6 ms·

TIL Wayland is 16 years old already; in a few years (I can't math) it'll be as old as X was when Wayland came out, but it seems it's still considered mediocre o

TIL Wayland is 16 years old already; in a few years (I can't math) it'll be as old as X was when Wayland came out, but it seems it's still considered mediocre or not as good as X was.

tmtvl 2y ago
If X is 40 and Wayland is 16,that means a difference of 24 years. Hence Wayland compositors have 8 years to work out the kinks. I am currently using Wayland via Plasma 6 and it works well enough but I don't have special needs, so I don't know how well... say... screen readers work.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  That means in two more years it will be legal for X11 and Wayland to have a baby!
  - guappa 2y ago
    Maybe like we did we pulseaudio (throw it away and make pipewire) needs to be done with wayland.
    - account42 2y ago
      I'd rather get something that actually works reliably this time.
  - josefx 2y ago
    We can call it V to signify another step backwards and make it the default, people can just use the terminal until the first implementation crops up.
  - tmtvl 2y ago
    What consenting adults do is their business, but still such an age gap feels a bit icky to me.
craftkiller 2y ago
> 16 years old [...] in a few years [...] it'll be as old as X was when Wayland came out Lol no. X is from 1984: https://www.talisman.org/x-debut.shtml https://www.talisman.org/x-debut.shtml That means Wayland is only 66% the age of X when Wayland came out, or you'd need 50% more of Wayland's life before its as old as X was.
tannhaeuser 2y ago
Another way to look at these figures is that in a few years a Wayland successor is due, born out of the same motivation as Wayland ie. lack of people with a desire to maintain legacy software. My expectation is that browser frontend stacks will eat the desktop completely at that point; it's not like there weren't many new desktop apps on Linux anyway.
dist-epoch 2y ago
Wayland came out at the same time as the Windows compositor in Vista. Let's be generous and consider the next Windows version, 7, as having a "good/stable" compositor. So Wayland is 13 years behind Windows.
jzb 2y ago
Initial release of X was June 1984, and Wayland was first released in 2008 -- so it won't be until 2032 that Wayland is the same age. When people complain about Wayland being mediocre or "as good as X was" what they often mean is "Wayland doesn't support $very_specific_feature" or "my video card vendor's proprietary drivers aren't well-tested with Wayland and it makes me sad". Approximately 99.999% of those complaints are uttered by people who 1) are not doing the work, 2) are not interested or capable of doing the work, and 3) do not understand or refuse to acknowledge that the Wayland and X developers are _mostly the same folks_ and they _do not want to work on X11 anymore_. I don't really have a stake in this argument, except I'm bone-tired of seeing people whine about Wayland when they're using software somebody else gave them for free. There are enough Wayland whiners that, by now, they could've banded together and started maintaining / improving X and (if their complaints and theories were correct) left Wayland behind. Strangely -- even though X is open source and eminently forkable (we know this, because XFree86 -> X.org) it gathers dust and none of its proponents are doing anything towards its upkeep. When someone shows up with "Wayland isn't as good as X, so here is my modernized fork of X anyone can use" -- I'll be quite interested.
- arp242 2y ago
  The core Wayland and X.org don't exist in a vacuum. I have written a lot of code over the years that works only on X, as have many others. I have not directly contributed to the X.org server, but have to the "wider X ecosystem". I will have to rewrite some of that. This is the case for many people.
  - jzb 2y ago
    "I have not directly contributed to the X.org server, but have to the "wider X ecosystem". I will have to rewrite some of that. This is the case for many people." This is a fair point, but the quality of Wayland isn't really at issue for this -- Wayland could be much better than X by all accounts and it would still require you to rewrite software for it. (Assuming XWayland doesn't suit your needs, anyway.)
    - robinsonb5 2y ago
gf000 2y ago
Based on what exactly? On a single frame difference, which is easily explained by the fundamental point of Wayland: no tearing? It's simply that X puts the cursor asynchronously, potentially tearing it, while Wayland always renders a correct frame, but the mouse movements' result has to wait for the very next frame. That's literally it.
3abiton 2y ago
> but it seems it's still considered mediocre or not as good as X was. Because there was a big fracture and doubt in the community support for Wayland, not to mention alternatives like mir popping up and diverting resources.
- bluGill 2y ago
  A lot of things liked mir happened over the years and didn't go anywhere. Most tried to fix problems with x that the x developers said were not the real problems. When wayland came it was supported by people who knew the real problems with x. They have also proven to keep working - no surprise at they had a history of working on x.
  - guappa 2y ago
    They "claimed" to know the real problems with X. But the fact that wayland is still lacking features shows otherwise.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      X is also lacking features. I use wayland and find it works great.
      - guappa 2y ago
        The fact that it works for you doesn't invalidate the fact that it doesn't work for a lot of people.
        bluGill 2y ago
        That goes both ways. X worked for me before I switched to wayland. However there are plenty of people who X didn't work for and they were complaining.
        guappa 2y ago
ein0p 2y ago
16 years old and there's still video tearing in the browsers. I try it with every Ubuntu LTS release, and then switch back to X in a few days. It solves problems I just don't have.
OvbiousError 2y ago
I'm getting much higher framerates in Civ VI on linux since I switched to Wayland, so there is that. For the rest it just works for me, use it both professionally and privately.
csomar 2y ago
I have switched to Wayland because X is a mess to setup and operate. Don't really give much interest to the discussion (lots of other stuff to care about!). So it was mostly a practical decision.

TIL Wayland is 16 years old already; in a few years (I can't math) it'll be as old as X was when Wayland came out, but it seems it's still considered mediocre or not as good as X was.

tmtvl 2y ago

If X is 40 and Wayland is 16,that means a difference of 24 years. Hence Wayland compositors have 8 years to work out the kinks. I am currently using Wayland via Plasma 6 and it works well enough but I don't have special needs, so I don't know how well... say... screen readers work.

DonHopkins 2y ago
That means in two more years it will be legal for X11 and Wayland to have a baby!
- guappa 2y ago
  Maybe like we did we pulseaudio (throw it away and make pipewire) needs to be done with wayland.
  - account42 2y ago
    I'd rather get something that actually works reliably this time.
- josefx 2y ago
  We can call it V to signify another step backwards and make it the default, people can just use the terminal until the first implementation crops up.
- tmtvl 2y ago
  What consenting adults do is their business, but still such an age gap feels a bit icky to me.

craftkiller 2y ago

> 16 years old [...] in a few years [...] it'll be as old as X was when Wayland came out Lol no. X is from 1984: https://www.talisman.org/x-debut.shtml https://www.talisman.org/x-debut.shtml That means Wayland is only 66% the age of X when Wayland came out, or you'd need 50% more of Wayland's life before its as old as X was.

tannhaeuser 2y ago

Another way to look at these figures is that in a few years a Wayland successor is due, born out of the same motivation as Wayland ie. lack of people with a desire to maintain legacy software. My expectation is that browser frontend stacks will eat the desktop completely at that point; it's not like there weren't many new desktop apps on Linux anyway.

dist-epoch 2y ago

Wayland came out at the same time as the Windows compositor in Vista. Let's be generous and consider the next Windows version, 7, as having a "good/stable" compositor. So Wayland is 13 years behind Windows.

jzb 2y ago

Initial release of X was June 1984, and Wayland was first released in 2008 -- so it won't be until 2032 that Wayland is the same age. When people complain about Wayland being mediocre or "as good as X was" what they often mean is "Wayland doesn't support $very_specific_feature" or "my video card vendor's proprietary drivers aren't well-tested with Wayland and it makes me sad". Approximately 99.999% of those complaints are uttered by people who 1) are not doing the work, 2) are not interested or capable of doing the work, and 3) do not understand or refuse to acknowledge that the Wayland and X developers are _mostly the same folks_ and they _do not want to work on X11 anymore_. I don't really have a stake in this argument, except I'm bone-tired of seeing people whine about Wayland when they're using software somebody else gave them for free. There are enough Wayland whiners that, by now, they could've banded together and started maintaining / improving X and (if their complaints and theories were correct) left Wayland behind. Strangely -- even though X is open source and eminently forkable (we know this, because XFree86 -> X.org) it gathers dust and none of its proponents are doing anything towards its upkeep. When someone shows up with "Wayland isn't as good as X, so here is my modernized fork of X anyone can use" -- I'll be quite interested.

arp242 2y ago
The core Wayland and X.org don't exist in a vacuum. I have written a lot of code over the years that works only on X, as have many others. I have not directly contributed to the X.org server, but have to the "wider X ecosystem". I will have to rewrite some of that. This is the case for many people.
- jzb 2y ago
  "I have not directly contributed to the X.org server, but have to the "wider X ecosystem". I will have to rewrite some of that. This is the case for many people." This is a fair point, but the quality of Wayland isn't really at issue for this -- Wayland could be much better than X by all accounts and it would still require you to rewrite software for it. (Assuming XWayland doesn't suit your needs, anyway.)
  - robinsonb5 2y ago

gf000 2y ago

Based on what exactly? On a single frame difference, which is easily explained by the fundamental point of Wayland: no tearing? It's simply that X puts the cursor asynchronously, potentially tearing it, while Wayland always renders a correct frame, but the mouse movements' result has to wait for the very next frame. That's literally it.

3abiton 2y ago

> but it seems it's still considered mediocre or not as good as X was. Because there was a big fracture and doubt in the community support for Wayland, not to mention alternatives like mir popping up and diverting resources.

bluGill 2y ago
A lot of things liked mir happened over the years and didn't go anywhere. Most tried to fix problems with x that the x developers said were not the real problems. When wayland came it was supported by people who knew the real problems with x. They have also proven to keep working - no surprise at they had a history of working on x.
- guappa 2y ago
  They "claimed" to know the real problems with X. But the fact that wayland is still lacking features shows otherwise.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    X is also lacking features. I use wayland and find it works great.
    - guappa 2y ago
      The fact that it works for you doesn't invalidate the fact that it doesn't work for a lot of people.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        That goes both ways. X worked for me before I switched to wayland. However there are plenty of people who X didn't work for and they were complaining.
        guappa 2y ago

ein0p 2y ago

16 years old and there's still video tearing in the browsers. I try it with every Ubuntu LTS release, and then switch back to X in a few days. It solves problems I just don't have.

OvbiousError 2y ago

I'm getting much higher framerates in Civ VI on linux since I switched to Wayland, so there is that. For the rest it just works for me, use it both professionally and privately.

csomar 2y ago

I have switched to Wayland because X is a mess to setup and operate. Don't really give much interest to the discussion (lots of other stuff to care about!). So it was mostly a practical decision.