Fedora Workstation 34 Should Be Very Exciting With GNOME 40, PipeWire Default

[stalkerg]

From a user perspective I do not really get why people are so invested in which part of the system is responsible for drawing the window border? You never hear these discussions on Mac or Windows. What is relevant is that the different applications support the system used so they get borders, but other than that I do not get it?

On Windows and Mac you have one default and working way to do it. On Linux you have no one default graphics lib you have at least GTK/QT. For windows decoration under X11 it was X protocol and some WMs who implemented it.
With Wayland it's complicated because we have only optional server side decorations... KDE and Sway support it but Gnome not. Gnome position can have sense if GTK will only one UI lib for Wayland/Linux (same as Windows/MacOs) but it's not true, also we have tons of games and graphics software which use something like SDL and can't and shouldn't link with GTK. Also for this types of software GTK provide extra overhead because just not designed for such things (have no direct rendering for example).

libdecoration can be good but maybe not... I didn't see a lot of activity here.

[Alexmitter]

In what way doesn't legacy applications work on Wayland? There is XWayland for that exact purpose! Ok, XWayland had limitations due to hardware vendors, it also looks bad on multi-dpi setup (but that is a general X issue), but in the general case it works quite well.

Exactly, for being such a horrible hacked together codebase as the basement of Xorg, they did a wonderful job with Xwayland. Of course it is much easier with Jack and Pulse, both modern clean code bases.

[birdie]

The transition was a mess, it took them till Windows 8 Beta to get near perfect compatibility to the old display server back. This new display servers first iteration in Vista was so broken that it was one of the major drivers behind the Vista sucks movement.

To be honest I only have fond memories of Vista. It was largely criticized not for this transition but for jumping on HW requirements (required at the very least 1GB of RAM vs 256MB for Windows XP) and being slow (which was solved for Windows 7).

Exactly, for being such a horrible hacked together codebase as the basement of Xorg, they did a wonderful job with Xwayland. Of course it is much easier with Jack and Pulse, both modern clean code bases.

XWayland is a hack to show old X.org applications in a window. Goodbye systray support, own/client window decorations, screen grabbing and casting, basically everything outside of just showing a rectangle on the screen.

[klapaucius]

...also we have tons of games and graphics software which use something like SDL and can't and shouldn't link with GTK. Also for this types of software GTK provide extra overhead because just not designed for such things (have no direct rendering for example).

Is this an issue for gamedevs or for gamers? For what is worth, when I play a game it is always fullscreen, and even if it wasn't, the last thing I care about is whether the window border is consistent with the desktop.

[jacob]

Pipewire is a perfect example of how a transition from X.org to Wayland should have happened: all the applications continue to work, the user doesn't notice anything, it's just configuration files that have changed. This is also how Microsoft transitioned from GDI to DirectWrite - all the old applications continue to work, while the new ones are able to get new features.

That's exactly how it happened. All legacy applications keep working via xwayland.

[Alexmitter]

XWayland is a hack to show old X.org applications in a window.

In a window? I think you believe Xwayland works like the virtual desktop of wine but per window, then spoiler, it does not.
Not any less of a hack then using DRI over Xorg, not any less of a hack then using a modern Xorg compositor. It works just like any X client did work on top of a Xorg compositor for years.

Goodbye systray support

Where the hell did you get that idea, your systray is working just fine.

own/client window decorations,

Client decorations work just fine. Over the usual interfaces between Xorg compositor and X11 client.

screen grabbing and casting

It of course is a wonderful solution to just allow any non-root application to directly read out the framebuffer. Its 2020 and there is a better solution for that and your new favorite Pipewire is a main component of it with all the fancy benefits like insanely low CPU overhead

basically everything outside of just showing a rectangle on the screen.

You can still show any X11 client form allowed by the protocol. After all, a Wayland Compositor acts just like a Xorg compositor for Xwayland using clients.

[Volta]

Pipewire is a perfect example of how a transition from X.org to Wayland should have happened: all the applications continue to work, the user doesn't notice anything, it's just configuration files that have changed. This is also how Microsoft transitioned from GDI to DirectWrite - all the old applications continue to work, while the new ones are able to get new features.

This is perfect example you have no clue what you're talking about. It's impossible to drop in replace X for Wayland, because Wayland is a PROTOCOL. Oh, on Wayland all of the old applications work as well, so what was your point again?

[EvilHowl]

Pipewire is a perfect example of how a transition from X.org to Wayland should have happened: all the applications continue to work, the user doesn't notice anything, it's just configuration files that have changed. This is also how Microsoft transitioned from GDI to DirectWrite - all the old applications continue to work, while the new ones are able to get new features.

Wayland is not a piece of software. It's literally just a protocol that other software might implement. It's a whole different story.

[birdie]

Wayland is not a piece of software. It's literally just a protocol that other software might implement. It's a whole different story.

Meanwhile most Windows 95 32bit applications applications work flawlessly under Windows 10 and have all the features, while we're here talking about the specifics which are of zero use for the end user. Period. The end user wants to run his old applications and have the same features but XWayland barely provides anything outside of basics.

[birdie]

It of course is a wonderful solution to just allow any non-root application to directly read out the framebuffer. Its 2020 and there is a better solution for that and your new favorite Pipewire is a main component of it with all the fancy benefits like insanely low CPU overhead

An X11 application can have a systray icon under a Wayland session? Um, could you show a screenshot please? E.g. Audacious running with a GTK2 backend?

2020 or not, Microsoft, Apple, Google - all major software vendors strive to provide perfect compatibility for old software (Apple often requires full recompilation but this doesn't imply any code changes) while Linux has its own way. Yeah, I've heard it, the way which hasn't increased Linux use above 1% over the past 30 years.