4 ms·

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.

by jrm4 3y ago

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me a TLS error (the certificate is misconfigured) but ignoring it brings me to a web page that states the information is obsolete and hasn't been updated in about 7 years according to the page info.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?
eloisant 3y ago
On the contrary, seeing this shows that Wayland is the survivor among many competitors and not something major distributions suddenly pulled out of their asses. If anything that gives Wayland even more weight as the replacement for Xorg.
- xscott 3y ago
  There are plenty of examples throughout history where an inferior product won out over the alternatives, usually because of business or politics unrelated to merit.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Thank you, I feel like there's likely a more complex story going on with Wayland; and it feels like Gnome especially is far more interested in "cornering the market and being the only game in town" than "playing nice with everyone in the spirit of e.g. Free Software." I get that no law requires them to "be nice," but we should definitely talk about it regardless.
bitwize 3y ago
~100% of developer effort in the Linux graphical stack is going towards Wayland. Shutting up and using Wayland is the sensible thing to do.
- tinus_hn 3y ago
  Before Wayland, 100% of the developer effort went towards X. Was shutting up and using X the sensible thing to do then?
  - ot 3y ago
    For the end user, yes. What would be the alternative?
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Wayland is developed by the same people that have spent their time implementing X. So one either shuts up and accepts that the X developers know what they are doing, or comes up with an alternative that beats Wayland.
    - jrm4 3y ago
      While "entitlement to open source" is a problem, I often think that this reverse idea -- i.e. "make your own or shut up" is just as much of a problem. E.g. I can criticize a restaurant or a government or a building development. None of these requires that I start my own restaurant, government, or building development.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Indeed, and when one doesn't like it, can eat at home, run for elections, do a building injunction, and so on. Or accept what exists and that is it.
        jrm4 3y ago
        Or, you know, just talk about it and openly criticize. I'm going to go with e.g. the framers of the Constitution and others who actually think this is a good thing.
Findecanor 3y ago
The article was written a few years before Canonical announced that they were developing their own display server called Mir. Back then in 2013 it looked as if it could have become Wayland's biggest rival as a successor to X11. Apparently, Mir is still being actively developed at Canonical, but with focus towards embedded systems. The original plan had been to base it on libraries borrowed from Android, but those have been replaced with parts of Wayland. It looks as if it can also be hosted on top of Wayland or X11. Official site: https://mir-server.io/ https://mir-server.io/
- goku12 3y ago
  There is a little bit more to that story. Canonical had initially chosen Wayland to be the successor of X11. Then they dropped that plan in favor of the in-house Mir project, citing problems with Wayland. The Wayland developers debunked all of those points, but Canonical just neglected the reply. As I remember it, it was this incident that irked a lot of people and gave Wayland the push to become what it is today. Wayland wasn't as popular before that.
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  Mir is a Wayland compositor these days

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.

by 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?

eloisant 3y ago

On the contrary, seeing this shows that Wayland is the survivor among many competitors and not something major distributions suddenly pulled out of their asses. If anything that gives Wayland even more weight as the replacement for Xorg.

xscott 3y ago
There are plenty of examples throughout history where an inferior product won out over the alternatives, usually because of business or politics unrelated to merit.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Thank you, I feel like there's likely a more complex story going on with Wayland; and it feels like Gnome especially is far more interested in "cornering the market and being the only game in town" than "playing nice with everyone in the spirit of e.g. Free Software." I get that no law requires them to "be nice," but we should definitely talk about it regardless.

bitwize 3y ago

~100% of developer effort in the Linux graphical stack is going towards Wayland. Shutting up and using Wayland is the sensible thing to do.

tinus_hn 3y ago
Before Wayland, 100% of the developer effort went towards X. Was shutting up and using X the sensible thing to do then?
- ot 3y ago
  For the end user, yes. What would be the alternative?
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Wayland is developed by the same people that have spent their time implementing X. So one either shuts up and accepts that the X developers know what they are doing, or comes up with an alternative that beats Wayland.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    While "entitlement to open source" is a problem, I often think that this reverse idea -- i.e. "make your own or shut up" is just as much of a problem. E.g. I can criticize a restaurant or a government or a building development. None of these requires that I start my own restaurant, government, or building development.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Indeed, and when one doesn't like it, can eat at home, run for elections, do a building injunction, and so on. Or accept what exists and that is it.
      - jrm4 3y ago
        Or, you know, just talk about it and openly criticize. I'm going to go with e.g. the framers of the Constitution and others who actually think this is a good thing.

Findecanor 3y ago

The article was written a few years before Canonical announced that they were developing their own display server called Mir. Back then in 2013 it looked as if it could have become Wayland's biggest rival as a successor to X11. Apparently, Mir is still being actively developed at Canonical, but with focus towards embedded systems. The original plan had been to base it on libraries borrowed from Android, but those have been replaced with parts of Wayland. It looks as if it can also be hosted on top of Wayland or X11. Official site: https://mir-server.io/ https://mir-server.io/

goku12 3y ago
There is a little bit more to that story. Canonical had initially chosen Wayland to be the successor of X11. Then they dropped that plan in favor of the in-house Mir project, citing problems with Wayland. The Wayland developers debunked all of those points, but Canonical just neglected the reply. As I remember it, it was this incident that irked a lot of people and gave Wayland the push to become what it is today. Wayland wasn't as popular before that.
pantalaimon 3y ago
Mir is a Wayland compositor these days