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My skepticism should be quite obvious: I am still posting through an X11 system. But, Wayland is far and away the best and most serious attempt to replace X, e

My skepticism should be quite obvious: I am still posting through an X11 system. But, Wayland is far and away the best and most serious attempt to replace X, ever, in thirty years and more. If there is gonna be an X11 replacement, ever, Wayland is the most credible attempt in decades

vundercind 2y ago
Agreed that it’s made the best show of attempting, but Wayland’s only got about nine years before it’s as old as x11 (the protocol) was when the Wayland showed up. If it’s gonna mostly displace x11… man, it’s sure taking its time. It’s older than xfree86 was when the xorg fork occurred.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  > If it’s gonna mostly displace x11… man, it’s sure taking its time. Yes, and I'm fine waiting 5, 10, or 20 years. It's natural that such major shifts take a long time in an already mature ecosystem.
raffraffraff 2y ago
I'm also using X11, even though I've attempted to switch to Warplanes twice and had to switch back due to screen sharing and remote desktop being trash or just breaking after some update or other (most recently, browser). It's a work machine and I simply can't waste an hour fucking around with it. Aside from those issues which are deal-breakers in work, there's a bunch of minor annoyances I won't go into, thrust not deal brakes but they're "there". With X11 everything I need just works. I'm on a bleeding edge distro (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) so I'll probably try it out on a weekend every few months to see if it's better. But in fairness I did that before, made the switch and then lost screen sharing after some random update...
- petepete 2y ago
  Screen sharing was the final hurdle for me. I switched to running Slack in a Chrome tab and it works better than it ever did on X11 for me. I've used it on both my work computers for a few years now and it's been totally solid.
  - guappa 2y ago
    I've done screen sharing for years on X11.
    - petepete 2y ago
      Me too. But Wayland is just better for everyday use.
      - guappa 2y ago
        I will certainly switch when the things I use daily will work on wayland as well.
arp242 2y ago
Tons of X11 infra will have to remain for a long time to support X11-only "legacy" apps that can't easily be updated. There's a long tail of that from games to scientific software to just unmaintained software that still works and is used. The major bit will be when and if toolkits like GTK, Qt, SDL, etc. drop X11 support and applications update to X11-less versions. AFAIK there are no plans for that and is still years away (there was some talk about GTK 5, but nothing firm and no one even started work on GTK 5). I also think Wayland will eventually replace all of X11, in the same way as IPv6 will eventually replace all of IPv4.
- cies 2y ago
  > Tons of X11 infra will have to remain As XWayland. XWayland will be the new X.
  - arp242 2y ago
    Well, also libX11 and all of that type of stuff. And as I understand it XWayland shares a lot of code with the regular xserver (it's built from the same repo).
    - cies 2y ago
      Yes, it just sits in a Wayland "container". So we can have security/fractionalScaling/modernMultiMonitor by default and X.oldness when required for that last bit of stubborn software.
      - arp242 2y ago
        What I mostly meant was that for people who prefer to use X11, that will probably remain viable for a long time, without any Wayland. There's this notion that X11 is "deprecated" and that "no one is maintaining it", but the reality of it is far more nuanced. The main "flag day" will probably be when toolkits start shifting away from X11 to Wayland only, and applications start using them (there's usually big lag between release and widespread adoption of new GTK versions and such). Some qualified language in all of the above, because hard to predict the future etc. etc.

vundercind 2y ago

Agreed that it’s made the best show of attempting, but Wayland’s only got about nine years before it’s as old as x11 (the protocol) was when the Wayland showed up. If it’s gonna mostly displace x11… man, it’s sure taking its time. It’s older than xfree86 was when the xorg fork occurred.

The_Colonel 2y ago
> If it’s gonna mostly displace x11… man, it’s sure taking its time. Yes, and I'm fine waiting 5, 10, or 20 years. It's natural that such major shifts take a long time in an already mature ecosystem.

raffraffraff 2y ago

I'm also using X11, even though I've attempted to switch to Warplanes twice and had to switch back due to screen sharing and remote desktop being trash or just breaking after some update or other (most recently, browser). It's a work machine and I simply can't waste an hour fucking around with it. Aside from those issues which are deal-breakers in work, there's a bunch of minor annoyances I won't go into, thrust not deal brakes but they're "there". With X11 everything I need just works. I'm on a bleeding edge distro (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) so I'll probably try it out on a weekend every few months to see if it's better. But in fairness I did that before, made the switch and then lost screen sharing after some random update...

petepete 2y ago
Screen sharing was the final hurdle for me. I switched to running Slack in a Chrome tab and it works better than it ever did on X11 for me. I've used it on both my work computers for a few years now and it's been totally solid.
- guappa 2y ago
  I've done screen sharing for years on X11.
  - petepete 2y ago
    Me too. But Wayland is just better for everyday use.
    - guappa 2y ago
      I will certainly switch when the things I use daily will work on wayland as well.

arp242 2y ago

Tons of X11 infra will have to remain for a long time to support X11-only "legacy" apps that can't easily be updated. There's a long tail of that from games to scientific software to just unmaintained software that still works and is used. The major bit will be when and if toolkits like GTK, Qt, SDL, etc. drop X11 support and applications update to X11-less versions. AFAIK there are no plans for that and is still years away (there was some talk about GTK 5, but nothing firm and no one even started work on GTK 5). I also think Wayland will eventually replace all of X11, in the same way as IPv6 will eventually replace all of IPv4.

cies 2y ago
> Tons of X11 infra will have to remain As XWayland. XWayland will be the new X.
- arp242 2y ago
  Well, also libX11 and all of that type of stuff. And as I understand it XWayland shares a lot of code with the regular xserver (it's built from the same repo).
  - cies 2y ago
    Yes, it just sits in a Wayland "container". So we can have security/fractionalScaling/modernMultiMonitor by default and X.oldness when required for that last bit of stubborn software.
    - arp242 2y ago
      What I mostly meant was that for people who prefer to use X11, that will probably remain viable for a long time, without any Wayland. There's this notion that X11 is "deprecated" and that "no one is maintaining it", but the reality of it is far more nuanced. The main "flag day" will probably be when toolkits start shifting away from X11 to Wayland only, and applications start using them (there's usually big lag between release and widespread adoption of new GTK versions and such). Some qualified language in all of the above, because hard to predict the future etc. etc.