Asahi Linux dev's explanation on why he would like people to use Wayland | Hacker News Reader

Asahi Linux dev's explanation on why he would like people to use Wayland

social.treehouse.systems

12 pointslinusg78910 comments

The thing is that from an outside perspective, Wayland took a wrong turn as well, very early on.

It is such a clean base architecture on one hand, on the other hand it simply abstracts away lots of stuff and calls it a day. Most relevant to me: any and all accessibility-related APIs.

I am quite convinced that Wayland won't ever really take off in its current form. Maybe someone integrates Wayland into a big package with all relevant APIs fixed and documented, and we get rid of the compositor abstraction mess we have.

Also, I'm not really convinced that creating Wayland as a totally new development was a good idea. As we all know, greenfield projects to replace existing technology are almost always doomed. But in X's case, this may really be the best solution, I don't know and I'd lean to give credibility here to the (definitely incredibly talented) developers behing Wayland.

Just one of lots of examples what's not so polished with wayland¹: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

There are lots of other links (see my comment history). I admit I am a bit sour.

¹ yes we're getting there, but only when all compositors and DEs have implemented their own APIs and solutions to the common problems wayland simply ignores

> But in X's case, this may really be the best solution, I don't know and I'd lean to give credibility here to the (definitely incredibly talented) developers behing Wayland.

If I remember correctly the initial spec for Wayland came from the X maintainers because they were tired of X's design flaws.

I had the thought years back to layer a Wayland-like surface rendering protocol over X using an HTTP UPGRADE like primitive and XIE extended event IDs.

Basically it would transform the socket to this new protocol which keeps X atoms under a binary ID prefix.

This would keep backwards compatibility, with Xorg DIX replaced with a modern server implementation.

This could be modified to a heavy client approach where direct rendering can bypass the server. Or a client can takeover chrome rendering through an extension.

I don't understand where there hasn't been a project to add Microsoft Windows style graphics to the kernel. Windows has a built-in windowing library like GTK, which reduces fragmentation because you don't have the X/Wayland Qt/GTK choice matrix. Another nice thing is Windows also provides a simplified driver interface ("miniport") for graphics card drivers, which simplifies supporting hardware. Also the graphics drivers run in user-land, sort like a microkernel design, so if the graphics driver crashes (which, if you're a longtime Windows user, you've definitely seen happen), it doesn't cause a kernel panic, and the kernel seamlessly reverts to framebuffer SVGA mode.

His ranting about X is from someone who has no idea what he is talking about.

X had 3d from a long time (PEX, OpenGL). And although 2D is despised by some, it is heavily in use everyday. A window is 2D, a pdf is 2D, gimp is 2D, Chrome is 2D etc

He didn’t say 2D is unused, that’s obviously wrong, yes. He said it’s not accelerated anymore, which also, yes

And why they chose KDE Plasma as the desktop environment: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110366449775675002

That's great and all, but last time I tried to use Wayland it was a buggy mess and lots of things didn't work.

My Linux desktop experience under X with intel drivers works just fine.

When was the last time you tried it? It's been making really good progress imo.

While pushing for something new and shiny is fine, that only works if the new shiny is better, as it stands on my work machine:

Wayland just causes flickering, alt tab is like a rave and duplicates open windows.

Many applications just do not work at all in Wayland mode.

Lack of hardware/driver support is an issue as I have an older Nvidia which means accel etc is broken.

X has problems sure, but from a UX point of view it's still vastly superior for people on older hardware or don't use the latest rust rewrite of whatever applications they use...

Edit: childish downvotes don't negate reality.

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