6 ms·

[flagged]

temp0826 1y ago
Wayland has been around for 15+ years now and I've been using it daily for probably 10. At this point I have to assume comments like this are unserious.
- hodgehog11 1y ago
  Good for you. Meanwhile, many other people have been encountering _serious_ issues for much of those 10 years. This is well documented. Downplaying the issues of other users is a great way to make people dislike the product.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - exiguus 1y ago
    What are this issues beside VNC or ssh -X does not work? Or my Software Y (still) does not support Wayland?
    - Zambyte 1y ago
      > ssh -X waypipe
    - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      Actually I don't think any of those are problems? * VNC is covered by wayvnc (unless you're on GNOME or maybe? KDE, but those have their own implementations) * ssh -X should be covered by waypipe * application software should generally work in XWayland (which okay is a little cheaty but if it works it works) The two pain points I'm currently aware of are: * Unified vs fractured ecosystem: In practice, everyone on X11 used Xorg and every window manager and desktop environment had the same basic features because of it. You could always control the keyboard layout via setxkbmap, every screenshot tool worked everywhere, xrandr/arandr were always available to configure displays, etc. In Wayland there is never one answer to anything; not every compositor lets you configure the keyboard and if they do each one has their own way to do it, there are 3 different screenshot protocols (supposedly KDE and wlroots are converging so only GNOME will be doing their own thing but I'm not holding my breath), display configuration is completely up to compositor choice, etc. * The accessibility story isn't there. There's work on it, so eventually the outcome will probably be "just throw out the a11y tools you're used to and switch to these new ones", but for now the current status is "they're working on it but it isn't there yet".
  - zveyaeyv3sfye 1y ago
    Link to any open issue you are encountering so we can discuss it then.
    - hodgehog11 1y ago
      I said "most" of those 10 years, since it has become much better now, especially on AMD. Nvidia is still a disaster on Wayland though, basic screen sharing apps like Zoom are broken for many users, even with PipeWire. The response to this is usually "that program is bad, it has problems and that isn't the fault of Wayland, don't use it". But Wayland broke userspace. If these programs all work well on X, that is a Wayland problem.
  - mort96 1y ago
    And I encounter _serious_ issues when I use X. Neither is perfect, but this insistence that Wayland is "not ready" because it doesn't have certain people's pet features ignores the silent majority for whom it just works and works better than X ever did. This is not me downplaying those issues some people encounter in Wayland. But I think you're sort of doing the opposite. (And, Wayland is not a "product".)
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      Because wayland is 'ready' when X can be properly killed, i.e. wayland is working for essentially all users. As it stands a huge fraction of users have issues with it, because most users have at least one 'pet feature' which they are not willing to give up.
      - mort96 1y ago
        As far as I'm concerned, a technology being "ready" (for mainstream adoption or whatever) means that it works better than or equally well as what it's replacing for most people and at least "well enough" for a significant majority. As far as I can tell, we've been there for a while with Wayland. The vast majority of people don't have to care that they're on Wayland.
      - lern_too_spel 1y ago
        X doesn't work for essentially all users. It works for substantially fewer users than Wayland does. There are several features that X is missing, and you might call them "pet features" but they are features that the vast majority of graphical desktop users expect these days.
        hodgehog11 1y ago
        That's quite the claim; maybe you operate in different circles than I do, but most power users I know still avoid Wayland like the plague. X doesn't have support most of the modern fancy features, yes. But on older hardware, which people with less money usually have, X works.
- dodomodo 1y ago
  You have to understand that I don't really care about the internals of my DE. The same of true for 95% of Linux users and 99.999% of general computer users, so when I see a huge amount of effort goes into basically seemingly pointless refactoring, instead of tackling issues that are actually important to users, it is disappointing to me. I just installed KDE Manjaro and guess what? It stills uses X, and no one has an answer to what benefit Wayland has for me.
  - simlevesque 1y ago
    Security. You said you did your research so I have to believe that you don't care about security. But most people care.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Thankfully you no longer have to be root to start X.
    - yyyk 1y ago
      That particular scenario (listening in on other apps) is very theoretical, can you recall any attack ever using it? IIRC Windows still has the same 'ability' - and nobody cares.
    - dodomodo 1y ago
      The threats models I have seen are easy enough to deal with inside the X ecosystem. And investing all your resources into a new system that is not backward compatible is something no serious security person would do as it leaves your existing users vulnerable
  - gf000 1y ago
    Well, do you also second guess your surgeon? Why do you think you have enough domain and technical knowledge to consider your "seemingly pointless" to be relevant?
    - johnisgood 1y ago
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  It's probably a distro thing. I'm on a rolling release distro (arch) and I've been using wayland on arch and it's worked great. There are still some things I struggle with, but for ~7 years I've been using wayland without major issue. Things iron themselves out pretty quickly these days when you're using a rolling release distro. This is not so for popos/ubuntu/debian etc.
  - mystifyingpoi 1y ago
    I don't want to be rude, but "it's worked great" and "still some things I struggle with" need some clarification.
    - blurbleblurble 1y ago
      The things I struggle with are very niche, like remote desktop via pipewire over ssh. Day to day stuff is way better than x11. Remember how much fiddling used to be necessary to configure x11 for your specific devices? I've never once done that and I don't miss it at all. By the way, pipewire is amazing.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
        > Remember how much fiddling used to be necessary to configure x11 for your specific devices? Er. No, I don't remember that. Are you talking about needing to make a xorg.conf once upon a time? Because that hasn't been generally needed for... over a decade? Maybe two at this point?
        mystifyingpoi 1y ago
        Me neither, and I had my first Linux machine in 2008. That was true maybe in 1995. Of course anecdotal evidence.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- gen2brain 1y ago
  Protocol, maybe, and there was no "Wayland"; there was Gnome and KDE. I was only recently able to try Labwc with LxQt, and I occasionally try to see if there are some improvements because it is not usable currently. The biggest issue is that every implementation is different; there is not even a shared common library. If Xorg developers are now working exclusively on Wayland, when are they going to start programming?
fruitworks 1y ago
At some point of development, the only way to progress without spiraling complexity is to break backwards compatibility. You might be interested in studying the internals of X11 and wayland to learn more. In a commercial project like windows, this sort of project is a total no-go. However in a collaborative community project like linux userspace, developers have more freedom to make design decisions in spite of short-term consequences. >The people that develop Linux desktop are deeply unserio The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. -Frank Herbert Don't take yourself too seriously, it might ruin you!
- vlovich123 1y ago
  In a commercial project like Windows this has been done many times - both Windows and MacOS switched to compositing window managers and have done deep surgery under the hood you never see. The difference is that internals can be mandated top down whereas in a bazaar model with lots of casual non interested observers throwing pot shots and no budget to support the work, relying on largely volunteer time, it’s much harder and takes longer to accomplish.
  - saidinesh5 1y ago
    > on largely volunteer time Are Linux desktop projects still run mostly by volunteers these days anymore? The kernel itself is heavily funded by, contributed to by so many large companies. A lot of user space projects are all maintained by companies or maintainers who work for companies like Redhat, Canonical, Suse etc ... Didn't Wayland itself get popular during Nokia/Intel Meego days? I remember there being automotive compositors, Jolla Phone all using wayland.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- asveikau 1y ago
ongy 1y ago
The core devs were all paid to work on it when I was still active. Not sure how many of the gnome (mutter) people are paid. Last I checked, the nvidia support was donated by nvidia (paid) for both KDE and Gnome. I think KDE got some work sponsored by valve (before gamescope), though I'm not quite sure on that. Overall, outside the sway/wlroots group I was a part of at the time, people generally worked adjacent or directly on wayland for day jobs.
yyyk 1y ago
X withering away was inevitable once you consider the 'economic' situation - very few people worked on it once the commercial Unix vendors went down. There was little practical enthusiasm for a common layer. Even before Wayland, its role was reduced more and more. Wayland is natural evolution of this where most of the work is offloaded to more resourced Desktop environments and the org mostly sets standards.
- slackfan 1y ago
  X wasn't withering away, it was pointedly being poisoned.
  - gf000 1y ago
    Feel free to include any kind of source for that. Otherwise, it is just FUD.
    - slackfan 1y ago
      Sure, the developer culture of the people working on X has been "This is too difficult/obscure/shitty therefore it should die." There have been repeated posts about this to various forums, news.ycombinator.com included. Refusal to accept fixes, as well as a full pivot of the project to a targeted sundown instead of any attempt to attract developers to the project. Sources: The X project itself, hackernews discussions, both in articles and in comments. It's not my job to educate you.
- o11c 1y ago
  And X11 is all the better now that fewer people are working on it. I don't need new features in my windowing system, I just need it to stay out of my way.
dang 1y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dodomodo 1y ago
  I was wrong to word myself the way I did, but my comment is simple not shallow, what I'm trying to say is that the amount of work done is not worth the architectural advantages of Wayland. It's a simple argument that people in the replies didn't fail to understand, but did fail to have a good response too. My real violation of the guidelines is this in my opinion: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
  - dang 1y ago
    Thanks for that! I appreciate the guideline swap, and also your original intention. Btw, it's not uncommon that a commenter (you in this case) will respond to a mod (me in this case) with substantive information that they didn't include in their original comment, which explains what they really meant to say. We call this the 'rebound' phenomenon (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20rebound&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). It's a pity that the comment doesn't come out this way to begin with! But it's hard to remember that the state in one's head isn't transmitted automatically, and also hard to figure out which bits of it need to be put into a comment. Something about getting resistance (like a mod reply) stimulates this process. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to activate it more proactively.

[flagged]

Wayland has been around for 15+ years now and I've been using it daily for probably 10. At this point I have to assume comments like this are unserious.

hodgehog11 1y ago
Good for you. Meanwhile, many other people have been encountering _serious_ issues for much of those 10 years. This is well documented. Downplaying the issues of other users is a great way to make people dislike the product.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- exiguus 1y ago
  What are this issues beside VNC or ssh -X does not work? Or my Software Y (still) does not support Wayland?
  - Zambyte 1y ago
    > ssh -X waypipe
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    Actually I don't think any of those are problems? * VNC is covered by wayvnc (unless you're on GNOME or maybe? KDE, but those have their own implementations) * ssh -X should be covered by waypipe * application software should generally work in XWayland (which okay is a little cheaty but if it works it works) The two pain points I'm currently aware of are: * Unified vs fractured ecosystem: In practice, everyone on X11 used Xorg and every window manager and desktop environment had the same basic features because of it. You could always control the keyboard layout via setxkbmap, every screenshot tool worked everywhere, xrandr/arandr were always available to configure displays, etc. In Wayland there is never one answer to anything; not every compositor lets you configure the keyboard and if they do each one has their own way to do it, there are 3 different screenshot protocols (supposedly KDE and wlroots are converging so only GNOME will be doing their own thing but I'm not holding my breath), display configuration is completely up to compositor choice, etc. * The accessibility story isn't there. There's work on it, so eventually the outcome will probably be "just throw out the a11y tools you're used to and switch to these new ones", but for now the current status is "they're working on it but it isn't there yet".
- zveyaeyv3sfye 1y ago
  Link to any open issue you are encountering so we can discuss it then.
  - hodgehog11 1y ago
    I said "most" of those 10 years, since it has become much better now, especially on AMD. Nvidia is still a disaster on Wayland though, basic screen sharing apps like Zoom are broken for many users, even with PipeWire. The response to this is usually "that program is bad, it has problems and that isn't the fault of Wayland, don't use it". But Wayland broke userspace. If these programs all work well on X, that is a Wayland problem.
- mort96 1y ago
  And I encounter _serious_ issues when I use X. Neither is perfect, but this insistence that Wayland is "not ready" because it doesn't have certain people's pet features ignores the silent majority for whom it just works and works better than X ever did. This is not me downplaying those issues some people encounter in Wayland. But I think you're sort of doing the opposite. (And, Wayland is not a "product".)
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    Because wayland is 'ready' when X can be properly killed, i.e. wayland is working for essentially all users. As it stands a huge fraction of users have issues with it, because most users have at least one 'pet feature' which they are not willing to give up.
    - mort96 1y ago
      As far as I'm concerned, a technology being "ready" (for mainstream adoption or whatever) means that it works better than or equally well as what it's replacing for most people and at least "well enough" for a significant majority. As far as I can tell, we've been there for a while with Wayland. The vast majority of people don't have to care that they're on Wayland.
    - lern_too_spel 1y ago
      X doesn't work for essentially all users. It works for substantially fewer users than Wayland does. There are several features that X is missing, and you might call them "pet features" but they are features that the vast majority of graphical desktop users expect these days.
      - hodgehog11 1y ago
        That's quite the claim; maybe you operate in different circles than I do, but most power users I know still avoid Wayland like the plague. X doesn't have support most of the modern fancy features, yes. But on older hardware, which people with less money usually have, X works.
dodomodo 1y ago
You have to understand that I don't really care about the internals of my DE. The same of true for 95% of Linux users and 99.999% of general computer users, so when I see a huge amount of effort goes into basically seemingly pointless refactoring, instead of tackling issues that are actually important to users, it is disappointing to me. I just installed KDE Manjaro and guess what? It stills uses X, and no one has an answer to what benefit Wayland has for me.
- simlevesque 1y ago
  Security. You said you did your research so I have to believe that you don't care about security. But most people care.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Thankfully you no longer have to be root to start X.
  - yyyk 1y ago
    That particular scenario (listening in on other apps) is very theoretical, can you recall any attack ever using it? IIRC Windows still has the same 'ability' - and nobody cares.
  - dodomodo 1y ago
    The threats models I have seen are easy enough to deal with inside the X ecosystem. And investing all your resources into a new system that is not backward compatible is something no serious security person would do as it leaves your existing users vulnerable
- gf000 1y ago
  Well, do you also second guess your surgeon? Why do you think you have enough domain and technical knowledge to consider your "seemingly pointless" to be relevant?
  - johnisgood 1y ago
blurbleblurble 1y ago
It's probably a distro thing. I'm on a rolling release distro (arch) and I've been using wayland on arch and it's worked great. There are still some things I struggle with, but for ~7 years I've been using wayland without major issue. Things iron themselves out pretty quickly these days when you're using a rolling release distro. This is not so for popos/ubuntu/debian etc.
- mystifyingpoi 1y ago
  I don't want to be rude, but "it's worked great" and "still some things I struggle with" need some clarification.
  - blurbleblurble 1y ago
    The things I struggle with are very niche, like remote desktop via pipewire over ssh. Day to day stuff is way better than x11. Remember how much fiddling used to be necessary to configure x11 for your specific devices? I've never once done that and I don't miss it at all. By the way, pipewire is amazing.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      > Remember how much fiddling used to be necessary to configure x11 for your specific devices? Er. No, I don't remember that. Are you talking about needing to make a xorg.conf once upon a time? Because that hasn't been generally needed for... over a decade? Maybe two at this point?
      - mystifyingpoi 1y ago
        Me neither, and I had my first Linux machine in 2008. That was true maybe in 1995. Of course anecdotal evidence.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
gen2brain 1y ago
Protocol, maybe, and there was no "Wayland"; there was Gnome and KDE. I was only recently able to try Labwc with LxQt, and I occasionally try to see if there are some improvements because it is not usable currently. The biggest issue is that every implementation is different; there is not even a shared common library. If Xorg developers are now working exclusively on Wayland, when are they going to start programming?

fruitworks 1y ago

At some point of development, the only way to progress without spiraling complexity is to break backwards compatibility. You might be interested in studying the internals of X11 and wayland to learn more. In a commercial project like windows, this sort of project is a total no-go. However in a collaborative community project like linux userspace, developers have more freedom to make design decisions in spite of short-term consequences. >The people that develop Linux desktop are deeply unserio The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. -Frank Herbert Don't take yourself too seriously, it might ruin you!

vlovich123 1y ago
In a commercial project like Windows this has been done many times - both Windows and MacOS switched to compositing window managers and have done deep surgery under the hood you never see. The difference is that internals can be mandated top down whereas in a bazaar model with lots of casual non interested observers throwing pot shots and no budget to support the work, relying on largely volunteer time, it’s much harder and takes longer to accomplish.
- saidinesh5 1y ago
  > on largely volunteer time Are Linux desktop projects still run mostly by volunteers these days anymore? The kernel itself is heavily funded by, contributed to by so many large companies. A lot of user space projects are all maintained by companies or maintainers who work for companies like Redhat, Canonical, Suse etc ... Didn't Wayland itself get popular during Nokia/Intel Meego days? I remember there being automotive compositors, Jolla Phone all using wayland.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
asveikau 1y ago

ongy 1y ago

The core devs were all paid to work on it when I was still active. Not sure how many of the gnome (mutter) people are paid. Last I checked, the nvidia support was donated by nvidia (paid) for both KDE and Gnome. I think KDE got some work sponsored by valve (before gamescope), though I'm not quite sure on that. Overall, outside the sway/wlroots group I was a part of at the time, people generally worked adjacent or directly on wayland for day jobs.

yyyk 1y ago

X withering away was inevitable once you consider the 'economic' situation - very few people worked on it once the commercial Unix vendors went down. There was little practical enthusiasm for a common layer. Even before Wayland, its role was reduced more and more. Wayland is natural evolution of this where most of the work is offloaded to more resourced Desktop environments and the org mostly sets standards.

slackfan 1y ago
X wasn't withering away, it was pointedly being poisoned.
- gf000 1y ago
  Feel free to include any kind of source for that. Otherwise, it is just FUD.
  - slackfan 1y ago
    Sure, the developer culture of the people working on X has been "This is too difficult/obscure/shitty therefore it should die." There have been repeated posts about this to various forums, news.ycombinator.com included. Refusal to accept fixes, as well as a full pivot of the project to a targeted sundown instead of any attempt to attract developers to the project. Sources: The X project itself, hackernews discussions, both in articles and in comments. It's not my job to educate you.
o11c 1y ago
And X11 is all the better now that fewer people are working on it. I don't need new features in my windowing system, I just need it to stay out of my way.

dang 1y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dodomodo 1y ago
I was wrong to word myself the way I did, but my comment is simple not shallow, what I'm trying to say is that the amount of work done is not worth the architectural advantages of Wayland. It's a simple argument that people in the replies didn't fail to understand, but did fail to have a good response too. My real violation of the guidelines is this in my opinion: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
- dang 1y ago
  Thanks for that! I appreciate the guideline swap, and also your original intention. Btw, it's not uncommon that a commenter (you in this case) will respond to a mod (me in this case) with substantive information that they didn't include in their original comment, which explains what they really meant to say. We call this the 'rebound' phenomenon (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20rebound&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). It's a pity that the comment doesn't come out this way to begin with! But it's hard to remember that the state in one's head isn't transmitted automatically, and also hard to figure out which bits of it need to be put into a comment. Something about getting resistance (like a mod reply) stimulates this process. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to activate it more proactively.