8 ms·

I was initially excited for wayland, and was an early adopter. I soon soured on the entire thing. It's very clear to me that wayland was an 'ivory tower' disp

I was initially excited for wayland, and was an early adopter. I soon soured on the entire thing. It's very clear to me that wayland was an 'ivory tower' display server that had little respect for users or wm devs. You can't just go and break tons of things for security's sake when the harm is clearly higher than the benefits. Disabling screen and input capture should have been an 'opt in' feature for the truly paranoid. They should have also shipped a fully working bare bones desktop wm instead of a 'toy' implementation meant to run on a car entertainment center. Frankly I can't believe it got as much traction as it has, but we're all stuck with it now as it's clearly 'the future'. This and systemd really showed me that the linux ecosystem is far more vulnerable to the interests of a few corporate sponsored devs than the general community.

prmoustache 3y ago
> Disabling screen and input capture should have been an 'opt in' feature for the truly paranoid. You can do screen captures on wayland. I've seen tools that were used to share a mouse and a keyboard to multiple computers kvm like that supported wayland so input capture seems to be possible to me. My only gripe with wayland is that we seems to be lacking a common top level interface that is compatible with any compositor. Right now if some feature is not managed by the toolkit's wayland backend, devs need to have to implement compatibility with gnome's mutter, wlroots based compositor and kwin independently which doesn't seem to be a sane way of doing things. I wish all projects would converge into a common library like wlroots.
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  You can, now, but it's still not up to the level of polish that we had in x11, and nearly all of these are janky workarounds to a self inflicted problem
  - bitwize 3y ago
    That will change, and you can expect support in Wayland to eventually surpass X11 because guess where all the developer effort is.
    - _jal 3y ago
      > That will change Been hearing that from Wayland folks about very basic things for what, 15 years now?
      - prmoustache 3y ago
        Basic things have been sorted for a while already.
        _jal 3y ago
        But not complicated things like, uh, dumping a representation of what's on screen to a file.
        ihattendorf 3y ago
        I've been using https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/grim https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/grim for ~5 years now.
        prmoustache 3y ago
        This has been possible for a long while already.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >I wish all projects would converge into a common library like wlroots. They could also converge to a single display server implementation and the display server can interface with a separate window manager which could be swapped out.
robert_foss 3y ago
x11 has seen no development for 10 years. Staying on it for forever is not viable.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  Maybe that's why X11 still works, while Wayland is still an absolute shitshow.
  - dralley 3y ago
    I've been using Wayland for years at this point, and it works fine, and has continued working fine. When I switched, which again was years ago, it handled several things I cared about much better than Xorg. Try using multiple monitors of different DPIs on Xorg, it sucks.
- abaines 3y ago
  According to [0] there have been several releases in the last 10 years. Including one in 2021 that added variable refresh rate and touchpad gesture support. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server
  - robert_foss 3y ago
    Maintenance work has been done, yes. But not new feature development.
    - abaines 3y ago
      Aren't the two examples I mentioned new features?
      - robert_foss 3y ago
        Oh sorry. They weren't visible in the edit I replied to.
    - 3y ago
akagusu 3y ago
You are correct in your observations except that traction was actually bought by Red Hat's money.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
The general Linux community is just fine with systemd. It works, and works well. It is only a minority (albeit vocal) of users who are actually upset about systemd.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  > It works, and works well. Bold statement to make. To say it works well is an overstatement. "It works", yes, it does but I still beg to differ. I've always encountered issues with it. Services failing to shutdown, throwing me timeouts of x/y requiring of attempting z tries. Which as experienced within an install of Ubuntu Server a few days ago; nor have I seen systemd-resolved work either.
  - r2_pilot 3y ago
    I've used both systemv and systemd professionally. They both have flaws. I have had fewer issues with systemd(albeit I have a system that rarely doesn't start up its target program after a restart, but it's managed so it's not a problem and just gets a manual start). Individual experiences may vary obviously but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority. So nobody can express their frustrations with it without being written off as just a "vocal minority"? That's pretty sad, in my opinion.
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      Others may not vocalise the issues, to which I believe happens to more people than those who do vocalise the matter, doesn't mean it's works well. It works at best.
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      > […] but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority. Is it possible to tell the difference between a demographic minority of people who are (all/largely) vocal, and a demographic majority of which only a small number are vocal?
tapoxi 3y ago
To be fair they just make applications go through an API now, known as a desktop portal. This is done to allow the user to control which applications can capture or control their screen or input, like Windows and MacOS. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal Allowing any application to do that without the user knowing, the X11 model, is a recipe for disaster. With the right exploit chain you could theoretically deploy a keylogger from a website. Now sure, Wayland didn't have all of this from the start, but it wasn't the default for most distros until all of these things were in place. You opted to use Wayland before it was ready for general consumption.
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  >Allowing any application to do that without the user knowing, the X11 model, is a recipe for disaster. I don't know a single person that has ever fallen victim to a virus or malware on linux, and I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 20 years. If it was a threat vector, it clearly wasn't a very big issue. If they wanted to not break existing apps, simply intercept attempts to share screens or inputs, and pop up a dialog box asking the user for consent? That would have been fine. That should have been a part of their default implementation. What they actually wound up doing was infinitely more user hostile. I tried using it summer of '22. The wayland hype train was well underway and major linux distributions were already pushing it. I'd be much more forgiving if the wayland devs said 'hey guys, we're working on a new display server but it's very experimental and no one should use it unless they want to help us work out the kinks'. Instead, it was 'this is the future, x11 is abandonware'
  - okasaki 3y ago
    > I don't know a single person that has ever fallen victim to a virus or malware on linux, and I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 20 years. If it was a threat vector, it clearly wasn't a very big issue. Yes, well, the ground is being prepared to turn desktop Linux into a Android/Windows like app system (/ wasteland) where users mostly download third party proprietary apps and devs push updates directly to users with minimal oversight. In this brave new world, you will definitely appreciate app isolation.
jhoechtl 3y ago
I share your thoughts on Wayland. Throwing systemd into the rant is unwarranted piggy-packing.
nsajko 3y ago
> but we're all stuck with it now as it's clearly 'the future' Citation needed. X seems to be doing fine.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I sure hope so. Wayland still doesn't support an important use case for me so it would suck if I couldn't use X11.
  - m4rtink 3y ago
    What is the use case ? :-)
    - Rogach 3y ago
      Not OP, but for me the use case is Xmonad (window manager).
      - m4rtink 3y ago
        Wmonad ;-)
        Rogach 3y ago
        There's a project called "wmonad" on GitHub, but it's actually another X11 window manager, no relation to Wayland. There was the Waymonad project, but AFAIK it was never usable and is now abandoned (last commit 4 years ago).

prmoustache 3y ago

> Disabling screen and input capture should have been an 'opt in' feature for the truly paranoid. You can do screen captures on wayland. I've seen tools that were used to share a mouse and a keyboard to multiple computers kvm like that supported wayland so input capture seems to be possible to me. My only gripe with wayland is that we seems to be lacking a common top level interface that is compatible with any compositor. Right now if some feature is not managed by the toolkit's wayland backend, devs need to have to implement compatibility with gnome's mutter, wlroots based compositor and kwin independently which doesn't seem to be a sane way of doing things. I wish all projects would converge into a common library like wlroots.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
You can, now, but it's still not up to the level of polish that we had in x11, and nearly all of these are janky workarounds to a self inflicted problem
- bitwize 3y ago
  That will change, and you can expect support in Wayland to eventually surpass X11 because guess where all the developer effort is.
  - _jal 3y ago
    > That will change Been hearing that from Wayland folks about very basic things for what, 15 years now?
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      Basic things have been sorted for a while already.
      - _jal 3y ago
        But not complicated things like, uh, dumping a representation of what's on screen to a file.
        ihattendorf 3y ago
        I've been using https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/grim https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/grim for ~5 years now.
        prmoustache 3y ago
        This has been possible for a long while already.
charcircuit 3y ago
>I wish all projects would converge into a common library like wlroots. They could also converge to a single display server implementation and the display server can interface with a separate window manager which could be swapped out.

robert_foss 3y ago

x11 has seen no development for 10 years. Staying on it for forever is not viable.

Nullabillity 3y ago
Maybe that's why X11 still works, while Wayland is still an absolute shitshow.
- dralley 3y ago
  I've been using Wayland for years at this point, and it works fine, and has continued working fine. When I switched, which again was years ago, it handled several things I cared about much better than Xorg. Try using multiple monitors of different DPIs on Xorg, it sucks.
abaines 3y ago
According to [0] there have been several releases in the last 10 years. Including one in 2021 that added variable refresh rate and touchpad gesture support. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server
- robert_foss 3y ago
  Maintenance work has been done, yes. But not new feature development.
  - abaines 3y ago
    Aren't the two examples I mentioned new features?
    - robert_foss 3y ago
      Oh sorry. They weren't visible in the edit I replied to.
  - 3y ago

akagusu 3y ago

You are correct in your observations except that traction was actually bought by Red Hat's money.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

The general Linux community is just fine with systemd. It works, and works well. It is only a minority (albeit vocal) of users who are actually upset about systemd.

doublerabbit 3y ago
> It works, and works well. Bold statement to make. To say it works well is an overstatement. "It works", yes, it does but I still beg to differ. I've always encountered issues with it. Services failing to shutdown, throwing me timeouts of x/y requiring of attempting z tries. Which as experienced within an install of Ubuntu Server a few days ago; nor have I seen systemd-resolved work either.
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  I've used both systemv and systemd professionally. They both have flaws. I have had fewer issues with systemd(albeit I have a system that rarely doesn't start up its target program after a restart, but it's managed so it's not a problem and just gets a manual start). Individual experiences may vary obviously but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority. So nobody can express their frustrations with it without being written off as just a "vocal minority"? That's pretty sad, in my opinion.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Others may not vocalise the issues, to which I believe happens to more people than those who do vocalise the matter, doesn't mean it's works well. It works at best.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > […] but overall your comment supports the GP assertion of a vocal minority. Is it possible to tell the difference between a demographic minority of people who are (all/largely) vocal, and a demographic majority of which only a small number are vocal?

tapoxi 3y ago

To be fair they just make applications go through an API now, known as a desktop portal. This is done to allow the user to control which applications can capture or control their screen or input, like Windows and MacOS. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal Allowing any application to do that without the user knowing, the X11 model, is a recipe for disaster. With the right exploit chain you could theoretically deploy a keylogger from a website. Now sure, Wayland didn't have all of this from the start, but it wasn't the default for most distros until all of these things were in place. You opted to use Wayland before it was ready for general consumption.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
>Allowing any application to do that without the user knowing, the X11 model, is a recipe for disaster. I don't know a single person that has ever fallen victim to a virus or malware on linux, and I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 20 years. If it was a threat vector, it clearly wasn't a very big issue. If they wanted to not break existing apps, simply intercept attempts to share screens or inputs, and pop up a dialog box asking the user for consent? That would have been fine. That should have been a part of their default implementation. What they actually wound up doing was infinitely more user hostile. I tried using it summer of '22. The wayland hype train was well underway and major linux distributions were already pushing it. I'd be much more forgiving if the wayland devs said 'hey guys, we're working on a new display server but it's very experimental and no one should use it unless they want to help us work out the kinks'. Instead, it was 'this is the future, x11 is abandonware'
- okasaki 3y ago
  > I don't know a single person that has ever fallen victim to a virus or malware on linux, and I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 20 years. If it was a threat vector, it clearly wasn't a very big issue. Yes, well, the ground is being prepared to turn desktop Linux into a Android/Windows like app system (/ wasteland) where users mostly download third party proprietary apps and devs push updates directly to users with minimal oversight. In this brave new world, you will definitely appreciate app isolation.

jhoechtl 3y ago

I share your thoughts on Wayland. Throwing systemd into the rant is unwarranted piggy-packing.

nsajko 3y ago

> but we're all stuck with it now as it's clearly 'the future' Citation needed. X seems to be doing fine.

JohnFen 3y ago
I sure hope so. Wayland still doesn't support an important use case for me so it would suck if I couldn't use X11.
- m4rtink 3y ago
  What is the use case ? :-)
  - Rogach 3y ago
    Not OP, but for me the use case is Xmonad (window manager).
    - m4rtink 3y ago
      Wmonad ;-)
      - Rogach 3y ago
        There's a project called "wmonad" on GitHub, but it's actually another X11 window manager, no relation to Wayland. There was the Waymonad project, but AFAIK it was never usable and is now abandoned (last commit 4 years ago).