5 ms·

I would hardly call modern X11 nicely conceived. It was nice in the 80s when everything was network transparent, X was indeed a graphic terminal for local or re

by rahen 2y ago

I would hardly call modern X11 nicely conceived. It was nice in the 80s when everything was network transparent, X was indeed a graphic terminal for local or remote Motif apps, and everything handled by the xlib. It was then somewhat reminiscent of Rio although foreign and bolted on top of the system. Nowadays it's just a clunky mess of direct rendering interfaces bolted on top of legacy cruft from a long gone era. It's complex and inefficient.

lupusreal 2y ago
X11 may be clunky, but it's familiar clunky which my tools and workflows are already set up for. I paid the cost incurred by X11's clunk many years ago and now I feel too old and weary to pay it again for Wayland. I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. If Wayland were such a great improvement overall that it didn't incur it's own clunky tax, then the situation might be different. On the contrary, Wayland is not only clunky but fragmented as well; hacks and workarounds for one compositor don't necessarily work for another, so if I switched to it I would be faced with the prospect of either figuring out numerous systems or picking one of them blind and hoping for the best.
- lpapez 2y ago
  > I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. Absolutely feel the same way, I don't wanna work on my tools, I wanna work on my work. I picked up Linux because I was an enthusiast. Now I use it because Windows became unusable and Linux is actually the best option on the desktop. But I don't care about X11 or Wayland, I just want things to work without fuss - and they mostly do through decades of churn and cruft. In my world legacy cruft is vastly preferable to new problems.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    > [...] I just want things to work without fuss - and they mostly do through decades of churn and cruft. In my world legacy cruft is vastly preferable to new problems. I am curious to know why you decided to choose linux over netbsd if that is your opinion.
    - smackeyacky 2y ago
      gee, because nothing runs on it and the hardware support is deficient?
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Isn't NetBSD the one people install on toasters for bragging rights, and FreeBSD is the one people actually use? Anyway, Linux has better support for both hardware and software.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  > I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. You don't really have to in practice if you aren't a tinkerer. Most distros do the whole thing for you and appart from having a smoother desktop, you wouldn't even know you are using wayland on Gnome or KDE. In fact only the tinkerers can be annoyed by the switch because they are the ones using a non distro polished setup.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I have a small pile of hacks and utilities created in my tinkering days which I still use. I don't care for either GNOME or KDE so my desktop is a hodgepodge of various stuff; Kwin and LXQt plus a bunch of xbindkey, xdotool, tdrop, etc. From what I understand, a lot of this would need to be replaced with compositor-specific solutions if I switched to wayland.
blacklion 2y ago
Network transparency is good, but now it is achieved with RDP/VNC. I like new mode much better: when you change from terminal to terminal you have all the same programs running on "server" without restart. I could work on my Windows workstation locally, go to my office, attach back to workstation and everything works, then I could go to vacation to India and connect to same workstation from my phone (!) and still programs runs without restart. X11 model with "RPC display server" when you cannot re-attach same clients to new display server without restart or some proxies, which you need to run in advance, is not so convenient, IMHO. VNC was invented to remedy this problem. And VNC is simple pixel buffer, not high-level controls or X11 protocol in any way.
- welterde 2y ago
  That's perfectly possible with X11 to attach via VNC to an existing session. But what X11 over (local) network does way better than either RDP or VNC is to run individual applications remotely while having them seamlessly integrate with the rest of desktop. At the observatory for example we were running thin clients in the control room while all the control panel windows were coming from many different machines across the mountain and it felt like all the applications were running locally on the machine in the control room (while in reality nothing was running there).
  - bitwize 2y ago
    That is a bloody lie. Nothing on X feels like it's running locally except for actually locally running applications. String an Ethernet cable across the room, and run X apps remotely over it, and you'll get lag and chug. RDP actually delivers on the promise of local-feeling remote apps. (The revenge of the UNIX-HATERS is that Microsoft designed a better shell than sh (PowerShell), a better X than X (RDP), and a better Emacs than Emacs (Visual Studio Code).)
    - welterde 2y ago
      Maybe the problem was with your specific setup or applications? Because at the observatory it worked flawlessly. Between the local data reduction machine (beefy server) and the desktop computer in my office the same. And I used that setup for years and it worked just fine (and I really really hate any lag or glitches). VNC really sucked on the other hand, not being able to transparently share single windows (at least I never figured out how to), some windows would fail to refresh and I would need to drag them around to get them to redraw, copy and paste was always a pain, sometimes inputs not registering properly. To be fair to VNC though, over the internet plain X11 forwarding really sucked (latency is the real killer here) and VNC won out there. Unless one was using NX proxy, then it blew VNC out of the water (while using X11 on both ends). Only RDP was somewhat on par with NX over the internet, but locally still beaten by X11.

by rahen 2y ago

lupusreal 2y ago

X11 may be clunky, but it's familiar clunky which my tools and workflows are already set up for. I paid the cost incurred by X11's clunk many years ago and now I feel too old and weary to pay it again for Wayland. I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. If Wayland were such a great improvement overall that it didn't incur it's own clunky tax, then the situation might be different. On the contrary, Wayland is not only clunky but fragmented as well; hacks and workarounds for one compositor don't necessarily work for another, so if I switched to it I would be faced with the prospect of either figuring out numerous systems or picking one of them blind and hoping for the best.

lpapez 2y ago
> I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. Absolutely feel the same way, I don't wanna work on my tools, I wanna work on my work. I picked up Linux because I was an enthusiast. Now I use it because Windows became unusable and Linux is actually the best option on the desktop. But I don't care about X11 or Wayland, I just want things to work without fuss - and they mostly do through decades of churn and cruft. In my world legacy cruft is vastly preferable to new problems.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  > [...] I just want things to work without fuss - and they mostly do through decades of churn and cruft. In my world legacy cruft is vastly preferable to new problems. I am curious to know why you decided to choose linux over netbsd if that is your opinion.
  - smackeyacky 2y ago
    gee, because nothing runs on it and the hardware support is deficient?
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Isn't NetBSD the one people install on toasters for bragging rights, and FreeBSD is the one people actually use? Anyway, Linux has better support for both hardware and software.
prmoustache 2y ago
> I no longer enjoy tinkering so I'm going to stick with what already works for me. You don't really have to in practice if you aren't a tinkerer. Most distros do the whole thing for you and appart from having a smoother desktop, you wouldn't even know you are using wayland on Gnome or KDE. In fact only the tinkerers can be annoyed by the switch because they are the ones using a non distro polished setup.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I have a small pile of hacks and utilities created in my tinkering days which I still use. I don't care for either GNOME or KDE so my desktop is a hodgepodge of various stuff; Kwin and LXQt plus a bunch of xbindkey, xdotool, tdrop, etc. From what I understand, a lot of this would need to be replaced with compositor-specific solutions if I switched to wayland.

blacklion 2y ago

Network transparency is good, but now it is achieved with RDP/VNC. I like new mode much better: when you change from terminal to terminal you have all the same programs running on "server" without restart. I could work on my Windows workstation locally, go to my office, attach back to workstation and everything works, then I could go to vacation to India and connect to same workstation from my phone (!) and still programs runs without restart. X11 model with "RPC display server" when you cannot re-attach same clients to new display server without restart or some proxies, which you need to run in advance, is not so convenient, IMHO. VNC was invented to remedy this problem. And VNC is simple pixel buffer, not high-level controls or X11 protocol in any way.

welterde 2y ago
That's perfectly possible with X11 to attach via VNC to an existing session. But what X11 over (local) network does way better than either RDP or VNC is to run individual applications remotely while having them seamlessly integrate with the rest of desktop. At the observatory for example we were running thin clients in the control room while all the control panel windows were coming from many different machines across the mountain and it felt like all the applications were running locally on the machine in the control room (while in reality nothing was running there).
- bitwize 2y ago
  That is a bloody lie. Nothing on X feels like it's running locally except for actually locally running applications. String an Ethernet cable across the room, and run X apps remotely over it, and you'll get lag and chug. RDP actually delivers on the promise of local-feeling remote apps. (The revenge of the UNIX-HATERS is that Microsoft designed a better shell than sh (PowerShell), a better X than X (RDP), and a better Emacs than Emacs (Visual Studio Code).)
  - welterde 2y ago
    Maybe the problem was with your specific setup or applications? Because at the observatory it worked flawlessly. Between the local data reduction machine (beefy server) and the desktop computer in my office the same. And I used that setup for years and it worked just fine (and I really really hate any lag or glitches). VNC really sucked on the other hand, not being able to transparently share single windows (at least I never figured out how to), some windows would fail to refresh and I would need to drag them around to get them to redraw, copy and paste was always a pain, sometimes inputs not registering properly. To be fair to VNC though, over the internet plain X11 forwarding really sucked (latency is the real killer here) and VNC won out there. Unless one was using NX proxy, then it blew VNC out of the water (while using X11 on both ends). Only RDP was somewhat on par with NX over the internet, but locally still beaten by X11.