185
ELI5 the whole Wayland vs X11 going on.
(programming.dev)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
185 points (92.6% liked)
Linux
48099 readers
739 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Similar to SystemD, a lot of the "other group of people" sometimes are people simply whinging too.
Like I saw one case where someone simply didn't want to upgrade their workflow.. And there were still people talking about Network Transparency as though it is something that has worked well on X11 within the last literally 20 years, or talking about standards.
That doesn't mean its perfect. But, when you say "feature Parity", there are features with Wayland which X11 hasn't caught up with, such as no massive gaping security issues. I'm not sure "feature parity" with X11 is a good idea, because don't forget, Xorg implements a print server too. A lot of the stuff simply needs to be implemented by the desktop environments.
But I agree, at the moment, its really whether about if we break some stuff temporarily, or keep waiting.. In my opinion though, the longer we wait, the longer the transition will take.
You haven't actually read that article which keeps getting reposted did you?
Some of it is stuff like "not all window managers do xxx", a lot of it is "my specific app (which might even be commercial and rather than bug the company who in paid thousands of dollars, let's blame Wayland). And yeah, should we wait until every window manager is 100% until we do anything. That's a generic statement, and they don't name them for a reason.
Oh, I use xkill, and it doesn't work. Well yeah, and you shouldn't necessarily be using it in xorg these days either lol
There are some valid things, but if you read through a lot of the beginning, it's actually just an opinion running around in circles.
You could literally halve that list pretty easily
And some things like DRM lease, I looked up, and it is supported by xwayland these days.
Some of it is stuff like "if the window manager crashes, you'll lose your session". Well yeah, that code would be in xorg instead, so it could crash there instead
Many xorg developers have also basically called xorg hot garbage..
It's funny how that keep saying xorg supports xxx. But if we look at the history, stuff like compiz and dri and such was basically tacked on. And that's the problem. Xorg was never designed for GPUs. It was designed for VGA cards like Tseng labs
It does some things better in Wayland already. The 15 year delay was in part because of NVIDIA screwing everyone around, and wasn't the fault of Wayland
If we're going to get pedantic about app support like the article, waydroid is broken on xorg as an example...
Actually, looking through it again, and its even more hilarious when I take a second look.
Another good example "Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD". The reference is from the NetBSD blog. The Netbsd marketshare is huge, so it's really important everyone holds back for them. The funny thing is that even gnome is missing features on NetBSD: https://wiki.netbsd.org/GNOME/ . So, should Wayland fix their OS for them?
To be clear for 90% of that whole link you've posted, it isn't the Wayland Development teams responsibility to pick up slack on other projects. It sucks that they won't be there for the beginning of the transition, but, if we transition earlier, they'll prioritise getting their crap together