It's Time To Admit It: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware

[lumks]

Same with the BSDs: Game engines and WINE need to get their act together. It's almost 2021 and they're still dragging their feet.

I think the problem for many projects is that wayland is not a thing but an implementation by every single project. So you have the HUGE GNOME implementation (huge because gnome is probably the most used thing on linux) that they cant ignore, but gnome doesnt support server side decorations, next the WLroots implementation is is widely used by many small projects, then KDE Kwin implementation that is used by KDE and maybe deepin and as one of the smaller implementations MIR. They are all not 100% compatible with each other and so a project will face problems here and there.

[Alexmitter]

And the stuttering that is present in Gnome is also in the X11 session because Gnome's "run everything in one thread" design is just fucked up in general.

First, its not true. The Shell is a process and Mutter is a library it links to but anything else is its own process and even splitting the shell is in work. Gnome Shell was designed 2010, when the many processes make one desktop concept was default but a bad idea due to the low thread, no hyper-threading and low IPS CPUs back then. Desktops with many threats easily ran into race conditions and stalls while one process desktops didn't. Today that of course is different now.

And the stutter is more of a X thing as you as the compositor can not control the frame flow and by this dont know when to animate properly. KDE has issues with that too, bigger ones actually but Gnome Shell simply is more animated.

[Alexmitter]

I'm only worried that many XWayland features are not getting released too due to the missing X.org releases. This is a big issue for games.

Regarding KDE I hope that they will will focus now on Wayland to get some of the fundamental issues and bugs solved.

A Xorg fork with pure focus on Xwayland and everything unnecessary for that may find someone who would like to do a release. But beside some small regressions that I never encountered with playing ontop of Xwayland, its working fine. Better then the usual Xorg I would say.

[sheepdestroyer]

What about all the VR enabling stuff that I remember being done by Keith Packard while employed by Valve? Only still in master I think.
Will we ever get it in a released version of X? Such a shame otherwise

And there are still edge cases that keep me on X, like the support for Synergy/Barrier to use my mouse and keyboard simultaneously accross computers.

RedHat is being cheap there ; They have the manpower, or at least the fundst, for managin releases...
Maybe Valve could do it?

[JackLilhammers]

Same with the BSDs: Game engines and WINE need to get their act together. It's almost 2021 and they're still dragging their feet.

And why should game engines developers and game developers get their act together? It's not like Linux is their main target platform, let alone Wayland.
Specifically, why should they even care about Wayland when Nvidia is still not supported?!

On various side notes:
• This kind of news really show what's the real use case for Linux and why it's not even supposed to try and succeed on the desktop.
• Reading all these posts makes me wonder how out of touch is a large part of the Linux user base
• Why do I even bother to dual boot Linux when Windows gives such a superior experience for my needs? (and this is a sad note)

[skeevy420]

What about all the VR enabling stuff that I remember being done by Keith Packard while employed by Valve? Only still in master I think.
Will we ever get it in a released version of X? Such a shame otherwise

And there are still edge cases that keep me on X, like the support for Synergy/Barrier to use my mouse and keyboard simultaneously accross computers.

RedHat is being cheap there ; They have the manpower, or at least the fundst, for managin releases...
Maybe Valve could do it?

IBM owns Red Hat. They have plenty of manpower and funds. They just have other priorities. It's basically what 144Hz said -- The status quo is good enough for GNOME and XWayland.

[ripper81]

X.Org is old and needs a replacement for sure. But as long as the support for all the desktops/compositors and applications is not there there is no way to avoid X.Org.
Switching to Wayland on my system would cause problems with gaming and screen recording. There would also be no support for my Freesync Display with Wayland. So for now using Wayland is a step backwards for me.

[Awesomeness]

And why should game engines developers and game developers get their act together?

Because X11 is pretty much dead. Maybe read the article you comment on. 🤦

It's not like Linux is their main target platform, let alone Wayland.

Stadia is running on Linux which is the obvious platform Linux ports are made for. If games for Linux end up on Steam, the Stadia version is the base.

If games don't end up with native Linux versions on Steam, it's up to WINE to get their act together and finally integrate Wine-Wayland already.

Specifically, why should they even care about Wayland when Nvidia is still not supported?!

Gnome supports NVidia since years, Plasma since quite some time as well. Stadia uses Radeon GPUs.

[Raka555]

Ok so we have a GUI system that we all use, but nobody want's to maintain.

A "cluster fucked"(tm) one, that is supposed to replace it, which almost nobody is able/want to write a windows manager/DE/compositor for. Which have almost no native apps and still relies on the the old one to provide any form of usability and has poor or no remote capabilities. (After 11 years of development)

Then everyone is going to hate Microsoft if they make a fully working GUI which conquer the Linux Desktop for all eternity with propriety software ...
Next thing they will start charging for that DE...

[Awesomeness]

Ok so we have a GUI system that we all use, but nobody want's to maintain.

The most successful Linux distributor moved its distributions to Wayland long ago. You are very misinformed.