Re: [LINK] X11 Server Development Pace Hits A Two Decade Low

[Spiros Bousbouras]

[Crossposting to comp.os.linux.misc . ]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 11:33:39 +0000
Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
> Dan Espen wrote:
>
> > Andy Burns writes:
> >
> >> what do people actually want X11 for now?
> >
> > To keep running the same WM I've been using for decades.
>
> I fall into the category where Gnome (my distro's default) as a WM doesn't annoy
> me enough to use anything different, I did use XFCE for a bit, and now I don't
> know which do/don't work with wayland ... that's what I meant by "fizzle out" if
> your favourite WM doesn't support wayland, eventually it's going to find it self
> beached without X11 to run on top of ..

I was under the impression that one of the plans for Wayland was to be able
to run X server on top of it so that all X11 applications would continue to
work. Has this plan been abandoned ?

[Spiros Bousbouras]

[Crossposting to comp.os.linux.misc . ]

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 22:48:48 +0000
Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev quoted:
>
> > "It shouldn't be news to you that most of the corporate-backed
> > developers working on the Linux desktop are no longer investing in
> > new feature work around the X.Org Server and have shifted their
> > efforts to a Wayland-focused environment moving forward."
>
> I think that's a good thing ... right? Provided the efforts to waylandize
> everything doesn't fizzle out ...

For context , the opening post of the thread gave the link
https://www.phoronix.com/news/XServer-2022-Development-Pace which says
Of course, it's not that X.Org Server is feature-complete and great as
there still are issues around HDR support, synchronization improvements,
and other enhancements that could be made along with better tackling the
X.Org Server security,

.I do think that the X server is great. I don't think that something as
wide ranging as this can ever be "feature-complete" , there will always be
some feature someone wants.

Anyway , I don't know what the features in the quote mean. I could look them
up but I'm not that curious. As long as bugs get fixed (assuming there are
any left) , that's fine by me.

I remember looking into Wayland a while ago. Anything it aimed to do and
supposedly the X server does not do (well) , I did not care about or thought
it was a very minor issue or didn't even know what it meant ! For example ,
one issue was storing fonts in the server. An entirely minor issue. Another
was that certain drawing primitives are better done in a library like Cairo.
Perhaps but that's a long discussion in its own right like how "better" is
defined and measured.

So I decided that I'm not interested in Wayland.

> <https://arewewaylandyet.com>

No vim on that page.

> I mean, running Xeyes on a colleague's VAXstation was fun once or twice, and
> firing up a gnome session to your own windows desktop using cygwinand XDMCP was
> so horribly insecure you'd only do it with the confines of your own four walls,

What's wrong with an ssh connection ?

> what do people actually want X11 for now?

I watch movies , look at images , surf the internet , read PDF and postscript
files , type text (like this one) and run terminal emulators. I use the great
and minimal ratpoison window manager. I don't use a desktop environment as
such. I play the occasional game too but I haven't done that in a long time.
The X server works fine and I'm of the opinion "if it works , don't fix it"
especially for something as complicated as this. I also know the X
programming interface. I assume there is something analogous for Wayland and
it may be great for all I know but I don't have unlimited time and the X
server interface already does what I want.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

[Andy Burns]

Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>
>> <https://arewewaylandyet.com>
>
> No vim on that page.

Well it doesn't need to be, since multiple terminal emulators are there.

[Andy Burns]

Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

> I was under the impression that one of the plans for Wayland was to be able
> to run X server on top of it so that all X11 applications would continue to
> work. Has this plan been abandoned ?

I think that still exists, XServer sits on top of Wayland, apps tolk to XServer,
believing it's Xorg, but when that first crept into Fedora, it seemed to break
the tradional way of X remoting by

export DISPLAY=host:0.0

[Spiros Bousbouras]

It does because various things work more smoothly if vim makes its own
connection to the X server. For example writing and reading from the *
register (for anyone not familiar , do :help quotestar in vim) or pasting
or recognition of unusual key combinations.

--
How do you know that a martial artist is a hipster ?
He uses latte spoons as weapons.

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 19:33:01 +0000
Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>
> > I was under the impression that one of the plans for Wayland was to be able
> > to run X server on top of it so that all X11 applications would continue to
> > work. Has this plan been abandoned ?
>
> I think that still exists, XServer sits on top of Wayland, apps tolk to XServer,
> believing it's Xorg,

Then why did you say in <k1nqsk...@mid.individual.net>

if your favourite WM doesn't support wayland, eventually it's going to
find it self beached without X11 to run on top of ..

? Applications needing X11 will still be able to find it.

> but when that first crept into Fedora, it seemed to break
> the tradional way of X remoting by
>
> export DISPLAY=host:0.0

This seems minor.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

[Computer Nerd Kev]

In comp.misc Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 22:48:48 +0000
> Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev quoted:
>>
>> > "It shouldn't be news to you that most of the corporate-backed
>> > developers working on the Linux desktop are no longer investing in
>> > new feature work around the X.Org Server and have shifted their
>> > efforts to a Wayland-focused environment moving forward."
>>
>> I think that's a good thing ... right? Provided the efforts to waylandize
>> everything doesn't fizzle out ...
>
> For context , the opening post of the thread gave the link
> https://www.phoronix.com/news/XServer-2022-Development-Pace which says
> Of course, it's not that X.Org Server is feature-complete and great as
> there still are issues around HDR support, synchronization improvements,
> and other enhancements that could be made along with better tackling the
> X.Org Server security,
>
> .I do think that the X server is great. I don't think that something as
> wide ranging as this can ever be "feature-complete" , there will always be
> some feature someone wants.
>
> Anyway , I don't know what the features in the quote mean. I could look them
> up but I'm not that curious. As long as bugs get fixed (assuming there are
> any left) , that's fine by me.

X is such a big project that I think there'll always be something
that someone could convincingly argue needs improvement. But in
terms of practical effect I don't see much making a real difference
in the last decade or so. Except of course hardware drivers for
newer graphics cards. If anything the most noticable difference is
that newer X servers are slower to start up on the same hardware,
so by that measure I'd rather they didn't do more work on it
(besides bug and compatibility fixes).

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

[Joe Beanfish]

On Thu, 05 Jan 2023 18:31:13 +0000, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

> [Crossposting to comp.os.linux.misc . ]
>
> On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 22:48:48 +0000
> Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev quoted:
>>
>> > "It shouldn't be news to you that most of the corporate-backed
>> > developers working on the Linux desktop are no longer investing in
>> > new feature work around the X.Org Server and have shifted their
>> > efforts to a Wayland-focused environment moving forward."

[snip]

>> what do people actually want X11 for now?
>
> I watch movies , look at images , surf the internet , read PDF and postscript
> files , type text (like this one) and run terminal emulators. I use the great
> and minimal ratpoison window manager. I don't use a desktop environment as
> such. I play the occasional game too but I haven't done that in a long time.
> The X server works fine and I'm of the opinion "if it works , don't fix it"
> especially for something as complicated as this. I also know the X
> programming interface. I assume there is something analogous for Wayland and
> it may be great for all I know but I don't have unlimited time and the X
> server interface already does what I want.

What do I want X11 for? For remote display. I want to be able to run a
program on the server and have it display on my desktop. Wayland isn't
client-server so it's a non-starter that I don't consider viable for me.
And, no, I don't want to run a whole desktop on the server and vnc to that.

[Javier]

That is because modern versions of the XServer have disabled TCP listening by default.

$ cat /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp "$@"

You need to remove the '-nolisten tcp' from /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
That should do the trick.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

In comp.misc Javier <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> In comp.misc Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>> Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>>
>>> I was under the impression that one of the plans for Wayland was to be able
>>> to run X server on top of it so that all X11 applications would continue to
>>> work. Has this plan been abandoned ?
>>
>> I think that still exists, XServer sits on top of Wayland, apps tolk to XServer,
>> believing it's Xorg, but when that first crept into Fedora, it seemed to break
>> the tradional way of X remoting by
>>
>> export DISPLAY=host:0.0
>>
>
> That is because modern versions of the XServer have disabled TCP
> listening by default.

Correct, and they didn't document the change properly either. Last
time I checked the current version of the man page didn't describe
the changed default. If they're going to mess with core
functionality like that and not bother to document it, then I
_would_ much rather that they wound down work on Xorg.

> $ cat /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
> #!/bin/sh
> exec /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp "$@"
>
> You need to remove the '-nolisten tcp' from /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
> That should do the trick.

Incorrect, that's what you needed to do _before_ the change to the
Xorg server. Now '-nolisten tcp' is the default so that argument
does nothing. Instead to enable remote connections like X used to
do without the '-nolisten tcp' option, you use the '-listen tcp'
option in the same place:

exec /usr/bin/X -listen tcp "$@"

But I don't know whether that's the problem in Fedora, or even how
they actually launch X within Wayland there (do they even use
xinit or startx?).

[Marco Moock]

What is the benefit of that if the WM itself doesn't run on Wayland?

[Computer Nerd Kev]

So that software that doesn't use a Wayland-supporting graphics
toolkit can still be run on a system running Wayland. Most distros
package many programs that will probably never be rewritten to work
on Wayland directly.

My assumption is that there's some magic that allows separate X
program windows to display in separate Wayland windows while still
sharing the same X server, like Xming can do on Windows.