[HN Gopher] GTK 5 might drop X11 support
___________________________________________________________________
GTK 5 might drop X11 support
Author : raybb
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-07-06 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| bitwize wrote:
| "X11 is dead, Summer. Gotta rip that band-aid off now; you'll
| thank me later."
| guerrilla wrote:
| Seems pretty consistent with GNOME dropping valuable features
| everyone uses... I say this as someone who just switched back to
| GNOME on Wayland (since 42), but it always seems like they're
| trying to lose users. At least it seems like a non-goal to grow
| their base, so it always loses out to any other concerns.
| mnd999 wrote:
| They also still haven't fixed the file picker.
| guerrilla wrote:
| What do you mean? Ctrl-L works and thumbnails kind of work
| now (I don't know why but only on some images, even of the
| same type, even form the same roll.)
| larrik wrote:
| There's a lot less substance to this than the article title
| makes it seem.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't think so. I think the title is perfectly accurate. I
| read the issue and it's comments. As I said, this seems very
| typical for GNOME. We've seen the same kind of thing a lot.
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't understand all of the hate around Wayland. X is fine for
| what it is, but Wayland enables the flicker-free, nicely-animated
| experience most users want from their desktops, and also better
| reflects how modern hardware works. GTK4 on Wayland is actually a
| pretty nice API to program with, which remedies a lot of warts in
| GTK/X11. Even Emacs runs X11-free these days:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure....
| What's so wrong with declaring that X11 support will be dropped
| years from now?
| brudgers wrote:
| I don't have an emotional response over Wayland.
|
| My practical engineering analysis says that people will be
| forced to choose between abandoning working X software and
| foregoing new Wayland packages.
|
| For example when one workflow critical app adopts GTK 5
| (assuming it does not support X) and another workflow critical
| app remains X based.
|
| And apps will remain X based because all the effort of porting
| to Wayland is chores not features.
|
| Wayland doesn't add import functionality to applications.
|
| Indeed breaking the client-server idiom is a functional
| regression.
|
| As is breaking Linux and Wayland is a breaking change because
| backward compatibility and/or reliable automated tooling to
| port complex applications is too much work for Wayland's
| developers.
|
| Who like most of those affected, are not getting paid Faang
| wages to work on deep pocketed well resourced teams.
|
| Breaking applications makes it Python3 on steroids in terms of
| generating tidal waves of compatibility efforts.
| asveikau wrote:
| > GTK4 on Wayland is actually a pretty nice API to program
| with, which remedies a lot of warts in GTK/X11
|
| Gtk on X11 does not expose any X11 to the programmer, so I
| really don't know what this is supposed to mean.
| pvorb wrote:
| It means that GTK itself (internally, not necessarily its
| API) has warts.
| asveikau wrote:
| Very doubtful to me.
|
| The design of gtk is to separate the rendering in the GDK
| layer. Prior versions ran on Win32 without application
| changes.
|
| That's how you can get it on X11 or Wayland without
| changing applications. Wayland didn't exist when this
| design choice was made, but has benefited from that choice.
| Imo rather than a liability, this is what good design looks
| like for such a library.
| kelnos wrote:
| What flicker? Maybe I'm just ignorant of it, but I haven't seen
| flicker on X11 in years and years and years and years. I've
| been on Intel graphics for the past 7+ years, so maybe that has
| something to do with it? And if it does, then that means it's
| not X11's fault that there's flicker, it's the people who write
| bad video drivers.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Flickering, tearing and frame drops happen with any hardware
| combination, just like they did on Windows before Vista.
|
| Not everyone can necessarily notice it. Some of us are
| unlucky enough to get headaches from it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| also anecdotal but I had screen tearing issues on virtually
| every machine until I used Wayland. I don't know whose to
| blame because I don't understand the specifics of the stacks
| well enough, but Wayland just straight up solved it. And you
| can really find pages of complaints about flickering or
| tearing issue on every linux forum.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > I don't understand all of the hate around Wayland.
|
| The Wayland thread a few days ago[1] made me want to try
| Wayland again. I've tried once a year or so for ages, but it
| had been a while. So I logged out, switched to Wayland and
| logged back in.
|
| To my surprise, things looked like they worked. No rendering
| artifacts like last time, YouTube even played fairly smooth.
| Sure it wasn't as snappy as Xorg, but hey.
|
| A day later I tried to play some video files from my Samba
| share on my NAS. I use SMPlayer since it can handle smb://
| links. However this time it didn't start playing. I checked the
| logs, and I could see it complained about not having the
| correct credentials to the share, NT_SOMETHING_SOMETHING.
|
| So I messed around trying to re-authenticate the share,
| different users etc. Nothing worked. I could view images just
| fine, but the videos just wouldn't play.
|
| Looking at the SMPlayer logs I noticed something that struck me
| as odd. After the NT_SOMETHIG_SOMETHING error, there was
| mention of a Wayland authentication error...
|
| So I logged back out, selected Xorg, logged back in and boom,
| video played like nothing had happened.
|
| I'm just a user. I don't wanna dig into why the hell Wayland
| has anything to do with Samba share authentication. I just want
| my computer to work.
|
| This October it's the 10 year anniversary of Wayland 1.0...
| maybe in another 10 it'll actually work for a mere mortal like
| me.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31940765
| sph wrote:
| There is no reason why Wayland would cause Samba
| authentication errors, now come on.
|
| Blame SMPlayer being buggy, I play videos from smb shares in
| Wayland and nothing breaks because it's a bloody desktop
| compositor, not your network stack.
|
| The misinformation surrounding Wayland is just astounding.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I agree that it seems very weird, but as a user all I know
| is that the exact same steps that works using Xorg does not
| work using Wayland.
|
| And as a user, that's all I care about.
|
| edit: This time might be SMPlayer, last time was perhaps
| Firefox, and so on. I've tried Wayland at least once a year
| for ages, and every single time I have to go back because
| something is broken.
| wooque wrote:
| >Wayland enables the flicker-free, nicely-animated
|
| Did you start using Linux last month? Because I have flicker-
| free, nicely-animated experience on X for years. Granted it's
| not experience that everyone has, but it's not fault of X, it's
| bad drivers or low power hardware. Wayland only brought forced
| vsync.
|
| GTK4 is actually trash that ruined font rendering because GNOME
| developers felt so.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I'm not even sure how to do anything with Wayland. I have
| kubuntu and at no point has it suggested Wayland to me.
|
| The stuff from comments about screen capture not working
| reliably does not inspire much confidence. I remember X11
| taking decades to fix rough edges and surely don't want to go
| over it again.
|
| Much like IPv6, it seems to be real old now, still not adopted
| and not really working, definitely not hip anymore.
| zamalek wrote:
| > capture not working properly
|
| This has changed.
|
| As a daily Wayland user, the only thing that Wayland can't do
| is networked sessions, and I have never needed that.
|
| > suggested Wayland
|
| Ubuntu slated it for default in 22.04, but reverted due to a
| bug. I expect them to try again during the next release. If
| you want to try it then it's typically selected in the login
| manager.
|
| > don't want to go over it again
|
| Or don't try it, the grandparent comment was talking about
| "hate" not "disinterest".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| X isn't to blame for screen flicker. That's all Nvidia's fault.
| Every other video driver on Xorg works correctly. Every other X
| server works correctly. X is just a collection of protocols and
| data structures. It can run on top of anything. It isn't to
| blame for low level hardware issues from poorly implemented
| drivers.
| mikewhy wrote:
| I'm not sure what constitutes "flickering" on X11, but it's
| really not hard to find examples of it happening to people
| that aren't using Nvidia.
| superkuh wrote:
| Most linux software still uses gtk3 and the docs for gtk4 aren't
| even finished. Hopefully slating this for 5 will give GNOME the
| decade it needs to realize X11 isn't going away until wayland is
| actually at feature parity. And I'm fairly confident it still
| won't be in any one implementation because there'll be dozens of
| different waylands now and 10 years from now. Just like 10 years
| in the past.
| phkahler wrote:
| Gnome will continue supporting X apps via xWayland. GTK3 and
| GTK4 apps will always work on both. Anyone building a new app
| should not be writing for X at this point (its deprecated) so
| there is no need for X support in a future toolkit.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| If X11 is well and truly on the way out by then, I'll be all
| for GTK5 dropping X11 support. It doesn't seem like much of
| the world beyond Gnome is on Wayland but GTK is everywhere.
| If that remains the case, a Wayland only GTK (that didn't
| accept X11 patches) would probably result in a massive fork.
|
| I generally use Gnome on my Linux laptop. I often find myself
| switching it to be Gnome on X rather than Gnome on Wayland.
| This isn't based on any explicit preference (I genuinely
| don't care), but I usually encounter some glitchiness that
| goes away when I take Wayland out of the picture.
| gkbrk wrote:
| > Anyone building a new app should not be writing for X at
| this point (its deprecated).
|
| Did I miss an announcement or something? Last time I checked
| X was not deprecated.
|
| How would you even deprecate a protocol? Is HTTP/1.1 also
| deprecated?
| zerocrates wrote:
| I mean I guess you deprecate a protocol by having the
| implementations tell people to stop using it, then they
| stop supporting it.
|
| SSLv2 and SSLv3 are surely deprecated protocols, no?
| kelnos wrote:
| After looking at gtk4 recently, I also learned it's pretty
| crippled in some areas as compared to gtk3. I understand their
| rationale for this (removing things like GtkPlug/GtkSocket, and
| making it impossible to implement yourself), but I can't say I
| agree with it. I've started a couple new gtk3-based projects
| recently, and I don't think I'd ever migrate them to gtk4.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| GNOME doesn't care if wayland is at feature parity. They can
| require it for GNOME by fiat. They also don't need to care
| about supporting multiple compositors; they can require all
| GNOME users to use theirs.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I've never understood why 'desktop' is such a difficult and
| heated topic in the Linux sphere.
|
| Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome
| etc. things that "just work", and if it does, why isn't everyone
| liking and using it?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Is there any combination of these various X11, Wayland, Gnome
| etc. things that "just work"
|
| that's pretty much what the latest Ubuntu LTS or Fedora release
| is. And I think most people are using it, but they're just
| silent about it. I think the linux community just has some
| uniquely vocal folks on the other end.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| I guess that means GTK-based apps will not be able to run on the
| BSDs?
| hexo wrote:
| or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs
| phkahler wrote:
| Gtk 2/3/4 programs. Also I think some people are conflating
| GTK and gnome. Systems can run multiple versions of GTK at
| the same time, and gnome will still use xwayland for older
| x-apps.
|
| There really is no problem with this move.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome_
|
| Yes and no. The GTK developers have stated that GTK now
| exists for GNOME. Other non-GNOME uses of GTK work through
| coincidence, and won't be supported or considered as they
| evolve the GNOME platform. We can already see this with the
| removal of several features from GTK4 (that were present in
| GTK3). GTK5 will just be more of the same, and will leave
| more non-GNOME people behind.
|
| Sure, apps won't _have_ to move from GTK3 or GTK4 to GTK5,
| but some will. And will someone step up to fork and
| maintain GTK3 and /or GTK4 when the GTK developers are
| focused on GTK5 and don't care about the older versions
| anymore?
|
| Alternatively, maybe we'll see a new toolkit start to gain
| prominence. After all, GTK5 is many years away, and
| GTK5-only apps are even further out. There's plenty of time
| for something new to take the stage. Maybe a Rust-based
| toolkit will become popular enough to be considered on
| similarly-equal footing to GTK and Qt. (Certainly the non-
| Rust binding story would have to be really good for this to
| be viable, as I can't imagine all those C, C++, Python,
| etc. devs who use GTK to all become Rust developers.) That
| would be my hope, but we'll see. There's a lot of time for
| this to unfold.
| jeppesen-io wrote:
| I know that FreeBSD has some wayland support already and
| wayland 1.20+ can build on BSD
|
| Also, this is only for GTK 5, so by the time that even comes
| out (years) and apps switch to it, we could see widespread
| wayland support in BSD
| wmf wrote:
| More likely BSDs will finally get Wayland working.
| vetinari wrote:
| By the time that GTK5 would be a thing, and going by the
| current level of effort to maintain X.org, it won't really
| matter by then.
| dabber21 wrote:
| Isn't Wayland already standard on Linux except on Desktop?
| agilob wrote:
| Every year I read a comment saying Wayland is standard, I try
| to switch to it and always regret. Literally most day to day
| functionality doesn't work, electron only recently added screen
| capture ability, and that's only for current window, not full
| screenshare or another window, so pair programming is pain,
| running Java or C# desktop programs is pain or impossible due
| to scaling issues. Vulkan/OpenGL programs can crash after
| restoring from minimised state... Switching from
| multiscreen(docked) to single screen(laptop) doesn't restore
| windows in their position, oh even dragging windows between
| monitors doesn't work well as the window on a new screen is
| different size, eg. just the top bar with the window content
| gone until minimized and maximized again
| mnd999 wrote:
| Screen sharing is still a awful yeah. It either just works or
| you're into a world of pain with user level systemd units
| that log nothing useful or nothing at all, dependencies that
| you have to somehow know to install with no instructions,
| arcane program arguments and env vars that mean hacking
| desktop files or shell scripts for things that are otherwise
| straightforward and then random breakages with upgrades.
| wetpaws wrote:
| No and unlikely to be in any forseeable future
| corrral wrote:
| I still class it as "bleeding edge". In another five years I
| doubt it'll be in a state that'd make me recommend it as the
| most sensible default. Maybe, _maybe_ by the end of the decade.
| wmf wrote:
| Servers don't have GUIs and Android doesn't use Wayland so do
| you mean cars?
| Kudos wrote:
| It's the compositor used on the Steam Deck.
| pvorb wrote:
| I guess it was meant as a joke.
| dabber21 wrote:
| if you'd develop an embedded OS e.g. for cars, why would you
| use X11 in this day and age?
| wmf wrote:
| I would expect them to invent some janky custom thing
| running on fbdev.
| dekhn wrote:
| Many servers have guis.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| By the time GTK5 arrives Wayland will probably be old enough to
| drive or maybe even drink in the US. And, as much as I hate to
| say it, I believe it will still not be omnipresent in the Linux
| desktop.
|
| I really want to see Wayland move forward and succeed, but there
| are so few companies injecting money on it, they get to dictate
| how things move. Red Hat is one of the main contributors, and
| they only seem to care about Gnome working on Wayland (as much as
| I don't like their direction, I can't really blame them for
| following it, it just sucks that I don't like the product they're
| developing). The landscape is extremely fragmented and everybody
| who is not on the Gnome garden will suffer a lot.
|
| I really wish some other non-Gnome-favoring company would find a
| reason to dump a lot more money into Wayland and help move it
| forward in the not-only-gnome-favorable path. This is not a thing
| that will move forward without full-time workers. X has always
| had a lot of paid people contributing to it.
|
| That is, if IBM doesn't decide to throw a bigger wrench at the
| problem.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > I really want to see Wayland move forward and succeed,
|
| Honest question. Why? Or, what are you hoping will be different
| if this occurs as opposed to the current status quo?
| vetinari wrote:
| Part of the puzzle:
|
| The Real Story Behind Wayland and X - Daniel Stone
| (linux.conf.au 2013)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Because, despite the fact that Wayland originally
| underestimated the size of the problem, it is in theory a
| better technical solution to our modern graphics problems
| than X11. It is designed in a more secure way (there is more
| isolation between the apps, which is both a blessing and a
| curse), every frame is indeed perfect, and it provides a sane
| solution to the 'compositing' problem.
|
| It's just a shame it was made into something that is even
| more fragmented than X11 due to it being even less than what
| X11 tries to be. So much got undefined by the protocol and
| left as something to be solved by the Compositor, and we
| don't have an universal compositor.
|
| And it's not like companies are throwing money at X11 either:
| progress is not happening there.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| X11 is a fairly mature piece of software, though. It's been
| around for decades, and as usual, when things stick around
| for that long, it's because they work fairly well. I'm not
| sure what progress you'd expect to see there.
|
| I guess I don't see why software that's been around for a
| few years longer than I've been alive, and has never really
| caused me much headache needs to be replaced with software
| that is an immature and in many ways, a worse offering.
|
| I see people talking about screen tearing, but X11 supports
| vsync on most video cards, so I really don't quite get
| where that's coming from.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| X11 makes tear-free drawing _possible_.
|
| Wayland, IIUC, makes tear-free drawing _inevitable_.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I guess if screen tearing is the worst thing you know,
| you wake up in cold sweat every night screaming its name,
| I guess you should really use Wayland. But for other
| people?
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, I never got this. Every time the X11 vs. Wayland
| thing comes up, I see so many people talking about tear-
| free rendering as if it were on the same footing as
| curing cancer.
|
| (Regardless, I haven't seen screen tearing on X11 in...
| close to a decade? More? I don't care if that's the case
| only because it's "possible", and not because it's
| "inevitable". Who cares? It works fine.)
| phkahler wrote:
| Some just needs to fork gnome and make windows98 style UI.
|
| This is actually OT because this is about GTK, which is a fine
| toolkit even if it's not C++. It has binding for most
| languages.
| warning26 wrote:
| XFCE is GTK based, and so is MATE, which is actually a fork
| of Gnome.
| lproven wrote:
| [Author of original article here]
|
| That fork of GNOME with a Win9x-style UI exists: it's called
| Cinnamon.
|
| It's OK and it's quite popular. It's a lot more customisable
| and versatile than GNOME's own GNOME-Classic or GNOME-
| Flashback sessions, but it's still really quite clunky
| compared to, say, MATE or Xfce.
|
| If GNOME-Classic or GNOME-Flashback worked a little better,
| so that one could rearrange panels and add/move/remove
| controls and so on, I suspect that there would be no need for
| MATE to exist.
|
| I personally find Xfce to support more of the customisations
| I personally want (such as a vertical taskbar with horizontal
| rows of components and controls) than MATE, or KDE come to
| that.
|
| Wayland, for me, delivers nothing I really want. I read about
| variable refresh rates, HiDPI support, smooth flicker-free
| animations and so on, but I don't actually want or need any
| of those things. I don't get flicker or tearing as it is, and
| X.11 does all I need: seamless multihead support with 3D
| acceleration, and so on. I frankly prefer a minimum of
| animations and fades and so on.
| pkulak wrote:
| What about all the portals built by Redhat that allow kde and
| wlroots to tap into screen recording, audio, and soon even key
| captures? I get that Redhat doesn't actively submit patches to
| wlroots, but they also seem to be making stuff as open as seems
| reasonable.
|
| As a Sway user, I haven't noticed anything that works on Gnome
| but not Sway, except for stuff like Zoom, which hasn't, until
| recently, used the portals.
| corrral wrote:
| > I really wish some other non-Gnome-favoring company would
| find a reason to dump a lot more money into Wayland and help
| move it forward in the not-only-gnome-favorable path. This is
| not a thing that will move forward without full-time workers. X
| has always had a lot of paid people contributing to it.
|
| My understanding is most of the work is, deliberately, not in
| Wayland itself. In fact if you read feature and bug discussion
| between users and Wayland devs, it kinda seems like Wayland
| doesn't do much at all and has no interest in doing more.
|
| I haven't looked into it, but wouldn't be a bit surprised if RH
| had a hand in that architectural decision. Definitely makes it
| harder to compete with Gnome.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Yeah, that's the fragmentation part thing. I have no idea how
| to properly solve it, but I'm sure throwing lots of money at
| the problem would help.
| failuser wrote:
| If you want a picture of the future, imagine X11 stamping on a
| Linux user interface --forever.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| I think I still like that better than anything I recall from
| the past of X servers running on Windows or OSX.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| GTA 5 would never drop support for DirectX 11.
| cowtools wrote:
| Maybe they will switch to DirectWay Land?
| pvorb wrote:
| I won't give Wayland another try until I absolutely have to. And
| I might even consider going back to Windows before doing so.
|
| Every attempt to do the switch (sometimes forced by bad decisions
| of distributions) broke essential functionality without any
| workarounds, so I had to switch back to X11 eventually. I expect
| this to happen again if I give it another try - be it 1 or 10
| years from now.
|
| So I'm sorry, but Wayland is not for me.
| drdo wrote:
| Do you have an example of something that does not work?
|
| I'm using Fedora 36 and everything that I can think of works
| well.
| pvorb wrote:
| It's been a while. The last thing that was an absolute mess
| was screen sharing via Google Hangouts/Meet. You could share
| individual windows just fine, but I had two external displays
| attached to my notebook and wanted to share a single screen.
| It wouldn't work. You could only share both screens at once,
| so it was impossible for others to read anything.
|
| I think external displays in general had problems, but I
| don't remember many details. I had problems with my docking
| station under Wayland, scaling options that didn't work. And
| there was an issue when trying to re-order attached screens
| with the corresponding Gnome tool.
|
| I think this was on Ubuntu in 2018 or 2019, when they started
| giving you Wayland by default. But they soon learned that it
| just wasn't ready yet.
|
| Granted, some of those problems might have been caused by
| Gnome tools or Ubuntu or maybe even hardware drivers. But all
| of them were gone immediately once I switched back to X.
| drdo wrote:
| Screen sharing definitely works on Chrome (webrtc), Zoom
| (desktop app) and Slack (desktop app or web) on my vanilla
| Fedora 36 setup.
| aordano wrote:
| X11 Keyboard extension system (which i need for my custom
| layout) is basically garbage on Wayland; some other
| extensions that are needed to enable small functions in other
| aspects (not just screen composition) also don't work or
| behave poorly outside X11. I really dislike X and i would
| ditch it in a heartbeat if a good alternative existed.
|
| I tried hard to love Wayland but it's just not there yet. I
| hope it will be sooner, debugging why my keyboard stopped
| working because a C header file changed slightly in a semi-
| unrelated package upgrade is very not fun, and yet that's the
| best there is.
| vetinari wrote:
| At this point, we are talking about spacebar heating
| (https://xkcd.com/1172/)
| pvorb wrote:
| Possibly the situation is better today and it might be even
| better once GTK5 will make it to end users.
|
| But if Wayland folks think that having two external
| displays and screen sharing is an esoteric workflow, I know
| that my decision was correct.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm sure Wayland works in general, but every 6 months I try
| Wayland/KDE and I have yet to successfully start up the
| desktop.
| artogahr wrote:
| Nvidia card?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| yes. I've considered getting an rx-6400 to switch.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For what it's worth, Wayland seems to work fine with the
| more recent proprietary Nvidia drivers released earlier
| this year.
|
| Mutter is still buggy on Nvidia but I believe KDE should
| work fine these days unless you're on a distro that
| doesn't have recent drivers.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment[1]. I got credential errors
| accessing a Samba share using Wayland, worked fine with Xorg.
|
| No idea what Wayland has to do with Samba but I'm back to
| running Xorg yet again.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32007533
| kelnos wrote:
| I've started Wayland up just for fun, to see what it was about,
| but I've never actually used it. Xfce will probably never port
| to it (since it'd involve a ground-up rewrite of most
| components), and I have no desire to switch to a different
| desktop environment. So as long as X11/Xorg exists and people
| still continue writing and supporting software for it, I don't
| think I'd ever switch to Wayland.
|
| But that will be the problem, someday: if Wayland ever becomes
| the primary windowing system to target on Linux, I would expect
| some things might disappear. Like maybe Steam for X11 stops
| being a thing. Maybe Mozilla stops releasing an X11 version of
| Firefox. That would suck. But I do expect I still have at least
| another decade before that becomes a concern.
| rvz wrote:
| And this is why Desktop Linux is a running joke with devs
| fighting with each other's solutions to a re-implementation of an
| old problem and they still can't do it right to the level of
| desktops like Windows, and macOS.
|
| The fragmentation and alternatives of alternatives mess of the
| Linux Desktop has turned it into a giant contraption full of
| inconsistency and tons of unnecessary in-fighting between a bunch
| of devs due to UNIX philosophy or a desktop that simply just
| works.
|
| It is not early days anymore and it has been over 20 years and
| the Linux Desktop still has the same problems already present
| today and is a solution in search of an (already solved) problem
| at this point.
|
| No wonder that explains why Google was so fed up with desktop
| Linux they decided to replace it with their own OS (Fuchsia).
| kjeetgill wrote:
| Almost nothing you've said here is correct.
|
| The Unix philosophy has very little to do with desktop
| fragmentation and everything to do with the fact that unlike
| macos and windows: it's not _that_ commercial an endeavor. A
| common employer is a main reason many work on someone else 's
| ideas when they can just work on their own ideas.
|
| Even when there are commercialization efforts: investment and
| adoption circular. The challenges are much much bigger than
| just the desktop fragmentation.
|
| See: ChromeOS. Investment can solve these problems.
|
| Similarly, Fuchsia is a much bigger effort about the future of
| operating systems and not about just desktop environment
| quirkiness. Again, they have ChromeOS for that.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I agree this all hurts Linux adoption, and
| as a user I wish it were different.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| It's funny how they made an article about 4 short comments
| between 2 devs.
|
| People sure like to hate on change. Rather odd for a forum about
| disruptive startups.
|
| Might be worth thinking about where Wayland was 5 years ago, and
| where it is now, and where it will be in 5-10 years. That's
| basically what the conversation was about.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Pretty much agreed. And we should also be projecting Wayland's
| future on a non-linear basis. Lets of groundwork has gone into
| it, similar to pipewire, and that will create a tipping point
| for the project in terms of stability and feature delivery
| rate.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's a weird comparison. The first time I heard about
| pipewire it replaced both pa and Jack for me without
| sacrificing anything and actually improved everything. And
| that was before it was picked up by distros. Wayland on the
| other hand is widely deployed and I still can't always use it
| for basic use cases like screen sharing.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| I'd argue pipewire is a much smaller scope and has had
| better collaboration from everyone involved. You got in
| when the distros quite reasonably made the switch on your
| behalf and it was not an especially difficult call for
| them. Wayland has a bit more baggage, bad actors in the
| video hardware/driver territory, etc.
|
| Distros are facing a way harder decision on Wayland to make
| on your behalf, especially as Wayland starts to support
| some use cases fully while still not hitting others.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| systemd then :)
|
| but such comparisons will always have shortcomings.
|
| For what it's worth, screensharing works fine for me. I use
| it with Zoom and Mattermost (webrtc). Are you on an old
| version? I'm on 1.18 I think (Debian 11)
|
| Screen-recording is still a bit cringe. The builtin Gnome
| tool is OK, but a bit clunky. I miss Kazam.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Does pipewire still do software rendering at the app server
| (because no GPU) and then run a video codec to ship whole
| frames to the desktop?
| monocasa wrote:
| Yeah, el reg sort of prove the maxim "believe nothing you hear
| and only half of what you see".
|
| Like once I was reading that a product I was an engineer on got
| a huge contract that I absolutely would have known about and
| would have been on call for. Remember that a lot of reg stories
| are banking on the idea that anyone who actually knows better
| won't break their NDA to inform the public.
| lproven wrote:
| [Author here]
|
| This is precisely why I tend to festoon my articles with
| links, as citations.
|
| In the specialist world of desktop Linux, a lot of the stuff
| about rival toolkits and display servers is well-known and
| understood.
|
| For the vast majority of people who work with computers,
| using Windows or macOS on the desktop and Linux only on
| servers if that, then this stuff is largely unknown. I try to
| bridge the gap by providing some context and explanation of
| what's going on, what it means, what it might lead to and so
| on.
|
| Actually, from my own personal career history, even people
| working with Linux on the desktop often don't know much of
| this stuff. If they know enough to have a preferred distro
| and desktop, many people look no further.
| lproven wrote:
| [Article author here]
|
| It's a holiday in the USA, meaning little news from there, and
| for 2 days where I live in Czechia. It's a slow news time of
| year. That's why. :-)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Can't you just run the whole session on xwayland? lol
| hexo wrote:
| I guess, we'll drop GTK 5 support.
| ciupicri wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31971819 from a
| couple of days ago.
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