Ask HN: What is the misunderstood difference between X-Windows and Wayland?
My understanding is that application developers are required to write these themselves and that not all developers have the inclination or the resources to do them.
The analogy I can make is with the Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer which provided standardized interfaces to device drivers so developers wouldn't have to deal directly with the quirks of the devices themselves. Microsoft set a standard or some requirements they had to fulfill and device manufactures had to meet those standards for them to be to Windows "certified".
In this case instead of Wayland providing a standard application interface developers can write for, the application developers have to deal with window elements at a lower level.
Can anyone explain to me what the fundamental differences between X11 and Wayland in this respect?
What newer better features is it meant to provide, or what problems is it meant to solve or address in relation to X11 and why should it take so long?
Wayland has been in development for 17 years now. I and I suspect a lot of others too don't understand how something so fundamental to desktop usage is still not ready to be used "out of the box", so to speak after so many years. If it was a part-time project mostly being done by volunteers in their spare time that would be understood, but it has received corporate backing over the years, apparently being something corporations are ready to bank on.
There is no doubt that if it was a fully corporate project it would have been canned years ago, but somehow some corporate backers have been willing to keep it going because of the large component of volunteers involved and it gives them an presence in the free software environment.
Is the "delay" (if that is a good way to describe the situation) due to technical challenges, wrong turns, inadequate resources, complexity or any of the other issues that affect software projects?
I've read a few blog posts over the years about problems developing for Wayland eg https://dudemanguy.github.io/blog/posts/2022-06-10-wayland-xorg/wayland-xorg.html, though I acknowledge that things may have improved since then.
Right now I just want to go back in time to 2007 understand what it is [sic] at its core at its inception and how meaningful its goals however distant make it an alternative to X11 - what makes it a candidate for its corporate support.
I'm getting the HTML5 vs Flash vibes, when instead of opening up Flash and cleaning it up or creating a more secure open source alternative, corporate agendas preferred to go for HTML5 which in my view was never a proper substitute for what Flash accomplished. Guys please don't let this comment be a major digression.
I just want to understand it technically from nuts and bolts upwards. Some comprehensive diagrams comparing with X11, Windows and macOS would help.