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Topic: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing... (Read 14635 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #15 –
This is not the first time crap like this has happened, and much of it involving the Ximian people.  X11 is not going anywhere.  It is not an exaggeration to say it has billions of installations and is not restricted to Linux.  I use to run in the Pharmacy X11 on Windows just to get a sane configuration to work with.  The BSD guys, those loons, are not putting up with the Ximian and Pottering Loons crazy shit.  So a fork was just inevitable and this is largely expected news, Dog bites Man, not Man bites Dog.

However it plays out, someone will pick up X and just make it work, or turn a tidy profit on it.  It just is too important and does too much to be tossed out.  It will still be with us long after Mono is a dead letter and systemd has been replaced for security reasons.


Meanwhile the Freedesktop people have a fundamental problem moving forward...the Desktop as a business focus and in the use of the general public has a real expiration  date on it and we are closer than we think to the end of the desktop,  its being laid on the scrap heap of technological history along with the Telephone and the dot matrix printer.  They are going to have to find something else to fight about but in the world of DRM infested hand held locked down crap, they are going to have to find a new hobby.

It is not like someone didn't warn them...


Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #16 –
BTW - Cory Doctorow is one of the under appreciated hero's in the US media.

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #17 –
Quote from: ####### – on
Wayland support seems to be progressing in the Mate desktop:
https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/developers-corner/wayland-meson/
A lot of desktops are maintained and developed by freedesktop to some degree, so who will integrate this revised Xorg into those desktops?
Nobody, you can forget about any project that is using current freedesktop ecosystem to switch, simply because It's not a matter of having these DEs aligned with the fork, it’s about providing an alternative for power users who need X11 for their niche use cases. It's the same situation as with any other system init vs. systemd, but the problem is the scope of Xorg as the project and how it bites into other dependencies and I'd argue that the "rotting" codebase that freedesktop devs were bitching about wouldn't be as bad as it is currently if they actually wanted to have those MRs upstreamed, and you can see how out of touch they are - They'd rather close and cease all of this independent development just to push for something that is only now beginning to take any shape...

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #18 –
Desktops yes, can be a problem, but I believe window managers are less exposed. Of course if GTK intentionally breaks to be wayland only then we have a real problem.

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #19 –
Quote from: dpx – on
Desktops yes, can be a problem, but I believe window managers are less exposed. Of course if GTK intentionally breaks to be wayland only then we have a real problem.
Remember that we now can use systemd-free distros that provide packages specifically compatible without systemd. With enough people on board, I guess that if XLibre takes off, it'd work on similar basis, but as I said, the scope is significantly larger...

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Shoun2137 – on
Quote from: ####### – on
Wayland support seems to be progressing in the Mate desktop:
https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/developers-corner/wayland-meson/
A lot of desktops are maintained and developed by freedesktop to some degree, s



that shouldn't be a problem.  Desktops are like fads and come and go.  If desktops were so critical to long term success, we would all be using SunOS.

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #21 –
Quote from: dpx – on
Desktops yes, can be a problem, but I believe window managers are less exposed. Of course if GTK intentionally breaks to be wayland only then we have a real problem.


What ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.  GTK aims to be a platform independent programming platform and happens to even work on Microsoft Windows.  If it stops being such, they will just stop using it and use QT or something else that works.

You expect them to BREAK GTK by purposely going out of their way and changing the code so that will not function on X... like if you see X don't work?

The only threat is that Wayland can remove its X compatibility.    That would suck for them, but HEY it would make me happy!!  I would love to go back to using Open Look™

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #22 –
Quote from: mrbrklyn – on
Quote from: dpx – on
Desktops yes, can be a problem, but I believe window managers are less exposed. Of course if GTK intentionally breaks to be wayland only then we have a real problem.


What ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.  GTK aims to be a platform independent programming platform and happens to even work on Microsoft Windows.  If it stops being such, they will just stop using it and use QT or something else that works.
Yes, but each platform has it own backend. And outside of M$ and Apple they can actually drop X support
ARMtix
If you need to contact me, use email

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #23 –
Quote from: dpx – on
Of course if GTK intentionally breaks to be wayland only then we have a real problem.
Actually you can have wayland compositor running on top of X as a window. So, if you REALLY need something sucky which has wayland as its requirement, you can still run it with some overhead without switching core.
ARMtix
If you need to contact me, use email

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #24 –
Quote from: phoenix_king_rus – on
Quote from: mrbrklyn – on



What ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.  GTK aims to be a platform independent programming platform and happens to even work on Microsoft Windows.  If it stops being such, they will just stop using it and use QT or something else that works.
Yes, but each platform has it own backend. And outside of M$ and Apple they can actually drop X support


You are missing the point.  GTK3 is a programming widget library.  It doesn't call for X, Wayland or anything else.  As you point out, they need a back end.  You are going to make it refuse to work with X?  That is a lot of work for nothing but selfish and hateful vengeance against a neutral software platform which it is already written for.  

https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/getting_started.html

GDK might be more of a problem but you know what... I stopped wriiting GTK code years about because it was STUPID to try to force a structured programming platform like C to do object oriented coding.  And the natural solution was to port it to C++, but noooooo Miguel insisted on moving it to Mono.  The heck with Mono, Miguel, Ximian and GTK3.  There are other and better libraries out there not beholden to the Free Desktop paradigm.   They guys are not people I wanted to hitch my wagon to.

Regardless. the GTK3 widgets are still neutral and a standard.  They would literally need to burn years of work to prevent it from working on X.

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #25 –
X (through libX11) provides routines for drawing pixels and shapes on the screen. GTK uses these routines to draw its widgets when running with Xorg.

In wayland on the other hand, drawing is done on the client side.

So it's a completely different approach, requires separate segments of code for doing the actual drawing, and from a technical point of view, GTK could perfectly well drop support for one or the other. Same thing with QT.
 

Re: X.Org is being forked, huge drama brewing...

Reply #29 –
Quote from: mrbrklyn – on
Sure you don't want to clarify that?
I fail to follow your argument, but then that's nothing new.

That windowmaker link actually shows nicely how drawing is done thru Xlib; see appendix section 7: Xlib drawing.

As for doing it in wayland, see for example https://gaultier.github.io/blog/wayland_from_scratch.html

Since we're talking about API layers here, you need to actually look at the code behind the API to draw any conclusions on dependencies. Look at the source code of GTK3, not at a programmer's reference for using GTK3.