4 ms·

X11 does have various ways to restrict access (one of which ssh does use for instance) and some more advanced security extensions. But as far as I can tell ther

X11 does have various ways to restrict access (one of which ssh does use for instance) and some more advanced security extensions. But as far as I can tell there has never been that much motivation to widely deploy any of it.

nolist_policy 2y ago
Eh even if you secure the X11 API itself, the Xorg server still is a 33 year old (!) c codebase.
- guappa 2y ago
  Linux is 33 years old as well. Let's stop using it to be secure?
  - jdiez17 2y ago
    Linux is not as secure as most tech people would assume at first glance. The monolithic kernel with all device drivers in ring0 is, let's just say, not the best approach if one were writing a new OS from scratch. It is mostly "secure" due to it being used in practically every server and billions of devices, so there is an active maintainer community around it. Xorg has none of that.
- welterde 2y ago
  It is only one old C codebase however (or a couple if one counts the *BSD semi-forks separately) instead of many different fresh c codebases (one per compositor with some shared code between some of them to be fair). I don't buy that this is actually better for security. It is a lot of more fun/less painful than cleaning up and improving some legacy codebase however.
  - FreeFull 2y ago
    There's nothing that forces a Wayland compositor to be written in C. I've seen ones written in C++, Zig, and Rust, but you could really use any language as long as you can still call the appropriate system/kernel APIs
    - welterde 2y ago
      Nothing preventing you from writing a X11 server in something else either (and people have done so!). But fact is, most wayland compositors right now are either pure C or C++ (and I think the rest uses at least wlroots?). Many X11 window managers are written in non-c languages too and I don't think I am too far off the mark when I say that a decent fraction of wayland compositors would just be external window managers if there existed a standardized interface for window managers when they were written (I think some compositors have an interface for external window managers now, but is there a standard interface by now?).
- bandrami 2y ago
  I far prefer one 33-year-old to four (and counting!) newer codebases that all try to do the same things slightly differently.
- arp242 2y ago
  Eh, wlroots is in C. Tons of the Wayland stuff is in C. There's a bunch of good reasons to prefer Wayland, but this is probably the worst reason I've seen yet.

nolist_policy 2y ago

Eh even if you secure the X11 API itself, the Xorg server still is a 33 year old (!) c codebase.

guappa 2y ago
Linux is 33 years old as well. Let's stop using it to be secure?
- jdiez17 2y ago
  Linux is not as secure as most tech people would assume at first glance. The monolithic kernel with all device drivers in ring0 is, let's just say, not the best approach if one were writing a new OS from scratch. It is mostly "secure" due to it being used in practically every server and billions of devices, so there is an active maintainer community around it. Xorg has none of that.
welterde 2y ago
It is only one old C codebase however (or a couple if one counts the *BSD semi-forks separately) instead of many different fresh c codebases (one per compositor with some shared code between some of them to be fair). I don't buy that this is actually better for security. It is a lot of more fun/less painful than cleaning up and improving some legacy codebase however.
- FreeFull 2y ago
  There's nothing that forces a Wayland compositor to be written in C. I've seen ones written in C++, Zig, and Rust, but you could really use any language as long as you can still call the appropriate system/kernel APIs
  - welterde 2y ago
    Nothing preventing you from writing a X11 server in something else either (and people have done so!). But fact is, most wayland compositors right now are either pure C or C++ (and I think the rest uses at least wlroots?). Many X11 window managers are written in non-c languages too and I don't think I am too far off the mark when I say that a decent fraction of wayland compositors would just be external window managers if there existed a standardized interface for window managers when they were written (I think some compositors have an interface for external window managers now, but is there a standard interface by now?).
bandrami 2y ago
I far prefer one 33-year-old to four (and counting!) newer codebases that all try to do the same things slightly differently.
arp242 2y ago
Eh, wlroots is in C. Tons of the Wayland stuff is in C. There's a bunch of good reasons to prefer Wayland, but this is probably the worst reason I've seen yet.