How long will Xorg live?

kpedersen said:
WPF is open-source but is kind of deprecated (in typical Microsoft ways, similar to VB6)

In terms of enterprise (stuff that keeps things ticking), .NET/WinForms doesn't quite have the same market penetration as Java/Swing. KDE is of no real relevance for the industry.
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Maybe some brave soul could spin off Weston into an API based compositor as a drop replacement in for the swaths of existing X11 WMs on FreeBSD. Who wouldn’t want a stable API/ABI to develop on? That’d be interesting.

kpedersen said:
I'm surprised Wakefield is taking so long for Wayland to be honest. Linux is a key platform for Java, alongside AIX, Solaris and other classic commercial UNIX.
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Probably the only thing keeping Linux relevant in the enterprise. IMO It has such little to offer. Tier 1 support for OpenJDK is much needed for FreeBSD. I think Java is cool too.
 
What does a newbie see in all this: FreeBSD without GUI and user environment in packages and ports (what is called "base" here). This is "bare", "clean" FreeBSD, which is minimally subject to breakage during updates, crashes, etc. This reminds me of the Linux kernel.
And there is "everything else" - GUI, self-written scripts, all sorts of crutches, small and backwater programs assembled from sticks and crap by individual users and programmers. This reminds me of everything that is behind the Linux kernel - distributions and crap software of all stripes.
Therefore, in my paradigm, I do not see much difference between the "architecture of society" in Linux and FreeBSD.
And the last observation. Just like Linux has free beta testers for corporations (Fedora for RedHat, Ubuntu for Canonical), here we are, in part, free beta testers for Solaris (the same OpenZFS, forked many years ago from the "true" ZFS from Solaris). What, did they just give us a piece of code? - f*ck. A clever trick was done. I may be wrong, but this is how I see the situation. I can't live without conspiracy theories.
That's why today I have something to choose from for MY convenient and custom WORKING ENVIRONMENT.
I don't really cling to "Desktops" or a program for creating screenshots. I don't give a damn what program I have for screenshots: from programmer "A" or from programmer "B", "C". I'll choose one of the three. And that's it - there is no problem. It's kind of stupid to bother with such trifles as brooms, rags and dustpans for cleaning. Today one rag, tomorrow another rag. The main thing is a powerful engine (vacuum cleaner, turbo engine, etc.). Today one environment, tomorrow another. This is not critical. The main thing is to have a BASE. This is the basic FreeBSD.
 
Beastie7 said:
Maybe some brave soul could spin off Weston into an API based compositor as a drop replacement in for the swaths of existing X11 WMs on FreeBSD. Who wouldn’t want a stable API/ABI to develop on? That’d be interesting.
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I think that would be a good approach. I am surprised that no API / abstraction libraries for X11->Wayland have appeared. Perhaps with more time. Weirdly Wayland is *still* in the market penetration stage.
 
I think xorg won't die as long as NVidia doesn't fix XWayland issues with their GPUs.
Another reason for it to continue its existence would be the userbase which still maintains, and fixes security holes.
If the userbase don't loose interest in Xorg it will probably continue to live.
There are also a lot of wayland deniers so, if one person stops commiting someone else is going to attempt it, I think.
I am not really worried about xorg, but rather about getting XWayland to work somedays on NVidia GPUs.
If someone manages to get XWayland to work on NVidia please let me know :D
 
This thread is going on now for almost three years, which might be conclusive on all those 'how long will <something> be avaliable'
 
X server death is a self fulfilling prophecy.

X.org develop Wayland, they stop maintaining the X server, predict code rot, etc. Users buy into the FUD spreading and talk the X server to death. Tech press run articles, because bad news is good click bait.

X.org obviously want users to move to Wayland, even though the latter is a typical mess from Linux land. That doesn't matter, because hobbyist users are just volunteer beta testers. Systemd was similarly foisted on Linux users.

It was supposed to be the Bazaar : here's whats on offer, use whatever you like.

Now big corporations are funding and steering Linux, Wayland and systemd and as with the likes of Microsoft, it's all about manipulation and coercion : "software XYZ is EoL, it won't be supported, bugs won't get fixed" etc. In short - free software developed with a corporate mentality and corporate money.
 
mro said:
https://x.org seems to have disappeared https://mastodon.decentralised.social/@wezm/114386105983566716
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Works just fine here.

1745398321113.png
 
blackhole said:
Now big corporations are funding and steering Linux, Wayland and systemd and as with the likes of Microsoft, it's all about manipulation and coercion : "software XYZ is EoL, it won't be supported, bugs won't get fixed" etc. In short - free software developed with a corporate mentality and corporate money.
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We depend, but to the least extent. Linux today is fragmentation. Corporations fight for the crowd. They don't need individual freaks. Any bank fights for the crowd. Any social network fights for the crowd. They need the masses. From the masses - profit. There are also hipsters. These are the people of the system. This is a glossy youth subculture. They also get their profit. But it is impossible to ignore Wayland completely. This is not an ecosystem that is alien to me today. Wayland does not yet have a corporate core. I am not an expert, but I did not notice that Wayland poses a threat to us. Correct me if I am wrong.
 
USerID's link seems to be aimed at Gnome Fedora users. That is, if you use Fedora and do a default install, X should be easily available, and for Gnome users, you may not even notice a difference--at present, Fedora's default for Gnome is Wayland.

Currently, at least, there are a variety of other Fedora downloads, including one that allows you to perform a minimal install, to which you can add an X11 window manager or desktop afterwards.
 
Well you would need to look at who funds X.org to answer that. It's the same funding as Debian, which is based around systemd (and gnome). Namely: SPI. SPI is one or those organisations which manages funding/donations/legal for FOSS projects. It's never that simple to see clearly where money comes from and whos money is going where. What we do know is that Microsoft funded recent debconf events and is interested in Wayland.

If a big tech corp funds a FOSS project, it's because there is a business case/strategy for doing so.

MS was working on its own wayland compositor https://www.phoronix.com/news/Microsoft-Writing-Wayland-Comp

github.com

GitHub - microsoft/wslg: Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios

Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios - microsoft/wslg
github.com github.com
 
scottro said:
link seems to be aimed at Gnome Fedora users.
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Yes, that's for sure. But our task is not to miss the "moment". I look and see that the work on promoting Wayland is going quite successfully, despite the second-order problems.
blackhole said:
It's never that simple to see clearly where money comes from and whos money is going where.
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Thank you. You understand the essence of the "money-people-services" movement well. And you described it well. Moreover, briefly and clearly. But speaking directly on the topic, I draw conclusions for myself: in 3-4 months, I will be crawling from X to Wayland. Moreover, I consider sway and other tilings to be more promising WM than traditional, stack ones. The paradigm of the classic desktop is no longer relevant for me. I am already designing a rigid pragmatic and minimalistic machine for myself. I am not saying that I am not a user of the "desktop" concept. But these things: X, GNOME, KDE and XFCE, have become fat. On forums people write that even LXQT DE has become fat and unwieldy...It is better to break yourself and reconfigure today than to run with suitcases along the platform with sweaty armpits, catching up with the train...A big promising thing is jails. An important topic is launching and working of the browser in jail. And then we'll see.
My "working little bull" in the future will look like this: not a laptop, mini-ITX case, 2 video cards, FreeBSD, ZFS + stripe of two ssd M.2, Wayland + sway + Firefox in jail. The rest is optional and facultative (not particularly important).
 
Well, if you like window managers (vs desktop environments) both labwc and dwl are good replacements for openbox and dwm. I have a page https://srobb.net/wayland.html with a few starting tips, and a link to a NapoleonWils0n's video as as a link or two to discussions on these forums. As for Fedora itself, dwl compiles on it, and there's an rpm for labwc.
I prefer (and generally use) xorg, but if FreeBSD decided tomorrow to drop it for Wayland, which ain't gonna happen for a long time, IMO, I'd be alright with dwl. BTW, the dwl maintainer is *very* responsive, and (hope he doesn't get get mad at me for revealing this) quite nice even if the answer is RIGHT THERE IN THE MAN PAGE fercryinoutloud, and the questioner is too oblivious to see it. Err, talking a friend's experience of course. <looks down and scuffs foot>.
 
Thanks for the article. But they can also "teleport" basic user programs to Wayland. Then we won't be able to use anything under X. And FreeBSD programmers won't do it. What to do then?
 
USerID said:
Thanks for the article. But they can also "teleport" basic user programs to Wayland. Then we won't be able to use anything under X. And FreeBSD programmers won't do it. What to do then?
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Then we will fix the abstraction layers. No-one will write code directly for Wayland (just like no-one writes code directly for X11 these days). Gtk, Qt and things like that will always be able to have X11 support. Just like they will always support Win32, Cocoa, etc.

Sure, the Gnome people might threaten to do it as a way to push Wayland whilst it is struggling to gain a foothold but ironically, its not actually up to them.
 
kpedersen said:
Sure, the Gnome people might threaten to do it as a way to push Wayland whilst it is struggling to gain a foothold but ironically, its not actually up to them.
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It really is though. The whole GTK/GNOME/systemd/Wayland sandwich is practically control by our IBM/RedHat over lords. They have their tentacles on the entire userspace ecosystem outside the Linux kernel. That was their entire plan. So we can just forget about GTK. Now if Qt and Firefox/Chrome (who are RedHat loyalists) decided to stop future X11 development, FreeBSD is pretty much screwed. We have no control over kwin, mutter, etc.

Unless someone decides to fork gtk2, who's going to maintain it here? The committers aren’t going to bother touching GPLd code outside of drivers. The toolkits and apps are whats at stake here, less so DEs. its either fork the toolkits or write our own Wayland backend for them and browsers.

IMO, I think FreeBSD is ripe for disruption in writing its own API Wayland compositor. The project could penetrate other markets like IoT, embedded, mobile, etc. I’d like a base system I could easily port to ARM/RISC-V phones and tablets. The license, API/ABI stability, and features would fit the concept of Wayland.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
 
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SDK Chan said:
You can always patch X11 support back into Gnome, right ? ;)
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We don't really care about Gnome. But the Gtk project is now under their umbrella. That is the one to reinstate X11 support if they ever stop maintaining it.

Beastie7 said:
Unless someone decides to fork gtk2, who's going to maintain it here? The committers aren’t going to bother touching GPLd code outside of drivers. The toolkits and apps are whats at stake here, less so DEs. its either fork the toolkits or write our own Wayland backend for them and browsers.
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Strangely I do maintain a fork of Gtk2 (that sits ontop of SDL2 for some graphics related simulations). Yes, it was a fair amount of work but luckily X11 support is already in Gtk3+, all we would be doing is reverting their breaking commit.

Besides, fast forward a few decades and far more people will be using Gtk with X11 than i.e Win32 and Cocoa ever have (due to having better alternatives) and those small communities have still managed to implement support.

Beastie7 said:
Firefox/Chrome (who are RedHat loyalists) decided to stop future X11 development, FreeBSD is pretty much screwed.
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I think these are a good example. The sheer volume of very complex patches required to currently build these browsers, absolutely dwarfs what X11 needs for it to be supported inside Gtk. It shows that it will get done. Its not like we all need to support ALSA for our audio, "just coz Linux does" right? Why should graphics be any different?

This is going to be one of those things where we keep hearing lots of noise from the various camps trying to push their agenda, but nothing ever changes. X11 just keeps on trucking along.
 
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