NetBSD On The State & Future Of X.Org/X11

[mercster]

router space

You seem extremely invested and obsessive about the "router space." That's fine, I'm not even talking about routers. Someone mentioned "Pfft forget people who run BSD on routers", and all I said was, why discount the people who are running BSD on routers, even if they are a minority? I haven't run custom firmwares on routers in probably 20 years, so it's irrelevant. If you get something out of writing book-length posts about it, though, please feel free to continue.

EDIT: Basically, my whole point is, the desktop hobbyists want to crap on everything that isn't their specific software stack and hardware of choice.

"Oh you're running BSD? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."
"Oh, you're using an NVIDIA card? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."
"Oh you're using XYZ distro? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."

Look at the Intel Management Engine system on every single chip Intel ships... running Minix. That's right, everyone using an Intel chip in recent memory has been using Minix (this may have changed recently, I don't know, but the point stands.) So if Intel is distributing friggin' Minix, you have to accept the fact that INTERNALLY, a MUCH wider array of software and hardware is used internally, not only by home hobbyists but corporations the world over. Banks are still running COBOL and FORTRAN, I know one customer recently who is still on big-iron running all kind of UNIX.

If people want to run Wayland, they should run Wayland. That is great. People choose older software solutions that your average ho-hum Linux enthusiast has no idea of, because believe it or not, Linux does not fit in everywhere. Just like Wayland does not fit in everywhere. I'm not even interested in whether BSD is losing or gaining ground, it was an example of a technology that is still used, somewhere, by somebody, who needs solutions that would not be served by someone's grand idea to forcibly change everyone to some new standard that doesn't even work for half the people on the target platform!

Every time someone says "Wayland doesn't work for me", the hunt immediately begins to find out what they're doing WRONG. "Oh what hardware are you using? What this and that?" This is antithetical to open, free software.

[oiaohm]

and all I said was, why discount the people who are running BSD on routers, even if they are a minority?

This is not what you wrote.

Why not count FreeBSD and OpenBSD in home routers?

The OpenBSD bit does not exist on home routers any more. NetBSD is disappearing you only find it there as vxworks and vxworks alterations are not up-streamed to Netbsd..

Any party making silicon routers first interest will be Linux distant second interesting will be FreeBSD third will be vendor custom OSs that source code is closed to the public.

This is a circle drain problem. Once as a OS you fall under a particular market share you start circling the drain you don't have the support of the hardware vendors any more because they cannot see the profit in support your platform..

Look at the Intel Management Engine system on every single chip Intel ships... running Minix.

There is a big warning with Minix for BSD users.
https://git.minix3.org/index.cgi Minix the open source project development completely stopped 5 years ago. It has not been forked as another open source is 100 percent dead with zero developers.
Only actively developed minix is Intel own fork that source code is not open to the public. At this point the Minix inside your intel cpu might as well be a closed source OS it really functionally no different now.

Like it or not OpenBSD and NetBSD are circling the drain at the about the same level Minix was 8 years ago. Freebsd is circling the drain at about where Minix was 15 years ago. Yes this is like a black hole event horizon the closer you get the harder it is to correct your position and get away. The Linux kernel is circling the drain blackhole that looks to be at least 50 to 60 years off the event horizon even if things go wrong with Microsoft Windows around the same area. MacOS is somewhere in the middle between where Linux and Windows is and where Freebsd is.

Item like minix has fallen over the event horizon and all we can see now is a frozen image of what it once was but has not reached the point of totally not existing any more. If nothing changes Netbsd and openbsd is going to join minix..

The reason why X11 developers made the X12 wiki page at x.org is that X11 is bad and to fix it required interface breaking changes.

"Oh you're running BSD? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."

Stop this is circle drain problem. BSD don't have the resources to go an make their own solution to the broken X11 protocol problem so they are attempting to use the Linux developers work. Early Xfree86 on Linux the Linux world had the same problem where Xfree86 was a problem to get working on Linux because functions BSD and Unix had did not exist on Linux.

"Oh, you're using an NVIDIA card? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."

Nvidia is a two to tango. Nvidia was we will support Linux by doing our own 100 percent custom stack that does not integrate into the kernel correctly. Development of Wayland has been fairly much all GPU vendors on Linux will provide a compatible ABI from kernel space to user-space no exceptions any more.

The proposal for the x.org X11 sever to have only 1 user mode driver being the mode-setting driver was only put forwards in 2003 yes well before Wayland. So this pressure against Nvidia custom stack on Linux predates Wayland and only ramps up with wayland.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/

Also look here mercster. There is no driver for NetBSD or OpenBSD provided by Nvidia. The pressure by the Linux world resulting in following

https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

so far gives NetBSD and OpenBSD developers who are left a chance at having functional Nvidia support using Freebsd Nvidia userspace.

This dispute between Nvidia and Wayland for BSD(not FreeBSD) and other alternative OSs(not Linux,Solaris or Windows) is a good thing as this is opening up firmware and Nvidia kernel space code so they can make for themselves fully functional drivers to use Nvidia hardware. Of course this means they have to find the developer resources to have this support but at least they have a chance of having this support now..

Nvidia-Wayland dispute was required for long term health of alternative operating systems. Yes Nvidia-Wayland dispute has caused short term pain.

"Oh you're using XYZ distro? You don't matter, X is bad and we need Wayland."

This again is circle drain problem. Lot of distributions died out every year even before Wayland died due to lack of developers problem. The lack of developers problem just means to move to Wayland just end up accelerating the fall into drain that they were going to fall into anyhow at some point. The distribution was already falling into the drain before Wayland appeared. Any major tech change was going to push them in as well.

Maybe some of these distributions disappearing will allow resources to be better forced and have more distributions with more distance between them and the drain.

[mercster]

[...]
This is a circle drain problem.
[...]
you start circling the drain
[...]
OpenBSD and NetBSD are circling the drain
[...]
Freebsd is circling the drain
[...]
Stop this is circle drain problem.
[...]
This again is circle drain problem.
[...]
Wayland just end up accelerating the fall into drain
[...]
between them and the drain.
[...]

Type "circling the drain" one more time... I DARE YA!

[access]

moonwalker yes! GEM. I wouldn't be able to remember the name if I tried.

Cp/m > msDOS
GEM > Windows 1.x

At the very least until Apple went after them "copying" their desktop.

I wasn't in uni yet so had never seen any Unix in any way shape or form. So I'm only talking about IBM clones.

Also, I went and checked. GEM and workbench and windows 1 and mac all of them did not have roll up. Idk why I thought they all did, I can picture it perfectly in my head, a stack of title bars to one side, them being the rolled up windows. I think I gaslighted myself or Mandela effected me, cause I swear I remember it, but yeah, memories are imperfect.

Sorry for the confusion.

Perhaps you're thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowShade ?

[oiaohm]

Type "circling the drain" one more time... I DARE YA!

https://fwintersberger.substack.com/p/circle-the-drain

Of course I will. Because it a term that comes out the finical world and calculations for how close a business is to going under under the title of "circling the drain" calculations. If the business keeps on doing what it doing how many years until it will go under. You can apply this math to open source projects..

One thing you must avoid while doing circling drain calculations is presuming someone is going to magically do something you favor instead look at the business own resources to support itself.

You argument were based on that other parties who are going to stop using X11 should support BSD and those remaining using X11 instead supporting themselves. This is problem you argument did not stack up to these math for circle the drain calculations in any way shape or form so you cannot expect that event to happen it because not in the other parties best interest to-do it or profit.

Yes I am kind of financial when I came to these things.

[nia_netbsd]

I've never seen such mastery in not reading the linked article before in my life, guys.

Ultimately it's my choice to contribute to whatever open source projects I wish, and that happens to be netbsd and x.org rather than furthering the goals of The Linux Desktop. I work on BSD and X at my dayjob too for embedded systems.

[User29]

labwc is my daily driver and only desktop environment for several months now.
[...]
It takes a bit of tinkering but that's part of the fun because you can make it exactly like you want it to and there are so many alternatives.

Wow this is good to hear. Tinkering is fun, I'll definitely take a look at it then. Thanks for the info!

[WileEPyote]

Stop talking like "devs" are some sort of a hive mind.

And there's also Arcan.

Devs do tend to congregate on major projects. Hive mind? No. Like minded? Yes.

Yes, there's Arcan. What distros and DEs are making it a priority? The simple fact of the matter is that the large majority of distros and environments are focused on wayland implementation. I mean, if you want to use x11, nobody is stopping you, but that's not where the majority of dev time is being spent. That's just a simple fact.

Again, it doesn't matter what you, me, or anyone else thinks. They devs in charge of the major products are who call the shots. Wayland has been chosen. As of this moment, Arcan is irrelevant, whether you like it or not. Maybe that will change, I don't know. But it hasn't yet.

You're thinking in technicalities, and not practicalities.

You're missing the point. Xorg's users are less about Xorg itself but more about Wayland being unusable. I am almost certain when Arcan becomes viable they won't mind switching to it (at least it's the case with me).

It's not Xorg's fault that Wayland is freaking crippled (in features, not bugs).

And idk what you mean by big boys. It's mostly Red Hat which is a cancer to Linux ecosystem already. (and guess who also made systemd btw)

If we count market cap then Nvidia is definitely the biggest boy around here.

Completely irrelevant. Most environments and distros are moving over to Wayland. It's functionality vs x11 doesn't matter in the slightest anymore. As of this moment, it's the future. Your opinion of it doesn't matter.

You're missing the point. Xorg's users are less about Xorg itself but more about Wayland being unusable. I am almost certain when Arcan becomes viable they won't mind switching to it (at least it's the case with me).

It's not Xorg's fault that Wayland is freaking crippled (in features, not bugs).

And idk what you mean by big boys. It's mostly Red Hat which is a cancer to Linux ecosystem already. (and guess who also made systemd btw)

If we count market cap then Nvidia is definitely the biggest boy around here.

Again. Doesn't matter what you are about. Wayland is seeing active development, x.org is not. These are just simple facts. There's nothing personal about it.

Have you ever designed a computer/software system? If you did, you should know that your design determines what can and cannot be done to a much greater degree than anything else. You cannot modify what was designed as a school bus into a jet fighter, but you can turn a heavy bomber into a passenger airliner, though it's gonna be not a particularly good one, as passengers of Tu-114 can attest. Those are the result of design limitations. The same is applicable to security, and, again, if you ever been through a security review you'd know that before any code analysis and pen. tests security engineers will first look at design of the system, how the components interact, what data they handle, how is it processed, transmitted, and stored, where are the security boundaries, etc., because if the design is problematic then no matter how good you make your code you're just rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic. So yes, "security designed in from the start" is very much a technical argument.

Unexpected Tupolev

I am. Who said anything is stopping me?

I won't. At least not until all of your Wayland puppets stop posting anything about how "it works for them". Tough luck you can't disable that "downvote" button huh. Can't stand facts?

So you get lost first.

But I don't care whatsoever about what you need. I care about what I need, and that's what I post about.

And nobody cares what you need, yet you feel the need to constantly tell everyone. Pot meet Kettle. It's pretty funny you don't see the irony in your posts.

[varikonniemi]

Yeah, such monitors are the most popular. Do you live in the real world? When was the last time you touched grass? The vast majority of displays are 60Hz. 120/144/165Hz are getting there but even the best of these three adds 6 ms of latency though at this point this issue is kinda solved.

Still it's kinda mad that Xorg needed none of this super duper hardware shit and worked on an actual rock and Wayland requires an Über computer to work well.

A forward looking architecture, my a$$.

Maybe your rage is blinding you so much that you did not study your enemy enough to know that if desired you can turn on tearing in wayland if you really need that worst case 17ms for placebo effect on a slow monitor.

[reba]

labwc

Oh, forgot one thing to add: it has
- tearing support ("nonperfect frames")
- window shading (rolling up the window to only the title bar)