Ubuntu Is Switching to Wayland (omgubuntu.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ubuntu is to ship Wayland in place of X.Org Server by default. Mir, Canonical's home-spun alternative to Wayland, had been billed as the future of Ubuntu's convergence play. But both Unity 8 the convergence dream was recently put out to pasture, meaning this decision was widely expected. It's highly likely that the traditional X.Org Server will, as on Fedora, be included on the disc and accessible from whichever login screen Ubuntu devs opt to use in ubuntu 17.10 onwards. This session will be useful for users whose system experience issues running on Wayland, or who need features and driver support that is only present in the legacy X.Org server session.

Comments

Waiting for Yutani ~nt~

[OverlordQ]

..

I'm glad they're ditching mobile...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to focus on the cloud. It sounds much more hip to say "No way in fuck would I use ubuntu on the cloud" as opposed to "No way in fuck would I use ubuntu on my phone".

But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as Linux can remember where I positioned my monitors after I put the laptop back into the docking station, and as long as I can wayland-over-ssh, and as long as there are performance gains, then I don't care.

I'm sure this post will be littered with "I hate change" type posts where people lament the loss of X for no other reason than passion and nostalgia, and I'll have to dredge through loads of nonsense before someone actually puts together a point-form list of pros and cons comparing Wayland to X

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long thought that Wayland could do nice things; I don't use it because it is still not ready. Network transparency is the biggest blocker for me: I use Xephyr pretty routinely--and Wayland won't do anything like that yet. The other killer is that it won't work at all in KVM guests.

I'll keep waiting. For the time being, X is it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[squiggleslash]

Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't. Wayland's devs tend to handwave the problem, either claiming it will somehow be implemented once they work on the other laundry list of things they want first, or claiming it's a niche requirement nobody wants or uses.

On top of that they're doing the #1 thing you're not supposed to do in development: completely rewriting a working system.

X11's main flaw is that it's supposed to be inefficient. It might be, but I've never noticed any significant difference between user interface performance on Ubuntu vs Windows or Mac. I think much of it is "This sub-nanosecond operation that is only called once or twice every frame takes THREE TIMES AS LONG under X11 as it should!" type purism.

I'm not happy about this.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 is a turd. The future is using javascript and rendering to HTML. Rust, go, python, and all the other important languages can be compiled into javascript which runs everywhere - the browser, the desktop, the server, the phone, chromebooks, and even embedded devices that only have 4 GB of RAM.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be. X is sloooooooooow. The average and best-case latency lags a lot compared to Windows or Apple stuff on the same hardware.

I'm just hoping I can still forward graphical stuff and render on Windows with a Linux backend.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does anyone care at this point?

If you are managing a computer remotely, you are doing one of two things: either A) you are SSHing into a console and using command line tools, or B) you are using a screen sharing program to view the full console screen of the remote computer.

The use case for X11 apps running on remote servers (sorry, I mean clients) and displaying on a local client (sorry, I mean server) no longer exists.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[caseih]

How this will be solved in the long run remains to be seen. In the short run, toolkits that support Wayland still support X11. Mainly I'm talking about GTK and Qt. Thus KDE, Gnome, GTK, and Qt apps will all run either on Wayland or X11 without recompiling. So for many people, remoting needs can be accomplished by simply using X11 on Wayland and tunneling X11 over SSH. Simply ssh into your remote machine and run the apps. Locally on wayland things are silky smooth, remotely they still work, though a bit choppier (X11 over ssh isn't fast enough for anything but LAN anyway... I use X2Go for WAN remote X11 stuff.

Of course in the long run if Wayland is successfull the X11 backend bits will languish in the toolkits and this will not be a sustainable future. I think essentially RDP will be adopted as the standard remoting protocol for wayland desktops. This will be used to forward individual apps or whole desktops. RDP is already a lot faster than X11 over ssh, due to the way X11 works and the fact that all modern toolkits essentially just push bitmaps these days anyway.

Before criticizing Wayland and extolling X11's virtues, consider watching this talk by Daniel Stone who was formerly intimately involved with X.org and seems to know hist stuff. He makes a good case for Wayland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not managing a computer remotely, I am using a computer remotely. Yeah, I ssh in. Always start with command line work - just like I do with a local login.

But then I need some word processing. So I start the word processor on the remote machine, and view the window locally. Common case, do it several times per week. No, I don't want to transfer the file here, run a word processor locally, and then transfer it back. That is hell, especially when there is a large set of dependant files. Figures and whatnot.

Surely this sort of thing can be done with wayland too. Wayland renders to memory and then blits to some display. All we need is to transfer that memory - or at least the changed altered - over the network. Then render on the display at hand.

It is a necessary function, but something that shouldn't be all that hard. I don't expect to run 3D games this way - but word processing used to be fine over an ADSL line to the office 6km away - surely wayland can be made to run over the fiber I have today.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[harrkev]

X11's main flaw is that it's supposed to be inefficient. It might be, but I've never noticed any significant difference between user interface performance on Ubuntu vs Windows or Mac.

Try tunneling X over a VPN connection from home to work. It sucks for most applications. Apparently there is a lot of "back and forth" between the client and server where latency is multiplied by orders of magnitude.

This was years ago, but I installed NoMachine's NX server (version 3.x) and things worked very smoothly, almost as fast as being local. NX eliminates a lot of the "back and forth" in "X" which demonstrates that you don't really need that extra overhead in the first place.

However, NoMachine seems to have screwed the pooch with version 4.x in that they only support a virtual desktop (like VNC), which makes it MUCH less desirable to me.

So, yeah, I am perfectly OK with something to replace X if it is a lighter weight protocol and can natively support remote sessions without having to jump through hoops to get usable performance.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[cfalcon]

> The future is using javascript and rendering to HTML. Rust, go, python, and all the other important languages can be compiled into javascript which runs everywhere

I 3 this troll. Please make a slashdotmeme outta this. This is app-guy levels of amusing. Which isn't saying much, but it is saying something.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're making the mistake of assuming because that's all you do that that's all anyone does. I use X forwarding every day to administer VMs because it's my preferred way of doing things. I could totally live without it but since the technology is there, works and is stable why throw it out? Thankfully I'm a Slackware user so will likely never have to worry about it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Auto-compositing. Good god I want to make separate X displays but Wayland isn't having it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[technoid_]

Think of how much progress could have been made on Wayland if the effort that was put into Mir has been added to efforts on Wayland.

I remember when Mir was getting started that many wondered why Canonical put the effort into Mir instead of contributing to more universal projects. Looks like Canonical is reaping what it sowed by starting its own projects instead of just working on existing projects.

While I think Canonical's intentions with Unity and Mir were not as benevolent as they portrayed, have to remember that even FOSS projects that fail often provide wisdom (of what doesn't work), code and experience that is beneficial to the FOSS community as a whole.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[SumDog]

I too use X11 forwarding over SSH (ssh -Y) all the time. Sometimes I'm at work and want to quickly tag some music that's on my machine at home. I can remote SSH with X11 forwarding and start up easy tag.

It's a pretty common use case among some of us Linux users.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[pak9rabid]

Before criticizing Wayland and extolling X11's virtues, consider watching this talk by Daniel Stone who was formerly intimately involved with X.org and seems to know hist stuff. He makes a good case for Wayland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

I can't second this enough. This should be required viewing before any of the anti-Wayland people spout their bullshit rhetoric.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[pak9rabid]

You might be interested in XRDP: http://www.xrdp.org/

I haven't used it in a few years, but I remember really liking it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

The use case for X11 apps running on remote servers (sorry, I mean clients) and displaying on a local client (sorry, I mean server) no longer exists.

You don’t know a damn thing about how I use my systems, so stop pretending that you know how everyone else uses theirs. You have an opinion, and you’re entitled to it, but you and your anecdotes are statistically insignificant.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[ArchieBunker]

Why are you using X just to bring up a remote xterm window? Just ssh in.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Eravnrekaree]

I agree with this. The "x11 is bloated" nonsense came from a book in the 1980s when computers had 2 MB of RAM. Its a myth because its far more efficient than Windows 10. The 1980s era X11 myth is long outdated and has no relevance in modern context.

What Wayland is supposed to do could have been done with X extension, mainly, what would be needed as far as I know is a way for X apps to be able to synchronize with the refresh rate of the display so it can draw a frame and have it ready for the next refresh, by being notified of a redraw deadline through an X extension for this purpose. Another thing is a buffer swapping feature that allows an application when it has finished drawing a frame allowing it to tell the window system the frame is ready. If it blew the refresh deadline, the window system will use the last complete frame from a previous refresh cycle and the new frame will be used for the next refresh. This prevents window tearing and so on that has been i suppose the big reason for Wayland. All we really needed was this refresh timing and deadline information to be made available to apps, the deadline is set some time before the actual screen refresh to give time for the compositor to combine the apps frames into a single screen frame, and a facility for apps to use a new pixmap into the refresh buffer. You also need an extension for the compositor process for it to get the frames from all the apps so it can composite them all together into a single frame for for the video cards output.

It should be noted as far as I am aware what Wayland does regarding direct rendering can already happen with DRI on the X server, your application has the video driver built into it and basically sends drawing commands directly to the GPU. This already happens with DRI on X. Yes, it can be dangerous, which is why there should be an easily accessible option to turn it off and send your openGL commands via GLX over X protocol to the X server which can then send them on to the GPU.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Uecker]

Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't. Wayland's devs tend to handwave the problem, either claiming it will somehow be implemented once they work on the other laundry list of things they want first, or claiming it's a niche requirement nobody wants or uses.

Well, it is a niche requirement and they simply do not care about the few users - even denying that they exist (I use it everyday and remotely over ssh and it works well for me). The aim of all these efforts in not the desktop anyway, but mobile or embedded devices. For the desktop Wayland will have no advantage. But they still somehow convinced a lot of people who do not understand anything about how that X somehow limits performance of the graphics stack so it must be replaced.

On top of that they're doing the #1 thing you're not supposed to do in development: completely rewriting a working system.

If they would just rewrite something it would be ok with me. The problem is breaking compatibility at the protocol level. This is really stupid.

X11's main flaw is that it's supposed to be inefficient. It might be, but I've never noticed any significant difference between user interface performance on Ubuntu vs Windows or Mac. I think much of it is "This sub-nanosecond operation that is only called once or twice every frame takes THREE TIMES AS LONG under X11 as it should!" type purism.

There is no fundamental benefit with respect to performance as Wayland and modern X clients basically work in the same way when operating locally. Somehow people believe that the old rendering APIs supported by X for backwards compatibility somehow prevent modern clients to do things efficiently. This is completely untrue as X has been extended with modern interfaces. There could be some performance benefit because Wayland basically merges the X Server, window manager, and the compositing manager. Of course, this could be done in X as well without breaking the protocols.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I vpn into work with work laptop at home, but use my personal computer with three monitors and big speakers to do any work.

Sometimes, I have to access the ticket system or some other intranet only site. I use x over SSH to get a browser from my vpn'ed laptop. Occasionally I might want to use Eclipse. Since eclipse is tied to all sorts of intranet things like our package repository cache servers, our svn repo, ticket system, etc... I can load eclipse through x over SSH.

Of course, I could also vpn on my personal computer, but then I am limited in my internet access on my PC. Being at home I can say, have steam running so that it downloads something during the working hours. Or maybe I want to have Netflix ON instead of music.

I could also use VPN but then I can't alt tab from eclipse to something else on my personal computer. I could full screen the vpn, but then I can't use two monitors.

So ultimately, x over SSH is the easiest way to have access to work with all the comforts of my home office without having to worry about exposing my personal computer to the corporate network.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[ilsaloving]

While Network Transparency is really cool, it's useless in an environment where network connectivity isn't guaranteed. I haven't seen a single system in years now that makes use of it.

I've personally used it lots of times, and I would hate to lose that functionality because in specific situations, it is overwhelmingly better than the next closest option. But when it comes to, say, a desktop user that needs to VPN into work and connect to a remote machine, Network Transparency becomes a liability. The last thing you want is for your application to fault out because your network connection dies. As ugly as full screen remote desktop is, it has one overwhelmingly massive advantage: You don't lose your progress if you're disconnected.

It's the exact same situation if I am sshing into another box. First thing I do is run screen or tmux, and then do all my work from within that. That way I don't have to worry about connectivity loss hosing whatever I was doing. Better still, it gives me the option TO break connectivity. I can do some work from home, reconnect from a mobile device while I'm on the train, keep working, and then resume again when I'm in the office.

Additionally, full screen remote desktop is a heck of a lot more efficient than individual applications, because it's simply not possible to aggregate all the screen painting. Every application is handled separately. Meanwhile, a full remote desktop solution can do all kinds of tricks to improve performance, such as only screen deltas, reducing colour depth, changing update frequency, etc.

Really, this shouldn't be an either/or situation. My preference would be to have both full screen AND NT, but in terms of feature priority, I can't fault the devs for wanting to get NT going first.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I could also use VPN

I meant vnc

Re:But is Wayland better?

[serviscope_minor]

There is no fundamental benefit with respect to performance as Wayland and modern X clients basically work in the same way when operating locally.

I think what he's referring to is this:

For a "modern" X system (i.e. using a compositing WM---though I don't use one), the event (say, mouse) goes to X, to the compositor program, back to X and then to the focussed program, compared to the old version of X where it goes from X to the program directly. I think Wayland, not having the compositor as a separate program, skips one of those steps.

I've seen that touted as an advantage of Wayland, but FFS, context switches are FAST, and the time taken to process events is down in the microseconds. It shaves a few microseconds of latency off events happening at 10s per second, and for which the minimum perceptible latency is about 0.05 seconds.

The advantage is therefore so minute as to to be irrelevant and touting it as a big advantage is pure FUD. I agree with the GP.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the millionth time, no X11 applications use X11 drawing primitives, and schlepping bitmaps will work just as well under Wayland as X11.

You can fucking start Weston as a headless RDP server you fucking moron RIGHT (fucking) NOW. (Fuck!)

Re:But is Wayland better?

[harrkev]

From the screen shots, it looks like XRDP is another one that shows an entire desktop, just like VNC. Thanks, but I will pass. I like solutions that are "windowless" where, on a Windows client, the Linux windows work just like Windows windows (if you know what I mean).

My current company has "Exceed On Demand" which works just fine, but is NOT open source, or even affordable for the average person.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

but I've never noticed any significant difference between user interface performance on Ubuntu

I doubt you have enough experience with either of the other systems then because the performance differences are blatantly obvious. X11 is disgusting and you retards that love it are free to maintain it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop pretending anyone cares how a couple of ancient "system admins" use their computers and stop expecting other people to maintain millions of lines of horrible code.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[mellon]

This would be awesome, except that my experience is that it's so brittle that it's not worth doing. Do you not have frequent app crashes when you do this?

Re:But is Wayland better?

[sjames]

Check out Xpra. It's like screen for X. You can attach and detach as desired including recovery from a lost connection. It looks a lot like regular old X forwarding otherwise.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Try tunneling X over a VPN connection from home to work. It sucks for most applications.

Motif, TCL/TK, WXWidgets, and FLTK applications handle this just fine. Many GTK applications handle this just fine. (Even Thunderbird is quite useful!) QT applications require a shitload of patience.

> So, yeah, I am perfectly OK with something to replace X if it is a lighter weight protocol and can natively support remote sessions without having to jump through hoops to get usable performance.

Don't blame X11 when the fault lies with moron GUI toolkit designers that assume that every operation is machine-local. Moron toolkit designers will continue to do heavy-weight bullshit for the rest of eternity, regardless of how light-weight the underlying protocol is.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Blaskowicz]

To me, desktops like Gnome 3 and Cinnamon use too much CPU and thus are undesirable.
I thought, Wayland ought to make the CPU load drop and allow to run those 3D desktops on modest hardware well, like Windows does. But I'm not so sure and it is the open source world's Duke Nukem Forever anyway. E.g., it's been long enough my graphics card has been deprecated already. Even if Wayland is released, then we'll have to rely on hobby developers to make the drivers compatible and then stable and/or efficient.
There is a lot of fast, efficient hardware with deprecated graphics out there like AMD E-350 laptops, desktop APU, 45nm Core 2 Duo but well they're fast enough to run browsers or applications, not spend half their resources on the windowing system.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Digit01]

Last time I did an 'ssh -X' even over a local network it was painfully slow and irresponsive. I very much prefer other remote desktop protocols.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Blaskowicz]

So, that's what happens for people with a 2.5GHz Sandy Bridge or better and Intel graphics or nvidia with proprietary driver.
Great, fine, but not all far of "works on my machine". How about dual core 1.0GHz AMD laptops? (Bobcat and Jaguar CPU, the latter using the same technology as Playstation 4)
The 3D desktops are slow. And we're asked to like it and believe they're more efficient since the GPU "off-loads" compositing tasks. Ha hahahaha.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[thegarbz]

or claiming it's a niche requirement nobody wants or uses

The claim has largely stood up. They welcomed efforts for people to work on this feature and no one stepped up. Then they even introduced sample code for RDP implementations that could run per application, and no one stepped up.

If this was really the killer feature that everyone requires, then it should be easy to get either volunteers or funding to make it happen. So far none of the users have stepped up. That's not to say you don't find it important, but the way people were talking when Wayland first came out it was like the world will end. Admittedly given recent political movements that's still likely but that's hardly attributable to network transparency.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[serviscope_minor]

I think you've misunderstood. Nothing I said was related to the actual drawing of graphics. That was all about how events are passed from the input device to the focussed program. You see: the compositing WM can in theory apply arbitrary warps to the window positions, so the events always have to go via the compositing WM.

Unless one isn't running a compositing WM of course.

A compositing WM is NOTHING to do with graphics drawing mechanisms. It's that an entire window subtree is diverted to render into a buffer instead of the screen, then the WM is responsible for drawing it. It might just get rendered to a Pixmap then drawn with XDrawPixmap. See xcompmgr for example.

As for the other other stuff, there's an X backend which accelerates the draw calls with OpenGL and shaders now, since a lot of newer cards have really sucky old-fashioned 2D performance. There's a variety of backends, depending on the card type.

But yes, the 3D desktops are often slow. They do make an incredibly slow thing faster by using OpenGL, but it's hardly a win.

FVMW FOR EVER!

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Rob Y.]

Well, okay. But it sounds like you could figure out how to do the same thing via a remote desktop session. So it boils down to whether Wayland improves things enough for the millions of everyday users to make it worth making users like you figure out another way to do that thing you occasionally do. I don't know enough about Wayland to know that it really will improve things - though I've read reports that it makes the desktop 'feel' smoother. If it makes it easier to get drivers for the latest video cards with fewer bugs, though, I'm all for it.

X remoting was always a good-sounding idea that was implemented in a way that made it not much more efficient in practice than VNC-type remoting. I use remote desktop on my Linux box at home when I need to access my office Windows system from home. I run local stuff on one virtual desktop and RDP on another. The RDP desktop is pretty awful - but useable enough, I guess (since I use it). It'd be better if 'grab all keys' actually grabbed all the keys. But somehow I don't think remoting via X Windows would be any less awful...

Re:But is Wayland better?

[OrangeTide]

GTK3 and QT5 work on Wayland. Most users won't really notice a difference between X.org and Wayland. Other than some of their old applications no longer work without some extra steps (XWayland)

Re:But is Wayland better?

[OrangeTide]

X11's network transparency is not terribly useful. It doesn't allow detach/reattach of sessions, so you're forced to exit every program and start them back up again at the new location. While this was very memory efficient back in the 1980's, it's not a very good user experience when dealing with unreliable wireless networks.
And if you've used GTK2 and other widget libraries in the last 10 years, you'll notice their network performance is pretty terrible. Network transparency is kind of useless if none of the software is designed around it. There are too many round-trip messages going on these days to deal with the broken parts of X protocol and in giving fancy user interaction.

VNC is slow, but it's what most people use because it works in a way that is convenient. NoMachine/NX/FreeNX is a technically better alternative, although it's not very popular. (being proprietary doesn't help)

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a word processor remotely? How can this possibly be a common use case?

Are you writing text documents on an IBM System/360 mainframe because it's the only way your publisher allows you to view your masterpiece? Are you collaboratively editing some document that somehow has not been transformed to a wiki?

In what world is this a common use case?

I'm genuinely curious. Back in 1995, it was unbelievably rare that anyone would use an X/Window system to view a window running on a different computer. Even in 1995 it was a silly use case. We are now 22 years later, and my raspberry pi has more power on it than the world's most powerful supercomputer did back then. How can you possibly need to view a window in another computer today?

I know some people edit documents in Google Docs. I know some people edit documents in Microsoft SharePoint. I know that some people maintain open source repositories of work in progress using Github. But how could you possibly find a use case where it makes sense to launch an X/Window session on a remote computer instead of just running a program locally, or just doing a full screen VNC session?

Re:But is Wayland better?

[gtall]

"On top of that they're doing the #1 thing you're not supposed to do in development: completely rewriting a working system."

Where did you ever learn a stupid rule like that? Some systems cannot be extended or modified beyond their current state without a massive effort. At that point, rebuilding it for future mods should certainly be considered. Just about any Agile project will shortly reach a point where the dirty snowball needs to be pissed upon until melted and rebuilt anew from scratch.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[EndlessNameless]

This would be awesome, except that my experience is that it's so brittle that it's not worth doing.

Your application, OS, or infrastructure is crap. People do this using X all the time.

Do you not have frequent app crashes when you do this?

The application shouldn't behave any differently than it does when you log into the server locally, for the most part.

This assumes that your windowing system is setup properly and the app doesn't have any special requirements for user input or output. E.g., many 3D acceleration features and touch screens do not work properly with X (or maybe they do now, but they didn't used to).

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't. Wayland's devs tend to handwave the problem, either claiming it will somehow be implemented once they work on the other laundry list of things they want first, or claiming it's a niche requirement nobody wants or uses.

Wow - that is going to make Wayland a non-starter for a lot of people.

I wonder where they got this "nobody wants" thing from. From the time I first remember using Sun workstations in the 80's, through the entire life of Linux, you could ssh -X (or equivalent with $DISPLAY in pre-ssh days) into another local machine and run applications that would be transparently mixed with ones running on your local box. Hell, even on my home network I have 3 PCs, two older ones built from parts as I upgraded over the years, and I routinely display programs from all 3 at once on my main machine.

What are they smoking? This is a key feature of X11. Now, I might agree that X11 is not efficient at it, and that X11 can use improvements. But throwing out such a central ability makes no sense.

I wouldn't be able to use something without that ability even at home. It would even feel like Linux any more.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

either A) you are SSHing into a console and using command line tools, or B) you are using a screen sharing program to view the full console screen of the remote computer.

you left out the third one: C) sshing into remote machines and running individual applicatoins to mix in transparently with your local ones, rather than displaying the whole honking screen from the remote.

Why'd you omit that one? It's the most friendly model for many purposes.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use my IDE remotely on a regular basis what with not having a webserver on my desktop computer. It's less than ideal given the bandwidth its using, but it's WAY less annoying than editing the files here then scping them to the dev server.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[duke_cheetah2003]

Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't.

Yeah, this is pretty much a showstopper from my perspective. IMHO, that's probably X's *BEST* feature is it's ability to render across networks.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[hublan]

You do realize that most of the folks that started Wayland were originally long-time X hackers, right? There has to be a reason why they gave up trying to get X11 to behave properly, besides "because it's bloated".

Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what world is this a common use case?

I do it almost daily. Not for a word processor (though I have before), but for other things that are installed on my main PC but not the PC I am currently logged into at the moment.

Also, sometimes I want to mix and match. Like, I have several PCs all doing something that needs occasional interactivity, and I can be logged onto one, while displaying things from the others locally.

I'll reverse the question: how do you NOT do this? Don't say "RDP the whole screen" - that is not remotely the same thing, pardon the pun, and is far more cumbersome.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before criticizing Wayland and extolling X11's virtues, consider watching this talk by Daniel Stone who was formerly intimately involved with X.org and seems to know hist stuff.

Why would anyone give a fuck what he thinks? X.org upstream has been populated by X-haters for a loooong time now.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Billly Gates]

X11 is a turd. The future is using javascript and rendering to HTML. Rust, go, python, and all the other important languages can be compiled into javascript which runs everywhere - the browser, the desktop, the server, the phone, chromebooks, and even embedded devices that only have 4 GB of RAM.

... and such a system written in such would probably still be faster and more efficient than X!

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Billly Gates]

Kill X11 with FIRE!

Read the Unix Haters Handbook entry on X and how it can't do the things people think it can for GUI here?

OpenGL is a great reason to dump Xorg. No DRI BS on MacOSX or Windows. It just works and no freaking emulating network protocols and HUUUUGGE latencies emulaing client/servers from the 1980s underneath.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Pseudonym]

... and such a system written in such would probably still be faster and more efficient than X!

I know you meant it as a joke, but I remember NeWS and Display PostScript.

X should not stand for all time, but there's a reason it won that particular battle.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Pseudonym]

This was years ago, but I installed NoMachine's NX server (version 3.x) and things worked very smoothly, almost as fast as being local. NX eliminates a lot of the "back and forth" in "X" which demonstrates that you don't really need that extra overhead in the first place.

I had a similar experience with lbxproxy. However, this was in the days when everything was Xt/Athena/Motif/whatever. QTK and Qt may have changed things.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you come across Xpra? This solves the problem quite elegantly - it has the performance and persistence of VNC (i.e. usable over a WAN, and doesn't crash when the connection goes down), but it acts like X-forwarding in terms of rootless windows and a shared clipboard.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't, but thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[sconeu]

You're wrong. The future is clearly Apps apping apps to app apps!!!!!

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Nobody is forcing you to move to Wayland. Buy a car instead of riding your donkey, etc.

2. X is bad code with many obsoletes that needed rewriting.

3. Since you are getting both for free, I find your post pathetic and generally feel sorry for you. Go help them code instead of just complaining about the free stuff you leech from.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[caseih]

Nothing about RDP limits it to full desktops. RDP can remote a single window as well as a full desktop. MS doesn't normally use it that way, but it can be done.

Furthermore, Xrdp can run in rootless mode, if I'm not mistaken. A single X11 apps could connect to it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[caseih]

Years ago most people began using FreeNX which used some open source parts of NX under the hood. Lately I have found that X2Go is the direct descendant and replacement for NX and FreeNX. Give it a try.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that their previous work is meaningless, right? All it means is they know how X11 did it in their implementation, not that they know it is bad in X11.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a great many distributed systems which are managed this way, and would be prohibitively expensive to have to manage on-site.

And if a remote machine misbehaves, would you rather wait a week for a technician to book a flight and arrive on site, or that it's fixed in five minutes because the remote IT prime was able to see (and manipulate) what was on the screen directly?

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Greyfox]

Yeah, they often say that no one wants that, while the last couple of decades of jobs I've had, that's pretty much the only way anyone worked. I assume it's the same disease that makes devs think that people liked Unity.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[slack_justyb]

I'm going to start where a lot of people don't usually start. The actual people who maintain X11. They hate the code base, they just simply don't want to deal with the tangled mess that it is. Seriously go look at a dependency graph of just the xserver or a slightly higher level view of the state of things. Point, no one wants to maintain this mess. Anyone feeling frisky in doing so is strongly encouraged to do so, but the majority of developers who have worked on this in the heyday have long since left the building. The sheer pool size of people working on X is low and fresh blood in the development pool is best described as anemic. Fewer developers working on one project and more on another project pretty much seals the deal on the direction. Arguments of X being better falls on non-existent ears. You want to talk to an X developer? Head over to Wayland, that's where you'll find a lot of them.

Next in line is that X is ineffective at one of the things that it's suppose to do, draw stuff on your screen. (Not even going to touch multi-monitor, sleep, touch input, etc all which have had extensive hacking to get it working and thus resulting in patches of code with serious bus factor one issues.) X11 lacks pretty much everything we take for granted in a modern GUI. Want anti-alias text? Well X11 doesn't do that. Want the concept of an alpha-channel? Not present in X11. Quite literally, X11 does nothing in the way of anything that say KDE, GNOME, Unity, Cinnamon, or whoever wants. Instead, your chosen toolkit is using a library that builds in memory the bits that need to be drawn and if your xserver supports RENDER, your toolkit just gives a stream of bits over to X11 via that method, and X just forwards it on to either the card or to a compositor, which by the way X11 doesn't have a concept of, hence the reason you need one external to the xserver. At some point someone said, if every toolkit is just building bits by themselves and then having X forward it on, why not just cut out the middle man? Why have this extra layer that we keep having to build ad-hoc extensions for? (RENDER, XDamage, RANDR, XFixes **yes literally an extension to fix stuff but mostlly to turn a lot of old X11 stuff off.) All of these wonderful extensions are in reality short circuiting old cruft in a code-ugly fashion. Add in new complexities being added to video cards, functionality that's difficult to eventually get working, and yeah everyone is ready to put the old girl out to pasture. X11's lack of so many things is a roadblock to tapping your card's fully ability, which is why most of the time we're happily ignorant of all of the by-passing of huge parts of the core of an xserver, with the prolific set of extensions that come automatically built into your distro. (which is why a lot of folks never notice and just think that this is the way X was built, but nothing further from the truth could be said. Try building an xserver from source.)

Now let me move on to your points

Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't.

If you are using X11 over ssh, you aren't using X11's network transparency. What you are doing is streaming pixels across ssh, but you aren't using anything remotely looking like core X11 protocol. On the remote side, Cario, Qt, Mutter, or someone is drawing pixels and then that gets wrapped into a generic X11 package and sent to you to open up and then have your computer decide what to do with the newly received pixels. There's no commands like "Window A is currently at location x,y. It has a button at rx, ry relative to the top-left corner of the parent widget, blah blah blah." Nope, it's just "here's pixel one, here's pixel two, here's pixel three..." There's no distinction in X between a button in an application running on a remote server and a picture

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used it quite a bit. It is surprisingly less awful than Remote Desktop. I demoed it once to someone as a web browser accelerator.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

For years I have wondered what your sig does thinking it might be a prank that will kill one of my systems. So today, I ran it in a VM I didn't care about and:

: syntax error near unexpected token `('

probably because there is too much curry in the, I think, php?

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Tupper]

If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.

Seeing this old quote always makes me laugh---soon afterwards cars started having additional speed controls and putting them next to the windshield washer or on the steering wheel, next to the controls for the stereo.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[MrKaos]

I am an ambidextrous mouser, mainly because early in my computing career I found mousing on the right hand was leading to RSI type pain. I started using a left mouse as well and the problem went away. Now all my machines have two mouses (apologies if I am using an incorrect plural).

The issue is with where the select and menu click is on a mouse. If you use a right handed context then your index finger is on 'select' and your middle finger is on 'menu'. If you are a left handed user you have to switch the mouse config over to get the same functionality. However when you do this the buttons on the other side become transposed which also elegantly demonstrates why the term 'left click' and 'right click' are an oversimplification.

So far X11 is the *only* windowing gui I have found that supports ambidextrous users so that the buttons are configured correctly.

The other, more subtle use case is the cut and paste paradigm. In X11 I select text boundaries with a 'index' and/or 'menu' click, then paste with a middle click - my hand doesn't leave the mouse. This is a massive boost of productivity over time that I think is an undervalued feature of X11, surely I can't be the only one who appreciates it?

It's a fairly popular use case to run X11 on my local display to support (servers/clients) over ssh. I have only tested this indirectly (on a colleagues machine who needed it) however Windows 10 seems to have killed Cygwin running X11, which means it is now more difficult to run X11 on Windows.

It would seem to me that the mass of user demands is overwhelming the power and more esoteric use cases that X11 satisfies.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[mellon]

I used to do this with X all the time back in the day, but when I've tried to do it with linux distros more recently, it was really flaky. My emacs window kept disappearing, to the point where it was easier to just log in over ssh and run emacs in ascii terminal mode.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Kabukiwookie]

But it sounds like you could figure out how to do the same thing via a remote desktop session.

Why would you want to replicate an entire desktop when a single window will do?

It seems like were going backwards technologically in certain areas.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[MrKaos]

Well, okay. But it sounds like you could figure out how to do the same thing via a remote desktop session.

With X11 the remote window behaves like a local application and the OS behaves like a presentation layer. With RDP the entire presentation layer is exported onto your local display where it has it's own behavioral characteristics. There is no comparison, X11 usability for high performance computing is king for users who need all of the power of their machines to be available.

But somehow I don't think remoting via X Windows would be any less awful...

RDP is pretty awful in comparison. Consider a use case where you need to have multiple X servers on your display from multiple machines. Using RDP you would have multiple desktops on your display. You can also encrypt and compress X displays over ssh which means they are also much more bandwidth and CPU efficient.

This isn't zealotry, there are a lot of good reasons to use X11, however most of the use cases are generally skewed towards admin or power users. They are important use cases worthy of a solid defense, after all who will replace the broken functionality?

With gnome I was considering returning to Ubuntu, with Wayland I will not.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

The use case for X11 apps running on remote servers (sorry, I mean clients) and displaying on a local client (sorry, I mean server) no longer exists.

It is also possible that you don't know what you are talking about.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's perl (this IS slashdot, isn't it?) Probably says something like "drink more ovaltine."

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Pseudonym]

It's a self-replicating Perl program.

Thanks for stalking me, though!

Re:But is Wayland better?

[complete loony]

When an application is drawing stuff, there's plenty of cases where you have to wait for round trips from the application to the XServer too. Plus the application, X and window manager can all manipulate the same properties of a window, so there are plenty of cases where you can't be certain what will actually happen.

I prefer to think of wayland returning to the unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well. It takes over the job of rendering multiple windows on a single desktop, and forwarding mouse and keyboard events to applications. Everything else is out of scope. Is Wayland doing that job well? Maybe, but I'm not an expert.

If you want to display an application that talks X11, or connect to another server via RDP or VNC, do that with another program. If you want to innovate in this space, go ahead. Build a GTK or Qt remoting protocol or something. Having a clean separation between network protocol and display compositing should help the ecosystem in the long run. I will say that the X11 wayland client isn't that good, I've seen plenty of weird bugs when using old applications.

The big challenge to adoption is the conversion of existing applications. Even if you are using a high level toolkit, there are bound to be a few X11 library calls hanging around.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

The short answer as to why it all used to work perfectly and now does not is Gnome3, what they did to gtk and how much stuff is now using gtk.
All the stuff you used back in the day and well written software now will work just as well as it used to.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Ramze]

There's no hand-waving. Wayland isn't meant to replace every X11 feature, and the devs explicitly say the reason Wayland doesn't have network transparency is because it's beyond its scope and Wayland can support it over an X11 session on top of Wayland -- or through any current VNC/RDP protocol... or even a new one that bypasses X11 entirely and accesses Wayland at a lower level than an X11 session would (which might be superior to an X session since it would allow less overhead and more optimizations). X isn't going away just because Wayland appears. It's going to take a long time to switch everything over to Wayland, and in the process, we may find some things just stay on X11 or migrate to a newer protocol that runs on top of Wayland.

https://wayland.freedesktop.or...

X's main flaws are serious design flaws -- like the horrendous security issue of not sandboxing data in open windows, and the more severe issue of screen tearing that's holding Linux back from serious gaming, VR, and 3D displays.

Wayland is coming -- and it's designed by X.org members who want it to replace X wherever possible. I trust since they've been the maintainers of X for ages that they know its limitations and created Wayland to resolve those issues.

You're arguing for ancient spaghetti code that's been hacked on for decades and given plugins for everything under the sun... so much cruft that's ridiculously outdated. They're not re-inventing the wheel... they're replacing the old wooden wagon wheel with vulcanized rubber tires on steel rims.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

If you have stuff with heavy requirements that you need to run on a cluster or high end server then you may as well run a word processor or anything else you need on the same thing. It's about easy of use, and unless you have a shitty line or shitty software it runs just as well as if it was on the workstation or PC in front of the user.

But how could you possibly find a use case

Use case - if that's where the files are then it makes perfect sense. If the files are large then the graphical information presented on your screen when editing a portion of them uses a lot less bandwith than waiting to download the file, editing it locally, than uploading it again.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

X remoting was always a good-sounding idea that was implemented in a way that made it not much more efficient in practice than VNC-type remoting

You are considering the one to one case instead of the one to many, and crippling the one to one case to boot with something like gnome3 that sends bitmaps all over the place instead of doing it properly.
Typically people using X remotely are using it for more than just logging into one host and running one application, and typically they are running software that doesn't require an accelerated 3D card just to run reasonably even on the local machine (lazy gnome3 devs I'm talking about you).

So if you are logging into one machine to run the current "gedit", it's not going to be much faster using X than x11vnc with all the acceleration options turned on. If you are running an older "gedit", or another application that doesn't use gtk3 or similar and/or want to run things from multiple hosts, then VNC is going to look very slow and clunky in comparison just due to the different way of doing things. Events and not spamming the place with bitmaps (unless it has to fall back to doing so with broken software like gnome3).

But somehow I don't think remoting via X Windows would be any less awful

It would be nice if the people discussing this would actually try it.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

watching this talk by Daniel Stone

You mean the one where he "forgot his cables", at a conference where he could have borrowed some from one of the 2000+ attendees?
Also note how he used the dog-slow gnome3 version of "gedit" as his "proof" that X is slow.
Finally, take not that the context is about tablets, phones etc and not desktop systems. He had trouble with X on a phone display.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

For the millionth time, no X11 applications use X11 drawing primitives, and schlepping bitmaps will work just as well under Wayland as X11.

Repeating something completely incorrect a million times does not make it correct.
The Wayland advocates with a clue make sure they carefully say no "modern" X11 applications use X11 drawing primitives so that they can use some badly broken Gnome3 applications as their example. You've left the "modern" weasel word off your claim so that makes it incorrect.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

If this was really the killer feature that everyone requires

It's already available in one project so why would the people who want it go and work on another project where people are actively hostile to those who request the feature?

Wayland first came out it was like the world will end

Initially Wayland had some stated goals that are different to what they have now. Linux only, no choice of window manager, no ability to run existing applications, no remote access and a few others (single monitor only and run multiple copies of Wayland for each screen?) where policy has changed since. The early policies and the "X sux" hype campaign to provide some sort of unneeded extra justification for the project seemed to annoy a few people. The amount of "X sux" misinformation certainly annoyed me.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Dorianny]

Then by all means keep using X11. Linux is open, nobody is forcing you to use Wayland, Systemd and you really enjoy a good fight, the emacs vs vim "holy wars"started on the glorydays of Usenet and is still blood being spilled with no end in sight

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why do you think that is? To be fair, I'm an advocate of X SSH forwarding, but the code base for x.org is a mess of many, many legacy workarounds tied together with bubblegum. Nothing prevents adding X SSH forwarding on top of the much cleaner (from maintenance point of view) Wayland graphics stack and enjoy the benefits of both.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[paulpach]

X11's main flaw is that it's supposed to be inefficient.

It's so much more than just inefficient.

First the there is the security issue. X security is inexistent. The problem in the last link is by design and it is simply unfixable.

X is big, as in really big, old, poorly written and it typically runs as root. Any buffer overflow or unchecked parameter is a potential privilege escalation vulnerability. Do yourself a favor and don't that dinosaur in your servers.

X is bloated. It has stuff in there like font rendering, drawing primitives, printers, mode setting, dozens of extensions and things that nobody uses. Nowadays, toolkits render their own fonts, and manage their own windows and essentially hand over a large image to the X server. The X server does not even render the image, it handles it to the compositor. X does not set the video mode, the kernel does that. X does not handle keyboard and mouse, it sends the data to the compositor, the compositor tells which window should receive the input and X sends the input event to the corresponding application. In short all X does nowadays is IPC, and there are millions of lines of code just sitting there doing nothing right next to this IPC.

It turns out that it is even terrible at IPC. An application does hundreds of requests to the X server just to display a simple window. You know what the worst case is for that? yeap, remote display. All the back and forth is really disastrous over a slow connection like the internet.

People say network transparent. Well, more like network capable. DRI does not work over the network at all.

Something supported by Mac OS X and Windows for decades like VSync so your don't see tearing is not doable in X.org, there is no way to wait for a screen refresh or prevent X.org from rendering your partially drawn window even with double buffering.

I am guessing you embrace the unix philosophy? if so, what is the one thing X does and how is it doing it well?

Heck, the wayland developers are the same X.org developers. They did miracles to keep X.org alive for so long, but they are moving on to greener pastures.

I would highly recommend this talk by Daniel Stone. He does an excellent job explaining why X.org is obsolete and unfixable.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[sc0ob5]

X2Go isn't too bad. Much of the superfluous traffic is dropped and it uses different compression algorithms so the performance is actually quite a bit better than just the usual ssh -Y. Worth a shot if you require remote access to applications.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[jimbo]

RDP is pretty awful in comparison. Consider a use case where you need to have multiple X servers on your display from multiple machines. Using RDP you would have multiple desktops on your display.

Well, depends on how much of RDP Wayland would implement. It certainly supports Seamless Windows:

Remote Programs, also known as remote applications integrated locally (RAIL), is a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) feature (as specified in the Remote Desktop Protocol: Basic Connectivity and Graphics Remoting Specification [MS-RDPBCGR]) that presents a remote application as a local user application. RAIL extends the core RDP protocol to deliver this seamless windows experience.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[ohnocitizen]

On top of that they're doing the #1 thing you're not supposed to do in development: completely rewriting a working system.

Common misconception. You shouldn't completely rewrite a working system if there isn't a need. But what if there's something that working system doesn't provide you need to succeed, or an associated cost that's a deal killer? The FOSS world (and the proprietary world) are both filled with successful examples of people rewriting working systems. Starting from scratch isn't always a bad move.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube says: invalid video id

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 over ssh isn't fast enough for anything but LAN anyway...

Depends what you use it for. Running a visualization script in Gnuplot or Matplotlib over an SSH+X11 link on a computation node? No problem, you just want to see a still picture and export it to a file, that's as smooth as it needs to be. Running Firefox over an SSH+X11 link? Hell no.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[thegarbz]

It's already available in one project so why would the people who want it go and work on another project where people are actively hostile to those who request the feature?

Except they aren't actively hostile towards those people, and they have only ever said that they have other priorities to make it function first before they start adding features that benefit few. Then they openly asked for help. But hey if only a single project should ever have a single feature than no one should complain when that single project stops being widely used. Open Source is still a community effort. "Effort" is not defined as sitting and bitching that someone isn't doing something your way.

Initially Wayland had some stated goals that are different to what they have now.

Horse shit, The world was ending long after Wayland changed it's stance, and the X-sux campaign hasn't changed either, but then there wasn't a campaign but rather simply a laundry list of downsides justifying why Wayland work is underway. That doesn't need to be published over and over again. Just once, like it was. Nothing has changed.

Speaking of:

some sort of unneeded extra justification

The only justification for Wayland was replacing shortcomings of X. Are you saying the only reason for the project's existence was unneeded? That's mind blowing logic right there. Let's put a lot of effort into nothing for no reason with no benefit. *thumbsup*

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found xpra to be easier to compile (and isn't a giant pile of shell scripts). X2Go filled the same niche, though, so if that's working fine for you that's a decent solution too.

Re: But is Wayland better?

[ssam]

For wanting to access intranet resources in a browser I prefer to use the sock tunnelling in ssh (-D). This avoids having to deal with a high latency user interfaces (but maybe you have a better internet connection than me).

Re:But is Wayland better?

[thegarbz]

Common case, do it several times per week

What is common for one person is not common across the user base. There are cases where people will need X11 forwarding. The easy answer is: Don't use Wayland.

However don't expect the rest of the world to sit by and support your edge case.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[thegarbz]

It's a pretty common use case among some of us Linux users.

Emphasis is important as was the GP's comment. X11 is incredibly useful and indispensable for some, but for the general user base it is truly an edge case.

The only answer is: Don't use Wayland. Or use X11 on top of Wayland (the stop gap that they suggested for your case). Or actively support the project to the point where it's feature complete and start working on feature expansion.

It seems to be something that has happened in the past 10 years where everyone always expects every new project to be 100% feature complete including a lot of edge cases.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also note how he used the dog-slow gnome3 version of "gedit" as his "proof" that X is slow.

You really have no idea do you? He wasn't timing the application, just the display calls. Something that isn't unique to gedit, or gnome3.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

What Wayland is supposed to do could have been done with X extension

Ladies and gentlemen: The way we ended up with X being the clusterfuck that it is.

What Wayland is supposed to do is replace the clusterfuck. You can't do that with an extension.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

context switches are FAST

Fast yes. But also often. If you break it down then every instruction executed by the CPU is fast. X11's main downside is the sheer number of steps to get something on the screen.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[OolimPhon]

Linux Terminal Server Program (LTSP).

I'm using it now and have done for ~15 years. All my programs, files and storage are located on a big, fat server in a cupboard (closet) somewhere and I'm using a diskless Mini-ITX board as a client. Downstairs, my partner uses an old laptop as another client, netbooting in with F12. We can fire up other clients as and where nhecessary.

All my storage is centralised, I only have one box to update, hardware and/or software, and one box to secure. I can't tell the difference between using a client and logging on to the server (when I have to). What's not to like?

Re:But is Wayland better?

[silentcoder]

Funny how you're writing this even as network transparency is having a major revival in several industries. Not least of which gaming (though this is not using X but specialised graphic streaming tech). Just look at the success of NVidia's streaming tech, or the Steam Link for that matter.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[silentcoder]

You could just SSHFS the remote directory into a local mount and work with the files that way. It would be faster than X sharing for this particular use-case.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[serviscope_minor]

When an application is drawing stuff, there's plenty of cases where you have to wait for round trips from the application to the XServer too.

Like what? I most cases, you can collect all the information you need befor, and most of the drawing commands don't return anything except error codes which you can pick up asynchronously. Don't forget some of the mild flaws in Xlib don't exist in the X protocol itself and there are other bindings now (e.g. xcb).

I prefer to think of wayland returning to the unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well. It takes over the job of rendering multiple windows on a single desktop, and forwarding mouse and keyboard events to applications. Everything else is out of scope. Is Wayland doing that job well? Maybe, but I'm not an expert.

I'm not sure: that's most of what X11 does: it basically does that plus a bit of drawing code. The interesting thing is that the forwarding and etc goes over a socket, so you happen to get network transparency mostly for free. X also provides a security model so you can run untrusted programs without risking them password sniffing while also running trusted ones with full access.

The other part of the philosophy is to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sometimes things can't be split apart as easily. For example:

If you want to innovate in this space, go ahead. Build a GTK or Qt remoting protocol or something.

That's the problem though. Build it for GTK and you can't run QT programs remotely. Build it for QT and you have to duplicate the code for GTK, or some of it anyway. And it won't work with what are disparagingly referred to as "legacy" programs which don't use either of those toolkits.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you possibly need to view a window in another computer today?

I work in High Performance Computing and in this field it's a pretty common thing to have. You have data that is stored (or being produced at the moment) in a remote server and you may want to do some quick analysis of it. Copying back hundreds of gigabytes just to do it locally makes no sense. So you open a graphical interface (depending on what you do it may be gnuplot, or it can be a software specific code) and get to see what you need.

Granted, a VNC session would probably work, but we don't usually have an X session for each user.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 was formulated when there wasn't a standard window manager on workstations from a dozen different UNIX vendors (HP, SGI, Sun, Dec, DIGITAL, ...) and every system had a completely different set of display capabilities (8-bit palette framebuffer, 16-bit, 24-bit with overlay). The X11 architects wanted a flexible architecture that split everything up into the client (the box doing the actual drawing) and the server (the box that was running the application), so that an application could be written once and run anywhere. In theory, in combination of architecture was possible. In practice, for workstations, this meant that all communication went through TCP/IP even though it was on the local system. They fixed that with direct rendering. This was the time when 60MHz desktop PC's were standard (around mid 1990's). X11 also split up the logical layout of widgets from the style of rendering.

First there was 2D acceleration built into SVGA cards, and that was handled. Then around 2000, 3D acceleration came along, and they had to create special rendering contexts to handle the extra 3D API functionality as well as things like Xinerama. Even now, any configuration still requires tweaking of Xorg.conf

  Web-paged based applications or running X11 over ssh has solved the security problems of maintaining an unencrypted data stream between client and server. Then software applications that just compress and stream the actual framebuffer took over for remote access.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not. He's using ssh -X to tunnel the connection and automatically set the display variable etc. You get that xterm, and then you can run all your stuff via it as if you were working locally.

Just because you don't understand why people do things, doesn't mean it's wrong, it's quite possible that it's you who are ignorant.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but watching that video made me hate Wayland even more.

Especially as a former Maemo user & tweaker (ie someone who had become well-acquainted with Daniel Stone's flavor of clumsy incompetence)

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Shirley Marquez]

One use case: running a system management program. Some of them have GUIs. I might want to sit at my desk and do that to a server.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[caseih]

Shrug. I guess if you can't take issue with his points you can always stoop to mocking him for forgetting cables.

The context of the talk I posted was not about about tablets, phones, etc, if I recall correctly. He was talking about X11 in general, though certainly X11's use is limited on tablets and other increasingly common devices.

And the limitations of X11 are very much present on desktops. X11 *is* slow. Compositing helped out to make things smooth. But we still have problems with synchronization of framerates. Expanding a window, for example, isn't nearly as smooth as just about any other OS because the redraws of the window decorations isn't synced to the redraw of the widgets in the app. Furthermore X11 remoting is unusable over anything other than LAN. *Especially* on modern apps like gedit that use client-drawn widgets. And no one is willing to go back to putting the widgets on the server. There's a reason why everyone who needs to remote X11 across a WAN uses kludges like X2Go and NX.

Anyone who claims that an X11 desktop is as smooth and silky as Windows or Mac hasn't used either recently, especially the latter.

All I care about is a way to remote individual applications over ssh. I don't care at all about the protocol or keeping X11. RDP will get us there, better than X11 in the long run.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

Perhaps you should watch the video.
The choice of the gtk3 gedit instead of some sort of benchmark or another application appears to have been to deliberately show an application with very poor performance.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

Shrug. I guess if you can't take issue with his points you can always stoop to mocking him for forgetting cables.

That's just one example of many things. His cracks at enlightenment, his bit about being one of only five people who understands Xinput (when it seems classes of fifty at a time were learning about that when I was at university) and his unfinished presentation tells a bit of a story - yet fanboys keep rolling it out as some sort of evidence perhaps because they do not actually understand the context enough to follow what Daniel Stone has said.

as Windows or Mac

I thought the topic was Wayland? Also I disagree, especially with MS Windows8 and MS Windows10.

Furthermore X11 remoting is unusable over anything other than LAN

Turn off your bittottent client and try again - it's working for other people.

*Especially* on modern apps like gedit that use client-drawn widgets

X isn't broken. The gnome devs are lazy. Their crap performs very badly even running purely on a local machine unless you've got a 1337 video card to pick up the slack. Try using something they have not touched and you'll see it works.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[dbIII]

Except they aren't actively hostile towards those people

Suggesting the same thing you did earned me about a dozen "foes" in this place. Apparently I am a complete dinosaur for wanting to run applications remotely. The Wayland mailing lists also had such active hostility to anyone who suggested incorporating such "unnecessary X features" into Wayland.

The only justification for Wayland was replacing shortcomings of X.

No. Like SVGAlib before it there was the goal of having a simple framebuffer for local applications to quickly display things onto the screen instead of having a more complex environment. That's a goal in itself whether "X sux" or not.


As for your "horse shit" - seriously? Are you being a goldfish? I listed many of the positive changes in direction above. Am I to be attacked for not suggesting that an evolving project was not born perfect? That remote support is being considered at all in Wayland is an example of positive changes.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[ilsaloving]

Oh neat! Thank you!

Re:But is Wayland better?

[jwhitener]

Your link did not work. Is it this vid? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44

So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Ubuntu's switching to PulseAudio, to systemd, to GNOME 3, and now to Wayland, what is it that makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

The only difference I can think of is where an installation ISO would be downloaded from, and typing "apt-get" instead of "dnf" to install packages.

Those are really minor differences.

So what's the point of using Ubuntu if it uses the same kernel, the same init system, the same windowing system, the same desktop environment, the same sound system, and pretty much all of the same userland software that Fedora does?

At least things like Unity and Mir made Ubuntu somewhat unique. But now Ubuntu has basically become Fedora with just a different name. Why would anyone even bother using Ubuntu now?

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Merk42]

...But now Ubuntu has basically become Fedora with just a different name. Why would anyone even bother using Ubuntu now?

If that's the case, why would anyone use Fedora instead of Ubuntu?

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[arth1]

With Ubuntu's switching to PulseAudio, to systemd, to GNOME 3, and now to Wayland, what is it that makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

Gratuitous privilege escalation enabled by default.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[F.Ultra]

Because let's pretend that Ubuntu didn't use sysvinit, Gnome2 and all those pesky incompatible sounddaemons from hell for several years before they even begun to look at upstart, pulse or Unity.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[fluffernutter]

For me, what makes or breaks a distro is that they take time to customize the desktop manager in their vision that fits with the OS. Some distros I really enjoyed and found the DM very efficient but then you install it vanilla and it is completely different, whether it was a menu module like Mint has or what not. Another OS that comes to mind that works well is Elementary OS, even though that is Pantheon.

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Exactly this. The reason to prefer Ubuntu to Fedora is the person doesn't know any better.

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's just the menu items and desktop background image that make Ubuntu Linux unique, why isn't it just implemented as a shell script or package that's installed over a Fedora Linux installation to adjust the default menus?

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedesktop.org macht frei

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the point of using Ubuntu if it uses the same kernel, the same init system, the same windowing system, the same desktop environment, the same sound system, and pretty much all of the same userland software that Fedora does?

Ubuntu is giving up on the managed desktop market.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora made some questionable choices, but it usually was/is a team effort. On Ubuntu, it's a single asshole who does decisions like Unity or Wayland...

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Eravnrekaree]

First of all, most distros have always had the same window system, X Windows. The reason for this is that since all applications and window managers which are GUI, have to talk to the WIndow System, its important to have standardization around the same API. Otherwise you end up with a MESS of an app that works on one distro not being able to run on another distro or having to run 10 different windowing systems, because each application ends up being tied down to one or the other. You also have to have video hardware drivers and those have to plugin to the window system as well. If we are going to change the core window system, all of the distros had better agree to it or else we will end up with a fractured ecosystem like above. Now, because of X's design of leaving look and feel to the Window Manager, you can completely change the look of the user interface by changing the window manager, which does not affect applications. This is why you can use the same apps regardless of what WM you use. Wayland should and will continue this philosophy.

All of what I said also applies to the sound server, as well, so it was important to standardize around pulseaudio if we are going to have a sound server, which is a good idea. The alternative to a sound server would be to incorporate that kind of functionality into the kernel, its better to have it in a user process rather than to add further complicated code to the kernel, as with X.

As for systemd, rather than to rehash all that here: please read this: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. Basically, systemd is a big improvement over what we had before and the criticisms are mostly myths.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[cfalcon]

Team effort to a fault at times :/

Here's Fedora trying to come up with a release name for Fedora 20:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki...

Which, whatever, ok...

Eventually they decided they could never come up with release names any more, it was just too hard:
https://lists.fedoraproject.or...

Which is why you'll see stuff like 'Fedora Core 25 ("Twenty Five")' - the part in quotes was supposed to be a fun name. But every name is offensive.

https://lwn.net/Articles/48890...

You can't name things after astronomical objects, because those are offensive, because Mars is offensive (apparently lol). Anything named after something religious or mythological offends an atheist. Coffee can't be used because some religions are offended by coffee. Scientist names are sexist because most of them are men, and they even tried that card to claim numbers are offensive, but that one apparently didn't fly.

So when everyone gets together to name something, they eventually just decide that Things are simply not nameable, lest someone be offended. If instead, some asshole was in charge of naming, it would just be named GloryPork and anyone who wanted to bitch about it would have their complaints circular filed. There are benefits to just some asshole in charge.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[ilsaloving]

Because Fedora is the baby version of RHEL, and RHEL is the first distro that all enterprise software vendors certify against in preference to literally everyone else.

You might see Ubuntu Server. You might see SLES. You will never not see RHEL.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Details please

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu LTS releases include five years of support over Fedora's 14 months. And Ubuntu has about three times more open source packages in the default repositories.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the developers making most of the software use Fedora and Redhat so it's very likely integration and bugs will be taken more seriously.

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Graymalkin]

...or they want a working system out of the box. Fedora requires adding the rpmfusion repo in order to have a robust selection of programs - ones that are readily available on Ubuntu. This extra step is opaque and difficult to discover for inexperienced end users. This has always been a problem with Red Hat based distros, they don't or won't provide a robust default package repo so users have always had to turn to third parties.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Rob Y.]

To the extent that you're even asking the question, the answer doesn't matter - use whichever you like. The closer Ubuntu is to Fedora (and other distros as well) in terms of the big underlying stuff, the easier it is to target all of those distros for 3rd party apps, and that's what matters. There still aren't many 3rd party Linux apps, and the race seems to be on between having decent 3rd party support - and not needing it, because 'all you need is a web browser'. But still, there's that occasional need...

Other than Chrome, I use exactly one 3rd party app on my Mint KDE system - a Cisco VPN client provided by my job - without which I wouldn't be able to work from home via Linux. This thing was built for Ubuntu, circa 2014, and it still works with the latest Mint distro - which is a good thing, since I doubt I'd be able to get the company to provide me with an upgrade to it.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Ubuntu's switching to PulseAudio, to systemd, to GNOME 3, and now to Wayland, what is it that makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

Well, it doesn't make you reboot to install updates via the GUI. Seems Fedora requires a reboot for pretty much anything -- which meanst typeing the passphrase *twice* if using full disk encryption.

More seriously though, Fedora is quite a bit more "bleeding edge" than Ubuntu. I started having my laptop randomly resuming from sleep (in the bag, etc) after a kernel update on Fedora about last summer. I switched to Ubuntu, and had perfect operation for over 6 months.. now I have the same issue on Ubuntu though.

So you have Ubuntu in the midlle, between Fedora and RHEL. All of them will get most of the annoying crap (and good features!) eventually, but bugs will be worked out along the way.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Bodhammer]

You mean like Wheezy, Jessie, Sid? Bit of a stretch don't ya think?

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Zero__Kelvin]

RedHat follows US laws. Canonical follows UK laws. So it's can't, not don't or won't.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Parker Lewis]

Ubuntu is PulseAudio since years ago. It's systemd, because Debian picked it. So, still a Debian derivate. And it was Gnome until switched to in-house Unity. It planned to use Wayland even before Fedora (but then the NIH syndrome). What makes Unity different is still the same: reliable LTS, larger use base, friendly community, easy of install, wide drivers support, almost everything working out of the box.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

...But now Ubuntu has basically become Fedora with just a different name. Why would anyone even bother using Ubuntu now?

If that's the case, why would anyone use Fedora instead of Ubuntu?

Simple - because Ubuntu sucks and Canonical is evil.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

You make really good point with your question!
But did you notice the "the community" cries "Fragmentation!" when Ubuntu choose their own direction?

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but for 3rd party applications we have containers.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not, and you're taking the word of the sociopath who is responsible for it at face value? He's a professional liar and peddler in broken software. Not one of the project he's been involved with has brought anything but misery.

Just take the whole reason de entre for PA: ALSA was "broken", and the devs were supposedley "unresponsive". Yeah? ALSA is open source, so how are you supposed to fix problems like that? MMmh?

Nope, no glory in fixing broken code, which might not be nearly as broken as you claim. Better start a new project with shitty code and even more problems, because A it's Lennartware, and B it's new code, which you use to paper over the old code. Good thinking!

How the hell he got into the position he and his shitware are in, I'll never understand, but he apparently must be one hell of a manipulator.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

enterprise software vendors

So you're talking about companies that run commercial software (neither speech-free nor beer-free) in Linux instead of Windows?
So both of those companies prefer Fedora over Ubuntu? Interesting.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[ilsaloving]

Not Fedora. RHEL specifically. (ie: RedHat *Enterprise* Linux, hint hint) Fedora is, more or less, just the consumer testing ground for software before it ends up going into RHEL.

If you examine major commercial linux software (not sure what you mean by "both"), they are infinitely more likely to support RHEL than Ubuntu. Things are have been changing in the past few years... Ubuntu Server *has* increased in popularity and support, and Amazon Linux is turning into a major contender simply because it's the default when setting up in Teh Cloud(tm). But with few notable exceptions, you are almost guaranteed to have RHEL support for any given major software package. Oracle. DB2. Zimbra. Etc.

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone even bother using Ubuntu now?

Fedora is too close to bleeding edge for most people and the support period for each release is too short.

Centos, the free equivalent of RHEL aka 'Fedora Stable/LTS' is too slow-moving for most home desktop users.

Ubuntu LTS with its five year support allows you to stay reasonably current with a choice of upgrading every 2 or 4 years to stay in support. It's a good compromise for many people.

Also, from some comments I've seen MATE desktop (which I use and like on Ubuntu 16.04LTS) doesn't seem to be quite as smooth an experience with Fedora (may need some fiddling).

Elephant in the room

[jjw3579]

Now if they'll just ditch systemd there might actually be a reason to use Ubuntu again.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Eravnrekaree]

For your reference: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
I think systemd is a benefit, and was a good decision to include it as it standardizes on what the other distros are also using. A declarative style event driven startup is something that Ubuntu has long had with Upstart, so its nothing knew to Ubuntu.

I never really liked startup scripts. Basically, you ended up with dense, difficult to read scripts that reinvented the wheel for every service. Every script had to have code for monitoring PIDs, killing the process, restarting the process, etc. And the shell script is just not very efficient for this.

The declarative style of systemd makes far more sense. Ive helped many users who had questions like, how do I start a service and have it restarted automatically if it quits? Its a convoluted mess of monitoring PIDs and so on with shell script. In systemd, it was a one liner.

People who say that systemd is harder to use, you cant be serious. I mean, you have to be being facetious. The declarative unit files in systemd are far simpler than shell script. Most shell scripts I have seen are a horror to read.

Another lie about systemd is that its monolithic. Actually, its more modular than the old init system. It consists over 50 binaries, you can swap out parts of the system, because the system is based on a bus based designed. You can have your own init daemon watch DBUS for an event that you want to respond to and start your service after another kernel or userspace generated event, and announce events to the DBUS. So a completely modular architecture where you can write daemons to watch for and response to any event on the system.

Another lie is it takes away your ability to use SysV init., You are free to use SysV init files and shell scripts if you need to. My experience is the declarative format takes care of 99% of use cases with with 1/10th the code in a clearer style, but for those other 1% its still possible to use shell scripts.

The noise in opposition to systemd is basically FUD nonsense. I cant understand it. Its open source, its modular, it does everything the old Init system did allowing you to use sys V init, it only adds flexibility. So basically you are arguing that people should not be alllowed to use the functionality and flexibility it offers, because it doesnt actually remove any features or backwards compatability.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

> restarted automatically if it quits

That feature is great, and while we've had a much easier time with systemd scripts than SysV init scripts, the dropping of a lot of the log messages is just infuriating. It makes troubleshooting much harder.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Gr8Apes]

The noise in opposition to systemd is basically FUD nonsense. I cant understand it. Its open source, its modular, it does everything the old Init system did allowing you to use sys V init, it only adds flexibility. So basically you are arguing that people should not be alllowed to use the functionality and flexibility it offers, because it doesnt actually remove any features or backwards compatability.

If it was a simple launch process controller, it wouldn't get the flack it's receiving. It's a system on a system.

Re:Elephant in the room

[sjames]

The ability to replace a module with an identical module is not actually modularity. What If I don't want to touch dbus with a 10 foot pole? How about if I want SysV in charge but call systemd for a set of subsystems? SysV is modular enough to deal with that, is systemd?

The scripts aren't generally anything like complex in SysV. They're mostly all the same, and so quite easy to quickly understand.

Systemd doesn't understand imperitives. Sometimes I want the system to just shut up and run the command I say. I don't want to be second guessed.

Systemd is easy to use so long as you happen to want exactly what it wants to do. If you want anything else, it is somewhere between much harder than SysV and impossible.

Have you ever tried to get systemd to mount a btrfs root filesystem in degraded mode? Good luck with that!

Re:Elephant in the room

[sconeu]

All systemd really needs is a good init system.

Re: Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

I just didn't like all the random breakage. Turns out in the end that sysvinit has always had the ability to restart services in a declarative style and nobody used it.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

What If I don't want to touch dbus with a 10 foot pole?

Nobody is forcing you to use systemd. So stop your whining, and go create your own init system. With blackjack. And hookers!

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

All systemd really needs is a good init system.

It already got one. Since version 1 I think? Or maybe version 2?

Attempts to kiss of death...

[Anonymous Coward]

using words like legacy and deprecated for the thing you don't want to continue and modern for your shiny new. Then complain that developers are against 'anything main stream' and when your new shiny doesn't get the traction you wanted and you have to switch back with you tail between your legs (again). Classy.

I'm switching too

[Anonymous Coward]

To Geico. Saved me a ton of money on my car insurance.

Wayland Unity systemd PulseAudio Gnome3

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh mama! Can this really be the end?

Re:Wayland Unity systemd PulseAudio Gnome3

[SumDog]

I've used Gentoo for over a decade and I avoid all this shit .. well except Pulse. I actually like Pulse now (just don't use it on a system where you want to run Steam).

My router uses Void Linux. There are other options out there, although they're getting smaller by the year.

RDP next!

[bluefoxlucid]

I was trying to push through some patches and updates to weston to supply weston-rdp as a back-end. Combine weston-rdp with Xwayland and an X11R6 session manager wrapper and you've got Xrdp working again.

So what next? Get lightdm integrated with weston-rdp as a session manager back-end and stick the Xrdp proxy server up front to call lightdm as the session manager. Wayland can switch session managers without tearing down, so Xwayland and Wayland clients can switch to your console Wayland display or to weston-rdp on command--meaning you can pull up your console session over RDP.

Can we see 18.04 supply an RDP service we can enable on port 3389 that gives you lightdm right up front, and lets you disconnect and leave the session running such that you can reconnect to it over RDP or from console?

Re:RDP next!

[ilsaloving]

That would be... pardon my french... fucking amazing.

Microsoft may otherwise be a bunch of flaming douche canoes, but they did a really good job on RDP and I wish I saw it on non-windows platforms.

Well

[JWW]

Ubuntu ditched the bad idea that was Unity. Time to ditch the bad idea that is systemd....

Re:Well

[Eravnrekaree]

its been discussed before, every myth about systemd has been debunked: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. Since you can still use SysV init with systemd, there really is nothing for you to complain about because you can use sysv init type startup for your services if thats what you want.

systemd is a major improvement over what we had before, more modular, easier to read configuration, more flexible.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks systemd is a bad idea, quite frankly, has no idea what systemd is or does. "It isn't the same as what I was used to in SunOS 2.4, it must suck!" It's the same type of person who uses setenforce=0 or disables the firewall or sets 777 on any file they have a problem with... "I don't understand what's broken or how to fix it, so I'll just get out a hand sledge and pound this square peg into that round hole!"

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd is a major improvement over what we had before, more modular, easier to read configuration, more flexible.

Bwahaha! Have a look here to see what kind of moron the creator of systemd is. This is in addition to all the other crap systemd does. Thanks RedHat for embrace-extending Linux. We are forever grateful.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

What it does maybe better, how it does it means it's not getting in our organization. The general attitude of the developers to, well anything, leaves it to those distros that are content to redhat derivatives. Good luck with that.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

has no idea what systemd is or does.

not unlike the systemd developers.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyone who thinks systemd is a bad idea, quite frankly, has no idea what systemd is or does.

Right, that's only because systemd does more.

And more... and more... and more...

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd is a major improvement over what we had before, more modular, easier to read configuration, more flexible.

1. Systemd is "more modular" in that you need to run more modules for it to work at all.
2. The configuration isn't easier to read.
3. Yes it's more flexible in that people have tried very hard to work around point #2 by making it work like SysV.

Think of it this way: if you have a second wife whose main benefits are that she is like or can behave like your first wife, why did you leave your first wife to begin with?

Re:Well

[thegarbz]

Ubuntu ditched the bad idea that was Unity.

The bad idea that was Unity was competing with Gnome 3.0's interface.

Time to ditch the bad idea that is systemd....

The bad idea that is Systemd is actually called upstart and they ditched that a while ago in favour of something far more feature complete and better suited to running an OS, Systemd, while at the same time succeeding in their original goal which was to migrate away from the dumb legacy that pretty much every distribution has put some kind of effort into getting rid of at some point.

Re: Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes he was wrong but: 1. Such things happen and 2. The bug was fixed.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who writes services systemd is great.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way in hell Ubuntu will dump systemd. Aside from the fact there's no compelling reason to switch back, Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) switched to systemd. In fact, Ubuntu didn't switch until Debian did. Announcement came only a few days later, if I remember correctly.

Re: Well

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he proved that he's a moron and an utter twat. He didn't even test the bug, he talked out of his ass about trivial but IMPORTANT issue, because he couldn't be bothered to see people potentially hosing their systems as "a problem".

Re:Waiting for Yutani ~t~

[Anonymous Coward]

http://toaruos.org/yutani-the-new-compositor.html

I've yet to find a advantage to wayland.

[Thanatiel]

From what I've read:

_ it's not safer
_ it's slower
_ it's still has issues (tearing & software compatibility)

And all this ignoring the remote capabilities advantage of X11.

So why the push ? Ubuntu thought it was looking too good getting rid of Unity ?

Re:I've yet to find a advantage to wayland.

[dbIII]

So why the push

According to Daniel Stone it was about avoiding the tearing in X and software compatibility could just go jump.
The funny thing is we are getting a lot of what he didn't care about (very good software compatibility with the newer qt, gtk and enlightenment stuff) but it still doesn't handle the former as well as X.
Anyway, give it time - it's already better in a lot of ways than was originally proposed.

Re:I've yet to find a advantage to wayland.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in a hurry, and I agree the general idea is interesting.
The day I find Wayland better than X, I'll consider the switch.
But yes, I would give it time.

(I don't have my credentials on this machine, hence the AC)

Remote display?

[swillden]

I haven't paid any attention to the Wayland/Mir development for quite some time. When they were introduced the stated plan was not to support any sort of remote display natively. Has that gap been closed? Or is that one of the "features ... only present in the legacy X.Org server session"?

Personally, I use remote display of X clients regularly. Not daily, but close.

Re:Remote display?

[Kjella]

I haven't paid any attention to the Wayland/Mir development for quite some time. When they were introduced the stated plan was not to support any sort of remote display natively. Has that gap been closed?

The way X does it through draw calls will never happen, because Wayland doesn't draw. I'm not sure how far they've gotten on detecting damaged sections and compression, but it's all bitmap based. I did read something to indicate they were considering a "smarter" rdp where you did the composition on the other end so you could move windows around without lag. I think it should also be possible with client support to expose a bigger virtual window that you have a viewport into so you could have smooth scrolling in a browser because what you actually see is a 1000 pixel cut from a 1200x pixel tall window buffer.

But if you want the client to interpret and render it's probably either a web application, a speciality format like video streaming or a dedicated client-server protocol. Basically the size advantage comes from intimate knowledge of the nature of the data, I once created a system that forwarded much of Qt's signals and slots to a remote window. That worked quite well because you could just tell it you wanted a QDialog with a QPushButton, all the logic to draw it was already client side. It's basically reinventing a "heavy" version of HTML and DOM manipulation though and the opposite direction of where Wayland is going.

Re:Remote display?

[SumDog]

They say it's not the job of Wayland; that you can run X11 on top of Wayland to get X11-ssh forwarding or someone at sometime down the line will magically invent their own rendered (maybe RDP based, maybe something else).

I can't really take this project seriously until they address this pretty critical issue. I don't have any issues with X myself. I use i3 and xrander and everything pretty much works the way I want it to. I don't play games in Linux; I have a windows laptop for that (Steam for Linux still kinda blows). Would nicer multi-monitor support for laptops be good? Absolutely! But with the track record of systemd taking over with no alternatives (I still run Gentoo/systemv and Void Linux/runit .. runit is awesome and amazingly simple btw) I'm going to hold off as long as I can.

I don't hate new things either. Lately I've been trying out Vivaldi over Firefox. I'll try new things, but I hate seeing all this half-assed garbage just breaking the Linux desktop.

Re:Remote display?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't play games in Linux; I have a windows laptop for that (Steam for Linux still kinda blows).

I play lots of twitchy FPS type games on a Linux system that was previously a Windows system. Steam for Linux is a little clunky, but I've noticed no huge difference in the gameplay, graphics, or responsiveness between the two OSs (ok, loadtimes are a little quicker on Linux).

Re:Remote display?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't really take this project seriously until they address this pretty critical issue.

That is because you don't understand the project, or what X does (or rather doesn't do). There's no reason for this functionality to sit in Wayland itself, and they've already showed off some very simple and efficient code for remote display.

Provided it works and I don't know Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided I don't know it is Wayland and it works, I don't care.

However, I seldom run programs on the system I'm actually sitting behind. Remote X is a way of life here and around the world. Plus there are hundreds of X tools, configs, fonts, and programs in use that need to keep working, unaltered.

If wayland supports all that, then I'm happy!

Re:Provided it works and I don't know Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

You ain't gonna be happy.

Curses! Foiled again

[Drunkulus]

All that work porting xeyes to Wayland, down the drain.

nasty wasty

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust, go, python, and all the other important languages

SQUEEEEE! What a simply adorable baby troll!

ONLY because of haters! ;_;

[Gravis Zero]

It would have been Mir but you open source people are just soooo anti-social! Mark said you anti-social people just hate and mainstream because you are haters who love to hate and then he cried because you killed Mir with your hate. Nevermind the technical discussions about the merits of each display manager, WHY WOULD YOU MAKE MARK CRY?! ;)

X also has stuff!

[Kludge]

Do all my X commands work in Wayland?
xwd? xidle?
Can I automate a Wayland GUI input using simple command lines like xwinifo, xte, etc?
And, of course, most importantly, xroach and xdaliclock. :)

X has years of development behind it, solid, works well, many features.

Re:X also has stuff!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I automate a Wayland GUI input using simple command lines like xwinifo, xte, etc?

You can buy a monkey that is trained to execute series of mouse movements and clicks specified on a punched card.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

Not to mention window managers. One thing we'll sadly lose is the richness of the X window manager ecosystem. That's not a techincal argument against Wayland.

Re:X also has stuff!

[AvitarX]

Will we though?

It looks like the compositor is allowed to decorate windows in Wayland, so it seems to me that it will exist. May take some time to get somewhere though.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

We'll lose the existing ones.

That said, you could probably write a compositor that just shoveled everything into an X11 window, then run XWayland on top of that, so you'd have 2 layers of Wayland and one of X, but at least you'd still have a decent WM.

Re:X also has stuff!

[Anonymous Coward]

RACIST! Racist, Racist, Racist, Racist, Racist, Racist, !!!

Re:X also has stuff!

[Billly Gates]

Or X was so horrible you needed an X Window Manager.

Yes you can still have GUi's if you wnat in Wayland. Infact it is easier to make one as X11 is quite archaic, old, and difficult to work with.

Re:X also has stuff!

[Lenbok]

We are already losing the benefits of X window managers via the rise of client-side decorations. Where once you had a nice consistent interface to all the windows on your desktop via the window manager of your choosing, now you end up with an inconsistent mess, with some having their decorations and behaviour handled by the window manager, and some directly provided by the app.

For example most of the newer gnome apps draw their own crappy window decorations, and when I drag the windows near the top of the screen they automatically decide to maximize themselves, which is not something my normal window manager (Window Maker) does.

Re:X also has stuff!

[dbIII]

Or X was so horrible you needed an X Window Manager

It was designed to be modular like that.
Just imagine what linux would be like if there was no choice other than to use gnome3. I do not think it would be a popular.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

Or X was so horrible you needed an X Window Manager.

The strange thing about X, is that people set out with the default assumption that it's bad without having the slightest understanding of any of the architecture. Your claim is not right. It's not even wrong.

The design of X is that windows are managed by a window manager, not clients. That means when clients freeze, their windows don't get stuck.

A valid argument is "windows managers tuck because VALID ARGUMENT" or "the architecture sucks because VALID ARGUMENT". The argument "X sucks because of window managers" is beyond inane.,

Yes you can still have GUi's if you wnat in Wayland.

Sure but my argument was it's sad to lose the rich variety we have now.

Infact it is easier to make one as X11 is quite archaic, old, and difficult to work with.

How much time have you spent writing in Xlib?

Re:X also has stuff!

[Anonymous Coward]

if there was no choice other than to use gnome3

GNU Hurd here I come. No, seriously if there is anything that could make me use Hurd its GNOME3 as only alternative.

Re:X also has stuff!

[DrXym]

Sure but my argument was it's sad to lose the rich variety we have now.

You don't lose the "rich variety". You can fire up X if you like, even run X over Wayland. There's no need for the local desktop to suffer to run X though and X absolutely is horribly broken in a multitude of ways that no amount of extensions would have fixed.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

You don't lose the "rich variety". You can fire up X if you like, even run X over Wayland.

You can run X on Windows too. Can I get FVWM to manage the windows that aren't in X?

So tell me, how do I get FVWM to manage a Wayland window (I actually know the answer. Do you?).

There's no need for the local desktop to suffer to run X though and X absolutely is horribly broken in a multitude of ways that no amount of extensions would have fixed.

No it isn't. Many, many, MANY people have said the same things about X. Unless you can provide some serious arguments to back it up, you're full of crap.

Re:X also has stuff!

[DrXym]

You can run X on Windows too. Can I get FVWM to manage the windows that aren't in X?

That's a pretty stupid question. The answer is yes assuming you have a remote client for whatever it is you're trying to work with.

So tell me, how do I get FVWM to manage a Wayland window (I actually know the answer. Do you?).

That's also a pretty stupid question. Why do you need to run Wayland at all if you're happy with X and some antiquated desktop environment? Why are you threatened by other people who might prefer a modern, responsive desktop and prefer an architecture that allows windows and the compositor to run as efficiently as possible on the hardware?

No it isn't. Many, many, MANY people have said the same things about X. Unless you can provide some serious arguments to back it up, you're full of crap.

The multitude of ways it is broken have been written about in detail by people who've had to write extensions to work around the brokenness. Pretending it isn't broken suggests you know more about X than they do or you haven't bothered to read or understand those explanations. Perhaps you should even offer to maintain the codebase or produce a dist which exclusively uses X11 if you're so offended that other people might not share your views.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

eeeh whateves dude. You argue X is bad with the reason "the truth is out there".I'M sure X is bad and aliens do exist. Yep.

Re:X also has stuff!

[DrXym]

It is extremely easy to find comments by former and current X maintainers emphasizing that point relating security, bandwidth use, obsolete code, pixel limits etc. Pretending you can't operate Google and find these comments says more about you than anyone else. Pretending that we should suffer an obsolete windowing system and citing esoteric issues with FVWM is just laughable. If you want X, run XWayland or stick with what you have. Big deal.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

And yet you've still failed to provide any arguments! I can find stuff from maintainers, including some extremely fuddy stuff from people who ought to know better. Your argument is that I should believe you because if I go and operate Google and then sort out the FUD and bullshit from the truth, then I'll come to the same conclusion.

Given that you lack the basic comprehension to even understand my original post, it seems unlikely.

Now put up or shut up. Actually put forth an argument of your own or admit you have no idea what you're talking about.

Welcome to

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to no proprietary drivers

Open Source Drivers Yeeeeeeeah!

forget games on ubuntu!

Re:Waiting for Yutani ~t~

[OverlordQ]

They'll merge to Wayland Yutani when?

its growing too

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon it will be KernelD and LinuxD

This concerns me... because I run Mint XFCE

[gosand]

Many moons ago I switched from Mandrake to Kubuntu, then to Xubuntu, then to MintXFCE where I have been for the last several years. XFCE fits my needs, and I don't object to change unless it really causes me pain. I really don't care for systemd, and since I have run it I have noticed some insane shudown times and other weirdness since it installed. But for the mostly transparent to me.

I haven't had to hand-edit any X config files for a very long time, so I am happy with how it works. As long as Wayland is mostly e transparent, I am fine. But from what I understand, XFCE will not work with Wayland as it is. Not sure if the other Mint DEs will either (like Mate or Cinnamon). If they don't then they may not support Wayland, and the direction that Mint takes could be interesting.

Re:This concerns me... because I run Mint XFCE

[dbIII]

I haven't had to hand-edit any X config files for a very long time

I did it recently for a 4 head system where 3 and 4 were on a different card and mirrors of 1 and 2, but it turns out a GUI configuration tool does even that edge case.

Wayland is not ready for Prime Time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you rely on standard features of current UI Graphics Systems like Color Management (i.e. you want the colors you see on your screen to actually mean something, and you want to be able to keep it that way by regularly calibrating and profiling your display), then Wayland isn't currently a choice, nor is it likely to be any time soon.

This seems to be because the Wayland developers simply don't "get" Color Management, either at a technical or user requirement level. They also seem to be so enamored of the beauty of their own creation that they can't bear to contemplate changing it to accommodate anything they weren't aware of when it was first architected. (i.e. "Every pixel is perfect" - except it's the wrong color! "Security" - so the user is forbidden to run Wayland applications that configure their own graphics hardware!).

So if you're running Linux and doing Color critical work, or are taming a wide gamut display using color profiles and color managed applications, you are going to have to stick to X11.

Re:X11 SUCKS

[Billly Gates]

Quotes from the Unix Haters Handbook here.

Let's desconstruct here your arguments X11 myths:

Myth: X Demonstrates the Power of Client/Server Computing

Fact: "The database client/server model (the server machine stores all the data, and the clients beseech it for data) makes sense. The computation client/server model (where the server is a very expensive or experimental supercomputer, and the client is a desktop workstation or portable computer) makes sense. But a graphical client/server model that slies the interface down some arbitrary middle is like Solomon following through with his child-sharing strategy. The legs, heart, and left eye end up on the server, the arms and lungs go to the client, the head is left rolling around on the floor, and blood spurts everywhere.

The fundamental problem with X's notion of client/server is that the proper division of labor between the client and the server can only be decided on an application-by-application basis. Some applications (like a flight simulator) require that all mouse movement be sent to the application. Others need only mouse clicks. Still others need a sophisticated combination of the two, depending on the program's state or the region of the screen where the mouse happens to be. Some programs need to update meters or widgets on the screen every second. Other programs just want to display clocks; the server could just as well do the updating, provided that there was some way to tell it to do so.

The right graphical client/server model is to have an extensible server. Application programs on remote machines can download their own special extension on demand and share libraries in the server. Downloaded code can draw windows, track input eents, provide fast interactive feedback, and minimize network traffic by communicating with the application using a dynamic, high-level protocol.

As an example, imagine a CAD application built on top of such an extensible server. The application could download a program to draw an IC and associate it with a name. From then on, the client could draw the IC anywhere on the screen simply by sending the name and a pair of coordinates. Better yet, the client an download programs and data structures to draw the whole schematic, which are called automatically to refresh and scroll the window, without bothering the client. The user can drag an IC around smoothly, without any network traffic or context switching, and the server sends a single message to the client when the interaction is complete. This makes it possible to run interactive clients over low-speed (that is, slow-bandwidth) communication lines."

Other fun tidbits that made me chuckle

" How to make a 50-MIPS Workstation Run Like a 4.77MHz IBM PC

If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.
- Marus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation

X-Windows is the Iran-Contra of graphical user interfaces: a tragedy of political compromises, entangled alliances, marketing hype, and just plain greed. X-Windows is to memory as Ronald Reagan was to money. Years of "Voodoo Ergonomics" have resulted in an unprecedented memory deficit of gargantuan proportions. Divisive dependencies, distributed deadlocks, and partisan protocols have tightened gridlocks, aggravated race conditions, and promulgated double standards.

X has had its share of $5,000 toilet seats -- like Sun's Open Look clock tool, which gobbles up 1.4 megabytes of real memory! If you sacrificed all the RAM from 22 Commodore 64s to clock tool, it still wouldn't have enough to tell you the time. Even the vanilla X11R4 "xclock" utility consumed 656K to run. And X's memory usage is increasing."

Dude if there ever was a case f

"I hate change" is your insertion

[Anonymous Coward]

When you see someone point out how the "new and improved" is, at the very least currently "new and fucked up", you re-interpret into "I hate change" because that means you can ignore the argument in favour of it being unreasonable bias and ignorance, relieving you of ever once having to consider the other person's point.

Doesn't this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

that the large percentage of linux window managers will be unusable? Or is there some backwards compatability?

javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Pimple on the tit of pointers .... hope you don't object, byteboi.

Ubuntu uses X11 by default?

[adam.voss]

I thought they had already switched to Mir, but the article says Wayland will be in place of X11.

Re:Ubuntu uses X11 by default?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they were working on Mir and hoping to switch to it with Unity 8. (Unity 7 is what they've been using.) Once they dropped the whole convergence plan, they no longer needed to push Unity 8 so hard. Without Unity 8, they had almost no justification for pushing Mir, especially as Canonical was the only one working on it.

I'm not surprised they've dropped Mir. I am surprised/impressed they've decided to switch to Wayland so quickly. My guess is they want to get the switch ironed out before they have a lts release with 18.04. I was surprised that they're waiting for 18.04 before switching from Unity 7 to Gnome, though. Figured they'd do so with 17.10 instead.

Re:Ubuntu uses X11 by default?

[aiht]

I thought they had already switched to Mir, but the article says Wayland will be in place of X11.

Mir came crashing down a while ago.

As in UI equivalent to systemd?

[Anonymous Coward]

(snarky) Uh, Wayland is adjacent to Weston, Lincoln, etc. Adjacency to Lincoln does not make it worthy. (/snarky)
On a less flighty note, I'm not convinced that it is better than X11. I want to see proof in the form of benchmarks: memory consumption, performance, and esp reviews re: easier to program to than X11. Please post such.
My concern equates that of my concern about systemd: It seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Yes, the systemd folk really did work hard to build something good, but I personally do not understand the compelling reason for it... That is: re-inventing something for the sake of re-inventing it does not make it good.

Good luck running Blender on Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

NVIDIA cuda essentially unsupported. You'll sprint back to X11 in no time. If the Linux community continues down this path, they'll see a lot of people jump ship to Win and FreeBSD.

Wayland is not ready.

Party like it's 1999!

[dbIII]

Congrats, so you've got one remote desktop just like running VNC like it's 1999!
It's a start, but a lot of people who use X to run applications remotely wish to run things from more than one host.

Re:Party like it's 1999!

[bluefoxlucid]

VNC is slow because it is essentially a continuous screenshot-encode-send desktop stream. RDP sends draw commands and keeps bitmap buffers on the display end, which is why it's a hell of a lot less-laggy than VNC. You should see the horrendous shit that happens when you use something like TightVNC hexagon RLE (high compression) over an SSH tunnel on local gigabit LAN, versus RDP with TLS encryption over wifi.

Basically, VNC has to draw a buffer on the originating end, render it to bitmap, and send that (possibly segmenting and compressing the bitmap) to be drawn to a buffer on the display end. RDP forwards draw commands and other graphics back-end, skipping the entire drawing and rendering to bitmap step on the originator.

Re:Party like it's 1999!

[phoenix_rizzen]

RDP has supported headless (is that correct term? Or is it rootless?) windows for ages now, so your remote applications run in local window manager, same as an X11-forwarded app does. So, you can start a single app on a remote host via an RDP connection and have it appear on your local desktop the same as your local apps. And you can do that from multiple remote hosts simultaneously.

RDP has come a long way from the "works like VNC only slightly better" days.

Re:Party like it's 1999!

[dbIII]

Yes people have kept on telling me that for years but vanish without trace every time I ask for an example of an application that can actually forward single applications.
Perhaps they are worried that I will compare it to Hummingbird Exceed on MS Windows 2000, or perhaps they have never actually seen RDP do it and they've only heard about it doing it in theory.
Have you seen RDP run like that and do you know of an application that uses it that way?
Meanwhile X does it well on a variety of platforms.

Xwayland

[buchanmilne]

You run an X server as a Wayland client:
https://wayland.freedesktop.or...

Re:Xwayland

[swillden]

You run an X server as a Wayland client: https://wayland.freedesktop.or...

That's fine until people start writing apps directly to Wayland, rather than as X clients. Or, rather, until toolkit support for X begins to bit rot due to lack of attention, and eventually gets removed. Hopefully enough *nix OSes will continue using X to keep that from happening, but...

Network transparency: use Xwayland

[buchanmilne]

This problem was resolved 3 years ago, run Xwayland, an X server for Wayland.

You assume that because the Wayland protocol isn't concerned with networl transparency that Wayland developers don't understand your use case. They do, they just don't think the network interfaces belong in the same binary as access to the display drivers.

Bullshit. X11 sucks for different reasons.

[Qbertino]

"X11 has network transparency." If I got a dime everytime I heard this, I'd be a billionaire by now.

Screw X11 Network transparency. The network transparency X11 offers (draw this pixel there, take this input here) can be redone in 2 days and bolted on top of a well designed system as soon as anybody needs it. If X11s hand-made cast-iron NW transparency is the only thing it has going for it, that is sad.

As for efficiency, I get your point. Computers are so insanely fast these days, no one really cares if you need 1 or 3 cycles to draw a desktop. Especially if a better design takes a little longer. Gamers have their own thing for displaying anyway.

The problem with X11 is that it is ancient (in itself not a problem) and because of that was built around problems and requirements that nobody has today and in turn offers zilch to address todays demands. Modline configuration are relics of the steam age of microcomputers and 16-bit color CRTs and turn any X11 config session into an arcane ritual from yesteryear with no way of knowing if it will work out.

If X11 would fix that and make it easy to set up systems with todays technical traits, be it only with feasible tooling, I'm sure it would still have a chance of sticking around for another few decades. Until that happens, people are always going to try and replace it. And for good reasons too.

I like they abandoned mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

While I never grew to love Unity I never thought twice that mobile was the wrong direction. I've tried my fill of linux distro's and Ubuntu was always one that at least kept its polish while others simply rushed out product. Mint is a distro I like better but has always been too rough around the edges. I sure hope linux on the desktop remain viable but I see many have already placed it on death watch.

Re:Waiting for Yutani ~t~

[Tallfeather]

I believe it's due in the Xerothermic Xenomorph release.