X.Org Could Use More Help Improving & Addressing Its Security

[karolherbst]

X will probably never see HDR support (nor wokring mixed DPI scaling, which is already around for a long time) and without that it's just dead if you care about "users" in a general sense.

[sinepgib]

Arch being Arch doesn't really have a "default" but Xorg is still the only option on their simple install script

First time I hear about a simple install script.

[Quackdoc]

Afaik none of these are defaulting to Wayland. Manjaro definitely hasn't defaulted to Wayland since they have a large percentage of users using KDE (which wayland still has issues with) and Arch being Arch doesn't really have a "default" but Xorg is still the only option on their simple install script

TBH until the new NVidia solution that works with EGL is stable, I think its a stupid idea for distros to default to Wayland (at least if you have an Nvidia card) unless you feel like deliberately crippling user experience is a good thing.

I think you might be drinking too much sir, I don't know how shipping Wayland out of box isn't "Defaulting to Wayland". either you aren't of full cognitive capability when you wrote this, or have a very different understanding of default.

Most distros shipping gnome are defaulting to wayland I believe. that includes manjaro gnome last I checked. and most major distros are supporting the migration. don't get me wrong, wayland has issues. pipewire screen record massacres my refresh rate for some reason. but most distros ARE supporting wayland by default if gnome is one of the default options, which in most cases, is most distros. obviously not all distros shipping gnome are shipping wayland by default. but most are.

[bachchain]

First time I hear about a simple install script.

They added

archinstall

to the live media a while ago. It's still very much experimental and incomplete.

[sinepgib]

They added

archinstall

to the live media a while ago. It's still very much experimental and incomplete.

Nice. Would have been cool to know exactly yesterday :facepalm:

[tildearrow]

Come on. No one asked for Wayland. The majority of distros stick to X because Xorg works even though Wayland exists for 13 years. Xorg may be dirty, but it works fine. Wayland looks like a launcher for GNOME, invented by GNOME fanatics who always go against Unix philosophy with their stupid decisions: CSD and such stuff. Perhaps, Xorg will be replaced eventually, but not by Wayland.

Come on. That is why I said "fix". Wayland is an incomplete protocol that needs several things to be done (mostly around data query) before it is able to replace X11 for good.

[Sonadow]

don't get me wrong, wayland has issues. pipewire screen record massacres my refresh rate for some reason. but most distros ARE supporting wayland by default if gnome is one of the default options, which in most cases, is most distros. obviously not all distros shipping gnome are shipping wayland by default. but most are.

At least that's all pipewire is doing on your system.

On mine pipewire screen sharing over web conferencing software like Zoom and Teams have ridiculous redraw issues to be point of being completely useless. If I select a window for sharing and scroll through the window's contents, the participants never see the scrolled content until I do something ridiculous like resize the window or highlight some stuff to force a redraw. And even then it doesn't completely send over all the new information; if I highlight 10 words the viewers will see only two or three being highlighted.

[waitman]

I've been using it since the 90's. Probably owe something i'll take a look and see what i can do.

[birdie]

The comments in the discussion are as always borderline insane as if 1) X.org is so insecure everyone who's running it is jeopardizing their lives and X.org users are getting hacked left and right (false) 2) X.org development takes resources away from Wayland development (false) 3) The fact that X.org still exists prevents Wayland from being successful (false).

Maybe those who are so concerned about Wayland could maybe address this: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayla...d/-/issues/233

[oiaohm]

1) X.org is so insecure everyone who's running it is jeopardizing their lives and X.org users are getting hacked left and right (false)

Everyone makes this statement false so you are correct. Problem here there is But. Before wayland started there were a few cases of fly by wire systems and other possible human killing systems using X.org bare metal. Are there parties who are running the security flawed X11 x.org bare metal server in roles it should not be the answer is unfortunately yes. Have some of those systems in fact been documented as hacked because of X11 the answer is again horrible yes.

So that point 1 when you break down is mixed. Yes there are parties who have been using X11 server in life threatening locations that have been getting hacked quite bit. Is this everyone who uses X.org X11 server not its not. So more secure alternative is need to X11 server that is what lead to wayland work.

Remember more secure alternative is need. This causes problem. Wayland has to be designed more secure so some of the feature that where done a particular way with X11 cannot be done that way again with Wayland. Having to design stuff does not make the process simple.

The restart of X11 developer for bare metal has seen a pruning process. This has in fact removed a large number CVE by removing functional that people don't use but its sitting there with exploitable flaws. This is the same as the XWayland process.

Yes X.org on bare metal has been in need of a feature trim. Yes Xwayland has already started a feature trim.