X Window System Turns 38 Years Old

[MorrisS.]

Is it no more simple to make a new operating system based on pure Wayland?

[JustK]

Old Grouch
In case of the X server, relevant functionality has long been pulled out of it (KMS/DRM, libpciaccess*, libinput), what's still usable is still used under wayland (libxkbcommon). Modern apps barely interact with X directly anyway, they use toolkits like GTK or Qt, which in turn don't touch X drawing APIs, they merely push rendered images to X so in can compose the screen. And guess how X does that, right it passes it to a compositing manager and gets the final image back, which it then passes to the kernel.

*To you remember the time when X used to run as root to read through /dev/mem to find PCI IDs of video cards? Those were the days.

But fear not! Xorg won't disappear any time soon and valid use-cases will get a wayland implementation one way or another.

[Old Grouch]

JustK
Thank you for the optimistic viewpoint.
I've never been a display system programmer, but I have used the X Window System for a long time (I don't care to say how long), and I'm still learning.

[birdie]

Is it no more simple to make a new operating system based on pure Wayland?

You've completely neglected my reply to your message as well as this entire discussion and all the information within. Are you talking to yourself, dude? This is now the second reply in this topic which makes absolutely no sense.

[Weasel]

no, your ability to understand analogies is so ass.
until roads were designed for cars, horses were still a better vehicle than car, but it was just a matter of time before things changed.

And cars have less features than horses? Because Wayland is crippled by design in many area, whether you like it or not.

Comparing a normal car with an offroad vehicle makes a lot more sense, idiot.

[cynic]

And cars have less features than horses? Because Wayland is crippled by design in many area, whether you like it or not.

Comparing a normal car with an offroad vehicle makes a lot more sense, idiot.

LOL!
sure, it has a lot of sense saying that offroad vehicle replaced car.
please, keep your head from farting on the keyboard.

[sinepgib]

Is it no more simple to make a new operating system based on pure Wayland?

It depends. What is an operating system for you?

If it's not done via Wayland protocol, then at least there should be a standard way of doing it.... (AT-SPI2 is almost, but not 100% standard)

And that is the actual problem, we need to standardize. Who implements the protocol is irrelevant. But in any case, won't gamedevs just use SDL2 for that?

Lastly Windows 10 can work on a fucking rock which supports VESA 2.0 while Mutter/KWin won't even launch on that.

Didn't try Windows 10 on that box, but I can confirm an old Unichrome Pro II worked with Windows 7 with VESA. For reference, that one was fixed function and quite weak.

People expecting useless and niche features on Wayland just because they got them on stupid xorg. -_-

Those features have use and are thus not useless if the people expecting them use them. They may be niche, and I agree expecting them from Wayland is a bit dumb. X11 will be there forever, but you won't get anything good from treating them like they're idiots.
Most should have something that is good enough for the default, and people with specific needs will have to reach for their specific tool, it's not the end of the world.

This is why Wayland is not getting any better - you compare X11 to something old but still functional and Wayland to something new, without realizing its flaws.

Your comparison is totally wrong because in the first three points, the former has ALL features of the latter (cars can move and more, electricity can power a light bulb and more, and the Internet can do fax and more); but in the last point, the former cannot do everything the latter could (for the most part it makes sense, e.g. you don't want fonts/primitive rendering in your protocol, but for SOME things, like data query or setting resolution, it doesn't make sense).
I can't believe people still do not realize Wayland is still lacking...

In all the given examples, the new tech is more featureful but either works in fewer settings or is somewhat less reliable. A water leak won't get you electrocuted if you use candles, a horse doesn't need roads, a fax can work under much cheaper and much more ubiquitous infrastructure.
Wayland won't do some things X11 does, and as with every other new stuff, it still doesn't do some that could in the future. It is a reasonable analogy IMO.
Do you still need candles, horses and fax in some settings? Absolutely, yes, you do. And you'll need X11 in some settings as well, always. This doesn't mean we need X11 to be the default everywhere forever.

[writequit]

Sad that a headline leads to 9 pages of argument. Use what works for you or contribute to the alternative.

[sinepgib]

Sad that a headline leads to 9 pages of argument. Use what works for you or contribute to the alternative.

It can be argued that 9 pages of argument may be useful to know what to contribute, or to help migrate if it turns out your gripe no longer applies.

[kpedersen]

Use what works for you or contribute to the alternative.

Agreed. It barely makes a difference to anyone since most developers use SDL(2) and equivalent anyway. That does the heavy lifting between Xlib, Wayland, Win32, macOS, RISCOS, Android's SurfaceFlinger, etc, etc anyway.

That said, I am enjoying using mmapped /dev/fb or drmfb directly. It feels a bit like making games back on *DOS and allows me to skip all the messy experimental / evolving stuff that is symptomatic of open-source development. libdrm is pretty tricky to work with initially but you only need to write the code once and then build upon it.