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Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #30
X is a giant mess of hacks that works... mostly. There was that bug not too long ago that crashed Xorg on nouveau drivers, but not Wayland. X itself is also a bit of a security nightmare given that clients can freely talk to each other (not the case in Wayland). Wayland certainly has its drawbacks. It's more bareboned, so you're more reliant on whoever writes the compositor to do a good job (the wlroots guys have done a fantastic job so far). But in the end you have a simpler, more efficient protocol that cuts out a ton of pointless middleman cruft Xorg does. I can't speak for other compositors (like whatever Gnome or KDE uses), but wlroots is really nice, impressive work.

After consideration I decided not to post the more detailed reply I made, or to follow it up with the long laudry list of shortcomings of wayland, but in its design and in its securiy.  I'm sick of hearing jaargon though, and I reconcongize that I am in in a bad mood, and you don't deserve to be unloaded on.   In the general let me keep this simple.

I reject your arguments and find them lacking in substance  and I don't want Wayland.   Things like, X is a giant mess that works..mostly, is misinformation.  I am aware of the shortcomings in X and they have been honed over decades of coding, and it the arguments against it lack substance.    However when I say, I have been using it 24/7 for over 20 years without a problem, that is a substantial and weighty record in favor of X that was not addressed.

I will also just add that I actually use Linux exclussively for all my computing, and have done so since 1996.  I have a little bit of expertise on what a linux desktop is capable of.


Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #31
I'm not really sure this discussion is worth continuing at this point (and probably not really appropriate for this thread who knows). But you are bringing up the experience argument, it's worth pointing out that Xorg developers (the guys that have more experience with X than anyone else) themselves are pushing for Wayland. They have extensively pointed out multiple, fundamental flaws in X's design and how window managers constantly have to work around the dumb things X does. Maybe you hate Wayland for whatever reason, but I don't think someone could really argue that Xorg is well-designed, good software (assuming your criteria is more than just "it works").

Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #32
I'm not really sure this discussion is worth continuing at this point (and probably not really appropriate for this thread who knows). But you are bringing up the experience argument, it's worth pointing out that Xorg developers (the guys that have more experience with X than anyone else) themselves are pushing for Wayland. They have extensively pointed out multiple, fundamental flaws in X's design and how window managers constantly have to work around the dumb things X does. Maybe you hate Wayland for whatever reason, but I don't think someone could really argue that Xorg is well-designed, good software (assuming your criteria is more than just "it works").


I can log into my remote desktop from upstairs and control the desktop completely, and all the hardware and monitor the activities of the user on the system.  That is what I do routinely and it is built into X11 and it is more than Wayland will ever ever do.  In fact, that is the security problem  they conjoured up.  Working is the most important thing software does and it is annoying to hear about the security problems with X11 from a userbase that thinks that client software should be allowed to shutdown hardware, and that run email readers that execute random code.

X is complicated and it does breed security issues, and that is how things are.  Complex systems need to mature and have to be hammered down, often continually when faced with constantly changing hardware specifications and extentions.

X's usability has already been compromised by systemd integration.  My problem with wayland isn't ill-defined.  It is very specifically that it is missing important networking capabilities and it is riddled with freedesktop.org hooks and systemd dependendcies.

Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #33
You could have just said "I absolutely need network transparency no matter what" and it would have made this conversation easier. No, Wayland intentionally doesn't have network transparency in the same way Xorg does. I will grant you that it can be useful for LAN at your house, but over big networks stuff like VNC performs much better. Of course, this doesn't mean that Wayland doesn't/won't ever support remote desktop. There's some APIs for that at the moment, but they're all still experimental and I haven't seen much beyond demos for this. So you are right that if you absolutely need remote desktop, then Wayland isn't ready for you yet. If you specifically need network transparency in the display protocol (let's be honest, it's debatable whether or not that should be in the display protocol), then you will probably never like Wayland.



I can log into my remote desktop from upstairs and control the desktop completely, and all the hardware and monitor the activities of the user on the system.  That is what I do routinely and it is built into X11 and it is more than Wayland will ever ever do.  In fact, that is the security problem  they conjoured up.

You don't see why it might be a problem that any X client can freely talk to one another? It's one of the reasons why keylogging in X is so trivial. Now yes in practice this isn't a big deal because the user has a brain and uses good FOSS from his distro, but it's not a "conjured up" security issue.

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Working is the most important thing software does and it is annoying to hear about the security problems with X11 from a userbase that thinks that client software should be allowed to shutdown hardware, and that run email readers that execute random code.

I complete disagree with that bolded statement. Things should work, but that's only step one. You need to make sure it's an efficient solution, the design is reasonable, the codebase is readable, etc. Systemd is something that definitely works. I don't think too many people here would consider it good software (I certainly don't at any rate). And I don't do the latter things (unprivileged software bringing down the system or execute javascript in my email).

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X's usability has already been compromised by systemd integration.  My problem with wayland isn't ill-defined.  It is very specifically that it is missing important networking capabilities and it is riddled with freedesktop.org hooks and systemd dependendcies.

I'm not sure what you mean by "freedesktop.org hooks," but no wayland doesn't have any dependencies on any other freedesktop projects or systemd. This is just flatout untrue. After all, I am literally using it right now on Artix.


Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #35
I'm not sure what you mean by "freedesktop.org hooks," but no wayland doesn't have any dependencies on any other freedesktop projects or systemd. This is just flatout untrue. After all, I am literally using it right now on Artix.


Really?  Maybe I am misinformed and all the updates I am reading are misdirecting me.  Does wayland need lognind?  Can it be started from the commandline?

What does this mean?

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Libinput handles input devices for multiple Wayland compositors and also provides a generic X.Org Server input driver. It aims to provide one implementation for multiple Wayland compositors with a common way to handle input events while minimizing the amount of custom input code compositors need to include. libinput provides device detection[clarification needed] (via udev), device handling, input device event processing and abstraction.[58][59]

udev is not a fredesktop archetecture?

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udev is now part of systemd and is installed by default. See systemd-udevd.service(8) for information.

A standalone fork is available as eudevAUR and eudev-gitAUR.


So where are we at now?

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In October 2010, Wayland became a freedesktop.org project.[119][120] As part of the migration the prior Google Group was replaced by the wayland-devel mailing list as the project's central point of discussion and development.

You know instead of doing this you might as well give up Linux and use Windows 10 or Tandy Deskmate on freeDos


Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #37
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/07/17/1455228/xorg-server-116-brings-xwayland-glamor-systemd-integration

derooting X itself, has been a major PIA.  I lost socket control and systemd went and rebooted X clients when they crashes (even with killall -9), spinning the system out of control and even without systemd you get stupid stuff like this:  crashed xterms:

Code: [Select]
[ruben@www2 ~]$ xterm
xterm: warning, error event received:
X Error of failed request:  BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied)
  Major opcode of failed request:  104 (X_Bell)
  Serial number of failed request:  502
  Current serial number in output stream:  503
[ruben@www2 ~]$


It is just so much fun to play with things that have worked for decades that suddenly are broken

and then there is the screwed up cut and paste because everything bypasses the X11 clipboard

Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #38

No it doesn't. I already linked a wayland window manager that can compile without logind.

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Can it be started from the commandline?

Of course. For me, it's literally just "sway" and there you go. The reference compositor that everyone knows, weston, is literally just 'weston-launch.' It's actually even simpler than 'startx' since there's less configuration files you have to worry about.

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What does this mean?

udev is not a fredesktop archetecture?

You have your dependencies backwards. Libinput depends on Wayland (and also eudev/udev). Wayland doesn't depend on libinput or udev/eudev.Libinput is merely an input stack that can be used by Wayland compositors to help handle input devices. There is absolutely nothing about Wayland that says you must use it. You could always write your own thing to handle input devices if you really wanted to, but there's no actual reason to duplicate work. You already use libinput right now since xorg depends on it in Artix (unless you went out of your way to compile it with just xinput or something which I'm not even sure is possible anymore).

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You know instead of doing this you might as well give up Linux and use Windows 10 of Tandy Deskmate on freeDos

Look it's not my fault you irrationally hate everything associated with freedesktop. They're not some evil organization that is out to pollute FOSS. It's just a loose collection of popular FOSS stuff. Do they have some crap software? Of course, don't use them. But don't pretend that the different projects necessarily have anything to do with each other.

Have you even looked at the software they host? The chances of you not using any of them is essentially 0 if you're using linux on a desktop. You don't use cairo? You don't use DRI? You don't use mesa?

If you don't like Wayland because it doesn't support network transparency like Xorg, then that's fine. Don't use it. However, don't spread misinformation about it having secret systemd dependencies or evil freedesktop hooks. That's just not true.

Sidenote: Okay I guess DRI/DRM is freedeskop so there you go you got me there. Better uninstall xorg as well if that dependency is unacceptable to you.

Re: Semi random thinking out loud

Reply #39
Have you even looked at the software they host? The chances of you not using any of them is essentially 0 if you're using linux on a desktop.
The problem of most of freedesktop software is that it sucks a lot. Honestly, all software sucks (c) but there some programs which suck more or less. Unfortunately, we're forced to use a lot of crap software just to make computer usable.
ARMtix