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> It starts with unsubstantiated claims that X suffers from "bloat" despite being capable of running on a 486 and dismissing the fact that the average Wayland c

> It starts with unsubstantiated claims that X suffers from "bloat" despite being capable of running on a 486 and dismissing the fact that the average Wayland compositor + necessary infrastructure is much more "bloated" than X ever was. "Bloat" doesn't mean "slow" or "memory-hungry". What "bloat" refers to is all the server-side windowing stuff that's no longer used by anything but Xaw or Motif, as well as extensions such as XRENDER that are useless nowadays. X servers carry around all of this legacy baggage that essentially goes entirely unused. > It fails to distinguish between compositing and hardware accelerated blit operations that allow X to display multiple windows without the need for a compositor. Compositing has been non-optional in every major desktop OS since 2006 except X. There's no point in supporting a non-compositing mode anymore, as it results in unavoidable tearing. 17 years is a long enough timespan to drop obsolete technologies. > It talks about hardware planes but fails to mention that no Wayland compositor so far is capable of using them whereas X is using them for the mouse for a long time (which avoids mouse stuttering on high GPU/CPU load). Huh? Weston has been using them since 2013 [1]. [1]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI5NTE https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI5NTE

phendrenad2 3y ago
Throwing out X11 because some features of it are legacy is and always was the entire point. And I don't think it's justified or good engineering practice.
- planckscnst 3y ago
  According to my recollection, it was more that the codebase became difficult and unpleasant to work on to the point that it was becoming unmaintainable. And nobody was interested in cleaning it up because that was just not interesting work
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    That's true, it was a bit of both. But in my experience "codebase became difficult and unpleasant" usually just means that the codebase is large and complex, and people don't want to take the time to understand it. It's always funny to me that people will talk about how elegant a codebase is one day, and the very next decide that it's crufty and old. Did it flip overnight? Did the cruft build up while they were calling it elegant? No, the only thing that changed was the complexity level. When people say cruft, I usually assume they're just frustrated by necessary complexity.

phendrenad2 3y ago

Throwing out X11 because some features of it are legacy is and always was the entire point. And I don't think it's justified or good engineering practice.

planckscnst 3y ago
According to my recollection, it was more that the codebase became difficult and unpleasant to work on to the point that it was becoming unmaintainable. And nobody was interested in cleaning it up because that was just not interesting work
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  That's true, it was a bit of both. But in my experience "codebase became difficult and unpleasant" usually just means that the codebase is large and complex, and people don't want to take the time to understand it. It's always funny to me that people will talk about how elegant a codebase is one day, and the very next decide that it's crufty and old. Did it flip overnight? Did the cruft build up while they were calling it elegant? No, the only thing that changed was the complexity level. When people say cruft, I usually assume they're just frustrated by necessary complexity.