LeFantome

Remind me 2030 if these issues I have get fixed:

You want me to track the progress of 4 bugs in Sway? Such a powerful argument. How about don’t use Sway?

One issue the wayland proponents fail to notice is that the ecosystem itself is fragmented

I did not fail to notice. I have another post here comparing compositors to web browsers. There is more than one by design. Long term, it is absolutely one of Wayland’s strengths. But ya, your experience is only going to be as good as the browser you choose.

For tiler lovers, Niri and Hyprland are both great. COSMIC is looking good but still Alpha. Plasma 6 is perhaps the best Wayland compositor at the moment.

why don't you stop using linux and move to windows?

Hilarious. Linux has been my primary desktop since the 90’s. You probably need to get off my lawn.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/12to11-git

Even more hilarious. Looks like you found an even crappier Wayland compositor than Sway.

Amongst the long list of broken things in 12to11, my favourite is this: “has not been tested on window (and compositing) managers other than GNOME Shell”. GNOME is a Wayland first and soon to be Wayland only project. A project clinging to Wayland on X on GNOME is a perfect metaphor for the point I am making. Thank you for making my point so well.

By 2030, Xorg will be in the AUR and the only x server in the core Arch repos will be Wayback (Xwayland on Wayland).

Sounds like you will be using 12to11 to run Wayland apps on i3 on XWayland on Wayback (Wayland on X on Wayland). Good times.

You seem to think I am telling you to use Wayland though.I don’t care what you use. My point is that everybody else is happy leaving you behind. Keep using X. You can switch to the Dillo browser too if you want. LMAO.

Very subtle “Arch, BTW”, BTW. Nice.

For everybody else, here is the project you linked to. It is a fun little project.

https://git.linuxping.win/12to11/12to11

They have different goals

I am not sure about that. They have different designs for sure. Mostly because one was designed 25 years later. I guess you mean they have different goals because Xorg did not incorporate some goals in its design (like security). But is it a goal of Xorg to be insecure? That feels like a stretch.

There are design goals in X11 that are not included in Wayland. Take asking the display server to draw primitive shapes for you as an example. But modern X11 apps do not do that either. That is not how things like Qt and GTK work. So, more of a “25 years later” thing than a true difference in goals. The “compositor” approach. The DDX layer. These are more of a reflection of “how things work today” on both systems than they are differences in goals.

Perhaps you mean things like “network transparency” as I hear that one a lot. Wayland’s design is to have a simple core that can be extended. But the same capabilities exist for Wayland. For example:

https://www.mankier.com/1/waypipe

or even better:

https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

What goal does Xorg have that Wayland does not? Again, other than poor security (not a goal).

The lack of security in Xorg makes many things easier. Wayland apps run in a sandbox which makes some things harder. Many complaints I see ultimately boil down to this difference. Flatpaks are also sandboxed and a lot of the solutions on Wayland are similar (eg. XDG desktop portal). But again, am not sure crap security was really a “goal” of Xorg. It is simply convenient.

Because of security, things have to be explicitly supported on Wayland while X11 apps can just do them. There is no official way to capture a screenshot on X11 even after 40 years. But any X11 app can do it pretty easily as all apps have access to the entire display (even contents of other windows). On Wayland, there is a protocol for screen capture. There has to be, or it would not be possible. The same is true for many other features. And, I fully admit, some protocols for Wayland to do things done by some x11 apps do not exist yet (or are not yet widely supported by compositors or apps).

But again, I do not really see “poor security” as an x11 design goal. It was simply born in an era where that did not matter as much. Projects that want to modernize X11, like Xlibre, will have to break things on X too. Time will tell what that looks like.

Even if 90% of us don't need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.

I most agree with you. The Xlibre project may become popular and do something to make X11 popular again. Who knows?

And I just argued on a forum yesterday that Xorg will keep working for 20 years at least. But a lot of smart people claimed I was wrong about it being able to support new hardware. But I think Xorg is likely to build and run for decades yet.

But the X server implementation that is likely to last the longest is Xwayland. And with Wayback, the “stand-alone” X server that many distros will bundle will be Xwayland running on Wayback (Wayland) and not Xorg.

As I have said elsewhere though, few people will be daily driving an X server (Xorg, Xlibre, or Wayback) simply because many desirable applications will require Wayland.

And what will be the x11 only applications that will make people run an X server to use them? Xeyes? Xfig?

I think even running Xwayland will be pretty niche. X11 is going to be a software preservation project. You can boot up OpenLook, CDE, Trinity, or i3 for the memories (and then go back to Wayland for the apps you need).

I could be wrong. Time will tell. Within a couple of years after the release of GTK5 at the latest, we will know. By 2030 maybe.

Here is an argument that some of the grumpy old men clinging to Xorg may understand.

It is 2003 and all the cool kids are moving to this new web browser called Firefox. But every time you try your favourite websites in it, you find stuff that breaks. So back to trusty old Internet Explorer 6 you go. Call me when it works you say.

Wayland is like HTML. Wayland compositors are web browsers. And yes, all these “modern” web standards are all implemented a little differently or maybe not at all in some browsers. And, annoyingly, a lot of real world websites still work better in Internet Explorer 6 than in any of these supposedly “modern” browsers.

But, as with the web, it will not be long until all websites (Linux desktop applications) will be written to use the modern standards and will work well, and pretty much the same, in all browsers (Wayland compositors).

And, while there will still be websites (Linux desktop apps) that work better in IE6 (Xorg), most people will consider those sites broken and will probably not use them. Alternatively, you can run your browser (compositor) in compatibility mode (Xwayland) for those sites.

You can keep using Internet Explorer if you want. Many people held on for a long time. Just know what your advocacy sounds like to people that have moved on to Firefox and Chrome. Pointing at your corporate website that looks wrong in Firefox will not impress them. And understand that you will not be able to hang on forever. Well, unless you want to be stuck in a tiny corner of the web that still works on your browser. Most websites will stop working on Internet Explorer at some point.

Yes. When will people realize that there should only be one HTML implementation. There are so many web browsers that it gets rather mind-boggling.

Same argument exactly.

You can use XFCE today by switching out xfwm for labwc (Wayland compositor). It works ok but, if you are an XFCE user, the Xorg version is still a bit more polished. That has nothing to do with Wayland really. Even XFCE will be be Wayland first in a release or two. But all the XFCE apps, the panel, the launcher, etc all work great on Wayland already. You are just waiting for them to finish their own compositor.

I guess that is why global shortcuts were added as an xdg-desktop-portal extension.

Do you use Debian? I find a lot of the biggest Wayland opponents are running software from 3 years ago and have no idea how Wayland works today.

You do not have to count voices. We are not having an election. But the people that do not care will be running Wayland. So, if we count desktops…

You completely missed the point being made.

Wayland is what new users start on. And Wayland works for most users. In fact, for these users, it works better than Xorg.

So nobody is going to switch to Xorg. The only people using it will be the few that have not switched to Wayland. And, as the applications go Wayland only, that will become a very short list.

It is mot Wayland that has to prove itself. X11 is not winning the battle for new users, or even old ones.

These “Wayland will never come” articles completely ignore the fact that Wayland is here and has already won.

There are lots of issues with Wayland. They will be fixed, but if this was simply a list of things still needing to be improved, it would be useful.

But most Linux desktop users use Wayland already. It will be 90% in 2-3 years. With the exception of Mint, the big Linux distros already install to Linux by default. So almost every new Linux user starts on Wayland. Few will ever try X11. And if they did, the list of broken and impaired experiences on X11 will bring most back to Wayland.

It really does not matter if every x11 user switches to Wayland. The ecosystem does not need them.

But very few of even the hard core adherents will use an X server 5 years from now. Most normal users will not even use Xwayland. And the simple reason is applications.

Everyday there are more and more apps that are Wayland only. Before 2030, that list will include all GNOME and most GTK apps. Are people really going to give up all these applications because of some obscure advantage they perceive in X11?

Most the the faults the article cites are exaggerated or historical. But it is not worth arguing over the details. Wayland is the future. But it is already the present. It is sad really that the people writing these articles do not realize that they are already in the minority and have already been left behind.

This is a “Linux will never be ready for all UNIX users” article written in 1998. It is both true and irrelevant.

What they are aiming for (not agreeing, just explaining) is a language that you can use to ask AI to do things for you.

The idea is that you do not have to do the nuts and bolts programming (the AI will do that) but at the same time you have more deterministic control over what the AI does.

So “higher level” than our highest level languages now.

They need to call it COBOL. A language regular business people can use!

I think that Red Hat porting a Red Hat tool is likely to be remembered. Clearly the intent is to ship and migrate to the new tool (in Fedora and in RHEL) and probably to stop shipping the old tool at the same time.

I fail to see how it is going to be forgotten.