KWinFT Going Through Code Refactoring, Working On WLROOTS-Based Usage

[curfew]

yes, it is correct... for now... as i was addressing concerns that this cannot be hold true in the future (because of further separation in developments)

Kwinft is developed for KDE so obviously it will maintain compatibility with KDE forever. The problem here will be can the sole developer of Kwinft keep up with the upstream in terms of features. Based on his description of changes to Kwin core, merging new features from upstream must not be feasible at all. And of course he'll in turn be at the whim of the KDE maintainers with whatever features they want to introduce.

[mdedetrich]

Really happy with KWinFT, been using it for a while (its also ultra easy to setup on Arch/Manjaro) and have had much less issues compared to the original KWin. I just hope at some point once the dust is cleared with all of the ironing out of wayland problems that it eventually gets upstreamed and replace normal KWin.

I understand the circumstances as to why the fork was created in the first place but there are obvious issues with how sustainable this approach is. I think that ultimately KWinFT will have to prove just how much better it is than normal KWin to have a hope of replacing it.

Kwinft is developed for KDE so obviously it will maintain compatibility with KDE forever. The problem here will be can the sole developer of Kwinft keep up with the upstream in terms of features. Based on his description of changes to Kwin core, merging new features from upstream must not be feasible at all. And of course he'll in turn be at the whim of the KDE maintainers with whatever features they want to introduce.

Well regarding the point about being at whim of any feature from KDE upstream, I don't think this is a problem in reality. KWin (and its dependencies) have one goal, which is a window manager for KDE. This means that by definition, any new feature that does get introduced is going to be a feature that a window manager needs to handle for desktop use anyways.

[oiaohm]

Well KWinFT also uses modern C++. I think a library like Mir would update their C++ standard requirement carefully.

There is more than 1 standard that is modern C++. Mir does not have a large number of users so they could decide to take different requirement to mesa3d and qt libraries.

This is actually a good reason. But I really don't like C, because it is more probable that use after free or memory leaks bugs occur.

Sorry C++ provides no real protection again use after free or memory leak bugs.

https://www.zerotier.com/2017/05/05/the-horror-in-the-standard-library/

Steffo quite a few cases where the standard C++ library has in fact been the cause of memory leak bugs and use after free events.

The reality Steffo is use after free or memory leak bugs are just as likely with C++ as C. Ok some of the C++ ones instead of being a normal memory leak is a object leak but the result is still the same of memory not being freed when it should have been and the data end up exposed when it should not have been.

This would be a different matter if we were talking about go or rust or something else design to be a safer language. C++ was not designed to be a safer language only a faster language to perform development in. C++ is just a faster way to write bad code than C. There is a lot of false belief that C++ gives a code base quality improvement.

[ResponseWriter]

Might be time to give this another try. Last time it introduced some issues that weren't present on kwin but all I need at this point is for it to be more stable.

I've actually switched to Wayland this week with 5.22 release and it's only once killed all my Xwayland windows requiring a new session to get going again (after restarting sddm & dbus). And the lockscreen broke after the display was off for a few hours but I can probably get by without it for now.

[Steffo]

There is more than 1 standard that is modern C++. Mir does not have a large number of users so they could decide to take different requirement to mesa3d and qt libraries.

C++ is backward compatible and if KWinFT uses C++ 20 and Mir C++ 17, there should be no problem. A library author usually knows about compatibility issues and is cautious regarding raising the requirements.

Sorry C++ provides no real protection again use after free or memory leak bugs.

It doesn't provide 100% protection, but it makes it less probable than with C.
You just ignore concepts like RAI and smartpointers which are far superior than goto.

[AHOY]

Does anyone know why he choosed wlroots over Mir? The latter is based on modern C++.

wlroots (WLROOTS for non screaming individuals) is the most used and mature library with real world desktop usage by a long shot.

Mir being from Canonical is another deal breaker for many developers. Not to mention they had their shot at EEE'ing Wayland and lost.

[mdedetrich]

The reality Steffo is use after free or memory leak bugs are just as likely with C++ as C. Ok some of the C++ ones instead of being a normal memory leak is a object leak but the result is still the same of memory not being freed when it should have been and the data end up exposed when it should not have been.

This is false, if you modern C++ features then you will have less use after free errors compared to C. Of course you can't completely eliminate such errors, but the occurrence is going to be a lot less frequent. Saying otherwise is misleading.

[mojo86]

KWin still crashes and freezes my system. Have the newest Fedora system atm. When you use the KDE Live CD and have a Nvidia card you are fked, the system will freeze, at least you can boot in rescue mode. I switched everything back to X11, VirtualBox is not responding to any input, games are not working, it's a mess.

[Vistaus]

For me it fails Wayland to Wayland, not XWayland even.

Bug report or it didn't happen. That's how the Phoronix forums work

[ms178]

I just updated the packages to 5.22. Have not testet them myself yet, though.

Thanks a lot! Yes, I meant your repo and it is a big plus point for openSUSE vs Kubuntu in my eyes that I can get these packages without a hassle.