Post B1xc2EvRFS0nDFM1PE by gsuberland@chaos.social
(DIR) More posts by gsuberland@chaos.social
(DIR) Post #B1xc2AXtX2nnd4JA9Y by osnews@mstdn.social
2025-12-25T10:42:43Z
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Wayback 0.3 releasedWayback, the tool that will allow you to run a legacy X11 desktop environment on top of Wayland, released a new version just before the Christmas. Wayback 0.3 overhauls its custom command line option parser to allow for more X.org options to be supported, and its manual pages have been cleaned up. Other fixes merely include fixing some small typos and similar small changes. Wayback is now also https://www.osnews.com/story/144066/wayback-0-3-released/#Wayland
(DIR) Post #B1xc2BNeQcCcDaWUpE by glennseto@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T20:57:58Z
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@mcc You're much more knowledgeable on graphics stacks than I am - may I ask about your current take on the Wayland/X11 transition?My own background is that of a lapsed but recently returned Linux desktop user, gamer and occasional streamer, who is kinda rooting for the maturation of the newer tech, sure, but also low-key baffled by the remaining number of issues.(Not trying to start anything or asking you to defend stuff, just curious about your two cents on this field of FOSS evolution.)
(DIR) Post #B1xc2CBdQmBWibuPjc by mcc@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T21:19:36Z
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@glennseto (1) The Wayland transition is unavoidable. X11 can't any longer be maintained: Nobody *wants* to maintain X11, and there's no mechanism to *force* anyone to maintain X11. X11 is a contract with GPU manufacturers and new GPUs are made all the time, so you can't just stick with what you have. (2) The Wayland transition probably couldn't have been delayed, at least not much, because I don't know where the resources to maintain both stacks in parallel much longer would have come with.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2CnZ9kWgcFehrE by mcc@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T21:19:55Z
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@glennseto(3) The Wayland transition was very disappointing. Needs from user groups as varied as (a) fractional-DPI laptop owners, (b) disabled users, (c) graphics apps managing floating palettes !! Were not considered early enough or thoughtfully enough. I don't see hard evidence there's a timeline for addressing them now.. I would call this a failure. But I need to be clear the failure was neither the decision to go Wayland, or the decision to do it now. It was a failure to plan ahead.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2DkPcxb7YlBha4 by mcc@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T21:20:37Z
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@glennseto(4) Going forward, here is the problem that concerns me: Wayland withholds many capabilities apps had under X, reserving them for the compositor or extension designers. This would be fine if people could just pick the compositor with the features they need. But you don't get to pick your compositor because your compositor is bound to your DE. Your DE picks it. Compositors are fragmented, and fragmented in the way that holds back innovation rather than the way that promotes it.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2EKDTqEnLnwIO8 by mcc@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T21:21:31Z
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@glennseto(4, contd) We need *some way* to give people the freedom to replace the compositor out from under the DE if they need a better feature set, so that extension innovation becomes possible. I may about to be say something incorrect, but I believe the problem here is GNOME. I *think* other DEs/WMs are ultimately based on wlroots, so wlroots-based compositors could be drop in replacements. But GNOME's Mutter is way more specialized. IDK how to work around that. We all switch to Cosmic? :(
(DIR) Post #B1xc2EvRFS0nDFM1PE by gsuberland@chaos.social
2026-01-04T21:34:50Z
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@mcc @glennseto > We need *some way* to give people the freedom to replace the compositor out from under the DE if they need a better feature set, so that extension innovation becomes possible. more than this, we need software that actually works by default. it's easy to get distracted by how technical people can tinker themselves out of this mess, but at the end of the day most users aren't hypernerds and couldn't give a toss about any of that. they just want their computer to let them work
(DIR) Post #B1xc2FZqpCL1EaGIOe by shironeko@fedi.tesaguri.club
2026-01-05T02:19:05.117222Z
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@gsuberland @mcc @glennseto > works by defaultwho's default? even take a "normal" people transitioning from other OSs, windows/mac/chromeos have different defaults.Customizability and flexibility is the key to accommodate everyone, it's why good seats can be easily adjusted, fridges have movable doors/compartments, etc. "default" is not a thing that exists for a sufficiently general audience.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2MeMWp6dAbQUts by gsuberland@chaos.social
2026-01-04T21:38:43Z
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@mcc @glennseto step 1 is the hypernerds tinkering themselves out of that mess. step 2 is a bunch of other hypernerds packaging that up as a ready-to-go solution. step 3 is now we have some half-baked solution that patched over a deficiency in what was available, but since it's the only frictionless way to do it right now that's what everyone does. repeat forever. oh whoops we're back with the X11 problem of immense techdebt.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2Um6Jw38Mv6n4a by gsuberland@chaos.social
2026-01-04T21:40:33Z
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@mcc @glennseto I don't have a solution to offer here. it just would've been real nice to plan ahead and not end up in exactly the same situation they were trying to dig everyone out of in the first place.
(DIR) Post #B1xc2d4TTVV46DlZp2 by gsuberland@chaos.social
2026-01-04T21:45:48Z
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@mcc @glennseto and I know I'm preaching to the choir here but wow look it turns out that talking to a diverse range of people and listening to their needs is probably the most important part of software ecosystem development, and making accessibility a "we'll deal with that after the regular functionality" line item basically always fucks you over in ways that extend far beyond accessibility alone.
(DIR) Post #B1xdUtxwM2ueYkktCC by gsuberland@chaos.social
2026-01-05T02:22:04Z
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@shironeko @glennseto @mcc you have come at this from the complete wrong direction and I would recommend reading the whole thread before engaging further.
(DIR) Post #B1xdUvUweouLJPClHM by shironeko@fedi.tesaguri.club
2026-01-05T02:35:36.242143Z
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@gsuberland @glennseto @mcc I understand what you mean, nerds scratching their own itch results in a mess. But the issue is no one is going to agree on anything going the holistic design route and it's what get wayland development stuck for all these years in the first place.It's only after people give up on the whole design by committee route did useful protocols make any meaningful progress and things started to trend better.
(DIR) Post #B1xikiyRUPOYsBM252 by mcc@mastodon.social
2026-01-05T02:39:53Z
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@shironeko @gsuberland @glennseto We are talking about basic functionality which is not in yet. Graham was talking about accessibility before, my rage point is that running GNOME in Wayland on a regular lenovo laptop results on half the apps being blurry messes unless you activate one of a series of hidden settings with gsettings.Moreover, my core criticism of how Wayland developed is that it means configurability is impossible, because your DE picks your compositor, so you can't pick one.
(DIR) Post #B1xikkWVjEEzg8Ikoy by shironeko@fedi.tesaguri.club
2026-01-05T03:34:29.728676Z
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@mcc @gsuberland @glennseto I'm talking about this mentality, that somehow the problem with X and wayland is caused by nerds only caring about their little world, and it would be much better if we just look at the big picture.The moment you want to assign defaults or create some sort of holistic system, you create things that are inflexible and hard to extend/customize. It's what made X so hard to maintain, because it was design by committee so a tangled mess. Eventually it was free-ed by obviously it is too late. Wayland technically tries to avoid this fate, but then the governance still became a committee and so nothing was getting done yet again. Only recently did people turn around and just try things see what works and what doesn't and things are now suddenly better.Would it be nice if there was collaboration on designs, goals, roadmaps, focus groups and everything? Of course it would be nice, but that only works for small groups of people not the whole internet.Everyone working on their own problems naturally selects for an ecosystem that is composeable, because each person have to utilize what's already there. Being composable also means you can decompose it, incrementally improve things without everything else falling apart.> more than this, we need software that actually works by default. it's easy to get distracted by how technical people can tinker themselves out of this mess, but at the end of the day most users aren't hypernerds and couldn't give a toss about any of that. they just want their computer to let them work> step 1 is the hypernerds tinkering themselves out of that mess. step 2 is a bunch of other hypernerds packaging that up as a ready-to-go solution. step 3 is now we have some half-baked solution that patched over a deficiency in what was available, but since it's the only frictionless way to do it right now that's what everyone does. repeat forever. oh whoops we're back with the X11 problem of immense techdebt.
(DIR) Post #B1xjnafiucDvwpWsIS by shironeko@fedi.tesaguri.club
2026-01-05T03:46:15.110690Z
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@mcc @glennseto @gsuberland On the micro level, GNOME is exactly the kind of "works by default" "polished" "accessible" project mentality, and it is a dead end, building on top of it is a herculean task. If what's there fits you perfectly you are vety comfortable, otherwise if you don't have exactly average measurements on every axis you are screwed. On the other hand, the other projects that just tries to do a little bit pulls each others up and they get better together.
(DIR) Post #B21X3gL5lY6mRHNSq0 by AnachronistJohn@zia.io
2026-01-06T23:41:14.464844Z
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@mcc @glennseto The more I read, the more small pieces fit in to place because of explanations like yours, @mcc At the same time, I’m completely lost about what Wayland is actually supposed to do. Can I ssh -Y with Wayland? No? Why not? How can this possibly be a replacement when it can’t do basic things?I wonder out loud why we can’t have our X11 / graphics drivers get talked to by Wayland until Wayland is ready to do that on its own. Or, in the case of old / odd hardware (X11 works on Amiga custom chipsets under NetBSD, after all), Wayland might never talk directly to the hardware, and that should be fine - nobody is forcing Wayland to support hardware that doesn’t make money for someone.Or maybe I’m misunderstanding things, which is entirely possible and would explain many things. It’d just be nice if new things which’re intended to replace old things didn’t do it both incompatibly and half-assedly.