Ubuntu 23.10 Now Available With ZFS Desktop Install Option, Linux 6.5 Kernel

[mercster]

The amount of shit and pain X gave me from the late 2000s until the mid 201Xs has reached the point where its banishment can't come soon enough.

Having to deal with the dreaded "No screens found" error and creating stubs in xorg.conf.d is something I never want to see again.

Look, I'll be the last person to tell you Xwindow is perfect. But it's been at least 20 years since I've had to mess with an X configuration manually... it just works. I have no doubt Wayland is a superior technology, but at the moment it's still working through growing pains as many decades of momentum from X means, it just doesn't work everywhere. If you wanna run Wayland that's great, but any complaints after that about "things not working" when Wayland is still immature (or the Linux GUI ecosystem around Wayland is still mature)... well, I don't really have a whole lot of sympathy.

This guy "sophisticles" is who I was responding to, and he seems to be laying all the blame on "Linux" when... he probably just doesn't know how to use it. If the software you need to run doesn't work right under whatever you're using... use something else? That's the great thing about Linux, there's plenty of choice. I have a feeling he doesn't even know what he doesn't know (Dunning-Kruger effect)... he's trying to tell me I'm clueless that I don't know a bunch of the stuff that doesn't work together in Linux. He's probably trying to get extremely silly and nonsensical things to work together. "This breathing air stuff sucks, it doesn't even work underwater!"

[mercster]

Having to deal with the dreaded "No screens found" error and creating stubs in xorg.conf.d is something I never want to see again.

Sorry and I have to address this... this means X isn't configured right. Believe me, I was editing Xconfig files (precursor to XF86Config and Xorg.conf or whatever going waaay back) in the 90s... it's very arcane and difficult to write manually. In what universe are you having to do this manually? I just can't fathom it. It's not the fault of the technology if a) you aren't writing the config files right and b) trying to do something manually that has long been overtaken by autoconfig things that just work magically. Yeah, UNIX/Linux is hard!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline

We had to write these MANUALLY! Yeah, you had to do weird math to get a GUI on your display. And if you didn't write it right, you could push your monitor's dot clock beyond its limits and break it! Trust me, I know the struggle... but even in 2010? No way, I don't know why you were having to config X manually to where your Screen sections were breaking and you were getting errors. But that's on you. :-) Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Sonadow]

Sorry and I have to address this... this means X isn't configured right. Believe me, I was editing Xconfig files (precursor to XF86Config and Xorg.conf or whatever going waaay back) in the 90s... it's very arcane and difficult to write manually. In what universe are you having to do this manually? I just can't fathom it. It's not the fault of the technology if a) you aren't writing the config files right and b) trying to do something manually that has long been overtaken by autoconfig things that just work magically. Yeah, UNIX/Linux is hard!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline

We had to write these MANUALLY! Yeah, you had to do weird math to get a GUI on your display. And if you didn't write it right, you could push your monitor's dot clock beyond its limits and break it! Trust me, I know the struggle... but even in 2010? No way, I don't know why you were having to config X manually to where your Screen sections were breaking and you were getting errors. But that's on you. :-) Don't hate the player, hate the game.

That's the thing. X autodetection is supposed to work until it doesn't.

Then that's where the pain starts. Where the monitor has the wrong refresh rate, or some other strange shit happens and you are dumped to the tty with the dreaded "no screens found" error. And then it's time to start using gtf or cvt to generate modelines, and dump them directly into an xorg.conf file or in a stub in xorg.conf.d and pray that the generated modelines work. Or set the "driver" section to "vesa" and pray harder. Let's not even get started on how attaching a second screen to a X desktop sometimes doesn't even work at all, even after running xrandr.

Also, the whole idea of "one common xorg server serves all desktop environments" just doesn't work out for me. All that means is that if X is broken in some form ,the same brokeness trickles down to all DEs. Things like full-screen applications going wild while capturing exclusive keyboard control means that you can't even successfully kill the application because you no longer have control over the keyboard is just not acceptable. Steam was such a horrible offender that it made me swear off all full-screen application usage in Linux until Wayland finally matured enough that it could be used on Gnome and Plasma sessions starting from around 2018. At least in Wayland, I'm starting to see desktop environments actually take these things more seriously. Gnome by far has the most complete Wayland support, even for screen sharing, and Plasma in a close second.

Finally, getting rid of the Xserver and reducing the graphics stack purely to the kernel and libdrm has also made it easier to deal with proprietary graphics drivers. Remember the days fglrx or Nvidia's drivers could not be installed even if you had an old-enough kernel simply because they did not support the version of the xserver bundled? That's mostly history now thanks to Wayland. And seriously, why should two drivers (Xorg driver and kernel drm driver) to run a graphical display?

In summary, using a graphical Linux desktop on X has always been like walking on ice. Or more accurately, on pins and needles not knowing when something decides to stop working one fine day for absolutely no reason.

(And if you noticed, I don't yap on and on about the so-called security benefits of Wayland.)

[mercster]

That's the thing. X autodetection is supposed to work until it doesn't.

Then that's where the pain starts. Where the monitor has the wrong refresh rate, or some other strange shit happens and you are dumped to the tty with the dreaded "no screens found" error.

I have to ask here, 1) what distro is this and 2) what monitor are you using that has "the wrong refresh rate"?

And then it's time to start using gtf or cvt to generate modelines, and dump them directly into an xorg.conf file or in a stub in xorg.conf.d and pray that the generated modelines work. Or set the "driver" section to "vesa" and pray harder. Let's not even get started on how attaching a second screen to a X desktop sometimes doesn't even work at all, even after running xrandr.

Again, I can think of no modern context, after 2010 or so, where this would happen. What are you doing?

Steam was such a horrible offender that it made me swear off all full-screen application usage in Linux until Wayland finally matured enough that it could be used on Gnome and Plasma sessions starting from around 2018. At least in Wayland, I'm starting to see desktop environments actually take these things more seriously. Gnome by far has the most complete Wayland support, even for screen sharing, and Plasma in a close second.

Steam... full screen... what? Are you talking about Big Picture mode? I have no idea what you're on about 😂

Finally, getting rid of the Xserver and reducing the graphics stack purely to the kernel and libdrm has also made it easier to deal with proprietary graphics drivers. Remember the days fglrx or Nvidia's drivers could not be installed even if you had an old-enough kernel simply because they did not support the version of the xserver bundled? That's mostly history now thanks to Wayland. And seriously, why should two drivers (Xorg driver and kernel drm driver) to run a graphical display?

Philosophical stuff that doesn't matter for 99% of users in practice. (Unless they're trying to do ridiculous things, which I do not put past most Linux noobs.)

In summary, using a graphical Linux desktop on X has always been like walking on ice. Or more accurately, on pins and needles not knowing when something decides to stop working one fine day for absolutely no reason.

I'm honestly trying my level best to understand all these complaints, but I never run into these problems. Probably because I'm an old greybeard who doesn't try to do stupid shit. I don't even know I'm avoiding it, because my brain is wired for non-stupid. Many newbies make assumptions that are wrong, and thus expect things to work in a way that they never have and never will. Maybe that's the source of my confusion.

(And if you noticed, I don't yap on and on about the so-called security benefits of Wayland.)

Another philosophical point that doesn't matter for 99% of people in practice, but newbies who can't code are super upset about.

[Sonadow]

I have to ask here, 1) what distro is this and 2) what monitor are you using that has "the wrong refresh rate"?

Mandriva, then Mageia. And also OpenSUSE once.
An old 16:10 monitor from the late 2000s with a 75Hz refresh rate. Wasn't all that common back then.

Again, I can think of no modern context, after 2010 or so, where this would happen. What are you doing?

Starting up a fresh installation of a distribution

Steam... full screen... what? Are you talking about Big Picture mode? I have no idea what you're on about 😂

Launching a game. Any game. If that game crashes (and it's very common) while still grabbing exclusive keyboard control, the only way out of it is the restart button.