Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg server

Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @03:55PM (#38451180)

I guess I'll repeat something I kind of wondered in the other thread - if xwayland works, including in rootful mode, is it practical to just polish it a tiny bit and ship a... xorg-server-shim package or however is easiest, that acts as a drop-in replacement and just runs on top of Wayland? I've been playing with this on my local machine, and running cage[0] with xwayland seems to mostly[1] just work - you run cage, you run an X11 window manager on it using xwayland, and then you ignore the underlying Wayland stuff and run X11 programs, including things like xdotool or such that don't really work in a mixed environment.

The advantage is that you can have it both ways - users who are ill served by Wayland can keep running an effectively pure X11 environment, but ex. graphics drivers only need to support Wayland.

EDIT: Oh hey, it looks like Puppy Linux actually did exactly this, including using cage: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2265

[0] https://www.hjdskes.nl/projects/cage/

[1] Not 100% - there's some weirdness with keyboard configuration, and of all things xscreensaver-settings wouldn't run, even though everything else I ran worked just fine.

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by WesolyKubeczek on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @04:05PM (#38451307)

I think the reason for rootful XWayland to exist, and the fact that it's like 100% made by Red Hat, hints that this is why they are doing it.

But I would like to run native Wayland clients too, and have them behave in such an environment. Can a compositor be made in such a fashion that it would cooperate with XWayland and manage native clients?

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @04:09PM (#38451348)

> I think the reason for rootful XWayland to exist, and the fact that it's like 100% made by Red Hat, hints that this is why they are doing it.

I had assumed the same, but then they announced that they were discontinuing xorg-server without pointing to rootful xwayland, so I'm not sure how to read the situation.

> But I would like to run native Wayland clients too, and have them behave in such an environment. Can a compositor be made in such a fashion that it would cooperate with XWayland and manage native clients?

You can have a mix with non-rootful xwayland on a wayland compositor; that's the easy path, really. I don't know if there's a way to have a X11 window manager control Wayland windows in that kind of system, though.

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by gpderetta on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @05:43PM (#38452530)

> of all things xscreensaver-settings wouldn't run

jwz must be so happy...

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @07:16PM (#38453600)

Oh, the actual screensaver was fine, I just couldn't configure it

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by simoncion on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @10:33PM (#38455177)

He is so _very_ happy: <https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/wayland-and-screen-savers/>. (You'll probably need to do something to scrape off the HN referrer when you use that link, or else you'll get goatse or something.)

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Re:Some might not see how much work it was to maintain xorg ... by gpderetta on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @04:35AM (#38457362)

He is much more positive than I expected. He kept the ranting and insults to a minimum and even acknowledge that the new model is superior, he gives ideas how to do the port while stating that he doesn't have the patience to do it!

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