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

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  • Originally posted by Sethox View Post
    I don't get the defending the Xorg argument. It's really outdated and it's literally standing on it's last legs as shown that no one wants to work with it. Only end-users will defend it's features. It's not a bad thing to have a "feature" complete project but if you defend Xorg then you cannot ignore it's technological side either or you fall into a cognitive dissonance situation.

    It's a better argument to say "I will stick with Xorg until Wayland is stable enough". But don't defend that Xorg on the premise of being "stable", which is equivalent to using dirty solutions/hacks for something to work.
    It is quite rediculous that all are bashing on X bugs wile there are much larger problems are out there. OpenBSD is known for stability and security - why should the move to something not functional and not secure at all. It is an extremely moving target which is not the right thing to use - neither for stability not for security reasons.

    And of cause Wayland make sense for GNOME people - but for all others it will be forced. And this is sad - but worked as expected.

    X is still in very good shape - and everybody is working with it (look at the pool of Wayland applications ... get it?) - but that so many things are just left out and was really in the pipe for X development (even Wayland will need X for more than a decade - from the time it is usable ...) not developing it is just stupid.

    Even off topic I am worried more about CUPS - seems to be abandonware due to the bad touch of Apple.
    I here I can see trouble - currently I don't get my printer to work on current Ubuntu versions (last working version was Eoan - 19.10) ... so the printing situation should soon be taken care of.
    And there are rumors of a successor. But shedding some lights here would be very welcome.

    Concerning these problems the Wayland <-> X situation is not at all interesting - even boring.
    X works quite well (working on X since mit 1990-ies ... and no crashes the last 10 years after getting installation right - so who really say that it is not stable???).
    Wayland is not used outside Red Hat influence and GNOME may be the (rather forced) default - but after my experiences the worst choice.
    Was very impressed to see KDE being faster than XFCE ... and much more stable ... so there are really choices.

    But it's sad that politics is more important today than technical matters - and that the free software spirit - making people use their computers as they want to - gets lost.
    We will see if things get better or totally messed up ... time will tell.

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    • Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
      Not entirely. They are very different things. Wayland is a vague protocol with far fewer reatures (network aware is a critical one).

      This article presents an interpretation of the history surrounding the ability for X clients to interact with X servers that are running on other machines over a network; recent arguments as to tha…


      Hopefully you have some other critical feature. X11 Network Transparency does not work with many applications. You need up needing virtualgl https://virtualgl.org/About/Background that X11 over network works so it all with modern applications at all and then it still has failures if you stick to X11 alone. So yes you have to use some non X11 protocol so it works. Now if you having to be using Xwayland to run X11 inside wayland you can use waypipe and it will support modern applications with network aware.(this should be a hang on moment).

      https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe Interesting enough we have waypipe for wayland. Waypipe supports modern applications while generically providing network transparency.

      There is a big advantage of doing network transparent the Waypipe way over the X11 way. The big advantage is because individual applications by wayland protocol will not be making network packets. Remember X11 applications don't have to use the system provided xlib or xcb just like wayland applications don't have to use libwayland-client. So with X11 application with embedded xlib/xcb how do you update the network protocol of X11 from a security flaw the answer is you cannot if you don't have the source code.

      Some of the reasons why Wayland is a ass to application developers by not telling where on screen there windows are makes wayland applicaitons more secure but its also to make wayland applications simpler to wrap to send over network by items like waypipe.

      Basically application to compositor you don't want network protocols and if network protocols are there that a mistake. The way X11 implements network transparency is a total mistake that you have to hack around so it works at all. Please note waypipe does not require a modified wayland protocol application cannot really tell if it on waypipe or a normal wayland compositor..

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      • Why did Gamescope choose to use X in the implementation instead of going with pure Wayland? Or X is only for games that depend on X?

        It's getting game frames through Wayland by way of Xwayland, so there's no copy within X itself before it gets the frame.
        SteamOS session compositing window manager. Contribute to ValveSoftware/gamescope development by creating an account on GitHub.

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        • Originally posted by JMB9 View Post
          X is still in very good shape - and everybody is working with it (look at the pool of Wayland applications ... get it?) - but that so many things are just left out and was really in the pipe for X development (even Wayland will need X for more than a decade - from the time it is usable ...) not developing it is just stupid.
          That is a very good thing to look at like most SDL applications work under Wayland without X11 without any modification. Turns out a huge percentage of X11 applications work under Wayland without X11 because it was just update the tool kit they used. Very few applications in fact use X11 protocol directly on a X11 desktop.

          Next X11 for wayland being Xwayland can be way smaller. Do take note that X11 x.org has dropped UMS(user mode setting) it is possible for X11 to drop direct display drivers and keep Xwayland as the only X11 display driver and libinput as only input driver. For example there are features of the intel graphics that are enabled when you use Xwayland under Wayland for X11 compared to using the X11 intel display driver for direct hardware.

          Yes people have not noticed the X11 server disappearing input drivers as well.

          Please note X11 x.org dropping direct screen support would allow dropping the horrible hack of the X11 compositor out the protocol completely.

          Originally posted by JMB9 View Post
          Even off topic I am worried more about CUPS - seems to be abandonware due to the bad touch of Apple.
          https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups Really I am not worried for cups. Really it would be helpful if Apple formally announced they were no longer maintaining cups so to allow the auto transfer back to OpenPrinting. Basically this would be cups returning home. Remember most LInux distributions and BSD install have not using apple version of cups but instead using the OpenPrinting version. The party that uses the apple version of cups is apple and fairly much no one else. The only issue is who has the authority to create a new major version a formal announce would allow it to happen quickly. Without announcement it wait for Apple cups not to have updates for 2 years then transfer will auto happen back to OpenPrinting its part of the original agreement when Apple took over being the main maintainer. So the cups issue is going to sort itself out one way or the other.

          X11/x.org issue is not going to sort itself out this way. X.org has been massively under funded for ages. The path the X11 x.org server is on is slowly decreasing features as it replaced. I do expect the day to come that X11 server no longer works without wayland.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by dragon321 View Post
            When did you try Firefox on Wayland last time?
            It was a few months back. Parts of the UI didn’t work right, and websites didn’t draw completely. I’ll give it a shot and see if it’s improved.

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            • I really do not understand the people suggesting that everyone is going to continue to use X. I don't care how much you like X or how much you dislike Wayland for whatever reasons, X is unmaintained. If you think that means "so stable you can't improve it" you're delusional and have never looked at a line of code in your life. X is rotting and as it does, security vulnerabilities will pop up, new things will be created that are incompatible with X or reveal bugs or glitches in it's core design that couldn't be fixed even if it was being maintained. This is why we aren't using software written in 1950, because software changes, computers change, humans change. X won't change anymore, so that means it's going to rot. Every single piece of software ever designed is an architecture, and every architecture is inevitably stretched to it's limits until it just can't function in the modern world anymore and is forced to be replaced. This has already happened with X, that's why all of it's maintainers made Wayland. That's why Wayland itself is a protocol, so the implementations can be swapped out when they also inevitably hit the limitations of their own architectures (I know this is a pipe dream that's already falling apart but it's a nice ideology).

              I don't know if Wayland will succeed myself, or if something else will come along. But X is dead, nobody is going to maintain it, it needs to be replaced ASAP.

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              • I keep reading how every single program ever in existence will need huge, massive rewrites when afaik, most of the stuff I use is built on toolkits which more or less are close or complete with wayland compatibility. I assume a portion of the people spreading this stupid FUD are the same kind of people who cry and and yell about "EEE" on every single article even tangentially related to Microsoft.
                X11 "works" just like one can get an old, shitty car to "work".

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Ironmask View Post
                  X is unmaintained. If you think that means "so stable you can't improve it" you're delusional and have never looked at a line of code in your life. X is rotting and as it does, security vulnerabilities will pop up, new things will be created that are incompatible with X or reveal bugs or glitches in it's core design that couldn't be fixed even if it was being maintained.
                  Finally, someone talking sense. If unmaintaned = so stable it's the be all end all of software, why not use WinXP with IE9 or whatever. I hear those things are unmaintained, must be super stable.
                  It's one of the most bizarre lines of logic I've seen. "This old lead pipe with decades of mineral deposits still carries water, so it's the best, unimprovable way of moving my drinking water."

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                  • Originally posted by bearoso View Post
                    That's an good insight.

                    BeOS and Haiku run programs with full privilege. Windows XP and earlier did the same. Those operating systems were intended for single users. X11 is rarely used or allowed as a multi-user server anymore, so security would only protect users from themselves. That's what's stupid about Wayland. Wayland runs as a client application, but it tries to prevent stuff like keyboard grabbing, mouse warping, or giving any client program control of anything, even though everything is sandboxed to the user. That, too, only protects users from themselves. How about we treat people as competent and allow them to control their own hardware?
                    Windows XP had a primitive multi-user support, but it basically was like granting 777 to /dev, and letting anyone do sudo. The problem is that X11 has no permission system, which means that any application is able to do anything (like mess with the cursor or the keyboard) without asking the user. Wayland is trying to solve the issue, but their permissions system is lacking and many data query/manipulation facilities are missing or non-standard (think of resolution/refresh rate setting).

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                    • Originally posted by JackLilhammers View Post
                      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)
                      Why do you? Use what works best. I find Windows to be absolutely horrid compared to Linux, but my needs and preferences are different from yours.

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