The real story behind Wayland and X

'Programming X is like reading one of those French philosophers where afterwards you start wondering whether you really know anything for sure.' [1] [1] Thomas Thurman - ▶ this video [link]

in “A peculiarity of the X Window System: Windows all the way down” · View on HN

But why? X11 works. I've tried wayland in 2010, second time today. If anything today's story shows that developers do not want to work on X11 and how much we depend on Red Hat. X11 problems explained by Daniel Stone [1]. As I understand there are two parallel architectures, one uses X11 server primitives (xfontsel), another renders on client (fontconfig fc-list etc). It is very confusing. [1] ▶ this video

in “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?” · View on HN

Protocol limits what is possible. Legacy defines performance. Gnome is X11 first. Wlroots in Wayland first. It should be possible to optimize Gnome. Wayland was created because of horrible X11 performance [1]. It is not Waylands prime time yet but X.Org still works and maintained. Phoronix.com should have checked contributions [2]. [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]

in “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?” · View on HN

[link] I've described context. You've confirmed it. Statement supported not by fact but by inner voice. My morale stems from Christianity, I believe Enlightenment got it right — discovery of nature is discovery of God. I've been to church, I've seen priest who shared joy. I've seen other priests, I would rather not see them. X.Org developer described what's wrong with the project [1]. Not one of the Wayland critiques addressed his points. They have no facts, they just want it to fail. Those who work hard and share for free get anger in return. Sway / wlroots maintainer (ddevault) got off the edge from this misinformation and I do not agree with him but I am not maintainer either. Where is love and God in this story? > That’s not even considering any personal goals, which I have vanishingly little time for. I get zero exercise, and though my diet is mostly reasonable the majority of it is delivery unless I get the odd 2 hours to visit the grocery store. That is, unless I want to spend those 2 hours with my friends, which means it’s back to delivery. My dating life is almost nonexistent. I want to spend more time studying Japanese, but it’s either that or keeping up with my leisure reading. Lofty goals of also studying Chinese or Arabic are but dust in the wind. I’m addicted to caffeine, again. > Less healthy ways have included walking to the corner store to buy unhealthy comfort foods, consuming alcohol or weed too much or too often, getting in stupid internet arguments, being

in “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?” · View on HN

Please address [1] or you don't know what you are talking about. Similar point in next post [2]. [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]

in “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?” · View on HN

> I have an opposite view. All I can say is that nearly every single one of the former core Xorg developers has said precisely the opposite (sometimes in literal terms [0] [1]), and has switched to developing Wayland. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] > In Plasma we need Wayland support as we are hitting the limitations of X all the time. Wayland will simplify our architecture and allow us to composite the screen in the way we consider as most useful.

in “On Abandoning the X Server” · View on HN

After watching ▶ this video At 18m30, he mentions that everyone uses SHM and DRI2, which don't work over the network. He mentions X isn't "network transparent" anymore, it's "network capable". I'm not 100% sure what the difference is tbh. At 40m10, he mentions that rendering on the "server" then compressing it to transfer over the network to display locally is basically VNC.

in “Red Hat Expecting X.org to “Go into Hard Maintenance Mode Fairly Quickly”” · View on HN

last time I used kde was in 2002. I loved especially kmail and konqueror. Though I have eventually been turned off by the dependency hell of big DE's (not unique to kde and probably only an issue if you compile the DE yourself, ... though also annoying if you have 100+ base-packages/dependencies pulled in just because you want 1 tool). after moving to i3 I find it hard to look back. the level of customization I can do with a tiling WM (also dwm, xmonad etc) is just insane. Makes more sense to me since most of the tools I use are lightweight, e.g. suckless (surf), a complete process tree after login now consists of: ?─┬─?───i3-wrapper───i3 ├─sh───xautolock ├─sh───unclutter ├─sh───dunst───2*[{dunst}] ├─sh───i3bar───sh───python───{python} ├─sh───x-terminal-emul─┬─3*[bash] │ ├─bash───pstree │ └─6*[{x-terminal-emul}] └─systemd─┬─at-spi-bus-laun─┬─dbus-daemon │ └─3*[{at-spi-bus-laun}] ├─at-spi2-registr───2*[{at-spi2-registr}] ├─dbus-daemon ├─dconf-service───2*[{dconf-service}] ├─dirmngr ├─gconfd-2 ├─gvfs-udisks2-vo───2*[{gvfs-udisks2-vo}] ├─gvfsd─┬─gvfsd-trash───2*[{gvfsd-trash}] │ └─2*[{gvfsd}] ├─gvfsd-metadata───2*[{gvfsd-metadata}] ├─pulseaudio───2*[{pulseaudio}] └─tracker-store───4*[{tracker-store}] $> sudo smem -c pss -t | tail -1 606032 ^^^^ as commenter below pointed out this includes processes from other users. the correct figure is smem -c pss -t | tail -1 220678 Use compton if you need some bells+whistles (transparency). If you want to get rid of X.org and use Wayland[0]

in “Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update” · View on HN

>Ultimately, since I can't go wrong with X and I can go wrong with Wayland, the choice was easy. Keep in mind that Wayland has been designed by people who've been maintaining X11 for years. >it also offers no mode that would work over a network X11 has a huge number of issues when it comes to network transparency. tl;dr is: it's not designed for this, you should use a proper remote desktop protocol instead. More info: ▶ this video >Of that, EGL even requires Mesa and thus Cgo. That's not true anymore. You can use the DMA-BUF protocol instead of wl_drm. I'm not sure how to export a DMA-BUF without Cgo though… But that's a different issue. If you're going to use the GPU you'll probably need Cgo anyway.

in “On the Road to Pure Go X11 GUIs” · View on HN