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There's been volumes written about the problems with X and what would've been done differently. Of course given enough time I'm sure Wayland will end up in the
by MadnessASAP 3y ago
There's been volumes written about the problems with X and what would've been done differently. Of course given enough time I'm sure Wayland will end up in the same place, it does have the advantage that it was designed to be extended upon and for implementations to be built from interoperating components (vs the monolithic Xorg).
The big difference really comes down too that X was designed to connect applications, input devices, and displays (including printers!!) across a network in a time when the concept of a untrusted network didn't really exist. Neither was there a concept of a GPU as they exist now.
Conversely Wayland was designed to connect those items (sans printers) within a computer and to default to providing the minimum amount of trust to those things, particularly applications.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI don't think the network thing actually matters; modern Xorg doesn't expose anything to the network by default, and IIRC will actually fight you about trying to do so to the extent that when I wanted to use it that way I ended up using socat to bridge TCP to the local socket. The general comment about trust and security is true, though; ex. the usual complaints about any X11 application being able to keylog any other (which XACE exists to counter, but since nobody seems to have done so I'm assuming it had problems!?)).
- cptskippy 3y ago> I don't think the network thing actually matters; modern Xorg doesn't expose anything to the network by default... It matters from the design and architecture perspective. It's foundational underpinnings we're constructed to support remote terminals. That really hasn't been a usecase for a very long time but the core architecture was built with that in mind and the monolithic nature of the code makes it very hard to change that.