X11 is an multiple decade old dinosaur, the developer decided it was growing too complex and no longer representing how graphics are done on modern systems and decided a rewrite. While doing so they decided to simplify some things along the way and in doing so they drastically overshoot their target and removed tons of fundamental functions that was present in X11 (stuff like being able to take screenshots, window manager, etc.). Some of that is slowly getting reimplemented and Wayland is getting closer to actually being a feature-parity X11 replacement, but it’s also taken 15 years and is still not done. The whole drama is the conflict between people wanting it as default and the other group of people for which it simply doesn’t work in its current state.
I understand what you mean now. You have to wait for the software developer to update the tool you use for compatibility with Wayland. Will it run under xwayland?
I’m confused by this. I’m on EndeavourOS with KDE. It had an all called spectacle which takes screen shots perfectly fine. Does X11 have a screen shot function built in?
With X, any program can capture the entire screen. The Wayland protocol does not allow this, so each DE must implement it separately. You’re using KDE’s screenshot feature, not Wayland’s, and other screenshot tools may not work if they don’t support KDE’s custom protocol for screen capture.
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.
Not really. Systemd had the complete opposite problem, it did far more than the previous hackery of shell scripts. The complaints were that it was too big, had too many features, violated Unix philosophy and was less deterministic. Systemd had no problem fully replacing init, cron, DNS and Co. Wayland simply can’t replace X11 in it’s current state, it just can’t do a lot of basic things.
such as no massive gaping security issues.
That’s an utter strawman that doesn’t get any more true by repeating it. Nobody cares about display manager security at this point, since every app you run already has full system access anyway. Wayland security is like making sure the door is locked after the thief is already in the house. It might become relevant in a future when every app you run is in a Flatpak sandbox, but we are a very long way away from that. Even apps that use Flatpak are rarely sandboxed to the point that it would improve security. And on top of that, the sandboxing model Flatpak uses fundamentally doesn’t really work with a lot of Unix tools, e.g. how would you Flatpak something like make?
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
That is partly correct. Wayland is not based on X.org. There is nothing rewritten, removed or simplified. It’s an entirely new design, new code with a different license. And X11 isn’t written by a single developer. XFree86 was started by 3 people, got maintained by an incorporated and then became X.org and sponsored by an industry consortium (the X.Org Foundation). Many many people and companies contributed. The rest is correct. It grew too complex and maintenance is a hassle. Wayland simplifies things and is a state of the art approach. Nobody removed features but they started from zero so it took a while to implement all important features. As of today we’re almost there and Wayland is close to replacing X11.
Hmmh, to me rewriting something means something like writing it again, or revising it.
But it’s entirely new, not based on the predecessor, they didn’t have the old code or architecture in mind and it ended up in a different place with different features. So I don’t see a “re-”, just a “write”. I’d say it’s the same category of software (display servers / -protocols) but entirely different and independent from each other. I’d use the word ‘rewrite’ if they were dependent on each other in some form or if one was meant to replicate the other one.
I think that’s generally the point of a rewrite. To start from scratch with a better architecture. If you weren’t changing the architecture then you can probably just keep incrementally improving it.
Yes, but the word rewrite implies that it would serve the same function and retain compatibility.
If someone wrote a new implementation of the x protocol, as a drop in replacement for the existing x.org server, you might call that a rewrite.
Wayland is an entirely different solution to the same problem. It doesn’t follow the x protocol, and doesn’t maintain compatibility with the x.org server.
X11 is an multiple decade old dinosaur, the developer decided it was growing too complex and no longer representing how graphics are done on modern systems and decided a rewrite. While doing so they decided to simplify some things along the way and in doing so they drastically overshoot their target and removed tons of fundamental functions that was present in X11 (stuff like being able to take screenshots, window manager, etc.). Some of that is slowly getting reimplemented and Wayland is getting closer to actually being a feature-parity X11 replacement, but it’s also taken 15 years and is still not done. The whole drama is the conflict between people wanting it as default and the other group of people for which it simply doesn’t work in its current state.
Every time I learn more about what Wayland can’t do, I learn of even more critical stuff that doesn’t work
no screenshots? really? who approved this trashfire as default. That’s about as ridiculous as no global hotkeys
I’m on Wayland, KDE plasma with Fedora 39. I take screenshots all the time.
yes, using spectacle I imagine
I use different software, apparently that matters
I understand what you mean now. You have to wait for the software developer to update the tool you use for compatibility with Wayland. Will it run under xwayland?
I’m confused by this. I’m on EndeavourOS with KDE. It had an all called spectacle which takes screen shots perfectly fine. Does X11 have a screen shot function built in?
With X, any program can capture the entire screen. The Wayland protocol does not allow this, so each DE must implement it separately. You’re using KDE’s screenshot feature, not Wayland’s, and other screenshot tools may not work if they don’t support KDE’s custom protocol for screen capture.
wait so you’re telling me I’m gonna be forced to use spectacle on wayland if I use KDE?
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.
Not really. Systemd had the complete opposite problem, it did far more than the previous hackery of shell scripts. The complaints were that it was too big, had too many features, violated Unix philosophy and was less deterministic. Systemd had no problem fully replacing init, cron, DNS and Co. Wayland simply can’t replace X11 in it’s current state, it just can’t do a lot of basic things.
That’s an utter strawman that doesn’t get any more true by repeating it. Nobody cares about display manager security at this point, since every app you run already has full system access anyway. Wayland security is like making sure the door is locked after the thief is already in the house. It might become relevant in a future when every app you run is in a Flatpak sandbox, but we are a very long way away from that. Even apps that use Flatpak are rarely sandboxed to the point that it would improve security. And on top of that, the sandboxing model Flatpak uses fundamentally doesn’t really work with a lot of Unix tools, e.g. how would you Flatpak something like
make?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
That is partly correct. Wayland is not based on X.org. There is nothing rewritten, removed or simplified. It’s an entirely new design, new code with a different license. And X11 isn’t written by a single developer. XFree86 was started by 3 people, got maintained by an incorporated and then became X.org and sponsored by an industry consortium (the X.Org Foundation). Many many people and companies contributed. The rest is correct. It grew too complex and maintenance is a hassle. Wayland simplifies things and is a state of the art approach. Nobody removed features but they started from zero so it took a while to implement all important features. As of today we’re almost there and Wayland is close to replacing X11.
That is the definition of a rewrite, no? They started from scratch. Otherwise it would be a refactor, cleanup or overhaul.
And yes, it was more than one developer but Wayland was largely started by at-the-time X maintainers.
Hmmh, to me rewriting something means something like writing it again, or revising it. But it’s entirely new, not based on the predecessor, they didn’t have the old code or architecture in mind and it ended up in a different place with different features. So I don’t see a “re-”, just a “write”. I’d say it’s the same category of software (display servers / -protocols) but entirely different and independent from each other. I’d use the word ‘rewrite’ if they were dependent on each other in some form or if one was meant to replicate the other one.
I think that’s generally the point of a rewrite. To start from scratch with a better architecture. If you weren’t changing the architecture then you can probably just keep incrementally improving it.
Yes, but the word rewrite implies that it would serve the same function and retain compatibility.
If someone wrote a new implementation of the x protocol, as a drop in replacement for the existing x.org server, you might call that a rewrite.
Wayland is an entirely different solution to the same problem. It doesn’t follow the x protocol, and doesn’t maintain compatibility with the x.org server.