3 ms·

That's very good info. > For a long time the X Window System had a reputation for being difficult to configure. But apparently some things never actually chan

by ssl-3 2y ago

That's very good info. > For a long time the X Window System had a reputation for being difficult to configure. But apparently some things never actually change. :)

jandrese 2y ago
You want arcane, try doing the same thing in Windows when it can't detect your monitor properly and doesn't like your video card.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Thanks. Now I'll have nightmares of the time I spent trying to help a friend get the 32" TV they won in a contest (back when an LCD of that size was still both unusual and expensive) to work at proper native resolution in Windows. Windows really wanted it to be 1080p, and the TV supported this input, but it was a blurry mess. It was advertised as 720p, and the TV supported this input as well, but that was also a blurry mess. It actually had a physical vertical resolution of something like 760 lines, which was not one of the modes that it offered up over DDC as an option for whatever was driving it to use. Fun times. (I did eventually get 1:1 pixel mapping, but IIRC I had to give him a different video card for this to happen.)
- derefr 2y ago
  What Linux solves through configuration, Windows solves by having everything you buy come with its own model-specific drivers that burn the needed configuration into the .INI + .DLL. Windows "not liking your video card" is presumably because you either aren't using the right driver, or because Windows doesn't like your driver — i.e. the monitor is old enough that there's no version of that driver for current Windows.
matttproud 2y ago
Author of article: Honestly, it is pretty easy to configure the X Server these days; very little manual intervention has been required since the mid-2000s if you want to accept the defaults, which largely are correct and good. I am mindful about what families of hardware I buy, though, but that's not too restrictive. The only piece of hardware of mine that needs manual configuration is the Logitech TrackMan Marble, but that's only because I operate the mouse with a right-handed layout with my left hand. Interestingly the TrackMan Marble does not work with its full feature set in Wayland (core example: the buttons to enable horizontal/vertical panning of a wide or tall document), and this is not exotic hardware. How configuration is being handled in the X to Wayland conversion is a mystery to me. Some of it is happening in libinput (I think), but other parts aren't. This is one of the reasons I am deferring the Wayland migration for as long as I can. Configuring software stack that runs (think: what the ~/.xsession file manages) is the place I've invested most of my effort, and that's purely about aesthetics and behavior: DPI, font rendering settings, window manager, etc. And this is pretty easy to do these days, because most of these things can prototyped and altered in an existing X session (keeping a tight edit-run loop). And both of these situations can be alleviated by storing critical configuration files (e.g., ~/.xsession or the X Server configuration) under version control. There's no point in having to invest in reconfiguration of the same hardware these days when there's cheap version control and storage.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Oh, for sure. I've been using X in various capacities for ~3 decades. I remember how it was. I'm impressed with how it is. I recently switched back to X as a primary desktop after a rather long hiatus of doing [mostly!] other things. There was some initial driver discourse (standard nVidia vs. OSS necessary nonsense), but it wasn't really so bad once I sorted out what I needed and most "regular" Linux users can skip by a lot of this by default. So far, I've done zero manual configuration of X itself outside of using XFCE4's GUI tools to arrange the three monitors in front of me in the right order -- and I don't presently see any reason to change anything else. It's been very pleasant, all said, even though I got here on Medium-Hard Mode with an a rather barebones base install of Void on an existing ZFS pool for root. X really was one of the easier parts of the whole operation. (I have no interest in Wayland. It offers no clear advantage to me as a user that I can identify; even the games I like to play run splendidly in X. I've also always adored the concept of remotely displaying GUI applications. It's convenient -- I ran remote X apps for years immediately prior to this recent switch, and it worked well. Remote X apps have saved my bacon a few times by allowing me to quickly get a thing done in a familiar way instead of learning how to do it using something else entirely and maybe stuffing it up in some unforeseen fashion.)

by ssl-3 2y ago

That's very good info. > For a long time the X Window System had a reputation for being difficult to configure. But apparently some things never actually change. :)

jandrese 2y ago

You want arcane, try doing the same thing in Windows when it can't detect your monitor properly and doesn't like your video card.

ssl-3 2y ago
Thanks. Now I'll have nightmares of the time I spent trying to help a friend get the 32" TV they won in a contest (back when an LCD of that size was still both unusual and expensive) to work at proper native resolution in Windows. Windows really wanted it to be 1080p, and the TV supported this input, but it was a blurry mess. It was advertised as 720p, and the TV supported this input as well, but that was also a blurry mess. It actually had a physical vertical resolution of something like 760 lines, which was not one of the modes that it offered up over DDC as an option for whatever was driving it to use. Fun times. (I did eventually get 1:1 pixel mapping, but IIRC I had to give him a different video card for this to happen.)
derefr 2y ago
What Linux solves through configuration, Windows solves by having everything you buy come with its own model-specific drivers that burn the needed configuration into the .INI + .DLL. Windows "not liking your video card" is presumably because you either aren't using the right driver, or because Windows doesn't like your driver — i.e. the monitor is old enough that there's no version of that driver for current Windows.

matttproud 2y ago

Author of article: Honestly, it is pretty easy to configure the X Server these days; very little manual intervention has been required since the mid-2000s if you want to accept the defaults, which largely are correct and good. I am mindful about what families of hardware I buy, though, but that's not too restrictive. The only piece of hardware of mine that needs manual configuration is the Logitech TrackMan Marble, but that's only because I operate the mouse with a right-handed layout with my left hand. Interestingly the TrackMan Marble does not work with its full feature set in Wayland (core example: the buttons to enable horizontal/vertical panning of a wide or tall document), and this is not exotic hardware. How configuration is being handled in the X to Wayland conversion is a mystery to me. Some of it is happening in libinput (I think), but other parts aren't. This is one of the reasons I am deferring the Wayland migration for as long as I can. Configuring software stack that runs (think: what the ~/.xsession file manages) is the place I've invested most of my effort, and that's purely about aesthetics and behavior: DPI, font rendering settings, window manager, etc. And this is pretty easy to do these days, because most of these things can prototyped and altered in an existing X session (keeping a tight edit-run loop). And both of these situations can be alleviated by storing critical configuration files (e.g., ~/.xsession or the X Server configuration) under version control. There's no point in having to invest in reconfiguration of the same hardware these days when there's cheap version control and storage.

ssl-3 2y ago
Oh, for sure. I've been using X in various capacities for ~3 decades. I remember how it was. I'm impressed with how it is. I recently switched back to X as a primary desktop after a rather long hiatus of doing [mostly!] other things. There was some initial driver discourse (standard nVidia vs. OSS necessary nonsense), but it wasn't really so bad once I sorted out what I needed and most "regular" Linux users can skip by a lot of this by default. So far, I've done zero manual configuration of X itself outside of using XFCE4's GUI tools to arrange the three monitors in front of me in the right order -- and I don't presently see any reason to change anything else. It's been very pleasant, all said, even though I got here on Medium-Hard Mode with an a rather barebones base install of Void on an existing ZFS pool for root. X really was one of the easier parts of the whole operation. (I have no interest in Wayland. It offers no clear advantage to me as a user that I can identify; even the games I like to play run splendidly in X. I've also always adored the concept of remotely displaying GUI applications. It's convenient -- I ran remote X apps for years immediately prior to this recent switch, and it worked well. Remote X apps have saved my bacon a few times by allowing me to quickly get a thing done in a familiar way instead of learning how to do it using something else entirely and maybe stuffing it up in some unforeseen fashion.)