[SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

quickfur · 2024-01-19 21:19:07

The fact the Devuan exists gives hope that there are some who are willing to stand up against the manipulations of Big Tech. Even though this is outside the scope of Devuan proper, there must be some who would be willing to stand up and fight against the trend and either keep X11 alive, or replace it with something better.

Given that there's quite a lot of unhappiness with Wayland (see for example the link to XScreenSaver's page that I posted earlier), the demand is certainly there. All it takes now is for some to fill that need.

Last edited by quickfur (2024-01-19 21:19:37)

golinux · 2024-01-19 21:22:09

Cheer up!

I am an merely an observer . . . neither an optimist nor a pessimist.

There must exist free thinking intelligent people here somewhere!

Devuan is an extraordinary haven of folks with those qualities but sadly too few actually roll up their sleeves and DO something for whatever reason(s).

golinux · 2024-01-19 21:25:15

quickfur wrote:

Given that there's quite a lot of unhappiness with Wayland (see for example the link to XScreenSaver's page that I posted earlier), the demand is certainly there. All it takes now is for some to fill that need.

LOLOL! Actions speak louder than words, which seem to be your forte . . .

chomwitt · 2024-01-21 09:24:34

I'd like to remind my relative posts ;
How X started
Copy paste , a hard problem?

A very short recap of my current understanding is that historically speaking a Display Server (DS) is a concept broader than a rendering frame perfect protocol. And than Wayland can be seen as an improvement in the a DS's RP (Rendering Protocol) and not as a replacement of X11. Why ?
Because X11 was a DS with network-centric nature from day one. So i think posing Wayland as X11 replacement creates confusion and harm.

For those interested in detailed arguments in favor of my claim you could read my posts where is the results of days digging in the web for X and x386 history.

As for the future..
I am pessimistic too. But not only of X . I am pessimistic of Steam and Codeweavers too . PC - roomcell gaming is a selfdefeating aim. Contradictory .I am also pessimistic of the perfect frame goal.As Wittgenstein would said every construction is a short of a prison. And i guess prisons, how matter fanciful ,after a while they start to suck more and not suck less.

Game money and gpu money is currently in the driving seat. That could end . I think , as in the X case , the 'new' wont came from the hackers . They look blind sometimes. It will come from society new needs. BUT i think in order for libreIT world to respond quiclly to those needs X11 networking and platform - vendor independence spirit must be kept alive.

Lastly , i think it very basic discussing about X and Wayland to answer why there is not a fork ? Isnt that supposedly the spirit of libresoftware that shines ? Could it be that Wayland is a fork ? And then the case is simple. One group of people must step forward and do another fork focusing not on the rendering site but on the network centric side. And that means proposing a common standard - protocol for remote - desktop , remote graphics . And remote-network-graphics cant be frame perfect. They must be typed and semantically sound. A pixel or mime cant be a sound type for that kind of remote computing, And you cant have either one type-system. You must be able to accommodate many.

Last edited by chomwitt (2024-01-21 14:26:15)

golinux · 2024-01-21 16:22:32

chomwitt wrote:

One group of people must step forward and do another fork . . .

Oh is that all! So easy to say. So useless to say. Show us the fork YOU are going to initiate and we will take your babblings seriously. Hot air does nothing but add to our collective climate woes.

athenian200 · 2024-01-21 22:10:02

Hi, thanks for all the replies here. I am really sorry if I took up any resources that could have been better spent on something else, I just kind of assumed people would reply in their free time when they don't feel like doing stuff and would just be watching YouTube or posting memes anyway since this is in "Off-Topic," and that it wouldn't detract from Devuan development. I was thinking this forum was more informal than like a developer mailing list or something.

But yeah, to make a long story short, I'm in a similar position to the XScreenSaver developer that was quoted earlier in the thread. I develop an application, and it's possible I may have to drop Linux support at some point. The fact is, most of my users are on Windows or Mac anyway, and keeping up with Linux API changes takes up most of my development time that isn't related to improving core functionality in the application. So I am completely sympathetic to the fact that most Linux distros don't have time to maintain Xorg to accommodate people with existing investments in X11. But I think it's just as fair for me to turn around and say I that I don't have the development time to maintain a Linux port if doing so has suddenly become a lot more difficult. What I've asked my Linux users to do in the interim is to look at enterprise Linux distros with 10+ years of support, and try to get the longest tail of legacy they can, and then when there is no more legacy support left for X11, to decide whether they want to continue on with Linux regardless, see if BSD/Solaris still offer X11, etc.

So, even if this wasn't the answer I was hoping for, the answer that no one out there is able to take on the job of maintaining Xorg, and my choices are to either work on Wayland support or drop Linux entirely when enterprise support for X11 runs out is still a useful answer, at least for me, as it allows me to plan accordingly. Hopefully the situation changes within the next 5-8 years, but if not, I know what kind of announcements to prepare, what kind of code has to be removed, etc.

golinux · 2024-01-21 22:36:23

@athenian200 . . . there is no need for you to apologize. At least you seem to have gleaned some benefit from the responses that will help to sort the direction(s) your future contributions will take. It is not easy for humans to adapt to changes beyond their control and those pulling the strings will only protect/expand their interests to the detriment of individuals, community or even species survival. It is the human way and we adjust to and grieve the loss in different ways. Know that you are always welcome here . . .

ruenoak · 2024-01-21 23:20:46

I agree, there is not need for apologies I found it quite an interesting discussion and Dowse was mentioned. Any discussion where Dowse is mentioned will always be a good discussion!

brocashelm · 2024-01-22 01:09:47

I will simply direct the focus to this thread on OpenMATE. It's a fork of MATE 1.4, so originally released back in 2012.

I think if people focused their efforts on that project, we'd be one step closer towards preserving traditional display servers for Unix-like OSes.

Forget about other distros and DEs. There's no getting off this train that's bound to crash. Enjoy it while it lasts.

golinux · 2024-01-22 01:16:43

I agree that OpenMATE is an admirable project but what does a desktop fork have to do with the demise of X11? Please 'splain!

brocashelm · 2024-01-22 01:31:25

Because if you use a DE or WM that's not at all reliant on any part of Wayland, then you can continue to use X11 for however long it still exists. Knowing that i3 will never adopt Wayland is an example of this, so you can stay on it and not worry about the powers that be ordering you to remove it because it uses "insecure" X11. Something like OpenMATE as an example means that there will at least be some efforts to keep X11 chugging along for a while.

But, as I mentioned in closing in my previous post, software as we know it will never be the same again.

golinux · 2024-01-22 01:51:10

@brocashelm . . . thanks for the explanation. The trend I assume will be for Debian etc. to eventually attempt to remove X11 entirely in order to make Wayland mandatory. Sneaky little buggers! I do hope X11 will be maintained and kept alive somewhere.

Camtaf · 2024-01-22 10:27:59

I do hope X11 will be maintained and kept alive somewhere.

As far as I can recall, xenocara is a version of 'X' built & maintained in/by the OpenBSD maintainers, so there is the hope that some distros will package it for use in Linux.

(I had forgotten about xenocara because I have been installing NetBSD on some of my spare computers lately.)

Last edited by Camtaf (2024-01-22 10:32:03)

chomwitt · 2024-01-22 10:46:46

-

Last edited by chomwitt (2024-01-22 15:18:06)

stopAI · 2024-01-22 12:13:06

Knowing that i3 will never adopt Wayland is an example of this

Why is i3 here, if there is sway? And why do i3 developers have to adapt i3 to the wayland environment, if there is sway, which is practically the same as i3, only working in the wayland environment?

athenian200 · 2024-01-22 12:43:00

As far as I can recall, xenocara is a version of 'X' built & maintained in/by the OpenBSD maintainers, so there is the hope that some distros will package it for use in Linux.
(I had forgotten about xenocara because I have been installing NetBSD on some of my spare computers lately.)

That is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! I guess I spoke too soon. So there is some faint hope that at least the BSDs and Solaris will continue on with X11 in some form even if it's discontinued on mainstream Linux, especially if people start contributing to Xenocara. And if I'm leaving the X11 support code in place for those operating systems, I might as well leave it there for anyone willing to self-build on Linux.

I would be willing to perhaps try and contribute to Xenocara in my spare time and keep that going, but I know there is no point in taking on maintaining an Xorg fork all on my own as a one-man project. I am a little surprised, I had heard OpenBSD was exploring Wayland support, but it sounds like they are pretty far from dropping X11 if they are working on something like this.

The thing is, my application's support code isn't really "Linux code," it's just a vaguely POSIX-compliant version of the code targeting an X11/GTK stack, sort of like how people used to target an X11/Motif stack back in the day. That basically means supporting BSD, Solaris, AIX, or whatever else is about the same as supporting Linux, as I really only need one codepath that accounts for a few OS-specific libc quirks. But if Linux moves to Wayland, that means I would now have to put in the level of effort normally needed to support something like OS/2 or Haiku to keep it going.

quickfur · 2024-01-22 16:57:02

I think there's some misunderstanding here. If all you care about is the ability to run your application on Wayland, it does have an XWayland layer that, for the most part, will continue to function as if it's X11. It mostly works, except for some functions that are fundamentally incompatible with Wayland, such as screen capturing or locking. As long as your application doesn't depend on these incompatible functions, it will in all likelihood work in Wayland.

This is aside from the more philosophical issue of whether Wayland is a good solution or not, which is a question of a different nature.

chomwitt · 2024-01-22 17:11:37

Oh is that all! So easy to say. So useless to say. Show us the fork YOU are going to initiate and we will take your babblings seriously. Hot air does nothing but add to our collective climate woes. wink

I hope you can make sense of what you write. Because it seems to me that your response except from lacking politeness is also so easy to say and so contradictory to say.
My 'babblings' will get elevated to not 'babbling' status when i present in front of you code ?
Show me your code ? That is the babbling status elevator ? Really ? That old opensource mentality ?
Have you read my arguments? Who drives Wayland developemt ? How 386 arch opensourced X11 started?
Have you tried to answer 'Why no X11 fork exists?' And lastly have you pondered how ethical are the gaming money?

And i guess all other comments on an offtopic thread have pass you babbling status filter.
Even comments that promote possibly false inflammatory dichotomies X vs Wayland .

I guess you intend to program the heck out a harmonious libre community since last time i checked politeness
hasnt been incorporated in any existing programming language.

Last edited by chomwitt (2024-01-22 17:24:28)

golinux · 2024-01-22 18:15:14

Touche!

Seems I hit a nerve. FWIW . . . the rage quit and deletion was completely unnecessary and deprives the forum of your thoughts which had value historically if not practically. I hope that you will reinstate it. Problem is that unless there is coordinated ACTION, yes in code, your words merely serve as a postmortem.

Perhaps someone should interact with the folks still putting out the X11 advisories that Altoid has been posting to see what they are planning for X11's future. Their thoughts could be very useful to gauge where things are going at the source . . .

chomwitt · 2024-01-22 18:58:31

Touche! big_smile
Seems I hit a nerve. FWIW . . . the rage quit and deletion was completely unnecessary and deprives the forum of your thoughts which had value historically if not practically.

Are you answering ? Or fueling with more facts the nonpoliteness that i attributed to you ?

golinux · 2024-01-22 19:14:58

I was suggesting you replace the post that you deleted. No more. No less.

golinux · 2024-01-23 23:51:39

chimwitt wrote:

Game money and gpu money is currently in the driving seat . . .

Perhaps you'd want to add this to your equation . . . It is research from a colleague on a global list of GMO watchdogs for decades. Nvidia seems to have more than a few fingers in this pie and I thought you might find that connection interesting. I will post the introduction here:

This longer post below is the first in what will likely be a two-part essay on how the worlds of artificial life (Synthetic Biology) and artificial Intelligence are rapidly merging. Its a topic I’ve been trying to puzzle out as a member of the UN’s Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (mAHTEG) on Synthetic Biology. I’ll explain a bit about both Syn Bio and AI below but I’ve come to see that there are broadly 3 ways in which developments in these fields are converging - into what my friend Pat Mooney snappily calls “DNAI” - and I think the significances of that convergence are huge.
Firstly, There’s the way that Artificial Intelligence tools (such as generative AI) are being used to design synthetic organisms or synthetic biological ‘parts’ such as DNA and proteins including so-called ‘alt-proteins’. I call this ‘When AI bots do genetic engineering’ - and thats the ‘part 1’ essay shared below.
Secondly , Synthetic Biology is being increasingly used to design organisms as a component of bigger cyber-physical systems driven by AI and algorithmic decision-making. The example I will write about from digital agriculture is what I call ‘robot-ready crops’ . These are crops genetically engineered to emit different signals that can be interpreted by AI systems to direct autonomous agricultural machinery.
Thirdly, We are also seeing synthetically engineered biological organisms and parts become the substrate for AI computation itself - so called ‘biocomputing’. Instead of using silicon chips to compute, DNA or other cellular processes can carry out computation which is promised as a ‘low energy’ computing option. One arresting example from the past year is the emergence of organoid computing where lab-grown brain cells are now being cultured as AI computers.
I’ll deal with the second and third areas in a post yet to come.
The big questions of course cross all three areas: eg. what does this mean for nature?, for our economies and peoples livelihoods?, for safety?, governance? for who we are in the world and how we relate to each other? etc etc.

chomwitt · 2024-01-25 13:20:37

I wouldn't be so hasty to focus my attention to synthetic AI-driven bio-engineering. I dont trust the extremely well oiled (with billions) hype engines that trigger massive diversion of public or shareholders money and value to exciting new techs that instigate FOMO feelings to the public and to the investors while more pressing ecological and society problems get under the radar . On the contrary that attention diversion highlights the great power imbalance and pathological power concentration on the mass media , and mass social platforms.

Can we really entrust our future to companies that build their fortunes on parent's money for pc room-cell gaming? Last time i checked farmers in Taiwan were suffering in order to sustain the water-hungry TSMC. Can we trust steam to guide the future of the display server??

That's one reason that i prefer more often to look back . Like in How X started..

Last edited by chomwitt (2024-01-26 10:10:17)

golinux · 2024-01-25 15:43:57

@chomwitt . . . It seems you are misunderstanding my intentions in posting that article. We are actually on the same page regarding the trajectory and cost of such contrived "progress". That is the story of human history and should come as no surprise . . . greed, hubris and ultimately self-destruction. That is the human way . . .

zapper · 2024-01-26 00:01:16

Pardon me for asking, but are you the same athenian, who develops epyrus?

I became curious when I saw your username for that reason.

Btw, I don't see a benefit to wayland either. These problems that they are trying to fix, could have been solved if they hadn't kept adding bloated linux frameworks and instead designed efficient lean, applications made with intelligence in mind IN the FIRST PLACE!

Emphasis I felt was needed, bloat makes problems inevitably a hundred times worse. Screw you redhat! Screw you corporations!

Seriously though, this is like web 2.0 and web 3.0, nobody needs javascript or java built into the web. Nor does anyone need novices building the web.

If you want something like the web, linux frameworks such as wayland done right, have an expert do it.

There is zero reason we should have all these security crucial stuff built by greedy simpletons who code as well as I can. The difference being, I admit I cannot develop code well and they have a tiny amount of skill but don't admit how terrible they are.

Btw, in case anyone responds, that a reason is for profit, that they feel like its a good reason. No...

greed justifies nothing. Money is an illusionary reason why something needs to be done. Its a false reason with no purpose.

This being said, I don't like the future of linux right now. I almost wonder if stuff like my usb mouse, doesn't work because it requires some framework that I detest to make it work.

Dropping X11 for wayland is just another drop in the bucket called idiocracy

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#26 2024-01-19 21:19:07

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#27 2024-01-19 21:22:09

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#28 2024-01-19 21:25:15

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#29 2024-01-21 09:24:34

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#30 2024-01-21 16:22:32

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#31 2024-01-21 22:10:02

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#32 2024-01-21 22:36:23

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#33 2024-01-21 23:20:46

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#34 2024-01-22 01:09:47

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#35 2024-01-22 01:16:43

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#36 2024-01-22 01:31:25

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#37 2024-01-22 01:51:10

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#38 2024-01-22 10:27:59

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#39 2024-01-22 10:46:46

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#40 2024-01-22 12:13:06

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#41 2024-01-22 12:43:00

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#42 2024-01-22 16:57:02

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#43 2024-01-22 17:11:37

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#44 2024-01-22 18:15:14

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#45 2024-01-22 18:58:31

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#46 2024-01-22 19:14:58

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#47 2024-01-23 23:51:39

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#48 2024-01-25 13:20:37

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#49 2024-01-25 15:43:57

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

#50 2024-01-26 00:01:16

Re: [SOLVED] What is your view on major distros dropping X11 and requiring Wayland?

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