Adam Jackson On The State Of The X.Org Server In 2020

[oiaohm]

I suspect people use X11 because that is what they know and are familiar with, and they do not know how to achieve the same outcomes using Wayland+other tools.

That is a big part of the problem. Other part is basically rose colour glasses kind of problem. Where they are looking back at what they have been doing and have ignored the warning signs of the growing problems.

However, if people insist on using knives as screwdrivers, the intelligent solution is to give them screwdrivers in addition to knives and show how it makes their lives easier. It isn't always obvious; and sometimes having a knife to hand is more convenient than driving 20 miles to get the screwdriver in your toolbox.

Problem here when it comes to interfaces this is not the intelligent solution. You can really think of system latency like a backpack on soldiers back. The more you put in that backpack the slower the solider can move so the higher the latency. So you have to try to pack that backpack with the exact tools the soldier needs and nothing extra.

Managing the display is such a fundamental part of the user interface for most people that changes that diminish functionality, even temporarily, don't go down well.

This is the unfortunate reality for those attempting to fix these problems. In the process of packing the backpack on the soldier back they are going to miss things. Latency when developing interfaces has many effects on what you can and cannot do.

Big part is everyone need to accept X11 protocol has major problems that cannot be fixed inside X11 protocol we will be needing like the dbus screencast solution using pipewire for X11 and wayland. We will be needing a new way or improved way of injecting input. And the list will go on.

The unfortunate part of this is you really need a interface missing all the broken bits so that you can be sure that you implemented the new replacements covering their functionality this is where wayland desktops come in. Also developing new interfaces fragmentation at this stage is not our worse enemy so multi different interface replacement ideas can be tried out.

Its horrible that stuff being feature missing is part of this process. The scary part is over 90 percent of documented X11 protocols need to be redone or disposed(as in totally removed) of for the future desktop environment to be functional. So its quite a monster of a task. Part of Xwayland is not to make old X11 server work on Wayland but to work out what is the bare min X11 protocols applications in fact use so those X11 protocols that don't get implemented in Xwayland can be thrown straight in the bin of never be seen again.

The process at the moment has a lot of very savage cuts to happen. Reality the next major release of x.org X11 server could be major deleting patch. When I say major I mean like 50%+ of the git repository go poof.

[JackLilhammers]

several people at my home are using wayland without knowing what it is. it just works

Seems like sample significant enough to estimate the worldwide adoption of wayland.

In the meantime:
• Ubuntu and all its derivatives still default to X (*buntu, Mint, Pop, elementary, Zorin, Neon...)
• All the countless distributions and distributions versions that don't run Gnome and are not based on Ubuntu still default to X
• All those who run Gnome, but use Nvidia, nvidiots as you call them

I suspect that something doesn't just work, but maybe they're just outliers

[Azrael5]

https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/Applications

All the ones that list rawhide there there was not a even a single binary change required.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/Applications/Porting

Porting instructions for GTK applications first thing just try running it with Wayland you have better than 90 percent chance that it straight up works.

In fact if you are running a wayland desktop and you run GTK application it first trys wayland and if it not Wayland compadible you have to add GDK_BACKEND=x11. to make it use XWayland.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/wayland#GUI_libraries

The reality majority of applications updating the toolkit to support wayland ported the application to Wayland without having to-do anything else.

Really how far X11 has got abstracted away by the toolkit came clear with how the migration to Wayland has gone. Fairly much 99% applications for over 20 decades now on Linux really have not been using X11 instead have been using a toolkit that would happen to produce X11 output that could just as simply produce something else.

Fun one with like GTK is the fact you can if you want wacky with most applications use a html5 backend as well.

Web browsers like Firefox and Chrome contain their own toolkit they are about the last toolkits to be ported. Majority of the applications that don't work under Wayland native today are using legacy old toolkits or closed source toolkit where the person building the toolkit decided to build it without wayland support. Of course there are the likes of the electron applications that depend on that depend on the chromium rendering engine that of course depends on the same toolkit as Chrome.

The reality is that going to wayland does not require major software rewrites because X11 is insanely rarely used directly. So it now comes about performance. There are going to be legacy applications like old games that Valve has that will require Xwayland for a while yet.

Well to know.

[oiaohm]

Well to know.

The with how likely application is to work no one is really bothering doing major lists. Most issues tracing to toolkit issues making a list listing those that don't work is also most pointless as well. Microsoft does not make exact list of applications that work with Windows either you are talking a huge volume of work for basically no practical gain.

[ferry]

Oh KDE itself also has tons of wayland related issues. I know as I am actually using it and have to deal with those every day. Still need to file bugs for a bunch of those, but claiming that KDE is fine is just not true.

I didn't say that either. All I said is that is nonsense to ask Canonical to make wayland the default. If it works you can do it now. If it's full of bugs as you claim, then it's just not ready yet.

Most of them are just not as important and the benefits of wayland itself still are way more important.

I haven't discovered any benifits yet. Please enlighten me.

[oiaohm]

I haven't discovered any benifits yet. Please enlighten me.

Seeing them is not that straight forwards with the wrong ideas.

https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/

First thing you need to be aware of is that Wayland is part of process to get to X12. Note part. X12 requires that network transparency be supported but must be secure.

One of the things Wayland brings back even that the protocol itself does not support network transparency is functional network transparency.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/

Yes this is true functional network transparency with opengl and vulkan support.

If you be realistic you are not going to use X11 native network transparency because if a network connection drops out for any reason you application dies.

https://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Usage/OpenGL

So you will use xpra notice on of the recommend ways to get Opengl and vulkan support for modern X11 applications is in fact use Wayland to be exact Xwayland. The reason why Xwayland does not work with Nvidia is the same reason why Xdummy does not have accelerated opengl support with Nvidia out the box lack of proper glvnd/libglvnd support from Nvidia drivers. But for us with AMD/Intel GPU setups everything is good of course Nvidia is a sooner or latter by either Redhat or Nvidia that libglvnd work will.

Gamescope from Valve depends on wayland ability to sandbox applications. Flatpak and Snap are also needing wayland to fix the X11 I cannot sandbox anything problem. There were many attempts to add sandboxing to X11 but due to the protocol being a pure mess no one succeed if you tested closely.

Yes gamescope using Wayland around applications it a lot simpler to implement application window scaling than X11. Nothing having a messy protocol helps a lot.

Yes Wayland protocol not wanting to take every feature and the kitchen sink is part of making a clean protocol to allow doing a lot of things. This also cause problems for those who look at X11 and attempt to say Wayland should be the same. Wayland to keep protocol clean something that were implemented in X11 protocol will have to be implemented in third party protocols outside Wayland. Reality here a lot of the things that need to be implemented as third party protocols to wayland like screencapture if you look closely don't work correctly under X11 due to applications by passing X11 so be the future Wayland or X11 for that feature we need third party protocol.

Like it or not there are benefits to Wayland. To get these benefits you cannot do stuff the same way you have with X11 of old of course this generates teething problems from hell. The worse part is some of the differences Wayland needs we also need to keep using X11 into the future even Wayland was not on the table. Yes those features to keep X11 working in future that need to be third party to Wayland core protocol people have been demanding to be made part of Wayland core protocol then getting upset when the Wayland developers are like no we are not doing that because it make no sense. The problem of not stepping back and looking at the problem as a complete eco system.

Hard reality here is Wayland is really about fixing the defects of the X11 solution.

[Zan Lynx]

I haven't discovered any benifits yet. Please enlighten me.

Many Wayland benefits come from the security design.

Security has a problem though. If nothing goes wrong, no one cares. So I guess developers who care to evangelize Wayland's benefits should spend some time creating a few really good bits of malware for X Window systems.

It's like people who loved Windows 3.1 or BeOS because they didn't have the annoying security that the Windows NT operating systems had. Like, wow, you weren't even allowed to write files into C:\Windows! What kind of OS is that?

There are people who run Linux always logged in as root. We correctly make fun of them.

[ferry]

Many Wayland benefits come from the security design.

Security has a problem though. If nothing goes wrong, no one cares. So I guess developers who care to evangelize Wayland's benefits should spend some time creating a few really good bits of malware for X Window systems.

It's like people who loved Windows 3.1 or BeOS because they didn't have the annoying security that the Windows NT operating systems had. Like, wow, you weren't even allowed to write files into C:\Windows! What kind of OS is that?

There are people who run Linux always logged in as root. We correctly make fun of them.

Yes security is important. But it's not something that helps me get a job done. Of course, insecurity could prevent me from getting a job done (like a hacked computer).

But since my computer is behind a firewall and insecurity of X is not the only weakness, I don't care too much.

However, I do open applications on other servers and have them displayed on my desktop. These days that even works across vpn's. Afaik that is not available under the various wayland implementations.

What I'm trying to say (and I'm giving up now) is: people are doing real work with their computers, and they don't care how good or bad the underlying technology is. They care about the functional behavior (what can I do), sometimes they about the performance (how fast can I do it), but not really how it's done (true functional network transparency with opengl and vulkan support).

I see the trouble with nvidia, I know the problems with security on X (yes, we did send nude pictures to coworkers screens 30 years ago). And it would be great if wayland solves that all and I'm glad people are working on it. But I will switch only after I am sure *everything* I do now with X still works.

[oiaohm]

However, I do open applications on other servers and have them displayed on my desktop. These days that even works across vpn's. Afaik that is not available under the various wayland implementations.

That wrong. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...Remote_display

Waypipe exists to service the need to open remote wayland application in a general way without being Wayland compositor particularly. You do also have weston RDP and sway/wlroots vnc.

Wayland protocol is not required to-do remote. Waypipe is a implementation of wayland that is designed to operate remotely in way more secure way than X11 ever could.

[ferry]

That wrong. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...Remote_display

Waypipe exists to service the need to open remote wayland application in a general way without being Wayland compositor particularly. You do also have weston RDP and sway/wlroots vnc.

Wayland protocol is not required to-do remote. Waypipe is a implementation of wayland that is designed to operate remotely in way more secure way than X11 ever could.

Again missing the point. Nobody denies that X has security issues.

I'm talking about usability. Your answer proves my point: this implementation can do this, that implementation can do that. But there is no single, ready, finished implementation that does everything X does.

In fact, who wants more than one implementation? In these list flame wars happen because kde exists alongside gnome, qt alongside gtk etc .