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

[darkonix]

GSX/GEM, no? But then again, I never actually used CP/M, so...
You could also chalk it up to me writing that response before my morning coffee kicked in XD

I used it a long time ago. I didn't had a GUI but GEM rings a bell. I remember it existed but not the platform.

[DumbFsck]

I used it a long time ago. I didn't had a GUI but GEM rings a bell. I remember it existed but not the platform.

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.

[mercster]

After almost 25 years of linux experience, ~20 years on linux desktop, ~10 years of BSD just out of curiosity and currently managing 30-40K linux
servers, I can confidely say that BSDs are irrelevant (pls don't come with openbsds running on home routers and freebsd at netflix, because both
could be done with linux equally as good). This is kind of sad, but this is the truth.

People choose technology solutions for a wide variety of reasons that you are not aware of. Why not count FreeBSD and OpenBSD in home routers?
That's what those users chose to use, again, for various reasons.

Open Software is all about choice, and telling a whole segment of people "Oh you're using the wrong thing, you will be forced to switch with a gun to your head because I know what's best" is uhh... I mean, do you hear yourself? I have 31 years of experience with Linux, and have used FreeBSD in production in my career as a UNIX systems engineer, for reasons that made sense in that place and time. I have a hard time believing you're an admin at an enterprise and don't understand that most are heterogeneous environments, with a whole host of people with different competencies and expertise, and softwares working in complicated custom environments. Maybe you look over a farm running all boring instances of the same thing, but many times that is not the case.

It's all a moot point, the fact is, no one person or entity or "community" knows the solution for everybody, and Linux going all the way back to
the early 90s had many obscure drivers for things I'm sure you roll your eyes at. Uninteresting to me.

Not everything is perfect in linux, but it's getting better and better from release to release.

And I'm not saying anything against Linux, I also won't tell you that Linux hasn't become the "default generic server OS"... but it's not the only one out there, and that's a Good Thing. 90% of the people who laugh at *BSD are home hobbyists who don't know a damn tittle what goes on in businesses and organizations and their IT departments. None of these people are contributing code to X or Wayland anyway, they're backseat driver "experts." It's laughable.

Edit: in the very early times angry unix people were shouting "Linux is not UNIX!!!!". Why were they angry? Did they foreseen the demise of Unix?
If linux is not unix, why bsd folks blame linux not heing unix enough?

I have no idea what this has to do with anything, I'm not here to prattle on about what the lInUx cOmMuNiTy thinks about BSD or UNIX in general;
most are totally disconnected from serious IT, I ignore it.

[mercster]

That decades-old technology was proven for decades-old use cases (xterm+xeyes+twm on a diskless X terminal). For today's ones (true color, GPU compositing, 3D, HD/UHD video etc.) it's proven deficient. No need to get aggressive about being left alone, in fact the world is leaving you alone and that's precisely what you lot are moaning about: former X11 developers have moved on to wayland and don't want to support X11 at their own effort and cost purely for you. No-one is stopping anyone from taking over the maintenance and development, except that few people have the skills to do it and the precious few who do seem to be unanimous that it's pointless from a technical standpoint of view, that Linux doesn't need it anyway and that BSD is not worth the effort.

ROFL... wtf are you on about, xeyes? In 1993 all we had was twm/fvwm/etc, and we got a lot done, and we ran more than xterm and xeyes. You're speaking from an entitled modern user who takes a WHOLE lot for granted, happily dismissing anybody's choices and preferences because you've "seen the light." Calm down and be quiet. The fact that you tried to shade all Xwindow software with "lulz it was just xeyes and xterm" perfectly illustrates why you have nothing to say.

The rest of your rant is laughable: X11 is/was for the desktop and hardly anyone is running UNIX on anything these days, desktop or otherwise. Oh yeah, netflix OCA yada yada yada lest we forget it. Noob.

If only you knew... but ya don't. You're a hobbyist. Stick to hobbying, and let us know when you contribute code to Wayland or X, so you have any authority to say anything about anyone's choices on what software they run.

[DumbFsck]

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$$.

Avis, why don't you try and engage with what I said?

I'll repeat if you don't mind; yes the philosophy of always serving perfect frames does create a delay of at minimum 1 frame. X11 you could use vsync to get those perfect frames. Now Wayland has the frame tearing allowed protocol or portal or w/e, and so now it is apples to apples.

With screen tear allowed their latency is at worse equal. DRM also can maybe on paper mean that Wayland is faster than X11 - but I haven't seen this materialise in practice I think, but also I didn't look.

Now for what you engaged with that no one said:
No one ever said high refresh monitors are the most common. There's no indication anywhere that you need an über computer to use Wayland.
Today when I visited and took care of my mother we did do some gardening, so I did touch grass thank you for asking.


And since apparently it wasn't clear by my previous comment, the only reason I made up a hypothetical 500hz screen was to say that Wayland is not an overhead that slows input. The input is delayed only until the next frame is ready in the buffer to be swapped. As my main contention with you was with your wording, all of it were rhetorical devices to ask the question, that I did ask and you avoided.

How much latency would you call "a bit higher" instead of "much higher"?

Half a frame? 2/3? Especially when talking about perceived latency (as in, click to photon) that makes absolutely no sense I think.

[DumbFsck]

Don't take this guy seriously. He is just a troll looking for creating arguments. I play games all the time on Plasma/Wayland and there is no latency that I can notice. He doesn't know what he is talking about, he doesn't use Wayland, and I doubt he plays any games. If you are a professional gamer, you are probably using Windows and RTX4080 anyway. Wayland gaming is just fine.

I can reliably tell the difference between 20ms, 15 and 10.

<10 my results were the same as flipping a coin. Maybe in a drawing tablet I'd be able? Who knows, that is not something I can test easily at home.

And I'm old, far from a progamer, untrained, etc etc.

You might find research done by Albert Ng interesting. Just search his name in Google scholar, his career is a goldmine

[jacob]

I used it a long time ago. I didn't had a GUI but GEM rings a bell. I remember it existed but not the platform.

It was an early competitor to Windows 2.0 on MS-DOS, and also the Atari ST/TT/Falcon used it in a M68k version. It was a lot like the Mac Classic environment.

http://hirudov.com/amiga/images/Hatari3.png

[oiaohm]

People choose technology solutions for a wide variety of reasons that you are not aware of. Why not count FreeBSD and OpenBSD in home routers?
That's what those users chose to use, again, for various reasons.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi There turns out to be a reason not to called hardware support why freebsd in routers is not used that much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_firmware_projects

The reality you are using embedded arm based sbc or the like for your router you are using Linux

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_distributions

Notice both of the wikipedia lists no OpenBSD.(before you say I missed one with FRRouting go to their github and notice they only do Linux versions these days).

Reality in business or home routers OpenBSD is mostly not used. If you are talking OpenBSD you are talking that person who rolls a custom one off who does not want to have a quick to management GUI. Human typos add up.

There use to be more Openbsd and FreeBSD options then there are now. OpenBSD has basically died out of the router space.

Lots of the netbsd listed used ( https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html and when I say a lot I mean over 50% and the list is not even that long) when you look into in the past 3 years have ceased to be or been dead projects even longer..

One of the realities is the BSD usage is dieing out. Some of the die out is business making routers have got use to releasing the GPLv2 required bits to use Linux so the benefits of the BSD license is no longer there for them.

[mercster]

VARIOUS INTERNET LINKS PROVING BSD ISNT USED ANYMORE! IM GOOD AT INTERNET RESEARCH!

You don't get it. You reeeaaally don't get it. You can show me a billion links and your personal, tiny little conception of why BSD isn't useful or important, but the bottom line is:

You're doing so in some kind of Sega-Nintendo war to discredit BSD because you don't like their stance regarding continued Xwindow support, because you want fast refresh rates on your goofy-ass Linux desktop. Have a good one!

[oiaohm]

You're doing so in some kind of Sega-Nintendo war to discredit BSD because you don't like their stance regarding continued Xwindow support, because you want fast refresh rates on your goofy-ass Linux desktop. Have a good one!

I am not. There was a time BSD and Unix and Windows existed on supercomputers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superc...00_supercomput ers.svg

This is not being anti BSD this is being real where the markets are going.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junos_OS

Yes we have been seeing this as well. Where what was a pure Freebsd router OS has become a FreeBSD/Linux OS.

And it not just BSD dieing out in the router space being replaced by Linux. Yes Cisco IOS kenrel is dieing out and being replaced by Linux kernel.

merceter in the router space we are very much watching a replay of what happened in the supercomputer space where anything not Linux is disappearing. FreeBSD items will most likely be the last hold outs.

The commercial routers based of netbsd project disappeared long ago. Openbsd even well before that.

Commercial router with a some what recent version of open to public BSD it will be a FreeBSD not openbsd or netbsd that just how things are.

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

Also note how netbsd product page claims darwin. Apple is clear darwan is Freebsd. The parts of netbsd that appear in darwin got there by Freebsd..

Apple has used netbsd in places but no recent products but that was the VxWorks fork off from netbsd along time ago. Yes VxWorks the company behind it has attempt to move into the Linux space as well.

nercster no point being insulting. Lot of ways the netbsd stand on Xwindows is to be expected. Lets not have to admit we are critically short on developers so call those working on Wayland as going after shinny because we don't have the resources to follow.. Reality Linux projects can in a lot of cases go after shiny/experimental without much harm due to how well resourced in developers the Linux world is.

The falling market share of BSD is making developer resources in the BSD side less this results in so less able to-do experimental work. Less experimental work less performance improvements because of this work and so on and this less results in more loss of market share. This is circling the drain problem. Unless something changes the results are not going to be good for the BSD world.

I don't really want the Linux kernel left without competition but that is where we are heading if nothing changes.