5 ms·

Part of the problem is that Wayland looked at several large chunks of functionality that X11 implemented and said "no thanks, those are security holes, we want

Part of the problem is that Wayland looked at several large chunks of functionality that X11 implemented and said "no thanks, those are security holes, we want nothing to do with them, that is the responsibility of the distro/DE/etc" Which is rather in conflict with earlier promises about maintaining functionality. This resulted in a whole chunk of work that was either badly done, or not done at all, or needed all sorts of hacks and extra work because it needed to be re-implemented in different ways on different distros. So I'm really not sympathetic to the Wayland devs, they needlessly created this situation. A more reasonable answer would have been "we don't like this, it's a security hole, but whatever, just implement a Wayland extension that matches the X11 one, and security conscious people can disable it, and everybody else can move forward productively in the short term"

bitwize 3y ago
The Wayland devs don't need your sympathy. What's needed is a higher s/n ratio, and that means aggressive moderation of useless "wayland sux/x11 roolz" type comments, which belong in the dustbin of [flagged] [dead] along with e.g. any comment that uses "woke" as a pejorative. The dead horse has been beaten enough and a decision has been made. We're a few years out from the major toolkits removing their X code paths altogether. Everybody who knows anything about how the graphics stack actually works is committed to Wayland. Nobody cares at this point if you're sticking with X11. One day, you'll wake up and find that your entire GUI environment has broken all around you.
- grandinj 3y ago
  Well, yes, what is needed is a solid understanding of why we are here, and what needs to be done to get to a better place. I like the Wayland devs, and their occasional failures should not overshadow their successes.
  - nolist_policy 3y ago
    No what is needed is that the armchair experts shut up and start contributing to actual Wayland development. The one doing the work decides how its done.
    - grandinj 3y ago
      Well, normally that would be true. But Wayland decided to "boil the ocean" and entirely replace a stack of stuff that was working perfectly well for most people. So perhaps the onus should be on the people who decided to do that, to make sure that things keep working instead of just dumping it? An alternative design would have been to have built Wayland inside X.org and tunnel the new protocol over the existing protocol, and then migrate chunks of functionality one at a time. Which is exactly how X11 replaced X10, and X10 replaced X9, etc. But that would have been careful engineering practice, and not nearly as much fun, so I understand why it did not happen.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        > An alternative design would have been to have built Wayland inside X.org and tunnel the new protocol over the existing protocol, and then migrate chunks of functionality one at a time. This is the kind of ignorance Drew was complaining about. Wayland is a fundamentally different design that cannot simply be embedded in the X protocol; and besides which, again, nobody wants to touch the Xorg code base. Again. Every single person who knows or cares about the modern Linux graphics stack is pretty much in agreement that abandoning the X approach and starting from scratch was the correct choice. This has been explained time and time again by Drew, Daniel Stone, and others much more knowledgeable about this issue than I. Explaining it over and over again to the stubborn and ignorant is getting tiring. You want to stay on legacy, unsupported X11? Fine. Enjoy having no modern software available for your system, as toolkit and app developers remove their X code paths entirely. Red Hat is abandoning X11 already, and Red Hat IS userspace Linux.
        grandinj 3y ago
        For starters, it is rather rude to assume how little I know about this. Leaving that aside, Drew is mis-characterising things a little. Wayland is fundamentally a different __compositor__ architecture. But the X11 system is about more than that, in fact compositors are a rather late addition to the X11 system. And the protocol architectures are actually quite similar in shape. Which is not surprising, since good ideas last, and X11 has been around for a long time and has accumulated lots of good things (along with lots of cruft too). So it would have been quite possible, but a good deal less fun, to do it differently.
- JackSlateur 3y ago
  Can I run wayland software in windows ? No ? You mean, I must still use the so infamous yet so helpfull X11 to actually print things on my screen ? Guess I'll stick with X then ? Come back when you have a working alternative, and please stop using some magical "authority" argument : "a decision has been made" (by whom, where, when, why, with whom authority ?)
  - bitwize 3y ago
    > Can I run wayland software in windows ? Yes. Wayland is the protocol by which WSL programs display on the Windows desktop. > Come back when you have a working alternative, and please stop using some magical "authority" argument : "a decision has been made" (by whom, where, when, why, with whom authority ?) By the X developers, who decided en masse to abandon X and work on Wayland instead.

bitwize 3y ago

The Wayland devs don't need your sympathy. What's needed is a higher s/n ratio, and that means aggressive moderation of useless "wayland sux/x11 roolz" type comments, which belong in the dustbin of [flagged] [dead] along with e.g. any comment that uses "woke" as a pejorative. The dead horse has been beaten enough and a decision has been made. We're a few years out from the major toolkits removing their X code paths altogether. Everybody who knows anything about how the graphics stack actually works is committed to Wayland. Nobody cares at this point if you're sticking with X11. One day, you'll wake up and find that your entire GUI environment has broken all around you.

grandinj 3y ago
Well, yes, what is needed is a solid understanding of why we are here, and what needs to be done to get to a better place. I like the Wayland devs, and their occasional failures should not overshadow their successes.
- nolist_policy 3y ago
  No what is needed is that the armchair experts shut up and start contributing to actual Wayland development. The one doing the work decides how its done.
  - grandinj 3y ago
    Well, normally that would be true. But Wayland decided to "boil the ocean" and entirely replace a stack of stuff that was working perfectly well for most people. So perhaps the onus should be on the people who decided to do that, to make sure that things keep working instead of just dumping it? An alternative design would have been to have built Wayland inside X.org and tunnel the new protocol over the existing protocol, and then migrate chunks of functionality one at a time. Which is exactly how X11 replaced X10, and X10 replaced X9, etc. But that would have been careful engineering practice, and not nearly as much fun, so I understand why it did not happen.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      > An alternative design would have been to have built Wayland inside X.org and tunnel the new protocol over the existing protocol, and then migrate chunks of functionality one at a time. This is the kind of ignorance Drew was complaining about. Wayland is a fundamentally different design that cannot simply be embedded in the X protocol; and besides which, again, nobody wants to touch the Xorg code base. Again. Every single person who knows or cares about the modern Linux graphics stack is pretty much in agreement that abandoning the X approach and starting from scratch was the correct choice. This has been explained time and time again by Drew, Daniel Stone, and others much more knowledgeable about this issue than I. Explaining it over and over again to the stubborn and ignorant is getting tiring. You want to stay on legacy, unsupported X11? Fine. Enjoy having no modern software available for your system, as toolkit and app developers remove their X code paths entirely. Red Hat is abandoning X11 already, and Red Hat IS userspace Linux.
      - grandinj 3y ago
        For starters, it is rather rude to assume how little I know about this. Leaving that aside, Drew is mis-characterising things a little. Wayland is fundamentally a different __compositor__ architecture. But the X11 system is about more than that, in fact compositors are a rather late addition to the X11 system. And the protocol architectures are actually quite similar in shape. Which is not surprising, since good ideas last, and X11 has been around for a long time and has accumulated lots of good things (along with lots of cruft too). So it would have been quite possible, but a good deal less fun, to do it differently.
JackSlateur 3y ago
Can I run wayland software in windows ? No ? You mean, I must still use the so infamous yet so helpfull X11 to actually print things on my screen ? Guess I'll stick with X then ? Come back when you have a working alternative, and please stop using some magical "authority" argument : "a decision has been made" (by whom, where, when, why, with whom authority ?)
- bitwize 3y ago
  > Can I run wayland software in windows ? Yes. Wayland is the protocol by which WSL programs display on the Windows desktop. > Come back when you have a working alternative, and please stop using some magical "authority" argument : "a decision has been made" (by whom, where, when, why, with whom authority ?) By the X developers, who decided en masse to abandon X and work on Wayland instead.