XWayland 23.1 Released With High Resolution Scroll Wheel, DMA-BUF v4 Feedback

[finalzone]

The fact that Wayland broke almost everything-- Compiz, remote access, screen sharing-- certainly didn't help.

Let remind that Wayland is a protocol aiming for minimal libraries as possible unlike Xorg letting compositors (Mutter) the responsibility to handle such functionalities.

[ll1025]

Let remind that Wayland is a protocol aiming for minimal libraries as possible unlike Xorg letting compositors (Mutter) the responsibility to handle such functionalities.

That's not really a useful answer to end users wondering why everything is busted in their latest Ubuntu release.

[Barnacle]

The fact that Wayland broke almost everything-- Compiz, remote access, screen sharing-- certainly didn't help.

Exactly. Imagine deciding to reinvent the Linux display server to solve the problems of X11. Then instead of keeping it somewhat inline with how Mac and Windows (99% of the desktop market) operate to minimize the work for downstream UI toolkits, you instead decide to go the other way and bet the farm on radical, unproven, half-baked ideas, and make it "protocol only" so that downstream UI toolkits and desktop environments must constantly reinvent the wheel. Then when tragedy ensues, refuse to budge on any of the original protocol.

Either Satya Nadella showed up to the Wayland board meeting with a suitcase full of cash, or they are so incompetent that they did a better job sabotaging and fragmenting the Linux desktop than even the greatest enemies of desktop Linux could have done if they tried. If Wayland were a serious project for serious people, they would actually be concerned about the state of Wayland adoption 14 years later, and doing something about it.

[You-]

There is actually one thing that is still concerning me : fragmentation between desktops.
I don't understand why KDE and Gnome are not using wlroots for more stuff.
Instead, they are duplicating a lot of work, and in the process, they also force lib developers to target more desktops...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems stupid.

There is actually one this that is still concerning me: fragmentation in desktops.
I dont understand why KDE and gnome exist and do not share the same desktop.
Instead, they are duplicating a lot of work, and in the process, they also force lib developers to target more desktops...

As for specific arguments on wlroots, it was late to the game. it wasn't the first compositor, so if you wanted to avoid fragmentation at that point, you should use an existing compositor. Mutter or kwin would be good starting points. Other desktops could adopt them for their use too.

Thats how we eventually ended up with one maintained xserver - there were multiple implementations that were either proprietary or over time went unmaintained - leaving people to think there was just one.

[You-]

The fact that Wayland broke almost everything-- Compiz, remote access, screen sharing-- certainly didn't help.

Compiz broke due to being undermaintained and then not supporting wayland protocol. As for fancy effects, they outlived compiz. I normally have wobbly windows and burning effects on my windows in gnome.

Remote access and screen sharing work and work well. Maybe better than under x11. However some proprietary apps didn't implement the support for the new portals that have been around like over 5 years by now. That is on them and if an app still struggles, i would consider finding alternatives - they must be security nightmares with extremely old and vulnerable dependencies.

[oiaohm]

There is actually one this that is still concerning me: fragmentation in desktops.
I dont understand why KDE and gnome exist and do not share the same desktop.
Instead, they are duplicating a lot of work, and in the process, they also force lib developers to target more desktops...

As for specific arguments on wlroots, it was late to the game. it wasn't the first compositor, so if you wanted to avoid fragmentation at that point, you should use an existing compositor. Mutter or kwin would be good starting points. Other desktops could adopt them for their use too.

Thats how we eventually ended up with one maintained xserver - there were multiple implementations that were either proprietary or over time went unmaintained - leaving people to think there was just one.

KDE and Gnome existing are licensing and programming language issues and differences in design concepts. Possibility of those two ever 100 percent agreeing with each other is close to absolute zero. Thing have improved at least they have been able to agree on using the same interfaces for some things. I remember early gnome and kde where the sound services the dbus equals and so on were all totally incomparable leading to gnome application names starting with g and kde application names starting with k so you knew what run with what.

It one thing to talk about the Wayland causing fragmentation its another thing when you take off the rose colour glasses and look back and see that the later 1990s and early 2000 was insanely fragmented. Yes you might have had one X11 server but almost everything else you need for desktop was unique desktop particular protocols.

Something to remember by the time there was a single implementation of the xserver in common usage we already had desktop environments doing their own unique compositors taking over 90% of the X11 servers functionality.