On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 11:36:17PM +0200, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
> Anno domini 2019 Fri, 12 Jul 13:53:20 -0400
> Steve Litt scripsit:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > What do you think of Wayland? I hear Buster now defaults to Wayland.

> Another step in windosification of linux.

It seems obvious that big players would have a powerful
motivations to influence the software that millions of
people run. It is one of the alternatives for explaining
the famous bug in Debian's pseudorandom number generator. Here's a good write up with
incisive comments.

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/09/20/software-transparency-debian-openssl-bug/

> Has the
> "middle-mousebutton-press does not copy text" been fixed
> at last?

> Can it do display over network now?

No, but one of the proposals is to do it the way X does.


Quote from Wikipedia:[1]

    Initial versions of Wayland have not provided network
    transparency, though Høgsberg noted in 2010 that network
    transparency is possible.[12] It was attempted as a Google
    Summer of Code project in 2011, but was not successful.[13]
    Adam Jackson has envisioned providing remote access to a
    Wayland application by either "pixel-scraping" (like VNC) or
    getting it to send a "rendering command stream" across the
    network (as in RDP, SPICE or X11).[14] As of early 2013,
    Høgsberg is experimenting with network transparency using a
    proxy Wayland server which sends compressed images to the
    real compositor.[15][16] In August 2017, GNOME saw the first
    such pixel-scraping VNC server implementation under
    Wayland.[17]

ISTR hearing assertions early on that network transparency
was not a priority for the Wayland project, and thinking that it
didn't seem like a good direction.

> Dont know if wayland is compatible to anything not gnome. But I'm not verry eger to try.

Why throw-away a protocol stack that solves the problem? Why
not just fix X? Keith Packard and the xorg team did a remarkable job of
modularizing X, why not build on that? Of course anyone has
the freedom to re-architect something, and perhaps
network transparency will be neatly solved. I for one
don't need to be their bug tester. I've scarcely noticed
anything with X to complain about.

Quoting wikipedia again[2]

    Unlike most earlier display protocols, X was
    specifically designed to be used over network
    connections rather than on an integral or attached
    display device. 

And here from askubuntu[3]:

    Wayland is a lot less complex than X which should make it
    easier to maintain - although some of this simplicity comes
    from pushing the complexity (eg: how to actually draw onto
    that buffer, network transparency) to other layers of the
    stack. By making clients responsible for all of their
    rendering the clients can be smarter about things things
    like double-buffering.

Existing xclients will not work, and although those based
on GTK+ or Qt *may* be supported in future.


To paraphrase in doggerl:

Wayland's like a step back
counting on a future hack.
Those less geeky won't think twice
Hearing all is new and nice.
They'd be more choosy what they run
Knowing who's behind the fun

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
3. https://askubuntu.com/questions/11537/why-is-wayland-better
--
Joel Roth

"Welcome to the World Heat Bank, where we store your waste
energy and return it with interest."