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NetBSD Has Some Wayland Support But X11 Is Far More Mature

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  • NetBSD Has Some Wayland Support But X11 Is Far More Mature

    Phoronix: NetBSD Has Some Wayland SUpport But X11 Is Far More Mature

    Following the news yesterday of NetBSD changing its default X11 window manager after two decades with TWM to now using CTWM by default, some wondered why they don't jump on the Wayland bandwagon...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Oh this SWC compositor maybe is not as cool as GNOME and KWin.
    I never heard of SWC before either, so it doesn't seem popular, maybe its not so good.

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    • #3
      NetBSD, has a very nice support for ARM devices, and they support arm devices till 256 cpus..
      I believe this work have been ported to FreeBSD as well..


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      • #4
        Originally posted by uid313 View Post
        Oh this SWC compositor maybe is not as cool as GNOME and KWin.
        I never heard of SWC before either, so it doesn't seem popular, maybe its not so good.
        SWC is one of the original independent wayland compositor libraries (the other major one being WLC). It's still maintained, and the changes for NetBSD were actually rather small - https://github.com/michaelforney/swc...39f31b4aabccee . It's written by Michael Forney, who also wrote the ninja-compatible build tool, samurai.

        I doubt GNOME or KWin would be fun projects to try to port to NetBSD as wayland compositors. Other compositors likely have little interest in being NetBSD compatible -- I think the only BSD they really care about is FreeBSD, which is known to have mature (and more Linux-compatible) input and graphics stacks.

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        • #5
          It sucks to play catch up with main Linux distros.

          It's only recently that I've been able to run a fully Wayland setup on Arch and be fully happy with the results. For a few years I tended to pop between i3 and sway just because of this bug or the other. I've been able to switch my wife's Gnome setup to be the same w/o complaints.

          Now that it's relatively stable and everyone can start making the leap, *bsds are expected to just jump on board as though there are no additional hoops to jump through.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by BwackNinja View Post

            SWC is one of the original independent wayland compositor libraries (the other major one being WLC). It's still maintained, and the changes for NetBSD were actually rather small - https://github.com/michaelforney/swc...39f31b4aabccee . It's written by Michael Forney, who also wrote the ninja-compatible build tool, samurai.

            I doubt GNOME or KWin would be fun projects to try to port to NetBSD as wayland compositors. Other compositors likely have little interest in being NetBSD compatible -- I think the only BSD they really care about is FreeBSD, which is known to have mature (and more Linux-compatible) input and graphics stacks.
            Yeah, I don't think any developer wants to bother trying to port GNOME or KWin to some very little used BSD that nobody uses. NetBSD should just change their system so that it can run unmodified GNOME or KWin. NetBSD should work like Linux.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by uid313 View Post
              NetBSD should work like Linux.
              The vast majority used to provide this same old-fashioned "insight" as early as the 90's about how Linux should just be like Windows.

              Turns out they were wrong (and just producing pointless noise). Just like your above statement is.

              Imagine what a mess we would be in if people who mattered actually listened to these luddites.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

                The vast majority used to provide this same old-fashioned "insight" as early as the 90's about how Linux should just be like Windows.

                Turns out they were wrong (and just producing pointless noise). Just like your above statement is.

                Imagine what a mess we would be in if people who mattered actually listened to these luddites.
                Well, Linux should be more like Windows. Windows is actually very sane, and Linux is a bit weird and stupid.
                Example Linux file system is case-sensitive, that is just dumb, I don't care of my document is named "My Apples.txt" or "My apples.txt", to me its the same.
                And on Linux when you install applications, they all put them in the same place everywhere, some goes in /bin/, some goes in /usr/, some goes in /etc/, some goes in /var/, etc, mean while on Windows everything gets neatly tucked under its own directory under the C:\Program Files\ directory instead of scattered all over.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by uid313 View Post

                  Yeah, I don't think any developer wants to bother trying to port GNOME or KWin to some very little used BSD that nobody uses. NetBSD should just change their system so that it can run unmodified GNOME or KWin. NetBSD should work like Linux.
                  Uh, um, something, something, systemd. Well that stops unmodified GNOME in its track.

                  Originally posted by uid313 View Post

                  Well, Linux should be more like Windows. Windows is actually very sane, and Linux is a bit weird and stupid.
                  Example Linux file system is case-sensitive, that is just dumb, I don't care of my document is named "My Apples.txt" or "My apples.txt", to me its the same.
                  And on Linux when you install applications, they all put them in the same place everywhere, some goes in /bin/, some goes in /usr/, some goes in /etc/, some goes in /var/, etc, mean while on Windows everything gets neatly tucked under its own directory under the C:\Program Files\ directory instead of scattered all over.
                  You do know that there's at least one distribution that actually does Linux like Windows and adopts something similar to "C:\Program Files", right? You should check out GoboLinux. I think you'll like their approach.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by uid313 View Post
                    And on Linux when you install applications, they all put them in the same place everywhere, some goes in /bin/, some goes in /usr/, some goes in /etc/, some goes in /var/, etc, mean while on Windows everything gets neatly tucked under its own directory under the C:\Program Files\ directory instead of scattered all over.
                    ...and that's one of the biggest problems with Linux: applications are part of the "system layer", and there is no true "user layer".
                    I complained and proposed a solution in a previous post:

                    Originally posted by tildearrow View Post

                    Exactly! This is *exactly* what has to be fixed in Linux userspace in order for it to become a good desktop OS.

                    Here I propose a solution:

                    - Separate the userland into 2 spaces: the base system one (the monolithic and glued together one), and the other "variable" one (for user applications, macOS style).

                    - The base system provides an "SDK" which can be used to develop applications for the "variable" space, and it must consist solely of very stable (as in API) libraries.

                    - Developers can still target the base system, but they are encouraged to use the "SDK".

                    Although Flatpak and AppImage are trying to do something like this, they have problems. In Flatpak it demands sandboxing. In AppImage there is no standard "library base", resulting in developers having to pack in many libraries (which sometimes are often used like Qt), and as such AppImage versions of apps are generally bigger than their macOS/Windows counterparts. Furthermore, they don't want the developer to use newer versions of certain libraries (such as newer versions of glibc) to "achieve broad compatibility". What if he/she really needs to use the new features?

                    Also, it requires the user to "make it executable", something the Windows/Mac user doesn't do when he/she downloads an application.

                    Flatpak, Snap and AppImage aim to fix this, but they're still not as good as... e.g. macOS bundles.

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