back to article Fedora 25: You've got that Wayland feelin', oh, that Wayland feelin'

Fedora 25 is the first of the major Linux distros to employ the Wayland graphics stack by default. Wayland is one of the biggest low-level changes to hit Linux distros in recent memory and what's most remarkable at least when it comes to Fedora 25 is the move is almost totally transparent. Provided your graphics card is …

  1. Hans 1
    Joke

    >Fortunately it seems Redshift-like features may be coming straight to GNOME itself.

    Does that mean that Gnome 3 will distance itself from us at "very" high speed ? Thank god for that, I can already claim: "Best news of 2017" ... and the year has only just started!

  2. Hans 1
    Happy

    > This release also sees the GNOME extensions API being declared "stable".

    Wow, it is 2017 and Gnome 3 has finally reached Beta! I will have to look into this more in detail ...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Being a KDE and Nvidia user (forget Nouveau it's crap) I'll have to sit out getting Wayland until the KDE devs and Nvidia kiss and make up over EGL and GBM.

    1. Steven Raith

      I use Ubuntu 16.10 and have an AMD R280 GPU.

      Shall I put the kettle on for us?

      Steven R

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Megaphone

        @ Steven Raith

        My sincerest condolences on being the purchaser of an AMD graphics product. Those cnuts drop official support for both Windows and Linux after 3 weeks from release.

        AMD, Nvidia give 10 years, yes that's right 10 fucking years official support ! As a lot of sad faced AMD users found they had been shafted for W10 (I know, supping with the devil) graphics support for a 5 year old GPU while you can chuck in an 8000 series nvidia and it works out of the box.

        Don't get me started on their Linux support.

        Have an upvote for your pain.

        Wankers.

    2. nematoad

      "...(forget Nouveau it's crap)"

      And who's fault is that?

      Nvidia who will not work with FLOSS or the guys working to reverse engineer the Nvidia blob?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >And who's fault is that?

        What a short memory you have, I remember the document dump from AMD and here you go folks you're on your own, fans spinning like vacuum cleaners and no re-clocking. Don't forget those AMD firmware blobs you need as well, not true FLOSS.

        https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Radeon-Blob-Updates.

        On the whole Nvidia just works and Aaron Plattner happens to be a very nice approachable guy when you have a genuine bug report.

        I've yet to see opensource Windows divers for either Nvidia or AMD, do remember a lot of us are bilingual or polyglots. I'm not being cursed with AMD's shit support across all OS's just because they are semi-opensource wrt Linux. I'd have a lot more respect and would consider purchasing AMD again if they stepped up and matched Nvidia's 10 year driver support length.

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Unhappy

      "Being a KDE and Nvidia user"

      Mate and NVidia here. My older X11 desktop (from >2 years ago) works pretty well using Xorg, and FreeBSD had Gnome 2 back then (so I'm still running it). Mate's just the next revision...

      change for the sake of change is highly overrated. why must the open source world follow Micro-shaft's ARROGANCE and FOLLY?

      I'm not saying I *hate* Wayland, but there are things about X11 that I don't want to LOSE, things I use all of the time - like running an X11 application on an X server that's hosted on a different (remote) machine, via an ssh tunnel [for starters]. Can Wayland do THAT ?

      If I start a Linux machine without a GUI [still possible to do this], and log into an ssh console, I should be able to 'export DISPLAY=mymachine:0.0' and run ANY X11 application, displaying the GUI on 'mymachine'. If that's "not secure enough", maybe it should be an option...

      I'd also need to be able to run something like 'tightvnc server' to be able to debug GUI applications from within a GUI. Not sure if Wayland has the same kind of lock-up problems you get when you set debug breakpoints and don't respond to certain X11 events while paused... (that's an irritation in X11, yes).

      from https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html

      "does it support remote rendering?"

      "No, that is outside the scope of Wayland. To support remote rendering you need to define a rendering API, which is something I've been very careful to avoid doing."

      And, THAT pretty much says it all, I think!

      I hope that the open source world does NOT try and push Wayland the way they've pushed GNOME 3 and other "fat-finger-friendliness"

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        You shouldn't need remote rendering. FreeRDP server is being baked into Wayland so that you can get proper RDP. Not VNC that needs a firehose of a connection, but RDP. Or, at least, such was the case last time I checked...

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          (I lied. It's baked into *Weston*, which is the reference compositor for Weyland. Please don't eat me...)

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        " like running an X11 application on an X server that's hosted on a different (remote) machine, via an ssh tunnel [for starters]. Can Wayland do THAT ?"

        Agreed. My primary systems are all up in the attic where I go when I need to be in front of them, access the scanner or other physical devices or need to full dual screen setup. The rest of the time, I'm in the living room with the family, maybe watching TV together but can still use all the apps on the main PC from my severly underpowered laptop. It also means I don't have to worry about syncing databases, config files and other stuff that can become problematical when running apps installed on separate computers.

        I note that RDS gets a mention below. Is that Remote Desktop Services or Remote Display Services? Will I be able to run an app remotely and display it's window locally or is it like MS RDS where you have run the entire desktop on the remote PC and basically just stream the video to a local window?

  4. wolfetone Silver badge
    Pint

    So Proud

    There was a time around when Fedora utilised Gnome 3 for the first time where I thought the distro was going to fall out of favour. It was going to have a long painful death because it was buggy as hell and it didn't feel loved.

    But now? Now it's amazing! They got their act together a few versions ago, and it just feels like a proper polished OS now. Gnome itself is lovely to use, much MUCH better than Unity or Cinnamon (yeah, I went there). I'm just so glad people kept the faith with both Fedora and Gnome, and now we have a distro to be proud of.

    Best news of 2017, and it's only the first week of January! A hat tip to all you fine developers, and this pint's on me. Share it amongst yourselves though, I'm not made of money.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: So Proud

      They've not got their act together. They still use systemd. Sadly, more and more is getting married to it. Now let's talk about Weyland and systemd...

  5. find users who cut cat tail

    Unfortunately, the fact you are so happy with GNOME 3 (and talk only about GNOME 3) means I have to distrust also everything else in the review. It does not even matter who of us is sane and who is the crazy one, or if we both are crazy. The abyss between our expectations of what should work and how things should behave is just too wide and deep. For me GNOME 3 is the closest thing to a proof that aliens are among us, and are apparently trying to take over desktop environment development, as I can get...

    Of course, I will start cautiously testing upgrades to F25 anyway -- workstations always with XFce. That's life with Fedora...

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      Try MATE if you can't stand GNOME 3

      There is always the MATE Compiz spin for those of us who find that GNOME 3 is unusable. I'll try GNOME 3 again later today to see if it has improved, but the last time that I did it was too dumbed down and lacked things like multiple desktops - that I just cannot do without.

      1. DanDanDan

        Re: Try MATE if you can't stand GNOME 3

        Multiple desktops work fine for me in Gnome 3. I must say I never saw the issue with Gnome 3, but then again, I wasn't an early adopter. I think I waited until 3.2 was released before I gave it a go. I found Unity just too big a paradigm shift to be useful. Things weren't where they should be.

        My main gripe with Gnome 3 is that when you're in a folder and start typing the file name, instead of just selecting that file so you can do something with it (like move it to another folder), it opens up a "find file" search and starts spitting out other files with the same name from nested folders. Infuriating to say the least. Other than that though, it's fine.

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Try MATE if you can't stand GNOME 3

          ACK on both "use MATE" and "gnome 3 has multiple desktops"

          The biggest gripe from me regarding gnome 3 is the "fat finger friendliness". with gnome 2, then Mate, I can put 22 launch icons, plus the menu, system monitor, and the clock stuff into the top panel, and STILL have room for white space between groups of things. I can't even do HALF of that with Gnome 3 and they only let you group left, center, right. I want MULTIPLE groups, and positioned manually, MY way, not THEIR way. Like that. You can't cram them next to one another where a mouse does JUST fine selecting and clicking, because, fat-finger-friendly and "dumb it down for those who aren't on board with the new, shiny".

          I wrote a web page, once, "making gnome 3 usable", which insulted gnome 3 while explaining how to deal with its quirks and set it up to be usable again [mostly]. And I (somewhat carefully) posted a link to it on a gnome 3 developer mailing list. I got several 'near flames' from various gnome 3 devs, but they wouldn't take the hint. THEN, Mate appeared, and the problems were solved!

          1. Kiwi
            Linux

            Re: Try MATE if you can't stand GNOME 3

            with gnome 2, then Mate, I can put 22 launch icons, plus the menu, system monitor, and the clock stuff into the top panel, and STILL have room for white space between groups of things. I can't even do HALF of that with Gnome 3 and they only let you group left, center, right. I want MULTIPLE groups, and positioned manually, MY way, not THEIR way.

            And here you have why I also use Mate and not Gnome! Way back when I first tried out Linux seriously as a desktop this was one of the things that sold me. Windows had its rather limited single taskbar, Gnome had that plus I could add more, and put on launch icons, menus, monitors, and if I really began to run out of room I could add more. I could also have separate ones for my second screen.

            I'd played with a few things and ran KDE and whatever came on the Knoppix disks, but Gnome2 was a big part of me becoming someone who used Linux on the desktop most of the time.

            Every time I've used G3 I've stopped as quickly as possible, and only from a live image. Did intend to install it once but thankfully hit the "try" instead of "install" buttons, survived a few minutes trying to get it into a usable state. Hopefully they've improved?

            Glad to see there is a Mate version for Fedora, downloading now and will give it a spin soon. Will try Gnome3 again but I think

    2. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      KDE and xfce4 seem OK on Fedora 25 (both with GDM) as well as the default Gnome 3. The KDE 'spin' is actually very nice and runs responsively on a very modest dual core laptop with 2Gb RAM and a small SSD drive.

      As a result of US patents (finally) running out, mp3 playback is easily installable on 25 and encoding/playback is likely in 26/27 without enabling extra repositories.

      I personally find anaconda, the installer program, with its 'spoke and wheel' logic extremely confusing and I need to flail around a bit to achieve a custom partition layout. I need to specify a custom layout because anaconda insists on allocating 60Gb of disk space for root and the remainder for home when using auto-partition. A bit tricky if you have a small SSD drive (e.g. 64Gb). Most normal people probably won't be (re)installing that often, especially if the version to version update actually works well.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who's the guy in the picture?

    How can anyone get so obese that the fat actually noticably sticks out from their face?? Whoever that guy is he'll probably drop dead of a heart attack in his 30s if he doesn't lose weight.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

      "How can anyone get so obese that the fat actually noticably sticks out from their face?? Whoever that guy is he'll probably drop dead of a heart attack in his 30s if he doesn't lose weight."

      If you get run over by a bus tomorrow he'll have outlived you, even with his obesity.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

        "If you get run over by a bus tomorrow he'll have outlived you, even with his obesity."

        I think you're definately going to be a finalist in the Most Fatuous Counterpoint of the Month award. Congratulations.

        Plus since I'm older than any age he's likely to make in that state you're wrong already.

        1. wolfetone Silver badge

          Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

          "I think you're definately going to be a finalist in the Most Fatuous Counterpoint of the Month award. Congratulations"

          Well I was going for the Most Judgemental Dickhead of the Month Award but you beat me to it.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

            "Well I was going for the Most Judgemental Dickhead of the Month Award but you beat me to it."

            Nothing wrong with judging gluttony Little Snowflake. Or should that be Fat Snowflake?

            1. wolfetone Silver badge

              Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

              "Nothing wrong with judging gluttony Little Snowflake. Or should that be Fat Snowflake?"

              Plenty wrong with it when it doesn't concern you. How does it affect you? Are you worried your taxes are being spent on him or something?

              I did wonder if the Daily Mail website was missing a commentard. Now we know.

            2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

              Hey boltar: you're a piece of shit human being and I hope you drop dead. And yes, that's a judgement, you bigoted fuckbag.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

                "Hey boltar: you're a piece of shit human being and I hope you drop dead. And yes, that's a judgement, you bigoted fuckbag."

                Aww, don't get all upset poppet. Have another box of doughnuts and a supersized milk shake.

                1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                  Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

                  You're the one bellyaching that people won't volunteer to build a graphics subsystem to your personal specifications, mate. "Bigot believes others should do as they demand, and has a tantrum when they don't: news at 11." When you cry alone in the dark, can anyone stand you enough to notice, let alone care?

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

                    "You're the one bellyaching that people won't volunteer to build a graphics subsystem to your personal specifications, mate."

                    Seems you either can't read or have comprehension problems. Try harder.

                    "When you cry alone in the dark, can anyone stand you enough to notice, let alone care"

                    I suspect you're more of an expert on that than myself. Why not tell us the answer?

                    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
                      Pint

                      Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

                      "Seems you either can't read or have comprehension problems. Try harder."

                      I do have problems comprehending why you think you're so important people should be developing graphics subsystems with features you want, instead of features that everyone else wants.

                      Get out there and convince people that what you want is important to more than just yourself and go fund development of the features you want. It isn't that hard, really. The rest of us managed to get an entire distribution without systemd funded, because we didn't like what TPTB were doing. Surely, if you're so correct, and your view so common or important you can rally your vast social circle to accomplish the same.

                      Oh, that's right...you're a friendless bigot without any social skills! Too bad. Suck it up princess, 'cause ain't noone got time for you.

                      Beer, because after this thread, everyone could use one.

            3. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

      Who's the guy in the picture?

      Could be Wayland himself? (weighs about as much as a landmass..)

      Looking at the downvotes, there must be a number of people the "fat finger friendly" Gnome3 was written for reading here...

      Disclosure: I write this as someone who comes from an obese family line and could stand to lose a fair bit of weight - in fact if I did stand more often I would lose some weight.. I am not quite yet 45 and I have already outlived my mother, all but one of her siblings (7), my grandmother, and several cousins.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

        Welcome to Linux! Peace and luv and communism for the beautiful people

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

      I wondered that too (without the, er, tackiness at the end of the initial post and indeed in various subsequent ones).

      My initial guess was that maybe he was one of the recent generation of heavyweight white rap vocalists, knowing El Reg's fondness for musical subheadlines. But I couldn't see a connection and usually there's some kind of connection. So, having time on my handsright now, I followed up.

      A few clicks and one drag to GoOgle image search led to this:

      https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/jerry-messing

      "Meet “The Fedora Guy,” One Of The Internet’s Most Famous Memes

      BuzzFeed News spoke to Jerry Messing, the actor turned meme whose poor attempt at paying homage to The Blues Brothers made him one of the most widely recognised memes on the internet."

      Never heard of him myself, and the same probably goes for quite a few other readers.

      I kinda lost interest at that point but others may still be interested (buzzfeed? internet meme? actor??? => probably not for me).

      Want a proper heavyweight vocalist (and guitar, bass, and drums), and a bit of a laugh: enjoy this:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7gK3oeVUV4 Mammoth: Fat Man

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who's the guy in the picture?

      How can anyone's unpleasant attitude get so inflated that it sticks out and makes them look very ugly? Whoever *that* guy is will be very lonely in his 70s if he doesn't lose judgment

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another major change no one is asking for

    First it was systemd now wayland is slowly shoving itself into the face of everyone. Apparently its better than X (say its developers) and no one uses the remote graphics capabilities of X anymore (say its developers) so wayland doesn't need them. But its new and shiny and must be better than what we have because, err, ... its new and shiny!

    Sure, X isn't perfect but it works and works pretty well frankly and yes, power users DO still use remote X sessions! Problems can be fixed - there's no law against an X12 being released so why do we need to go down the complete re-write route just for the sake of it just because some devs who probably weren't even born when X was first released think they can do better? Its systemd all over again.

    1. yossarianuk

      Re: Another major change no one is asking for

      But people have been crying out for the end of X11 for a long time.

      For a start there are inherent security issues with X11 that will never be fixed (like Windows its the design itself that can not be fixed - see atom tables, an unfixable Windows security flaw)

      i.e

      https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2015/11/looking-at-the-security-of-plasmawayland/

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Another major change no one is asking for

        "(like Windows its the design itself that can not be fixed - see atom tables, an unfixable Windows security flaw)"

        And none of them are particularly serious given the use cases for X. Hardly reasons for a completely new system. The major issue which was unencrypted data over the wire has been solved by ssh tunnelling for years.

      2. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Another major change no one is asking for

        "But people have been crying out for the end of X11 for a long time."

        which people? I haven't... [I want to MEET those 'straw men' and not just hear about them]

        (all _I_ want is a really simple C language cross-platform toolkit that lets me have "virtual space" in a multi-line edit window... wait, I'm working on one!!! X11workbench, which is still pre-alpha after all these years)

        But you see, THEY get what THEY want, but _I_ do not get what _I_ want. that's hardly FAIR.

        I have to wonder if it's the *SAME* kind of thinking behind Wayland, systemd, and gnome 3, that gave us Windows "Ape" (8.x) and Win-10-nic...

        (yes we do NOT need "that' in the open source world, *especially* if it's part of 'Embrace, Extend, EXTINGUISH' or similar)

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Another major change no one is asking for

          "Win-10-nic.."

          This is probably going to be a forehead slap moment for me but although I (possibly wrongly) assume that Win-10-nic is some sort of insulting term, I can't for the life of me work out what it is.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Another major change no one is asking for

            word play on Titanic.

    2. jelabarre59

      Re: Another major change no one is asking for

      ...and no one uses the remote graphics capabilities of X anymore (say its developers) so wayland doesn't need them.

      I've been saying all along that Wayland should never be allowed into the wild until it's **DEFAULT** configuration supports remote graphics. Not the usual mealy-mouthed excuse of "well, it *could* support it if you wanted, as long as the end-user recompiles it with some obscure and undocumented switches, and then configures it to run". I'm OK with providing the option to disable it, but that should *NEVER* be the default.

      If I wanted a kneecapped, bloated, only-works-locally solution which would require some sort of export-the-full-desktop remote option, I'd run MSWindows, because as it is, SystemD and Wayland are simply turning Linux into another borkified cesspool like MSWindows.

    3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Another major change no one is asking for

      @Boltar: Wayland isn't systemd, and its devs aren't fucking Pottering. It isn't about shoving some monolithic horror on the community against our will. It isn't trying to take over. Wayland is an honest attempt to do things better, and most of the community is behind it.

      Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 . It explains everything you'll need to know.

      TL;DW on it: for all that there are things you like about X, it had become nearly impossible for the devs to maintain it, there weren't enough devs actually offering to maintain it, and a lot of people (myself included) wanted more modern features from our graphics subsystem which simply couldn't be done without tearing X down to the ground and rebuilding.

      So they did. *shrug*

      For the record: X is far closer to systemd than Weyland. X essentially became it's own OS. (The dumbest OS you've ever seen, as the video says.) Weyland does one thing, and - we hope - does it well.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Another major change no one is asking for

        "there weren't enough devs actually offering to maintain it, and a lot of people (myself included) wanted more modern features from our graphics subsystem which simply couldn't be done without tearing X down to the ground and rebuilding."

        Its perfectly possible to rebuild a system from the ground up yet offer the same feature set and API as the original PLUS have all the new stuff. The fact that wayland devs have tossed aside remoting as some sort of irrelevancy (oh, and it purely co-incidentaly happens to be hard to implement properly) leads me to believe its more an ego trip and a halo CV entry for them than it is a genuine X replacement for the community.

        "Wayland is an honest attempt to do things better, and most of the community is behind it."

        That may be the case for your small subset of whatever "community" it is you're refering to, but I don't remember hearing other linux users saying "Now if only they could replace the graphics server my machine would be perfect!".

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Another major change no one is asking for

          Why should devs writing this for free implement something that only a small fraction of the userbase have been shown to want, especially if those devs don't want or need it? You're free to add the capability if you want. I don't want it. Nobody I know in the real world wants it. (But we *do* want RDP compatibility.)

          As for your narrow view of the community, who cares? I know lots of people who complain about X all the time. Hell, I'm one of them. X is fucking broken, and has needed to be burned to the ground for ages. I'm glad it's finally happening. So very, very many things that have plagued people so many of us for so long can finally start being ironed out.

          Now, as to your desire to have remote window drawing instead of using RDP and doing full remote sessions, that's stupid, and you're stupid for wanting it that way. That said, nothing prevents you from building a Wayland compositor that will support this. If there are so many people who want this, you can take the reference compositor (Weston) and build that functionality into it.

          The majority of us will use remote session capabilities like normal people and thank our respective deities (or lack thereof) that we don't have to use remote windowing over WAN links like it was the bloody stone ages anymore.

          Cheers.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Another major change no one is asking for

            "Why should devs writing this for free implement something that only a small fraction of the userbase have been shown to want, especially if those devs don't want or need it?"

            They can implement or not implement whatever they like. But if they want their system to be a serious replacement to something that DOES have certain functionality then yes, they need to implement it. Not doing so is just arrogant and lazy.

            "You're free to add the capability if you want"

            Oh FFS spare us that write-it-yourself argument you zealots always fall back on when you're backed into a corner. You think many sys admins are experts in linux graphics subsystems programming in C? You fucking clown.

            "As for your narrow view of the community, who cares?"

            Oh well clearly you have your finger on the pulse of the linux desktop community. So give us a quick rundown then of all the people around the world who've been demanding a replacement for X and some stats about what percentage of all linux users they are. Take your time.

            "Now, as to your desire to have remote window drawing instead of using RDP and doing full remote sessions, that's stupid, and you're stupid for wanting it that way. "

            You seriously need to get a clue mate. I mean that.

            1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              Re: Another major change no one is asking for

              "They can implement or not implement whatever they like. But if they want their system to be a serious replacement to something that DOES have certain functionality then yes, they need to implement it. Not doing so is just arrogant and lazy."

              Wrong. Their system will be the serious replacement to X because the number of people who want the remote windowing is too small to matter. The functionality you are moaning about isn't important. That may be lazy, but it isn't arrogant. They are correct and you are not.

              "Oh FFS spare us that write-it-yourself argument you zealots always fall back on when you're backed into a corner. You think many sys admins are experts in linux graphics subsystems programming in C? You fucking clown."

              You can get together with all those numerous people whom you claim want this functionality and fund development. There are umpteen crowdfunding sites. Get over yourself, you self-important goblin.

              "Oh well clearly you have your finger on the pulse of the linux desktop community. So give us a quick rundown then of all the people around the world who've been demanding a replacement for X and some stats about what percentage of all linux users they are. Take your time."

              I couldn't list all the people who want it, because there isn't space enough. Suffice it to say that the last time the numbers were run (I know about this having been done in 2012), over 70% of respondents (and it was 1000+ respondents) wanted X burned down and replaced outright. And so it was.

              "You seriously need to get a clue mate. I mean that."

              Okay. Got one. Several in fact. Why haven't you gone out and gotten some of your own?

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Another major change no one is asking for

                "Wrong. Their system will be the serious replacement to X because the number of people who want the remote windowing is too small to matter. The functionality you are moaning about isn't important. That may be lazy, but it isn't arrogant. They are correct and you are not."

                I do love the first class irony in that paragraph :)

                "You can get together with all those numerous people whom you claim want this functionality and fund development"

                I don't have to - we have X. What I don't want is some POS graphics system shoved onto us that we don't want simply because some know it al kids think they can do better.

                "I couldn't list all the people who want it, because there isn't space enough. Suffice it to say that the last time the numbers were run (I know about this having been done in 2012), over 70% of respondents (and it was 1000+ respondents) wanted X burned down and replaced outright. And so it was."

                You'll be able to provide a link then won't you sunshine.

                "Okay. Got one. Several in fact."

                Perhaps attempt to demonstrate them then. You're the one making the assertion that the majority want a replacement for X - put up or shut up.

                1. Tom 38
                  Stop

                  Re: Another major change no one is asking for

                  Thing is boltar, this change isn't made for you, it is made for the people writing and maintaining X and applications using X. They don't like it. They want to do different things. They went and did different things.

                  This isn't revolutionary, X has been wanted to be rewritten by the people who write and maintain X since before Xorg even existed. In fact, the existence of Xorg was a necessary step before replacing the parts of X that needed replacing, splitting the monolith into smaller packages.

                  So, you don't need to use this new stuff. You can do almost whatever the hell you want; the one thing you can't do is wail and cry because the feature you want is not in the new stuff; the people interested in writing the new stuff are not interested in that feature. They aren't particularly interested in what you want. They rewrote it because of what they want.

                  You've already been annoyed by someone saying "go off and write it if you want it"; it's not necessary to go that far, simply find other people who are interested in the feature that you want and go from there. Continue using X if you so desire.

                  Just stop whining like a little child; your toys are still in your pram, this is a new pram that you can choose to put your toys in. Or not. Whatever. Just stop whining.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Another major change no one is asking for

                    "Thing is boltar, this change isn't made for you, it is made for the people writing and maintaining X and applications using X. They don't like it. They want to do different things. They went and did different things."

                    I've written a boatload of programs using Xlib and various extension libraries over the years. The API isn't the best but I've seen a lot worse and anyone using higher level libraries such as gtk or qt doesn't even have to care about the quirks of X. So your point is BS.

                    "They aren't particularly interested in what you want. They rewrote it because of what they want."

                    Thats fine, until they start persuading distros to use their system INSTEAD of X because they think its better. Who the hell are they to force their pet project on people who don't want it?

                    "Just stop whining like a little child; your toys are still in your pram, this is a new pram that you can choose to put your toys in. Or not. Whatever. Just stop whining."

                    No, there is no choice if the other pram has been sent to the recycle and isn't an option. Ever tried installing X from scratch? Its damn hard. And pointing out that a replacement for a major core component of linux doesn't have the same functionality as its predecessor is not "whining", its a legitimate complaint. If you think everyone who disagrees with you is whining then you're in for some big shocks in life. Do yourself a favour and grow up you dumb Millennial

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Another major change no one is asking for

                      "this change isn't made for you, it is made for the people writing and maintaining X and applications using X. They don't like it. They want to do different things. They went and did different things"

                      OK so far. X11 really isn't the world's most coder-friendly API, and the performance doesn't always make the most of the available hardware. Not everyone thinks those are the main issues of the day, that those issues are more important than losing existing valuable (to some people) functionality.

                      "anyone using higher level libraries such as gtk or qt doesn't even have to care about the quirks of X. "

                      Ah. Someone who understands. I can't remember the last time a saw a real "pure X" application. Any suggestions? I mean, there's xneko, and I think xosview is brill in its own little way, but in all fairness theyre not reall applications are they?

                      Anyone with a clue in the last few decades has coded their UI stuff (and maybe more) against some kind of higher level library, of which qt and/or gtk are two examples. Others are available.

                      Nothing against wayland in principle. And as a supplement to what's already tried tested and proven, why not.

                    2. Tom 38

                      Re: Another major change no one is asking for

                      I've written a boatload of programs using Xlib and various extension libraries over the years. The API isn't the best but I've seen a lot worse and anyone using higher level libraries such as gtk or qt doesn't even have to care about the quirks of X. So your point is BS.

                      People writing Qt or GTK or Compiz do have to care about it. X is changing precisely because the people writing X and writing the primary toolkits that use X want it to change.

                      No, there is no choice if the other pram has been sent to the recycle and isn't an option. Ever tried installing X from scratch? Its damn hard. And pointing out that a replacement for a major core component of linux doesn't have the same functionality as its predecessor is not "whining", its a legitimate complaint. If you think everyone who disagrees with you is whining then you're in for some big shocks in life. Do yourself a favour and grow up you dumb Millennial

                      Yes, I have installed X from scratch - many times. You're not required to run Wayland, its an option. You're not required to run Fedora, its an option. Wailing how all your toys have been taken away from you if you choose that option is whining like a little baby. I don't think you are whining because you disagree with me, but because how you are complaining about it is portraying you as a whining little baby.

                      PS: Not a millennial, personally I grew up a long time ago. One of the crowning characteristics of millennials is their excessive entitlement issues. You might not consider yourself a millennial, but you act like it.

          2. P. Lee

            Re: Another major change no one is asking for

            I hate to disagree with Trevor, but the widespread use of Citrix' "published application" portals and the increased usage of SaaS suggests there is demand for remote rendering.

            X is far too bandwidth heavy, but the web protocols and languages are far too slow. We need some hybrid - open source Citrix+some extra smarts.

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

    5. Christian Berger

      The problem is that there are people percieving problems

      ...and wanting to solve those problems, as it means a way of expressing themselves. Having your code in a major OpenSource software project gets you noticed and gets you a decent job.

      However most of those people are to immature to actually improve the situation. At best they come up with something that has different problems, at worst they open up a new dimensions of problems which will be fixed by yet another project. (see OSS vs ALSA and Pulseaudio)

      If I was to make such a "windowing system" I'd take a look at what other, more innovative opterating systems have done. One example is "Plan 9" which exposes (virtually) all APIs via virtual filesystems. So you have a "main" directory which represents your screen, and every window would be a subdirectory. Inside those windows you could, for example, have your GUI elements as individual files/subdirectories. Since this works with basic file IO routines it's language independent and you can, for example, have a GUI toolkit that has elements written in different languages running as different processes. Since you have a file-based interface, you could even set access rights or export parts of that tree over the network. Essentially you get less code and get a much more flexible system. While speed might seem to be a problem when you first look at it, the use of mmap can easily solve that problem. However that's just my view of the world, unlike the "Wayland, Freedesktop, Systemd"-people, I do not think it's a good idea to force this on the world.

  8. Alistair
    Windows

    Wayland. Fedora 25

    Doc Ock, Steven R.;

    I have a pot of coffee.

    Remote X sessions are an absolute requirement. And getting KDE EGL sorted would be quite good. At least with work stuff I can live with nouveau, but...

    Have it popping away in a vm. Have to admit they've done a brilliant job with balloon.

    1. Dazed and Confused

      Re: Wayland. Fedora 25

      > Remote X sessions are an absolute requirement.

      Remote X has a major issue apart from the security side of things which is handled by an SSH tunnel. A lot of X applications are latency sensitive, so while they work well over a LAN they are often a pain over a WAN. If you're sitting in Blighty and looking after a stack of servers in the US then using X directly can be a pain. Remotely displaying with VNC leads to much more responsive displays (and you can still tunnel it through SSH).

      I've not yet played with Wayland, I'll have to have a play, been banging around with X11 for 30 years come later this year and of course X10 before that.

  9. Skoorb

    > The only downside? Fedora lacks an LTS release, but now that updating is less harrowing, that's less of a concern

    Eh. It does have an LTS release. It's called RHEL (or CentOS or Oracle Linux). Remember it is built as a desktop version as well.

    The current version (7) goes EOL 30 June 2024, and even the old version 5 branch from 2007 is still getting critical security patches until March this year.

  10. Tom 7

    First Wayland?

    Raspbians been using it for a while - who came first?

    1. Tom 7

      Re: First Wayland?

      Sorry not Raspbian - it does seem to be on the Pi-Top though.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: First Wayland?

      https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/preview-the-upcoming-maynard-desktop/ (2014)

      NB Preview.

  11. Tim99 Silver badge
    Coat

    I'd be more excited

    If RH admitted that Poettering's spawn was a leg-pull, and not a plan to lock us out.

    Mine's the one with K&R in the pocket >>========>

    1. stephanh

      Re: I'd be more excited

      But Wayland is not compatible with the Poettering method of software development. It is lacking in the following ways.

      1. It doesn't break existing applications. Qt and GTK applications can directly use the Wayland backend in those toolkits while other applications can use the X compatibility layer.

      2. The API doesn't change constantly, they have a stable API in place since 2012.

      3. It is not a single do-all program. The legacy X stuff has been factored out to a separate process leaving the core Wayland server smaller than an X server.

      4. It uses simple text-based .ini files for configuration. If it were Poettering-compliant you'd need a special configuration editor for its binary format; said editor would of course only run under Wayland.

      5. The Wayland developers have failed to alienate the X developers. In fact, they are mostly the same people!

      So clearly lacking the master touch of Mr Poettering.

      1. rjmx
        Thumb Up

        Re: I'd be more excited

        Sigh. If only I could upvote that one 5000000 times.

        systemd was/is a classic example of what *not* to to when you change a basic OS component.

  12. Beuk

    Redshift on Gnome 3/Wayland

    Been using this the past couple of weeks, works like a charm:

    https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mystro256/gnome-redshift/

  13. cmannett85

    I've used it for a few weeks now. It works, I like it.

  14. Steve the Cynic

    "Aside from possibly making you feel old – yes, you've (possibly) been using Linux for longer than the lifespan of a US patent"

    Yup, that's me. First touched Linux in 1995. As a development environment for $JOB, no less.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Linux

      "First touched Linux in 1995"

      you got me beat by about 8 years. I installed Debian Woody the first time I used Linux... and FreeBSD 4.7 slightly before that. It was a true "awakening".

      gnome 1.x with sawfish... bzzzzZZZZZ! [it used to make that sound on startup]

  15. Tom 38
    Headmaster

    I haven't [..] had any apps that won't work.

    [..]

    I like to use Redshift or f.lux to tint-shift my screen at night as I find that much easier on my eyes. Neither application seems to work under Wayland

    Er.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wayland only used for GNOME 3

    If you're sane, and you use something else (I use Cinnamon, but there are a lot of choices in Fedora these days) you are still using X.

    Which is fine by me, by the time Wayland support comes to Cinnamon all those GNOME users will have worked out any bugs, or the stabilized extension support will mean there are finally enough extensions that can be added to GNOME 3 to make it...well....not be GNOME 3 :)

  17. phil 27

    Had a play with wayland and gnome3 on debian after reading these comments about it. Found it broke my synergy install, reverted back to E17.

    I dont want a entire session remoted like rdp, if I did, I'd install vnc and be done with it. I want a single window from a single app on the remote machine without all the weight of the entire desktop.

    No remote, no usey.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm back to F24 everywhere

    I'm back to F24 everywhere -- two reasons:

    1. Could not get F25 to install on an Acer laptop (Intel N3050, two cores, 2GB memory, 32GB SSD, UEFI). The F25/XFCE spin runs well and looks fine, and the "install to hard drive" process also seems to work fine, but the machine could not be persuaded to reboot, even after three slightly different attempts. UEFI seemed to be the source of the problem.

    2. F25/XFCE installed on a non-UEFI laptop (Toshiba AMD Phenom, four cores, 8GB memory, 120GB SSD). After an install using the F25/XFCE spin, the Toshiba booted OK. But after some use, the XFCE login screen failed to recognise a valid user name and password more than once. This got fixed with some superuser magic via CTRL-ALT-F2 and CTRL-ALT-F1.

    So this user won't be using F25, even if others think it's wonderful. F24 actually IS wonderful!!

  19. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    It is possible to remote a single application via RDP in Windows

    Additionally, there's no sensible reason why RDP enhancements couldn't be added when using *nix.

    Yes, remote X is a neat trick, but aside from the latency issues there's also the dropped connection issue, something that does not exist with RDP. Having a connection to an X server app drop, and it killing the application gets old fast.

    Looking around there's been xpra for a while, but that's a compositing window manager that proxies to the existing X session. I can't see why you wouldn't want to use RDP. X applications continue to work, so historic access is not an issue.

    I agree that remote sessions are a necessity - I use them regularly even connecting to VMs on the same system (When one VM with hardware GPU passthrough is not displaying anything, and your main desktop is actually another VM with GPU passthrough, it's necessary to do a remote X session to XVnc to localhost and see what is displayed on the VM's screen.. The alternative is enabling VNC access on other interfaces than localhost, but that's not terribly secure)

  20. Matt 43

    Everyone is losing sight of the main problem here.

    Guy in the picture is wearing a Trilby.

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