3 ms·

> they're expecting all software to be rewritten. ALL software was ALREADY rewritten for the web, so just use a web browser running directly on the hardware in

> they're expecting all software to be rewritten. ALL software was ALREADY rewritten for the web, so just use a web browser running directly on the hardware instead of bothering with X11 or Wayland or some hypothetical replacement like X12. That's just an extra useless layer that nobody needs. A web browser is totally extensible and scriptable in JavaScript and WASM. Standards based. Excellent networking support. Streaming video. Secure sandboxing. Remote accelerated 2D and 3D graphics and GPU programming and WASM engine. Not rocket science. Off-the-shelf, well tested, open standards based solution. Problem already solved. Why this is not the most obvious thing in the world since the Effrafax painted a mountain pink, and hasn't already been done, totally baffles me. It's as if the Linux community would much rather bicker and squabble about X11 -vs- Wayland for another 30 years than solve the problem once and for all and permanently and perfectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem >An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. >The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38445174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38445174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31988890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31988890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29094938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29094938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29097030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29097030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844345

marrs 3y ago
I write software for web browsers for a living and I shudder at the thought of having all of my apps trapped in some bloaty, slow sandbox that's different enough from all the other bloaty and slow sandboxes to not actually support all the software it needs to run. If I have to live on your world, I'll probably just chuck it all in and work with my hands for a living instead.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  So you'd rather have TWO different bloaty slow sandboxes layered on top of each other, instead of one bloaty slow sandbox. Right.
  - marrs 3y ago
    I don't know what this means
    - hedora 3y ago
      The web browser is a sandbox, and it runs as an OS process, which is a sandbox. I think their comment means you’d be better off targeting an OS level sandbox (maybe based on OCI(?), which means a different container for each OS kernel or breaking kernel change — new docker doesn’t run on old linux as it is). If you chose the OS level sandbox correctly, that would probably be more cpu-efficient than the web browser. However, that’s a big “if”, since most of the linux sandbox thingies take multiple seconds to spawn a process, and multiply memory usage by 10-100x.
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        No, I mean the other way around. X11 sucks. Wayland sucks. Get rid of them both! But the browser's not going away, and it's open standards based and cross platform, and there's a huge amount of collaborative work and money and talent going into making it better and more powerful and more efficient and more secure across the entire industry and all platforms, unlike X11 and Wayland (which nobody gives a shit about outside of a few fanatical Linux desktop users), or even the Windows and Mac desktops and Android and iOS interfaces (which billions of people use every day, but are stagnant terribly designed dead-ends). The browser is a sandbox, so why run it on top of another leaky inflexible insufficient outdated sandbox full of clumps of dehydrated urine and cat turds like X11 or Wayland, instead of directly on the hardware? No modern desktop environment is complete without a browser, so since you're stuck with it, why not just use the browser itself as the desktop environment (or whatever user interface paradigm you choose to use), since you're never getting rid of the browser, and modern non-browser desktops aren't as flexible or powerful or extensible as a browser, and most useful applications have been ported to run in the web browser environment anyway, so they can run across many different platforms, and be easily distributed and efficiently used over the network (unlike Wayland or "modern" X11 apps). I'm just surprised this seems to be so hard for some people to understand, in spite of the fact that I've been making the same argument for more than a decade, and provided many links to those arguments, because it seems extremely obvious and straightforward to me, and the technology is finally mature enough to pull it off.

marrs 3y ago

I write software for web browsers for a living and I shudder at the thought of having all of my apps trapped in some bloaty, slow sandbox that's different enough from all the other bloaty and slow sandboxes to not actually support all the software it needs to run. If I have to live on your world, I'll probably just chuck it all in and work with my hands for a living instead.

DonHopkins 3y ago
So you'd rather have TWO different bloaty slow sandboxes layered on top of each other, instead of one bloaty slow sandbox. Right.
- marrs 3y ago
  I don't know what this means
  - hedora 3y ago
    The web browser is a sandbox, and it runs as an OS process, which is a sandbox. I think their comment means you’d be better off targeting an OS level sandbox (maybe based on OCI(?), which means a different container for each OS kernel or breaking kernel change — new docker doesn’t run on old linux as it is). If you chose the OS level sandbox correctly, that would probably be more cpu-efficient than the web browser. However, that’s a big “if”, since most of the linux sandbox thingies take multiple seconds to spawn a process, and multiply memory usage by 10-100x.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      No, I mean the other way around. X11 sucks. Wayland sucks. Get rid of them both! But the browser's not going away, and it's open standards based and cross platform, and there's a huge amount of collaborative work and money and talent going into making it better and more powerful and more efficient and more secure across the entire industry and all platforms, unlike X11 and Wayland (which nobody gives a shit about outside of a few fanatical Linux desktop users), or even the Windows and Mac desktops and Android and iOS interfaces (which billions of people use every day, but are stagnant terribly designed dead-ends). The browser is a sandbox, so why run it on top of another leaky inflexible insufficient outdated sandbox full of clumps of dehydrated urine and cat turds like X11 or Wayland, instead of directly on the hardware? No modern desktop environment is complete without a browser, so since you're stuck with it, why not just use the browser itself as the desktop environment (or whatever user interface paradigm you choose to use), since you're never getting rid of the browser, and modern non-browser desktops aren't as flexible or powerful or extensible as a browser, and most useful applications have been ported to run in the web browser environment anyway, so they can run across many different platforms, and be easily distributed and efficiently used over the network (unlike Wayland or "modern" X11 apps). I'm just surprised this seems to be so hard for some people to understand, in spite of the fact that I've been making the same argument for more than a decade, and provided many links to those arguments, because it seems extremely obvious and straightforward to me, and the technology is finally mature enough to pull it off.