5 ms·

We almost got the old thing half-working, time to switch to the new totally-not-working thing! I love you, free software. Recently I switched from Ubuntu's aw

We almost got the old thing half-working, time to switch to the new totally-not-working thing! I love you, free software. Recently I switched from Ubuntu's awful default whatever they call it to plain X11 with every newfangled thing disabled, and fvwm2. My satisfaction with my computer's performance is almost back to where it was in 1998 when my computer had 1% of these resources and for some reason double the performance. I'm definitely not looking forward to the next next thing unless it has a really great performance story incorporating all the lessons that whoever works on this stuff should have learned in the last 20 years.

mikekchar 12y ago
Like you I have removed almost everything "Desk Top Environment" recently and have been enjoying the increased resources I get. I similarly hate that everything is getting intertwined so much that it is hard to actually pick and choose applications without taking a huge amount of cruft with it. Having said that, if you look at the list of people working on Wayland it is quite impressive. As it contains a good number of core X windows developers, you would be hard pressed to argue that they don't understand the trade-offs that they are introducing. And while I haven't had time to play with it in any real depth, I've looked at Mutter's API and it is quite nice. Finally, I've actually tried Wayland (with Gnome and on top of Mutter by itself) and while there were still some problems at the time (about 3 months ago), I was actually able to get a full day's work done without much complaint. In fact, it is snappy and responsive and it mostly works. I like exporting my X displays through ssh, so I really don't know if I will use Wayland seriously any time soon, but I think it is a good prospect for people who aren't me. I like the fact that this update from the Gnome guys shows that they are thinking, "Hey maybe not everybody will dump X. Let's try to find a place where we can showcase Wayland with the least inconvenience to conservative people". IMHO, this kind of development is nothing but good. The real question is if Red Hat will take a less heavy hand in deployment of this as opposed to other "Let's reinvent the world" projects. As an option, I'm extremely happy to have it. If it gets wrapped up in everything so that I can't use any popular software without it, then I will be unhappy. But so far I see no signs of that.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Exporting X via SSH is still ultimately a bad user experience, since it's not portable. The thing we desperately need is a desktop-session (Mutter-level) VNC server that will operate behind a lockscreen, so you can export a remote desktop locally or remotely and have it persist between logins.
  - erglkjahlkh 12y ago
    As long as it supports root windowless mode, whatever works is fine for me. Also, it must work out of the box on most common distributions, without requiring extra software installation. Configuration is fine though, not even X11 forwarding is enabled on many platforms by default. I have sadly seen nothing of value in Wayland that would be worth losing X11 over SSH forwarding. I really need some similar feature, and I am not aware of anything usable being available with Mir or Wayland. VNC doesn't cut it unless it can export single windows. I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the functionality. Before that happens, I will keep uninstalling Wayland and Mir, because the critical requirements (for me and my environments) have not been met.
    - orbifold 12y ago
      I believe the main advantage is that wayland enables better access to hardware acceleration, at least once Nvidia and AMD implement support for egl.
    - josteink 12y ago
      > I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the functionality But many of the performance problems of X11 is rooted directly in features most of the user-base no longer uses (X11 as a network protocol being the prime example) and the work on a new protocol is being made specifically by eliminating the tradeoffs introduced by those features. I welcome a newer, more performant option, but I guess it won't have anything to offer for your concerns.
lmm 12y ago
Switch to FreeBSD, seriously. We don't always have the new shiny things that ubuntu or linux generally does, but it's rock solid; everything continues to work and the interfaces don't keep changing for no reason.
- leaveyou 12y ago
  After recently seeing several articles related to FreeBSD (one of them was the Digital Ocean intro for linux users) I decided to play with FreeBSD 10.1 in virtual box. I liked pkgng, the "compactness" of the OS and several other features and after I successfully installed Xfce and Mate I decided to give FreeBSD a try on the bare metal, to see how it performs compared to Ubuntu and how many devices will recognize of the various devices (especially the Broadcom wifi which gave me some head aches under linux) on my Lenovo Yoga 2 11. The experience was very short. I was not able to boot any of the memstick FreeBSD images. 'Fatal trap 1 : privileged instruction fault' in the first milliseconds. After some investigation I had to give up cause there was no apparent easy way to bypass this panic. I knew that FreeBSD hardware support is behind Linux hw support but in my case it was very disappointing. Overall I like FreeBSD principles but I can't find any good use of it in virtual box (it's a step forward though, I remember that some previous FreeBSD version failed to boot even in virtual box).
kbenson 12y ago
I've been toting around a custom fvwm2 config for 12+ years now, and every year or two I look at new features, then do a little research for how someone accomplished the same or similar in fvmw2, and modify it for my own needs (or just write it from scratch if needed). It makes for an interesting diversion for a day, and everything works exactly as I like it. I've been using windows for the past two years, but prior to that people that sat with me for a minute while I did something would often comment "wow, what are you using?" The kicker was that the comment wasn't because it looked super great, but because it was effective and efficient. I found that much more satisfying than if they just liked how it looked.
d4rti 12y ago
Jamie Zawinski's CADT[1] observation is relevant again. We are perpetually stuck on version 0.8. [1][http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html]
jkot 12y ago
Fedora is cutting edge experimental distro. So yes.
jsight 12y ago
I hear this type of opinion from time to time, and I honestly don't understand where it comes from. My computer back in 1998 didn't do nearly as much as my machine today, and yet my machine today responds to everything almost instantly. It's probably an order of magnitude faster than the Linux desktop that I had in 1998.
- hkhkhhjhnbv 12y ago
  he's referring to Ubuntu's desktop, which, IIRC, is GNOME 3. You could have the latest CPU and 500 GB of RAM, and GNOME 3 will find a way to make it crawl. I always switch to XFCE now. But fvwm2 would also be quite an improvement. Linux desktop in 1998 was super snappy. As long as you didn't expect much in the way of latest 3d graphics card drivers.
  - EmanueleAina 12y ago
    Nope, Ubuntu uses Unity, not GNOME 3.

mikekchar 12y ago

Like you I have removed almost everything "Desk Top Environment" recently and have been enjoying the increased resources I get. I similarly hate that everything is getting intertwined so much that it is hard to actually pick and choose applications without taking a huge amount of cruft with it. Having said that, if you look at the list of people working on Wayland it is quite impressive. As it contains a good number of core X windows developers, you would be hard pressed to argue that they don't understand the trade-offs that they are introducing. And while I haven't had time to play with it in any real depth, I've looked at Mutter's API and it is quite nice. Finally, I've actually tried Wayland (with Gnome and on top of Mutter by itself) and while there were still some problems at the time (about 3 months ago), I was actually able to get a full day's work done without much complaint. In fact, it is snappy and responsive and it mostly works. I like exporting my X displays through ssh, so I really don't know if I will use Wayland seriously any time soon, but I think it is a good prospect for people who aren't me. I like the fact that this update from the Gnome guys shows that they are thinking, "Hey maybe not everybody will dump X. Let's try to find a place where we can showcase Wayland with the least inconvenience to conservative people". IMHO, this kind of development is nothing but good. The real question is if Red Hat will take a less heavy hand in deployment of this as opposed to other "Let's reinvent the world" projects. As an option, I'm extremely happy to have it. If it gets wrapped up in everything so that I can't use any popular software without it, then I will be unhappy. But so far I see no signs of that.

XorNot 12y ago
Exporting X via SSH is still ultimately a bad user experience, since it's not portable. The thing we desperately need is a desktop-session (Mutter-level) VNC server that will operate behind a lockscreen, so you can export a remote desktop locally or remotely and have it persist between logins.
- erglkjahlkh 12y ago
  As long as it supports root windowless mode, whatever works is fine for me. Also, it must work out of the box on most common distributions, without requiring extra software installation. Configuration is fine though, not even X11 forwarding is enabled on many platforms by default. I have sadly seen nothing of value in Wayland that would be worth losing X11 over SSH forwarding. I really need some similar feature, and I am not aware of anything usable being available with Mir or Wayland. VNC doesn't cut it unless it can export single windows. I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the functionality. Before that happens, I will keep uninstalling Wayland and Mir, because the critical requirements (for me and my environments) have not been met.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    I believe the main advantage is that wayland enables better access to hardware acceleration, at least once Nvidia and AMD implement support for egl.
  - josteink 12y ago
    > I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the functionality But many of the performance problems of X11 is rooted directly in features most of the user-base no longer uses (X11 as a network protocol being the prime example) and the work on a new protocol is being made specifically by eliminating the tradeoffs introduced by those features. I welcome a newer, more performant option, but I guess it won't have anything to offer for your concerns.

lmm 12y ago

Switch to FreeBSD, seriously. We don't always have the new shiny things that ubuntu or linux generally does, but it's rock solid; everything continues to work and the interfaces don't keep changing for no reason.

leaveyou 12y ago
After recently seeing several articles related to FreeBSD (one of them was the Digital Ocean intro for linux users) I decided to play with FreeBSD 10.1 in virtual box. I liked pkgng, the "compactness" of the OS and several other features and after I successfully installed Xfce and Mate I decided to give FreeBSD a try on the bare metal, to see how it performs compared to Ubuntu and how many devices will recognize of the various devices (especially the Broadcom wifi which gave me some head aches under linux) on my Lenovo Yoga 2 11. The experience was very short. I was not able to boot any of the memstick FreeBSD images. 'Fatal trap 1 : privileged instruction fault' in the first milliseconds. After some investigation I had to give up cause there was no apparent easy way to bypass this panic. I knew that FreeBSD hardware support is behind Linux hw support but in my case it was very disappointing. Overall I like FreeBSD principles but I can't find any good use of it in virtual box (it's a step forward though, I remember that some previous FreeBSD version failed to boot even in virtual box).

kbenson 12y ago

I've been toting around a custom fvwm2 config for 12+ years now, and every year or two I look at new features, then do a little research for how someone accomplished the same or similar in fvmw2, and modify it for my own needs (or just write it from scratch if needed). It makes for an interesting diversion for a day, and everything works exactly as I like it. I've been using windows for the past two years, but prior to that people that sat with me for a minute while I did something would often comment "wow, what are you using?" The kicker was that the comment wasn't because it looked super great, but because it was effective and efficient. I found that much more satisfying than if they just liked how it looked.

d4rti 12y ago

Jamie Zawinski's CADT[1] observation is relevant again. We are perpetually stuck on version 0.8. [1][http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html]

jkot 12y ago

Fedora is cutting edge experimental distro. So yes.

jsight 12y ago

I hear this type of opinion from time to time, and I honestly don't understand where it comes from. My computer back in 1998 didn't do nearly as much as my machine today, and yet my machine today responds to everything almost instantly. It's probably an order of magnitude faster than the Linux desktop that I had in 1998.

hkhkhhjhnbv 12y ago
he's referring to Ubuntu's desktop, which, IIRC, is GNOME 3. You could have the latest CPU and 500 GB of RAM, and GNOME 3 will find a way to make it crawl. I always switch to XFCE now. But fvwm2 would also be quite an improvement. Linux desktop in 1998 was super snappy. As long as you didn't expect much in the way of latest 3d graphics card drivers.
- EmanueleAina 12y ago
  Nope, Ubuntu uses Unity, not GNOME 3.