X.Org Server 21.1 Will Aim To Release In The Coming Weeks

[JustK]

Meanwhile...

❯ grep ^NAME= /etc/os-release; ls -lh /usr/bin/X*
NAME=Gentoo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2,1M Jul 9 19:03 /usr/bin/Xvfb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2,2M Aug 6 17:16 /usr/bin/Xwayland

[user1]

The reason desktop Linux is full of technologies and features that are perpetually incomplete simply boils down to the fact that nobody has any desire to finish them as long as there is an easy fallsafe option.

Well, it's one thing what app developers target, but I'm not sure I agree with your point here. How did you come to the conclusion that it's related to the desire of the developers? Let's say we just drop X altogether and Wayland is the only option, do you really think Wayland devs will magically have more resources to the point that the development speed will increase twice? I don't think it's that easy. As being said, the development focus is already fully on Wayland. I mean Wayland development is already being sponsored by Red Hat while X is not. I don't think that if we theoretically drop X, Red hat will suddenly start throwing more money or developers at Wayland.

[Sonadow]

Well, it's one thing what app developers target, but I'm not sure I agree with your point here. How did you come to the conclusion that it's related to the desire of the developers? Let's say we just drop X altogether and Wayland is the only option, do you really think Wayland devs will magically have more resources to the point that the development speed will increase twice? I don't think it's that easy. As being said, the development focus is already fully on Wayland. I mean Wayland development is already being sponsored by Red Hat while X is not. I don't think that if we theoretically drop X, Red hat will suddenly start throwing more money or developers at Wayland.

At the very minimum, forcing everybody to Wayland will result in a crapton more bug reports and feature requests that will finally get the proper priority and developer attention they deserve instead of rotting away in the buglist.

Microsoft needed only two years to fix most of the crap that came with WDDM 1.0 after they made WDDM the standard display driver model for Windows going forward. Had they allowed XDDM to remain the default and punted WDDM to a lower priority, you can bet WDDM would have taken much, much longer to get itself polished to the state that it was in Windows 7 and 8.

[user1]

At the very minimum, forcing everybody to Wayland will result in a crapton more bug reports and feature requests that will finally get the proper priority and developer attention they deserve instead of rotting away in the buglist.

Microsoft needed only two years to fix most of the crap that came with WDDM 1.0 after they made WDDM the standard display driver model for Windows going forward. Had they allowed XDDM to remain the default and punted WDDM to a lower priority, you can bet WDDM would have taken much, much longer to get itself polished to the state that it was in Windows 7 and 8.

I don't follow Wayland development that much, but I think that if a feature / bug doesn't get the attention it deserves, it's not because the devs are lazy or something. Yes, more bug reports will probably have some effect, but again, it all depends on how much resources the devs have.
BTW, I would also say that forcing everyone on Wayland is a pretty unrealistic expectation that will certainly hurt the adoption of Linux on the desktop. When everyone will be exposed to the rough edges of Wayland, most regular non techy users will not bother to report bugs. They will say "screw it" give up and go back to Windows. So that may theoretically cause the opposite effect.

[Sethox]

Nether good or bad, planning to release a new version of X.org is quite good. Will I use it, not after reading/researching (a little bit) why Wayland was created and even tested it. This is just good for those that still uses X11, because anyone that knows how X11 barely stays together also knows that it needs proper updates.

[aufkrawall]

Supplying Xorg with some more oxygen doesn't slow down development of Wayland (anymore), it just makes lives of lots of Linux users better.

[xcom]

Wayland is not easy, and good enough to fully replace xorg yet. Maybe some years later

[Nocifer]

Right, screw this. I've had enough.

At this rate desktop Linux will never ever fully transition to Wayland and developers will simply continue to flog the zombie that is Xorg and the Xserver. Things like VR, HUDs and even newer exciting stuff will simply get grafted onto Xorg like the shitbag that it is. Let's continue to deal with having a kernel driver, a drm driver and an Xorg ddx driver just to draw the desktop instead of having everything done by the drm driver. And while we're at it, let's also continue to enjoy the clusterfuck of device-specific input drivers compared to have everything punted off to a general Wayland protocol extension.

Everyone might as well simply roll back all the efforts to create Wayland compositors and software that actually function properly on Wayland because the Xorg maintainers don't even have the will to stick with their plans of permanently abandoning the Xserver once and for all even after 13 years of Wayland development. If things screen sharing and remote desktop access don't work properly on Wayland, don't bother with wasting effort to address them because "switch back to an Xorg session" is going to be the easy way out.

Don't get stressed out over nothing, the impending 1.21 release is a) not being done by the people/corps that are currently developing Wayland but by an independent third party, and b) is being done for a good reason really, because as e.g. user1 says, Wayland has unfortunately still a long-ish way to go before it can be a proper X replacement and meanwhile people still need an up to date and properly working X to rely on in order to keep doing their everyday work.

In other words, the former X people that have declared X as EOL are still working 24/7 on Wayland, the distros & vendors (e.g. Red Hat, Valve, ...) that are leading the Wayland effort are still leading it, the various DEs/toolkits are still pushing for Wayland as the default display stack, etc; so there is absolutely no harm done if the community picks up maintainership of X until Wayland is ready, because in practice nothing will change and no work-hours will be wasted for X at Wayland's expense.

Also, do note that maintainership and development are two different beasts: this release will simply pull in all the various fixes and features that have accumulated in the last couple of years or so and that have already found their way into Xwayland, and will more or less bring bare-metal X sessions to parity with it. But as for developing new features for X and keeping it relevant as a competitor to Wayland? Lol, yeah, good luck with that.

[JackLilhammers]

The reason desktop Linux is full of technologies and features that are perpetually incomplete simply boils down to the fact that nobody has any desire to finish them as long as there is an easy fallsafe option.

Wayland doesn't work well enough? Fall back to Xorg sessions.
Flatpaks and Snaps don't work? Fall back to Appimage.

And heck, you got shit tons of people out there making no shame of boasting that they will always recommend the fallbacks to users, or refusing to use the new stuff in favour of the older stuff. As long as nobody pulls the rug out on these easy fallbacks, nothing ever gets completed because everybody will just insist on using those fallbacks and the teething problems on the their replacements will never get addressed due to lack of interest.

Who the hell will ever have any incentive to finish what was started under such situations?

If the developers think they cannot ever drop Xorg and the Xserver, then kill Wayland right now and continue to focus on developing and improving Wayland. Otherwise, sever all development of Xorg and Xserver, and focus strictly on the parts that matter like XWayland.

Make up your damn mind. Xorg or Wayland?

That's just plain wrong.
Adoption should not be forced, especially on a niche platform like Linux!

The best (and only sane) way to encourage the switch to Wayland is to make it better for the end users.
The display server, compositor, whatever, must be transparent to the user.

Once the user won't be able to tell the difference between Xorg and Wayland, everybody will use it

[furtadopires]

I wonder how Povilas will handle if this new release comes with some serious regression somewhere, since it seems like no big corp is backing it like before.


On the other hand, developers like those guys are probably thankful, because it gives them a reason to postpone a Wayland version like Sonadow pointed out