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According to Lindy's Law this means I'll be ready to switch to Wayland no sooner than 2065.

bee_rider 2y ago
I’ll be really surprised if Wayland is still popular when X is really ready to be tossed out. But surely by 2065 somebody will have come up with an entirely new successor.
ithinkso 2y ago
I'm switching to Wayland on the New Year's Eve of the year of Linux desktop
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  Prior comment was 2065, so there is stilla good 41 years to get it right.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- vetinari 2y ago
  “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." (― William Gibson)
vundercind 2y ago
X was about 25 years old when Wayland came out. By that timeline, we’re only a decade from Wayland’s successor protocol being released. It may, optimistically, have had five entire years of being the unequivocal standard by then!
- hollerith 2y ago
  Instead of looking at how long it will take Wayland to mature, let's look at how long X has been obsolete (for some applications): for example, Apple rejected X way back in the 1990s for use in its new OS (which they released to users in 2001). In contrast Wayland is mature enough that ChromeOS decided to go all-in on Wayland, and Microsoft uses it too, for WSL2. ChromeOS has been using Wayland in Crostini and ChromeOS's Android emulator for years, but only in the last year or so have versions of the OS rolled out to ordinary users that use Wayland also for the main UI (browser and task bar and such). Till then ChromeOS used a hand-rolled graphics system for that. Also Wayland was embraced many years ago by makers of graphical user interfaces for cars.
  - guenthert 2y ago
    Apple didn't reject X, they acquired NeXT, which much earlier chose Display Postscript over X11 since Jobs was big on wysiwyg. The paperless office, promised decades ago, is finally here and with that wysiwyg a demand of the past. X had many competitors and outlived them all.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      There is an Slashdot comment written in 2003 by Mike Paquete, who was working on graphics for the Mac, titled "Why Apple didn't use X for the window system": https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=6734612 https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=67... Note that the title of the comment implies that Apple had the option of incorporating X into OS X, as do these next 2 quotes: "The window system . . . is graphics model agnostic, working equally well with QuickDraw, OpenGL, the Quartz drawing engine, X11" (The final sentence) "Been there, evaluated that," where "that" is a reference to X11. (If X11 was not ever an option for OS X, there would be no need for an Apple engineer like Paquete to evaluate it.) Although it makes points similar to the point you make (namely, some at NeXT or at Apple considered it important for hardcopy to look like it did on screen), Paquete's comment gives many other reasons that have nothing to do with hardcopy for why X was lacking for Apple's purposes. To summarize, Apple rejected X back in the 1990s for many reasons, most of which cannot be dismissed as demands from the past.
      - richie-guix 2y ago
        I salute your ability to discuss this topic irreligiously and from a place of knowledge.

I’ll be really surprised if Wayland is still popular when X is really ready to be tossed out. But surely by 2065 somebody will have come up with an entirely new successor.

ithinkso 2y ago

I'm switching to Wayland on the New Year's Eve of the year of Linux desktop

ForOldHack 2y ago
Prior comment was 2065, so there is stilla good 41 years to get it right.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
vetinari 2y ago
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." (― William Gibson)

vundercind 2y ago

X was about 25 years old when Wayland came out. By that timeline, we’re only a decade from Wayland’s successor protocol being released. It may, optimistically, have had five entire years of being the unequivocal standard by then!

hollerith 2y ago
Instead of looking at how long it will take Wayland to mature, let's look at how long X has been obsolete (for some applications): for example, Apple rejected X way back in the 1990s for use in its new OS (which they released to users in 2001). In contrast Wayland is mature enough that ChromeOS decided to go all-in on Wayland, and Microsoft uses it too, for WSL2. ChromeOS has been using Wayland in Crostini and ChromeOS's Android emulator for years, but only in the last year or so have versions of the OS rolled out to ordinary users that use Wayland also for the main UI (browser and task bar and such). Till then ChromeOS used a hand-rolled graphics system for that. Also Wayland was embraced many years ago by makers of graphical user interfaces for cars.
- guenthert 2y ago
  Apple didn't reject X, they acquired NeXT, which much earlier chose Display Postscript over X11 since Jobs was big on wysiwyg. The paperless office, promised decades ago, is finally here and with that wysiwyg a demand of the past. X had many competitors and outlived them all.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    There is an Slashdot comment written in 2003 by Mike Paquete, who was working on graphics for the Mac, titled "Why Apple didn't use X for the window system": https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=6734612 https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=67... Note that the title of the comment implies that Apple had the option of incorporating X into OS X, as do these next 2 quotes: "The window system . . . is graphics model agnostic, working equally well with QuickDraw, OpenGL, the Quartz drawing engine, X11" (The final sentence) "Been there, evaluated that," where "that" is a reference to X11. (If X11 was not ever an option for OS X, there would be no need for an Apple engineer like Paquete to evaluate it.) Although it makes points similar to the point you make (namely, some at NeXT or at Apple considered it important for hardcopy to look like it did on screen), Paquete's comment gives many other reasons that have nothing to do with hardcopy for why X was lacking for Apple's purposes. To summarize, Apple rejected X back in the 1990s for many reasons, most of which cannot be dismissed as demands from the past.
    - richie-guix 2y ago
      I salute your ability to discuss this topic irreligiously and from a place of knowledge.