4 ms·

Yeah. I mean, not to deny the decades of arguments over its warts, but it's kind of amazing to me the extent to which X11 has emerged as, well, the simplest/be

by ajross 2y ago

Yeah. I mean, not to deny the decades of arguments over its warts, but it's kind of amazing to me the extent to which X11 has emerged as, well, the simplest/best and most hackable desktop graphics environment available. You want to play a trick, it's right there. The ICCCM got a ton of hate back in the early 90's, but... no one else has an equivalent and people still innovate in the WM space even today.

WD-42 2y ago
Hackable is right. But not always in the positive sense of the word.
- account42 2y ago
  It very much is. I expect programs running on my computer to not be restricted in how they can help me.
- ajross 2y ago
  FWIW, the threat model you're imagining is an attacker being able to run code to display directly to the desktop using the lowest level native API. A local[1] code exploit at the level of an interactive user is already a huge failure in the modern world. Is that a reasonable argument against using X11? Sure, for some use cases. Is it a good argument for wayland/windows/OSX/whatever to do your tiling WM experimentation? Not really, those environments kinda suck for playing around with. [1] Or "local-ish", your system or a trusted remote has to have been compromised already. Untrusted X11 protocol still exists but is deliberately disabled (and often blocked) everywhere. Even ssh won't forward it anymore unless you dig out the option and turn it on manually.
  - boudin 2y ago
    Isn't any app that can access read the x11 socket able to read any input? It's not just running an explicitly malicious app but also the risk of compromising an app which can read the x11 socket (e.g. Firefox)
    - ajross 2y ago
      Yes, exactly. I'm just saying that the response to a remote browser exploit in firefox is more likely to be "YIKES ZERO DAY IN FIREFOX!!!!!" and not "well it's a good thing we're running it in windows so it can't screenshot other apps or inject key events". It's not like it's not a valid argument, just that it's sort of a nitpick. Security is hard, and defense in depth is a thing, but this particular attack surface is way, way back in the "depth" stack for a modern app deployment.
      - superkuh 2y ago
        Javascript has managed to even ruin the linux desktop. Running every random JS application sent to your browser VM makes the browser insecure which means the entire computer can't be trusted. This is the reason things like the waylands enforce a smartphone like model of security where the user's applications aren't allowed to communicate or interact with other elements of the graphical desktop. Applications aren't trusted. So the user isn't trusted. A trade-off not worth it.
        quotemstr 2y ago
        Huh? What are you trying to say? There's no conflict between distrusting applications and trusting the user. Even on Android (which is pretty paranoid these days), you, the user, can still opt to trust apps with things like accessibility API access and background location. Why exactly should we perpetuate the insecure old single-privilege-level desktop model?
        superkuh 2y ago
        >Why exactly should we perpetuate the insecure old single-privilege-level desktop model? Because after 10 years of heavy development none of the waylands have managed support simple things like screen readers. X11 supports screen readers and innumberable other vital accessibility features that wayland never will be able to. Some waylands might eventually develop extensions for their particular desktop but there won't ever be a way for wayland protocol because it can't. Security theater is more important than accessibility/usability for wayland that leaves many use cases and entire demographics of people out in the cold. So yes, X11, which is still the least worst option. Better to have the ability to do all things than have to wait decades+ for developers to write complex extensions to do things (and just for their DE, causing fragmentation).
- l72 2y ago
  I find it very interesting how much our threat model has changed in the last 10-15 years. We no longer trust even local software, as we have to assume everything is now malicious. Commercial software from "reputable" companies can't be trusted to not pull a ton of analytics and personal data off your computer. We now have to worry about every piece of software being a keylogger and spying on other windows/applications and reporting back. We've had to give up so much flexibility. Wayland certainly focuses on plugging this hole, but it means we've lost all these cool utilities like this one. There was just so much you could do with devilspie, xdotool, and others to make sure my operating system and window environment worked for me. I still really miss X11's Zaphod mode, where you had two independent X sessions (:0.0 and :0.1) on two different monitors, with different window managers and different windowing rules. I miss the days of being able to trust my computer and trust my software.
  - singpolyma3 2y ago
    If you can't trust your locally installed software, everything is lost. I understand where this new threat model comes from for some people but I'd rather continue to avoid bad software sources than hamstring my OS in the hopes of avoiding malware I installed on purpose.
    - l72 2y ago
      I agree. But can you trust Zoom? What about Office or Photoshop? Can you trust Websites or your browser anymore? Even open source apps have analytics in them that may not be trustworthy anymore (firefox, audacity, ...).
      - singpolyma3 2y ago
        This is why I don't run Zoom or Office or Photoshop or versions of Firefox or Audacity not distributed by Debian. Browser sandboxes pretty heavily though of course one does want to be a bit careful there too.
      - jrm4 2y ago
        I teach online for a living, and -- yep Zoom through FIREFOX only. Coincidentally, it's also the best experience, for whatever reason it's the only on that supports virtual backgrounds on Linux for me? Neither Chrome nor Desktop seem to work for this.
themerone 2y ago
X11 is the opposite of simple and hackable. What you are thinking of as "hackable" is actually the result of it having a ton of legacy features that enable users to do neat tricks. Wayland breaks a lot of these tools because it is so much simpler than X.
- RedShift1 2y ago
  Wayland is simple because it shoves all the responsibilities to somewhere else.
- ajross 2y ago
  Lacking features isn't the same thing as "simpler", Wayland is great, but is very much a subset of the features implemented on an X11 desktop. Wayland doesn't do selections or provide any IPC mechanism of its own, much less something like an ICCCM that allows you to identify/target other users of the desktop and interact with them in a flexible way. In fact as I understand it the linked tool is in fact impossible to write in Wayland. Again, this isn't the fault of "Wayland", which is just a compositor framework. The complaint is that the ecosystem of "desktop" software which evolved around Wayland is an ad hoc monstrosity that lacks the unified structure that its ancestor had way back in the X11R5 days.
- vidarh 2y ago
  By window manager started out as ~50 lines of Ruby copying an equivalent amount of C. You can say many things about Wayland, but it's "simple" from a point of view I for one really do not care about. Wayland may be "simple" in some respects, but it makes most of the things I care about doing unnecessarily complex.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Walyand probably would have been better if wlroots had been developed as a (whatever this means) first-party “built-in” library.
    - vidarh 2y ago
anthk 2y ago
The most hackable would have been a Lisp based desktop.

by ajross 2y ago

WD-42 2y ago

Hackable is right. But not always in the positive sense of the word.

account42 2y ago
It very much is. I expect programs running on my computer to not be restricted in how they can help me.
ajross 2y ago
FWIW, the threat model you're imagining is an attacker being able to run code to display directly to the desktop using the lowest level native API. A local[1] code exploit at the level of an interactive user is already a huge failure in the modern world. Is that a reasonable argument against using X11? Sure, for some use cases. Is it a good argument for wayland/windows/OSX/whatever to do your tiling WM experimentation? Not really, those environments kinda suck for playing around with. [1] Or "local-ish", your system or a trusted remote has to have been compromised already. Untrusted X11 protocol still exists but is deliberately disabled (and often blocked) everywhere. Even ssh won't forward it anymore unless you dig out the option and turn it on manually.
- boudin 2y ago
  Isn't any app that can access read the x11 socket able to read any input? It's not just running an explicitly malicious app but also the risk of compromising an app which can read the x11 socket (e.g. Firefox)
  - ajross 2y ago
    Yes, exactly. I'm just saying that the response to a remote browser exploit in firefox is more likely to be "YIKES ZERO DAY IN FIREFOX!!!!!" and not "well it's a good thing we're running it in windows so it can't screenshot other apps or inject key events". It's not like it's not a valid argument, just that it's sort of a nitpick. Security is hard, and defense in depth is a thing, but this particular attack surface is way, way back in the "depth" stack for a modern app deployment.
    - superkuh 2y ago
      Javascript has managed to even ruin the linux desktop. Running every random JS application sent to your browser VM makes the browser insecure which means the entire computer can't be trusted. This is the reason things like the waylands enforce a smartphone like model of security where the user's applications aren't allowed to communicate or interact with other elements of the graphical desktop. Applications aren't trusted. So the user isn't trusted. A trade-off not worth it.
      - quotemstr 2y ago
        Huh? What are you trying to say? There's no conflict between distrusting applications and trusting the user. Even on Android (which is pretty paranoid these days), you, the user, can still opt to trust apps with things like accessibility API access and background location. Why exactly should we perpetuate the insecure old single-privilege-level desktop model?
        superkuh 2y ago
        >Why exactly should we perpetuate the insecure old single-privilege-level desktop model? Because after 10 years of heavy development none of the waylands have managed support simple things like screen readers. X11 supports screen readers and innumberable other vital accessibility features that wayland never will be able to. Some waylands might eventually develop extensions for their particular desktop but there won't ever be a way for wayland protocol because it can't. Security theater is more important than accessibility/usability for wayland that leaves many use cases and entire demographics of people out in the cold. So yes, X11, which is still the least worst option. Better to have the ability to do all things than have to wait decades+ for developers to write complex extensions to do things (and just for their DE, causing fragmentation).
l72 2y ago
I find it very interesting how much our threat model has changed in the last 10-15 years. We no longer trust even local software, as we have to assume everything is now malicious. Commercial software from "reputable" companies can't be trusted to not pull a ton of analytics and personal data off your computer. We now have to worry about every piece of software being a keylogger and spying on other windows/applications and reporting back. We've had to give up so much flexibility. Wayland certainly focuses on plugging this hole, but it means we've lost all these cool utilities like this one. There was just so much you could do with devilspie, xdotool, and others to make sure my operating system and window environment worked for me. I still really miss X11's Zaphod mode, where you had two independent X sessions (:0.0 and :0.1) on two different monitors, with different window managers and different windowing rules. I miss the days of being able to trust my computer and trust my software.
- singpolyma3 2y ago
  If you can't trust your locally installed software, everything is lost. I understand where this new threat model comes from for some people but I'd rather continue to avoid bad software sources than hamstring my OS in the hopes of avoiding malware I installed on purpose.
  - l72 2y ago
    I agree. But can you trust Zoom? What about Office or Photoshop? Can you trust Websites or your browser anymore? Even open source apps have analytics in them that may not be trustworthy anymore (firefox, audacity, ...).
    - singpolyma3 2y ago
      This is why I don't run Zoom or Office or Photoshop or versions of Firefox or Audacity not distributed by Debian. Browser sandboxes pretty heavily though of course one does want to be a bit careful there too.
    - jrm4 2y ago
      I teach online for a living, and -- yep Zoom through FIREFOX only. Coincidentally, it's also the best experience, for whatever reason it's the only on that supports virtual backgrounds on Linux for me? Neither Chrome nor Desktop seem to work for this.

themerone 2y ago

X11 is the opposite of simple and hackable. What you are thinking of as "hackable" is actually the result of it having a ton of legacy features that enable users to do neat tricks. Wayland breaks a lot of these tools because it is so much simpler than X.

RedShift1 2y ago
Wayland is simple because it shoves all the responsibilities to somewhere else.
ajross 2y ago
Lacking features isn't the same thing as "simpler", Wayland is great, but is very much a subset of the features implemented on an X11 desktop. Wayland doesn't do selections or provide any IPC mechanism of its own, much less something like an ICCCM that allows you to identify/target other users of the desktop and interact with them in a flexible way. In fact as I understand it the linked tool is in fact impossible to write in Wayland. Again, this isn't the fault of "Wayland", which is just a compositor framework. The complaint is that the ecosystem of "desktop" software which evolved around Wayland is an ad hoc monstrosity that lacks the unified structure that its ancestor had way back in the X11R5 days.
vidarh 2y ago
By window manager started out as ~50 lines of Ruby copying an equivalent amount of C. You can say many things about Wayland, but it's "simple" from a point of view I for one really do not care about. Wayland may be "simple" in some respects, but it makes most of the things I care about doing unnecessarily complex.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Walyand probably would have been better if wlroots had been developed as a (whatever this means) first-party “built-in” library.
  - vidarh 2y ago

anthk 2y ago

The most hackable would have been a Lisp based desktop.