Post by @mcc@mastodon.social

Okay so the hilarious thing is, one year ago I wanted to use Linux as a desktop operating system, so I was really angry Wayland was not designed to enable writing GUI applications for Linux. Wayland seems to have been designed as a kind of super-EGL, a surface negotiation protocol for embedded touchscreen devices. Now one year later I want to get Linux off my computer at any cost and I'm going hmmm so you're saying your surface negotiation protocol has NO Linux baggage…?

https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/01a17ad8-0a53-72af-91bd-6b91e7c25b7a

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autumnwinds

@autumnwinds@mathstodon.xyz 53 min. ago

@mcc this is a really interesting thread, thanks

also the corba stuff is making me catatonic

Joe Groff

@joe@f.duriansoftware.com 9 hr. ago

@mcc me: please give me a pointer to a framebuffer with the pixels in the order they will appear on the screen

Wayland: that’s to hard. here are some extension protocols I think you’ll like. do you like this

✧✦Catherine✦✧

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems 9 hr. ago

@joe @mcc compositor: isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?

✧✦Catherine✦✧

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems 9 hr. ago

@joe @mcc people misunderstand wayland to be a sort of replacement for x11. this could not be further from truth. wayland is a replacement for corba that happens to implement a replacement for icccm as a bonus

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social 9 hr. ago

This was what I thought for about 15 seconds and then it was explained to me that while Wayland treats the Linux *desktop environment ecosystem* like a total stranger, it apparently freely takes dependencies on a wide variety of very specific Linux kernel quirks and

(EDIT: I think some linux desktop specific freedesktop/XDG daemon that was mentioned the last time I asked about this on here, but that's being questioned so now I'm not sure?)

bob

@bob@feed.hella.cheap 9 hr. ago

@mcc why can't I have surfaceflinger but without depending on bionic libc

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social 8 hr. ago

@bob I'd guess because anyone who has the power to make that possible is professionally required to stay committed to Android lock-in?

bob

@bob@feed.hella.cheap 8 hr. ago

@mcc didn't google just fire a bunch of people

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✧✦Catherine✦✧

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems 9 hr. ago

@mcc one of the really really nice things about wayland is that it doesn't couple the window server and the GPU, meaning you can render any window on any GPU and graphics stack, or even in software. furthermore the GPUs can be hotplugged and hot-unplugged

this was de-facto unsolvable on Xorg and this problem alone is enough to leave it in the past

Glyph

@glyph@mastodon.social 9 hr. ago

@whitequark @mcc I am glad that this is working for you and I agree that Xorg (not X11! wayland speaks X11 and could have just been an X11 server initially) had several serious technical limitations that did need to be addressed, and even some of the “security” stuff is kind of real (even if botched)

but, as a developer, I need to know or change the absolute coordinates of a window far more frequently than I need to hotplug a GPU

Jacob Alexander Tice

@daemonspudguy@app.wafrn.net 8 hr. ago

@mcc@mastodon.social @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @glyph@mastodon.social

It drives me fucking insane whenever people conflate "X11" with "Xorg." Especially when Xorg wasn't even the first X11 server implementation nor is it the only living one. And no I'm not talking about the fascist idiots behind Xlibre either. There have been multiple implementations of the X11 standard, several of which are actually better than Xorg ever was. Granted others were XFree86, which sabotaged itself in spectacular fashion by adopting the obnoxious advertising clause. Xdec, Xsun, AIX X11, the X server on Apple's A/UX, and XQuartz were all different implementations on various Unices of the time. Xming still exists on Windows.

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✧✦Catherine✦✧

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems 8 hr. ago

@glyph @mcc yeah you're right, i edited the post

re: absolute coordinates: more or less yeah. i think "other-window-relative coordinates" (a proposal that i think is currently still WIP?) are what most applications with complex toolbar, etc needs want (this is how it's often expressed internally), and actually absolute coordinates are needed mostly by one thing, wine

but i also consider wine an absolute requirement for a platform to be usable to me

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mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social 9 hr. ago

Is this true? I don't know https://social.treehouse.systems/@whitequark/117510206309921582

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✧✦Catherine✦✧

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems 9 hr. ago

@mcc "it's inaccurate enough that i would only say that as a joke, but it's not so inaccurate that it becomes misinformation" is what i'd say

Briala

@static@aus.social 9 hr. ago

@mcc And systemd is a whole new realm of fuckery that I still sometimes wish had been still born.