Protocol limits what is possible. Legacy defines performance. Gnome is X11 first. Wlroots in Wayland first. It should be possible to optimize Gnome.

Wayland was created because of horrible X11 performance [1]. It is not Waylands prime time yet but X.Org still works and maintained. Phoronix.com should have checked contributions [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ

[2] https://github.com/freedesktop/xorg-xserver/graphs/commit-ac...

These are appealing arguments. But our industry is flooded with appealing arguments losing to pragmatic compromises.

Our industry is flooded with critics who do not contribute.

Most of the pragmatic solutions were built by contributing to existing things, not starting over.

Think risc v cisc. It isn't that there are not points to be gained from the alternatives. It is that leaving the past behind is not necessarily the best way to get progress. And even when enough time passes that the alternative gains ground, it often looks more like what it was replacing than less.

You clearly have not watched video by X.Org developer, have not you? I expect you are better informed, worked a lot with X.Org codebase and can show some links on your commits.

Or if you truly believe there is nothing wrong with X.Org you would become maintainer.

> My (often incorrect) views and opinions are my own and not those of anyone I currently or have ever worked for. Please help me make them more informed (and hopefully more correct) whenever you can!

Goal shift much? My point here has been to point out that gnome is the benchmark that matters most. That one side seems bent on ignoring that is baffling to me.

Sadly, for the most part I have been discouraged from Linux desktop usage in recent years. Shame, as I have been on Linux for a couple of decades now. That said, I confess this is opening my interest. Would love to get myself and my children contributing, and I will start looking for ways to make that possible.

> I only really care about performance and Wayland hasn’t been very convincing [0] with no discernible improvement over X11.

there would be no controversy with

"I only really care about GNOME performance and GNOME Wayland hasn’t been very convincing [0] with no discernible improvement over GNOME X11"

GNOME matters for you, it does not matter for me (xmonad, xterm, browsers). If all user see is GNOME he can decide it is Linux that is broken as well.

"The real story behind Wayland and X" by Daniel Stone (link above) specifically shows X11 performance problems, it is view from developer what is wrong with X. The story which we, as users, do not know. We can't blame developers for trying to implement something sane.

I have no contributions to core projects but I don't blame them either.

Ah, fair. Taking back to the root, I see the connection. Since you directed specifically at me, I took it just back to my entrance.

Continuing in that vein. I stand by pointing that the choice of benchmark matters. I've been burned by my own choices and choices from peers too often to agree that hypothetical benchmarks will see improvements for everyone.

I also find it dubious that there are many use cases that are better served today than in the past. I want to believe you, but the evidence is coming in weak with a ton of argument from authority. You don't get a pass just for being a developer to tell users they are wrong.

It would be nice to reproduce phoronix results. Do they run in GNOME shell? What if I run in Sway? What exactly they expect of Selenium? I've heard gedit startup example.

Sorry, I can't continue until you've watched presentation [1]

> gedit startup:

> 130 blocking InternAtom calls

> 34 blocking GetProperty calls

> 116 property change requests

> blocking because Xlib is terrible

> usually spends 25ms waiting for requests

> sometimes spends 1428ms

[1] https://youtu.be/GWQh_DmDLKQ?t=1390

I'm saying that we get your point. But you seem to be missing ours.

Nobody cares about benchmarks that a) don't exist or b) are not indicative of what folks will experience.

Obviously? The disconnect is that you seem to think that we can draw conclusions from nonexistent benchmarks.

You are asking us to literally draw conclusions from hypothetical benchmarks where the opposite results will exist.

I am sympathetic to the idea that things needed to start over. I'm annoyed with the lack of honesty and self critical approach. As framed by you, Wayland is above criticism. Which immediately raises my suspicions.

I have not said that Wayland is above criticism. I have said that the criticism which has been raised thus far is largely invalid, and that the benchmark you pointed to is flawed. If you insist on using flawed benchmarks as evidence for the inferiority of a technology simply because no less-flawed benchmark exists to provide a counterpoint, you are wrong.

How is it wrong? You felt it was just unfair, earlier. :)

To an extent, I actually agree. I just don't care, though. Pointing at comparisons that are not real world user cases is... Annoying. And feels ridiculously bad faith in argument.

Worse so, when it has been a prominent argument in this space for a long time.

What percentage of Wayland users are on Gnome? It seems likely to me that Gnome is likely to be 90-99% of peoples experience with Wayland.

So what? What percentage of Wayland desktops are on Linux? Do comments on Wayland generalize to comments on Linux? What percentage of Linux installations are on x86_64? Do comments about Linux generalize to x86_64?

No, obviously they don't. So, knock it off.

If the majority of new users are exposed to linux via wayland and exposed to wayland via gnome and the gnome experience sucks people will perceive that linux wayland and gnome suck regardless of who is at fault.

Have anyone ever bought a car or piece of electronics that was bad because of a particular component and though wow <component oem nobody has heard of> really sucks instead of <name on the box> sucks?

Desktop linux may be a niche but window managers are a niche among niches. Interesting window managers implemented via Wayland are a niche in a niche in a niche.