changed everything around completely, in a worse way (like no more multiple task bars, no more easy launcher icons, introduction of hard to disable CPU hogging background processes like baloo, less configuration, degradation in contrast of scrollbars in the theme choices, etc...).
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  KDE3.5 was forked at the time and still exists as Trinity Desktop https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  If you haven't, try KDE 5 as well. I also found KDE 3.5 to be an amazing desktop and was then very disappointed by KDE 4, one of the worst software released I've used. But it was pretty much abandoned relatively quickly and KDE 5 is once again an excellent environment.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
prmoustache 3y ago
For me it is the opposite, I can't stand the font rendering on windows.
hollerith 3y ago
I prefer the way text looks on my Linux install over the way it looks on MacOS or Windows.
ink_13 3y ago
Modern font rendering seems OK to me but I have given up on trying to figure out how to get a web browser to scroll without tearing
- andrewshadura 3y ago
  You need a compositor.
oooyay 3y ago
You would need to select a font that supports FreeType instead of ClearType. Here's a good thread on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528605 Anecdotally, I use PopOS as my daily driver and the fonts and DE are beautiful. I prefer it to the Mac workstation I use for work. When I flip my KVM I'm often reminded of the contrast. I use open source ligature enabled FreeType fonts and they are all exceedingly sharp. http://freetype.org/ http://freetype.org/
Roark66 3y ago
You know what is my pet peeve with Linux guis? Mouse movement. Why is it that despite spending a collective week of work hours on it and testing every single acceleration band speed setting it still feels like my mouse is imprecise and slow at the same time I use windows for a while and then go back to Linux?
- trealira 3y ago
  Could it be that you have mouse acceleration turned off on Linux? Mouse acceleration makes the mouse pointer move further if you move the mouse faster. It's an option to turn on/off on KDE, and it's the way GNOME is set up unless you install GNOME Tweaks.
  - Roark66 3y ago
    I've tried, with and without, I tried various settings (there are quite a few mouse acceleration related settings). But I could never find something that even approximated windows speed of movement and precision at the same time. I wish someone finds out why this is at some point. I'm a 90% Linux 10% windows user and I've been for many years. I've accepted the inferior mouse experience on Linux (not just one mouse, all mice I ever had on a number of pcs and laptops), but I hope it gets sorted at some point.

elitepleb 3y ago

see also: https://arcan-fe.com https://arcan-fe.com

jrm4 3y ago

Glad to see this; the whole "shut up and use Wayland" attitude of many is offputting. Let's at least see what else is out there.

pjmlp 3y ago
And from what is out there, since 2009, how many of those are still relevant 14 years later? How many of Wayland haters have put the effort to make them happen?
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Of the 7 non-Wayland systems linked in the opening post, two still have a working web page. KDrive gave me a TLS error (the certificate is misconfigured) but ignoring it brings me to a web page that states the information is obsolete and hasn't been updated in about 7 years according to the page info. Everybody online talks about KDrive in the past tense it seems. Y-windows.org works, but the homepage only shows two entries written in 2004. It seems to be the product of a thesis that never received any development. I think it's safe to say from the listed post, only Wayland survived. I think of all the other alternatives, Mir had the best change at succeeding, but that died half a decade ago.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  It's not listed in the OP, but Arcan ( www.arcan-fe.com ) is alive and architecturally compares favorably to Wayland. Only problem is that letoram actively avoids bringing popular attention to the project to the point that he deliberately writes his blog posts on it in a very dense style. I think he's just doing it til 1.0 though. I really hope Arcan takes off; it's a much more elegant system than Wayland's XML-based crap whose main defense is "just use a toolkit!".
  - goku12 3y ago
    Arcan has been around for a long time. At one time, it showed more promise than Wayland as a successor of X11. Is there a chance that it will come back and succeed? (I'm a Wayland fan. But I had high hopes for Arcan and still wish to see it succeed). > Wayland's XML-based crap What is that? Do you mean the protocol definition? Why is that a big issue?

shinjitsu 3y ago

Wayland has struck me for years as being the new IPv6, the tech that the deep technical people tell me needs to come and replace the old thing that "doesn't work any more" and yet never quite takes over. maybe the year of critical mass switchover will be soon?

tuetuopay 3y ago
Major graphical distributions are now using wayland by default. So the time has indeed come.
kllrnohj 3y ago
I mean, insert any "year of linux on the desktop joke here" In terms of usage numbers, X is very, very dead. Android uses something that looks a lot more like Wayland than X (or arguably Wayland looks a lot more like Android's SurfaceFlinger than X, but whatever), and ChromeOS is Wayland as well. I'm pretty sure Steam Deck is also Wayland.
- tuetuopay 3y ago
  steam deck is indeed wayland with their own compositor called gamescope[1] for low-latency gaming (they target the fewest buffer copies as possible). Another nice side-effect it has is hdr support on AMD GPUs. 1: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope
- blueflow 3y ago
  > In terms of usage numbers, X is very, very dead Thats wishful thinking. Citation needed.
  - kllrnohj 3y ago
    Citation was in my post if you read it more carefully. Android+ChromeOS is easily the 90%+ of the "Linux" market that cares about having a GUI, and even omitting Android then ChromeOS is still more market share than desktop linux is ( https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide )

user3939382 3y ago

XFree86

teunispeters 3y ago

I liked Fresco - but CORBA was kind of going the wrong direction it turned out in time. I'm still not convinced on Wayland. Does it solve X's security issues? https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ oh and this for X11 security issues as it's a nice summary : https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4641/why-are-people-saying-that-the-x-window-system-is-not-secure https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4641/why-are-pe...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Of the problems in that SO link, I believe only "Isolation between apps" is an ongoing concern; Xorg (at least) hasn't listened to the network by default for a long time (as noted in that answer), but these days it doesn't run the X server as root either. That said, AFAIK yes Wayland does an excellent job of limiting the access that programs have.