X11 Fork XLibre Released For Testing On Systemd-Free Artix Linux (webpronews.com) 56
An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews:
The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland.
Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11.
While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment.
In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."
Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11.
While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment.
In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."
Wayland mostly works for me (Score:2)
including screen recording. TFA is incorrect on that one.
What it really, REALLY lacks is proper remoting. The best option available at the moment is wayvnc - i.e. VNC over a headless Wayland session. It works, but VNC sucks ass. There's no RDP support and there's no remote session greeter.
Fortunately, my only Wayland machine is a laptop, so it's not like I need to remote it a lot, if at all.
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There is still plenty of stuff to do to improve X11, and the ecosystem. The people working on it just decided they would rather do a clean sheet implementation of a system they thought should work a different way. It turns out X was designed to do certain things and evolved to do certain things in certain ways because they were the least worst way to do them at the time, not on a humbug.
that's by design my dude (Score:2, Interesting)
Wayland was designed around "Anything Windows can do that X cannot is a flaw, anything X can do Windows cannot is unnecessary." There's also the fact that in software engineering you get WAY more recognition for developing a new package that gets adopted than for patching old stuff. So even though a lot of perceived issues around security or multimonitor support or whatever could have been fixed in X with some effort, there was a lot of institutional pressure at RedHat etc. to make sure X died so Wayland wo
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There's also the fact that in software engineering you get WAY more recognition for developing a new package that gets adopted than for patching old stuff. So even though a lot of perceived issues around security or multimonitor support or whatever could have been fixed in X with some effort, there was a lot of institutional pressure at RedHat etc. to make sure X died so Wayland would succeed.
Another way of putting it is justifying your job because you have a mature product.
Re: Wayland mostly works for me (Score:2)
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RDP works fine over broadband and VPNs. Since 2021 I've been working 100% remote, using Remmina to RDP to a Windows VM running on my local server, connect to a customer VPN with their software (it's easier to sandbox it in a VM), and then RDP to the customer's server or servers I'm working on. Two RDP hops, no problems. RDWeb is awful, though. And if you start adding VNC to the mix, it goes downhill fast.
The most convoluted setup I've used so far is VNC to PIKVM on a laptop, RDWeb to a jump host, RDP to an
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Sadly I run Sway.
As for RDP, if your internet is speedy enough, it's fine. I work remotely regularly and I RDP into my Linux box at work no problem.
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Labeling this bullshit.
waypipe (Score:1)
It requires support on both sides (ahem about the latest ffmpeg kerfuffle), and really x11 forwarding should have required such support if there were any alternatives at the time.
The balances between X11-style generic rendering pieces v. frame buffers v. application-specific rendering agents is an ongoing work of discovery. The network trade-offs are quite different now. We could gripe about ADSL, but that also modeled (in a gross, disgusting way) a server trying to deal with a zillion clients. The server c
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The only remoting I've ever needed to do was X11 forwarding over SSH which works transparently if you have XWayland running, which is automatic on most distributions these days. So it really doesn't matter to me if wayland has remoting of wayland native apps, provided the apps I'm trying to remote still support an X11 backend, which they all do. That will change in the near future, though, as GTK plans to drop their X11 backend entirely soon. So you'll be out of luck if you need to remote a GTK app.
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I thought Wayland was the way of the future and X is in the dustbin now? What happened?
X is still in the dustbin because the last stable release of X was X11R7 on June 6, 2012. The alternatives like XFree86 [wikipedia.org] had a final release on December 15, 2008. The X.Org server [wikipedia.org] has more recent patches; however, the last meaningful main update was 21.1 in October 2021./p>
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The X.Org server has more recent patches; however, the last meaningful main update was 21.1 in October 2021
That update fell what, 11 years after Wayland development began? What happened? I thought Wayland was supposed to solve all the problems so nobody would have to touch that icky, unmaintainable X11 code any more. I had it on good authority (the same people everyone is trusting to develop an alternative to X11) that nobody could reasonably keep X11 working.
With that said, IME the people who use DEI as a bad word are not serious people, so I expect XLibre to go nowhere.
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Anybody who doesn't have their head in the sand or are a political influencer knows the serious and very real grievances about DEI
Is your problem with promotion of diversity, equity, or inclusion?
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I thought Wayland was supposed to solve all the problems so nobody would have to touch that icky, unmaintainable X11 code any more. I had it on good authority (the same people everyone is trusting to develop an alternative to X11) that nobody could reasonably keep X11 working.
I do not know the technical reasons why the X Window system has largely been stagnant. I would guess that updating the X Window system these days would be like updating COBOL. Sure it can be done but there are few experts that are around anymore to understand the nuances of it.
With that said, IME the people who use DEI as a bad word are not serious people, so I expect XLibre to go nowhere.
Politics aside, I would say it is really old code that someone needs to dissect and understand. Maybe people talented enough just did not know that it was in need of major work.
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Sure it can be done but there are few experts that are around anymore to understand the nuances of it.
Those people decided it would be too hard so they did Wayland instead. Except now it's 15 years later and Wayland still doesn't do what X did, and the performance is worse as well. So they proved themselves wrong, but they're still married to their bad decision.
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I suppose that's the problem. If you don't understand the nuances of X then you don't know though to design a windowing system. The nuances are there for a variety of good reasons. If you understand and disagree with them, that's fine. But Wayland appears to be beset with problems which have come from not understanding why people did things the way they did.
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I'd be lying if I said I understood all of it, but then I never claimed it had to be thrown away. What I understand is that I've been using X11 for decades, and programs I was using when I started using it will still work with it. And I've used it on machines with only megabytes and megahertz, and not too many of either. The least maybe had 4MB and 16MHz? And even that could run R5.
Maybe Wayland will make sense eventually, I don't know. It hasn't worked well for me. It also has dumb intentional limitations
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Right? He wasn't even wearing his uniform properly!
I use ssh -CY every fucking day at work (Score:2)
So do many of my colleagues, and the ability to do this is integral to a good bit of my organization's electronics design workflow.
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Is setting the record straight "re-education?" ssh -CY works great on my KDE wayland desktop. Gnome is the same I understand. $DISPLAY is set an everything. Works the same as it always has as far as the user is concerned. Apps that have wayland backends use wayland directly. Those that don't use rootless windows with XWayland. Shrug. It works.
Re: I use ssh -CY every fucking day at work (Score:2)
Re sound - I've never yet seen a good explanation of wtf is wrong with just using Alsa direct instead of using Poeterings extra layer of crapfest on top. Alsa has good tools and the C API is pretty simple too IMO.
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That's what XWayland is for, and it works well. It's automatic and transparent on modern distros and Gnome or KDE, and probably others. Did you actually try it before you complain about Wayland? In fact even local X11 apps are supported transparently as well. I have a mix of X11 and wayland native apps running right now. Except for a few minor differences in how the windows are managed (roll-up is not available on native wayland windows, sadly), I cannot tell which is which.
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Except for a few minor differences in how the windows are managed (roll-up is not available on native wayland windows, sadly), I cannot tell which is which.
By that, do you mean minimizing to just a title bar? That's a weird thing to not work, given that it's basically just not drawing a window.
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Yes. Window shade, whatever you want to call it. KWin is responsible for it, and it can do it for X11 windows, but not Wayland windows. It kind of tries. Not sure if this is a wayland bug or a kwin bug, or both. Also focus-follows-mouse is a bit weird. Sometimes I have to leave the window and re-enter it to get it to focus (or click), and on wayland kwin will not focus the window if I just hover over the titlebar. I have to enter the body of the window itself. I assume this is a kwin bug, since kwin
This is the way. (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if you like X11 or not, this is the correct way to improve an open-source project that refuses additions: fork it.
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Or an open-source project being pressured to stop as well.
Hopefully they won't try to do terrible things to Enrico.
Wayland is the IPv6 of display protocols (Score:5, Interesting)
The priorities of the Gnome and KDE developers (which from my point of view are people interested in colorful pixels rather than a solid design of a display server protocol) appear to have shifted to smear the competition with ad-hominem "arguments", and journalists who write propaganda-articles like this one [heise.de] are foaming from their mouth while introducing politics into entirely unrelated topics.
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Wayland is much much worse. IPV6 actually can do anything IPV4 can do. Wayland is still lacking, it's just that the Wayland boosters will try their best to gaslight you into thinking X can't do those things either, even as you watch it do them.
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Wayland is much much worse. IPV6 actually can do anything IPV4 can do.
I would agree that IPv6 can do all the important stuff that IPv4 can do, but there are exceptions like DVMRP (Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol) that AFAIK did not make it into IPv6 yet. That is of course way less relevant than the beloved features that the Wayland makers opted to not implement.
Re: Wayland is the IPv6 of display protocols (Score:2)
Who gives a fuck about his politics? Plenty if people think RMS has weird views but we still use his software. Play the ball, not the man.
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Who gives a fuck about his politics?
When people complain about DEI they are usually complaining that they are not being permitted to act like a butthole.
Plenty if people think RMS has weird views but we still use his software.
I use his license and software which comes under his license by choice because I agree with his views and the results are good, which is one reason I agree with them.
Re: Wayland is the IPv6 of display protocols (Score:2)
Riiiight. How convenient. So if you didnt agree with his views youd avoid all GNU software would you? Good luck with that.
Oh, and you seem to be obsessed with DEI. Presumably you dont use anything with a lithium ion battery or pretty any modern electronics given the child labour used to extract some of the minerals in africa, right? Wait, let me guess, your solidarity with The Oppressed only lasts until it becomes personally inconvenient like most halo polishing virtue signallers.
The Linux world is abuzz (Score:2)
Oh, is that what I've been hearing? I thought my tinnitus was acting up again...
Relief (Score:3)
I have to support Ubuntu for commercial reasons. I am relieved to note that Ubuntu is NOT Wayland only. It's just that the latest Gnome only supports Wayland. So all I have to do to keep X11 available is not use the desktop environment that I despise anyway.
Wayland and Gnome are now so far up their own backsides, they will disappear into a singularity any day now.
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Wayland and Gnome are now so far up their own backsides, they will disappear into a singularity any day now.
Yep. That is why I use X.org with fvwm2 (and no systemd crap). If it is not broken, do not fix it.
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I needed to use an Ubuntu workstation recently. It was set up with Wayland and Ubuntu's gnome respin. The default you know? I decided to not be an old fart and really have it a go. Wayland was unfortunately still buggy even slightly off the beaten path (meshlab didn't run which is a bit of a deal breaker for me), and gnome... It's odd to be sure. Some is ok, some is annoying and some of the choices are absolutely barking mad and deeply user hostile. They're also obsessed with featureless grey in grey icons
OMG thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate Wayland. Still so frelling buggy. So many unfulfilled promises. So many things that just worked, and worked well, under X have been broken for so very, very long. I hope the teenagers who repllied "pffft" to the graybeards when they said "windowing is hard, secure remote windowing is really hard," have learned their lesson, who replied "X is just too complicated" have now recognized that they have something worse, who opined "the API is too obscure" have been brought to awareness.
Just because something is new does not mean it is better. Keep repeating that. If an old, working system appears to be complex, there just might be good reasons for it.
I used to be able to run remote windows on kinda slow cable with reasonable responsiveness, back in the day, under X. I could even run a browser. I haven't been able to do any of that under Wayland; opening a remote browser window now takes *minutes*, if it works at all, and I've got fat pipes now, compared to back in the day. Wayland, from the user's perspective, has been and remains an unmitigated disaster.
I'm all for bringing back X. Maybe those guys at MIT knew what they were doing.
My two cents: (Score:2)
Listen, upfront, I don't give so much as a rat's ass what you use, if it works for you. I personally use X11 since that's what works for me, but I personally have no objection to Wayland.
That said, I'm excited for a potential resurgence in X11's development, but I feel XLibre isn't quite the way to go. In the 3 or so weeks it's been out, Enrico Weigelt (the lead dev) has made it clear that he doesn't really care to test for bugs or keep the project compatible with Xorg. Couple that with the over-politicizat
Why? (Score:2)
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This mindless "x needs to die" is why Wayland has the problems it has, still after 16 years.
The reason Wayland is having so much trouble replacing X is because it's not doing what people want to do. It'll probably replace X eventually, but berating people into abandoning workflows which work in favor of the rather middle aged shiny thing also won't speed up Wayland.