5 ms·

I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less. Sad to see these type quirks will

by jmclnx 3y ago

I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less. Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.

raid2000 3y ago
Yes. Some of them are are only a couple thousand lines of code[1]. No background "activities", no keyboard shortcut stealing from other apps. 1: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html
- ratmice 3y ago
  XGrabKey?
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland. I started using Linux when I was 25 or so. I'm 51 now. I do believe there's a far from zero probability that X is going to outlast me... Even if I live until 80! P.S: and the day X dies, in decades, I do also think it's possible that, at long last, Wayland shall be as customizable and allows to do all the amazing thing X allows to do.
- bornfreddy 3y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't share your optimism. Judging by the fiasco that systemd is and how it managed to completely win over init scripts, even the opensource world is not immune to fashion / politics / ...
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Systemd has not took over the world. Slackware is still doing fine without it.
  - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
    I miss writing sysvinit scripts exactly never. Even if you were building a system for which init stages would be immutable, forever sealed and unchanging, determining the correct ordering means understanding every daemon and all their associated quirks and their dependencies and the quirks associated with their dependencies and so on... I will never get the hours spent being a human SAT solver trying to safely order hundreds of lexicographically ordered start and stop scripts that may or may not be present in an unbelievable number of permutations. The reason sysvinit is extinct is neither fashion or politics, but evolution.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > human SAT solver trying to safely order hundreds of lexicographically ordered start and stop scripts Your doing it wrong. You don't want too many services on a single server.
      - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
        Where did I mention anything about servers? The scenario I was referring to involved maintaining a large set of packages for a distribution, each of which may or may not be installed.
    - throwanem 3y ago
      Given my experience writing systemd units and then trying to figure out why they don't behave as the documentation says that they should, this suggests that being miserable to work with must be an adaptively neutral trait in init systems, thus selected neither for nor against.
    - oohffyvfg 3y ago
      except writing systemd unit file hacks are just as bad. but with the added offense that things don't work as promised. eg. if your sshd is set after initRandom, but unit random is set after timesync, and timesync depends on network because ntp... if you only have lan and your ntp servers aren't reachable (or offline) you don't get any log out user visible hint at all of why start sshd just hangs there forever. no matter how bad init hacks were, nothing was this shitty. zero logs. zero hints. just wait there forever. if you like systemd, it just means you're sheltered and too green.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Systemd has taken over most popular Linux distributions, but Linux isn't the whole of the opensource world. I suspect X servers will die out at some point, but you could probably just run XWayland right? I've not messed with Wayland yet, because it doesn't address my use cases (mythtv frontends which is one X program with no window manager, and running programs on freebsd/linux for display on Windows).
- p_l 3y ago
  The customizability is possible, but not the ease of it Because with wayland you don't write "just" a window manager - you write also the gorilla and most of the jungle, because a "WM" also has to be full Window Server with handling of input, rendering, display configuration, possibly linking extra virtual displays (still haven't figured exactly what part of the protocol handles it, but apparently pipewire can create virtual display that can be used for example by OBS)

by jmclnx 3y ago

raid2000 3y ago

Yes. Some of them are are only a couple thousand lines of code[1]. No background "activities", no keyboard shortcut stealing from other apps. 1: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html

ratmice 3y ago
XGrabKey?

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland. I started using Linux when I was 25 or so. I'm 51 now. I do believe there's a far from zero probability that X is going to outlast me... Even if I live until 80! P.S: and the day X dies, in decades, I do also think it's possible that, at long last, Wayland shall be as customizable and allows to do all the amazing thing X allows to do.

bornfreddy 3y ago
Unfortunately, I don't share your optimism. Judging by the fiasco that systemd is and how it managed to completely win over init scripts, even the opensource world is not immune to fashion / politics / ...
- hulitu 3y ago
  Systemd has not took over the world. Slackware is still doing fine without it.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  I miss writing sysvinit scripts exactly never. Even if you were building a system for which init stages would be immutable, forever sealed and unchanging, determining the correct ordering means understanding every daemon and all their associated quirks and their dependencies and the quirks associated with their dependencies and so on... I will never get the hours spent being a human SAT solver trying to safely order hundreds of lexicographically ordered start and stop scripts that may or may not be present in an unbelievable number of permutations. The reason sysvinit is extinct is neither fashion or politics, but evolution.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > human SAT solver trying to safely order hundreds of lexicographically ordered start and stop scripts Your doing it wrong. You don't want too many services on a single server.
    - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
      Where did I mention anything about servers? The scenario I was referring to involved maintaining a large set of packages for a distribution, each of which may or may not be installed.
  - throwanem 3y ago
    Given my experience writing systemd units and then trying to figure out why they don't behave as the documentation says that they should, this suggests that being miserable to work with must be an adaptively neutral trait in init systems, thus selected neither for nor against.
  - oohffyvfg 3y ago
    except writing systemd unit file hacks are just as bad. but with the added offense that things don't work as promised. eg. if your sshd is set after initRandom, but unit random is set after timesync, and timesync depends on network because ntp... if you only have lan and your ntp servers aren't reachable (or offline) you don't get any log out user visible hint at all of why start sshd just hangs there forever. no matter how bad init hacks were, nothing was this shitty. zero logs. zero hints. just wait there forever. if you like systemd, it just means you're sheltered and too green.
- toast0 3y ago
  Systemd has taken over most popular Linux distributions, but Linux isn't the whole of the opensource world. I suspect X servers will die out at some point, but you could probably just run XWayland right? I've not messed with Wayland yet, because it doesn't address my use cases (mythtv frontends which is one X program with no window manager, and running programs on freebsd/linux for display on Windows).
p_l 3y ago
The customizability is possible, but not the ease of it Because with wayland you don't write "just" a window manager - you write also the gorilla and most of the jungle, because a "WM" also has to be full Window Server with handling of input, rendering, display configuration, possibly linking extra virtual displays (still haven't figured exactly what part of the protocol handles it, but apparently pipewire can create virtual display that can be used for example by OBS)