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> 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

> 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". ...Yes? Wayland being a regression in terms of features and bugginess is kinda a sticking point. > 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_. If X works for someone and Wayland doesn't, none of that matters. It doesn't matter how much you insult X users, it won't make their usecases invalid or make Wayland good enough. > 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. It cuts both ways: Users aren't entitled to free work, and developers aren't entitled to their work being well-regarded. Giving software away for free has never meant that people can't point out its problems.

bluGill 2y ago
X also isn't wrking for some. If you care about tearing for instance x doesn't work.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  True; also various scaling problems, and its security situation. We're in an unfortunate situation where no option has everything. If you want to say "Wayland is better for what I need", or "Xorg is better for what I need", or even "Arcan is better for what I need", then that is 100% legitimate. I'm also cool with "the current problems with (X|Wayland|Arcan) are..." because that's constructive and useful for trying to improve them. It's only pretending that one doesn't have faults or insulting its users/proponents that I mind.
- Ballas 2y ago
  I haven't seen any tearing in X in at least 5 years - with nvidia, nouveau and intel drivers. I don't think I'm doing anything special to achieve this, so your comment seems like a strange assertion to me? I agree that X11 has some faults, and I really want Wayland to work, but everytime I try it, something ends up being broken.
  - usr1106 2y ago
    I do see heavy tearing when watching videos under i3 on Ubuntu LTS and a 60 Hz monitor. So what? I just don't care. Tearing in videos does not hinder me from getting my work done. Watching videos is just wasting time most of the cases anyway.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      > So what? I just don't care. Tearing in videos does not hinder me from getting my work done. Watching videos is just wasting time most of the cases anyway. It's fine for you to not care about that usecase, but other people do care and that's also valid. There even exist devices that mostly exist to watch video and we'd really like Linux and some standard graphics stack to work on them.
      - usr1106 2y ago
        Sure, I have no problem with people wanting to fix it. My datapoint was just in reply to someone writing that tearing under X has not occurred for 5 years.
- bandrami 2y ago
  From my standpoint as a software packager I have trouble believing that upending the entire video ecosystem on Linux was worth fixing this alleged "tearing" problem which is the main thing people bring up as the reason we all spent a decade doing this. (Along with some honestly fantastical worries about screen scraping -- the answer for that is open source.) Honestly Wim did this right on the audio side. If it was so important to bring what Wayland has brought someone should have written a display server that talked to display clients just like the old server did and upgraded gracefully if the client had the new capabilities. You didn't even have to recompile software to use pipewire, let alone rewrite it.
  - LtWorf 2y ago
    The real reason wayland was done is to put proprietary applications on the desktop. That's it.
    - bandrami 2y ago
      Which is ironic since it's the proprietary stuff I have to use that is least likely to work on Wayland at this point...
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      How so? Proprietary apps work fine on X. Or do you mean the security angle where flatpak wants to be able to isolate untrusted (including proprietary) apps?
      - LtWorf 2y ago
        untrusted are only the proprietary apps… if you can review the code they aren't untrusted :)
        yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I generally trust FOSS to not be malicious. I don't trust it to be bug free when processing untrusted input. So no, I really do want to sandbox plenty of apps regardless.
- eadmund 2y ago
  Tiling window managers don’t tear.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Tiling window managers tend to tear more than any other desktop out there. Especially on x11, where you're expected to composite your own desktop without any (!!!) synchronization primitives, it's extremely common to get halfscan output from your windows or status bar. dwm, awesome and i3wm will all tear by default because there is no dispatcher, internal clock or even adaptive sync support. Now, you might not notice the tearing if you've got V-sync properly configured. But V-Sync doesn't stop screen tearing, it just drops torn frames and decreases your refresh rate until your system can keep up with demand. It's an ugly hack on laptop hardware and an even uglier one on the desktop.
    - eadmund 2y ago
      Well, I guess ‘window tearing’ doesn’t mean what I thought it did — or rather that it’s more than I thought. I always thought that it meant the artifact when dragging a changing window, which of course doesn’t happen if one doesn’t drag. I don’t believe that I’ve ever noticed or been bothered by static tearing, but maybe I’m just used to it because I’m old and displays have always had it?
- account42 2y ago
  No tearing on my X.Org-based desktop for literally a decade.
FooBarWidget 2y ago
> It cuts both ways: Users aren't entitled to free work, and developers aren't entitled to their work being well-regarded. Giving software away for free has never meant that people can't point out its problems. While true, this statement is also useless. On a meta level, what you're essentially saying is that users' rights to feel resentful, is more valuable than achieving an outcome.
- pmontra 2y ago
  Sometimes that outcome is not the outcome that those users want. For example I'd stay on X11 forever because none of its problems are relevant to me. The only relevant problem with X11 to me is that all of its developers are stopping to work on it and it won't run on any new hardware soon (and probably on old hardware too.)
  - FooBarWidget 2y ago
    You both miss the point completely. What I mean is that just by being resentful, you don't achieve the outcome that you want to achieve (not the outcome that they want to achieve). The only way to achieve the outcome you want, is for someone to do the work. They're not going to do it. If you'd rather keep being resentful rather than do the work towards your own claimed desired outcome, then apparently you don't really value the outcome you so claim to desire; you value being resentful more.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > While true, this statement is also useless. On a meta level, what you're essentially saying is that users' rights to feel resentful, is more valuable than achieving an outcome. It's more useful than calling X users "whiners" while ignoring their complaints. And no, I'm pointing out that the users are resentful because they're being pushed to an outcome that's worse and therefore not desirable to achieve.
  - FooBarWidget 2y ago
    You miss the point. See my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42870194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42870194

bluGill 2y ago

X also isn't wrking for some. If you care about tearing for instance x doesn't work.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
True; also various scaling problems, and its security situation. We're in an unfortunate situation where no option has everything. If you want to say "Wayland is better for what I need", or "Xorg is better for what I need", or even "Arcan is better for what I need", then that is 100% legitimate. I'm also cool with "the current problems with (X|Wayland|Arcan) are..." because that's constructive and useful for trying to improve them. It's only pretending that one doesn't have faults or insulting its users/proponents that I mind.
Ballas 2y ago
I haven't seen any tearing in X in at least 5 years - with nvidia, nouveau and intel drivers. I don't think I'm doing anything special to achieve this, so your comment seems like a strange assertion to me? I agree that X11 has some faults, and I really want Wayland to work, but everytime I try it, something ends up being broken.
- usr1106 2y ago
  I do see heavy tearing when watching videos under i3 on Ubuntu LTS and a 60 Hz monitor. So what? I just don't care. Tearing in videos does not hinder me from getting my work done. Watching videos is just wasting time most of the cases anyway.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > So what? I just don't care. Tearing in videos does not hinder me from getting my work done. Watching videos is just wasting time most of the cases anyway. It's fine for you to not care about that usecase, but other people do care and that's also valid. There even exist devices that mostly exist to watch video and we'd really like Linux and some standard graphics stack to work on them.
    - usr1106 2y ago
      Sure, I have no problem with people wanting to fix it. My datapoint was just in reply to someone writing that tearing under X has not occurred for 5 years.
bandrami 2y ago
From my standpoint as a software packager I have trouble believing that upending the entire video ecosystem on Linux was worth fixing this alleged "tearing" problem which is the main thing people bring up as the reason we all spent a decade doing this. (Along with some honestly fantastical worries about screen scraping -- the answer for that is open source.) Honestly Wim did this right on the audio side. If it was so important to bring what Wayland has brought someone should have written a display server that talked to display clients just like the old server did and upgraded gracefully if the client had the new capabilities. You didn't even have to recompile software to use pipewire, let alone rewrite it.
- LtWorf 2y ago
  The real reason wayland was done is to put proprietary applications on the desktop. That's it.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    Which is ironic since it's the proprietary stuff I have to use that is least likely to work on Wayland at this point...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    How so? Proprietary apps work fine on X. Or do you mean the security angle where flatpak wants to be able to isolate untrusted (including proprietary) apps?
    - LtWorf 2y ago
      untrusted are only the proprietary apps… if you can review the code they aren't untrusted :)
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I generally trust FOSS to not be malicious. I don't trust it to be bug free when processing untrusted input. So no, I really do want to sandbox plenty of apps regardless.
eadmund 2y ago
Tiling window managers don’t tear.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Tiling window managers tend to tear more than any other desktop out there. Especially on x11, where you're expected to composite your own desktop without any (!!!) synchronization primitives, it's extremely common to get halfscan output from your windows or status bar. dwm, awesome and i3wm will all tear by default because there is no dispatcher, internal clock or even adaptive sync support. Now, you might not notice the tearing if you've got V-sync properly configured. But V-Sync doesn't stop screen tearing, it just drops torn frames and decreases your refresh rate until your system can keep up with demand. It's an ugly hack on laptop hardware and an even uglier one on the desktop.
  - eadmund 2y ago
    Well, I guess ‘window tearing’ doesn’t mean what I thought it did — or rather that it’s more than I thought. I always thought that it meant the artifact when dragging a changing window, which of course doesn’t happen if one doesn’t drag. I don’t believe that I’ve ever noticed or been bothered by static tearing, but maybe I’m just used to it because I’m old and displays have always had it?
account42 2y ago
No tearing on my X.Org-based desktop for literally a decade.

FooBarWidget 2y ago

> It cuts both ways: Users aren't entitled to free work, and developers aren't entitled to their work being well-regarded. Giving software away for free has never meant that people can't point out its problems. While true, this statement is also useless. On a meta level, what you're essentially saying is that users' rights to feel resentful, is more valuable than achieving an outcome.

pmontra 2y ago
Sometimes that outcome is not the outcome that those users want. For example I'd stay on X11 forever because none of its problems are relevant to me. The only relevant problem with X11 to me is that all of its developers are stopping to work on it and it won't run on any new hardware soon (and probably on old hardware too.)
- FooBarWidget 2y ago
  You both miss the point completely. What I mean is that just by being resentful, you don't achieve the outcome that you want to achieve (not the outcome that they want to achieve). The only way to achieve the outcome you want, is for someone to do the work. They're not going to do it. If you'd rather keep being resentful rather than do the work towards your own claimed desired outcome, then apparently you don't really value the outcome you so claim to desire; you value being resentful more.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> While true, this statement is also useless. On a meta level, what you're essentially saying is that users' rights to feel resentful, is more valuable than achieving an outcome. It's more useful than calling X users "whiners" while ignoring their complaints. And no, I'm pointing out that the users are resentful because they're being pushed to an outcome that's worse and therefore not desirable to achieve.
- FooBarWidget 2y ago
  You miss the point. See my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42870194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42870194