I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit

Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by bitwize on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @12:16PM (#26003668)

> Wayland's biggest mistakes were not launching with a coherent strategy for replicating functionality like screen sharing, screenshots, and to a lesser extent remote desktop/applications.

It's not just about replicating this functionality. It's about having an open framework that makes building these tools, and other unforeseen tools, easy. X11 was very accommodating of this.

For example, I like to run xsnow during the holidays. Wayland's answer to xsnow is -- we don't support that, but tell you what, draw up an RFC for a D-Bus API for desktop snow and wait 5-7 years for compositor implementors to consider incorporating it. Or something completely different. You know, whatever. It's like you have to prove your use case is valid to the community before you can even start hacking on it in a way that you can expect it to work with more than one DE.

For Wayland the attitude is "Fuck you. You get a buffer for a desktop window and that's it. [Wayland does not support nested windows.] Oh, that's not enough? You're not writing a desktop app? You want snow on the desktop/a desktop magnifier/a hall of mirrors effect toy/an anime window sitter/pinnable menus/something that responds to global hotkeys/etc.? I'm sorry, did we not anticipate your pwecious widdle use case? Fuck you. No one actually writes applications that way any more, nerd. Go back to the nerd table. We're trying to get the cool popular Mac-using kids to notice us here."

The X11 security issues are mitigatable with some changes to the server implementation. The Wayland approach really never was about security. It's about letting the cool kids define the shape of the Linux desktop to the exclusion of ordinary users/hackers.

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by cycloptic on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @01:30PM (#26004686)

I'm not sure what are the changes in the X11 server implementation you're talking about, but if they do indeed meet every single possible use case, then maybe someone can bring them over to Wayland? I'm sorry to say, but you have to acknowledge these are novelty applications and are really not driving progress right now, the main focus is in getting all the other applications to work.

FYI there is some prior art for poking a security hole in the Wayland server to support X11 features, but obviously not all implementations will want to support this: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/b...

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by bitwize on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @02:09PM (#26005172)

The X11 server changes would involve isolating clients by default, keeping them unaware of windows they did not create themselves... but allowing a whitelist of trusted clients that can see everything.

This is inimical to the design principles of Wayland, whose security policy is to isolate all clients -- no exceptions, no escape.

The 1984 Mac was largely a novelty, but it was one that demonstrated possibilities. There are non-novelty applications that are precluded by Wayland. Something like EXWM could not be done. You cannot write a standalone virtual-desktop switcher, it must be integrated into the compositor. Et weary cetera. Wayland is very opinionated about the kinds of programs you can write for it, and if you want to go beyond that you must traverse the step function into "write your own compositor".

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by cycloptic on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @02:17PM (#26005272)

See the protocol extension I linked, there are absolutely exceptions and escapes that can fall back on the X11 way of doing things, and could even work with such X11 client isolation, but somebody would have to take the time to actually design and implement them and figure out how to get them to work with the security model used by the Wayland implementations. That is really the problem, it's only an implementation detail if you choose to do it by hacking the X server or you choose to make a new D-Bus API for it, or whatever. (i.e. there is no real reason XWayland needs extra extensions, it could call a D-Bus API if necessary, and that may even be desirable because the D-Bus API would be forward-compatible with newer Wayland applications)

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by kaba0 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @02:08PM (#26005158)

There is nothing fundamentally difficult about goddamn snow, like transparent windows are a thing in wayland, full screen overlays are supported in some compozitors, so feel free to port it over if this is really the ultimate thing you need in life?

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by bitwize on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @02:11PM (#26005183)

Ah, but xsnow accumulates on your windows! Wayland clients are not allowed to know about other clients' window layout!

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Re:I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit by kaba0 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @03:51PM (#26006462)

Under the base protocol. What is great about wayland is that it has proper extensions, and it is entirely reasonable to create a new one to query the current layout for some application.

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