4 ms·

I've enjoyed BSDs, but I don't know how sustainable an approach this is. Unless the BSD maintainers are going to absorb and maintain the old X codebase (they ha

by scythe 3y ago

I've enjoyed BSDs, but I don't know how sustainable an approach this is. Unless the BSD maintainers are going to absorb and maintain the old X codebase (they have already refused to treat it as a system component, and it's reputedly hard to maintain), it seems like sooner or later they will have to switch to Wayland, unless something else comes along. And while BSD might be able to solve the fragmentation problem within themselves, they would probably diverge from GNOME and KDE by doing so, cf XKCD #927, and anyway they are generally loath to include or endorse graphical components in the base system. A first step might be to just have a list of all the functionality affected by fragmentation. So far, unfortunately, most such lists are accompanied by if not subsumed within angry rants.

JohnFen 3y ago
I don't know why they'd inevitably have to switch to Wayland. However, you never know what the future may bring. If BSD ceases to be a refuge, then I'll investigate other options at that time. For now, though, it seems OK. > they would probably diverge from GNOME and KDE by doing so Which would be something I could live with. I dislike Gnome quite a lot so don't care about that. I do use KDE, but it's nothing that would hurt too much to do without if necessary.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> they have already refused to treat it as a system component, and it's reputedly hard to maintain > and anyway they are generally loath to include or endorse graphical components in the base system. I don't remember the others off the top of my head, but OpenBSD certainly seems to be treating Xenocara as a core part of the OS? It's not in the main src tree, but it's maintained in-house, the x* sets are treated like any other, and even some non-graphical programs depend on the xbase set for things like font rendering.
- scythe 3y ago
  Mea culpa. I was only familiar with FreeBSD and NetBSD. As 'johnny22 noted, FreeBSD has already started looking at what they can do about Wayland. There is some discussion of the OpenBSD approach here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24922625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24922625
johnny22 3y ago
Wayland is already an entry in the freebsd handbook. Here's a page on xenocera (the patchset on top of xorg that openbsd uses) describing what's they had to do to make sway run on openbsd https://xenocara.org/Wayland_on_OpenBSD.html https://xenocara.org/Wayland_on_OpenBSD.html
vidarh 3y ago
The future of X, if it has one, is to rip the backend off a Wayland compositor, deprecate most legacy features (server side fonts, most drawing primitives) and most visuals (e.g. Xrender has a required set of visuals; support those and no others) then test app by app you care about and add client side shims of there are any apps anyone cares about that can't be patched. Most X apps these days use only a tiny subset of request types anyway (source: lots of time spent with xtruss) and most of what's left is easy to shim. The X protocol is messy, but very little of it is used by software people both a) care about, and that b) isn't available in source form and can easily be upgraded. Sometimes I wonder about taking wlroots and doing a FrankenCompositor with first class X protocol support, including window management and all the bits the Wayland proponents keep not wanting to add...

by scythe 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

I don't know why they'd inevitably have to switch to Wayland. However, you never know what the future may bring. If BSD ceases to be a refuge, then I'll investigate other options at that time. For now, though, it seems OK. > they would probably diverge from GNOME and KDE by doing so Which would be something I could live with. I dislike Gnome quite a lot so don't care about that. I do use KDE, but it's nothing that would hurt too much to do without if necessary.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> they have already refused to treat it as a system component, and it's reputedly hard to maintain > and anyway they are generally loath to include or endorse graphical components in the base system. I don't remember the others off the top of my head, but OpenBSD certainly seems to be treating Xenocara as a core part of the OS? It's not in the main src tree, but it's maintained in-house, the x* sets are treated like any other, and even some non-graphical programs depend on the xbase set for things like font rendering.

scythe 3y ago
Mea culpa. I was only familiar with FreeBSD and NetBSD. As 'johnny22 noted, FreeBSD has already started looking at what they can do about Wayland. There is some discussion of the OpenBSD approach here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24922625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24922625

johnny22 3y ago

Wayland is already an entry in the freebsd handbook. Here's a page on xenocera (the patchset on top of xorg that openbsd uses) describing what's they had to do to make sway run on openbsd https://xenocara.org/Wayland_on_OpenBSD.html https://xenocara.org/Wayland_on_OpenBSD.html

vidarh 3y ago

The future of X, if it has one, is to rip the backend off a Wayland compositor, deprecate most legacy features (server side fonts, most drawing primitives) and most visuals (e.g. Xrender has a required set of visuals; support those and no others) then test app by app you care about and add client side shims of there are any apps anyone cares about that can't be patched. Most X apps these days use only a tiny subset of request types anyway (source: lots of time spent with xtruss) and most of what's left is easy to shim. The X protocol is messy, but very little of it is used by software people both a) care about, and that b) isn't available in source form and can easily be upgraded. Sometimes I wonder about taking wlroots and doing a FrankenCompositor with first class X protocol support, including window management and all the bits the Wayland proponents keep not wanting to add...