Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 14, 2012 19:56 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Wayland - Beyond X (The H) by nix
Parent article: Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

You keep saying this even though people keep popping up in response to your words and saying 'I use it' over and over again.

Yup. The very same group of few dozens of people raise huge racket again and again.

Since you're ignoring people directly telling you that your assertion is wrong, yet you keep making it, why should we believe anythign else you have to say?

It's your choice. Either you are creating desktop for the masses (and that means 'I use it' arguments are sent straight to /dev/null where they belong), you you continue to "scratch your own itch" till it's raw.

Long, long ago people who wrote the software were more-or-less the same as people who used said software. Back them it made sense to ask your users and do as they say. Today not only developers are different from users, what's worse majority of user are not presented on the forums where developer participate.

Thus you need to use indirect methods. For example you can count number of Macs (which don't support anything besides VNC) and PC laptops (which at least theoretically can support network transparency) on Linux conferences.

This number clearly grows - and that means that people are not bothered by lack of network transparency. For the applications which are designed to be run over network you can continue to use X - it's quite compatible with Wayland.

But for applications designed to be run locally network transparency is just useless abstraction.

I already wrote about this "you don't exist" phenomenon before.

The fact is: most users value "pretty pixels" way, way, WAY above network transparency. I wrote about this, too.

You may think that "serious feature" should not ever be sacrificed for "useless embellishments", but in reality it's the other way around. If your application is ugly then nobody will want it and if your platform encourages creation of ugly applications then your platform will be ignored by Joe Average completely.

The last example which shows that is surprising: it's Micrsoft's WP7. It was designed with very simple, streamlined, fast interface in mind. And people like that. The problem Microsoft faces: without enough blitz in the interface people will not even try to use it.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 14, 2012 21:26 UTC (Tue) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link] (2 responses)

'Thus you need to use indirect methods. For example you can count number of Macs (which don't support anything besides VNC) and PC laptops (which at least theoretically can support network transparency) on Linux conferences.'

That's odd, both of my Mac laptops support X11.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 14, 2012 21:41 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the conversation has now passed some sort of event horizon. Macs support X11 in the same fashion Wayland does

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 14, 2012 21:45 UTC (Tue) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link]

Yeah, I realized after I posted that he was speaking more of remote accessibility for native Quartz apps and that my counter was a bit off target.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 1:20 UTC (Wed) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (4 responses)

> and that means 'I use it' arguments are sent straight to /dev/null where
> they belong

Sums up perfectly the disgust people have at the attitude of the Wayland community.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 1:40 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

:"Sums up perfectly the disgust people have at the attitude of the Wayland community."

How so? None of the wayland developers have posted here. khim doesn't represent the wayland community any more than you do.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 4:38 UTC (Wed) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (2 responses)

Somebody better tell him to pipe down, then, because he's giving them a bad reputation.

Given the quotes in the article, I don't know that he's far off from the developers.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 16:30 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

Regardless of what you might think of khim's opinions, I don't believe he is giving them a bad reputation at all unless you blame Wayland developers for his opinions which you have no reason to do at all. If you want to know their opinions, ask them

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 17, 2012 2:30 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

khim *is* giving them a bad reputation.

If they don't want that, maybe, they should start to get involved in the discussion on one of the important, if not the most important, Linux news sites? Life's a bitch and all that...

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 18:57 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link] (22 responses)

> Yup. The very same group of few dozens of people raise huge racket again and again.

It's not 1990 anymore. The concept of X over the network is no longer as strange as you would like to pretend. The inclusion of a bad implementation of this idea in MacOS is ample demonstration of this. The network GUI concept is fairly commonplace in the corporate Windows world. If anything, people should be improving these features in Linux rather than trying to abandon them.

If the Wayland crowd have their way we will have a perverse situation where Windows is better at rendering it's GUI across the network than Linux is.

MacOS+VNC is just plain painful and is nothing that should be held up as an example of how Wayland might work.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 19:04 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (20 responses)

MacOS+VNC is just plain painful and is nothing that should be held up as an example of how Wayland might work.

Right. But there are undeniable fact: Mac is the only platform which significantly grown market share over last 10 years or so (Windows is losing it, Linux is stagnating).

Everyone agree that MacOS+VNC combo had nothing to do with that: people hates this side of MacOS. But apparently butter-smooth MacOS experience is highly relevant to said growth - and it's direct consequence is this exact MacOS+VNC combo.

Thus I'm not sure I want to demand network transparency (as many here are doing): sure, it's nice feature to have, but if lack of network transparency will be compensated by great local experience it still can be a net win as MacOS shows.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 19:37 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link] (19 responses)

The "butter smooth" MacOS experience is mostly mindless hype. It completely evaporates once your requirements are non-trivial.

Want a Mac? Buy yourself a Mac. Don't sabotage Linux.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 20:12 UTC (Wed) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (18 responses)

Indeed.

The growth of OSX is directly related to non-technical customers being forced to find alternatives to windows over the course of its continued odyssey into free-style mass self destruction. To even suggest otherwise requires completely entering into an alternative reality. Most end users don't want to pay an extra 500% for a computer.

This also echoes the rise of Linux for that matter in the 90s with technical users.

(the ipod/itunes societal downfall is an orthogonal issue)

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 21:52 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (17 responses)

The growth of OSX is directly related to non-technical customers being forced to find alternatives to windows over the course of its continued odyssey into free-style mass self destruction. To even suggest otherwise requires completely entering into an alternative reality.

And how we've entered realm of pure fantasy and self-delusion.

To even suggest otherwise requires completely entering into an alternative reality.

Perhaps. But then it just means that we all were moved to this alternate reality recently. When you participated last in some developer's conference? Number of Macs dwarfs number of Linux laptops on events like GDC. And not just among PHP developers. Googlers also overwhelmingly prefer them over Linux laptops. And that's in a company which uses Linux almost exclusively on servers and which officially gives supported Linux laptops for the ones who prefer them! If Google engineers are mindless non-technical customers then who are these mythical highly techinical customers who prefer the "X-based Desktop Linux" mess?

This also echoes the rise of Linux for that matter in the 90s with technical users.

Sadly 90th have come and gone. Now it's Windows for non-technical users and MacOS for the users who want actually usable *nix.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 23:29 UTC (Wed) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (15 responses)

Non-technical user does not mean "mindless". A brain surgeon and a rocket scientist may simply want to browse the web when they get home from work, and potentially not also being heavily involved in "I.T." would therefore still be described as a non-technical user.

Guess that was a little too baited and off topic. It's just that I had to sit through another ipad consumerism drool session earlier today, and for some "crazy" reason thought there still might be someone left on LWN that would at least understand.

I'll concede that mac laptops are everywhere. Yes I see them outnumbering Linux ones at events (which I do go to), and yes the iron curtain of osx is now the apparatus of conformity and fashion that windows once was.

My comments were on how this came to be, not so much why it perpetuates.

I will say though, that you should at least open yourself to the possibility that maybe, just maybe - PHP, game, and google developers do not constitute the core of "linux users". Or for that matter that most people would even think of osx as a *nix. (although it is).

Regarding the mythical users, I'll put it like this. Everyday some kid somewhere discovering computing for the first time is hooked. That first program written, or that first system built, or that first network turned on, or that first cloud image deployed, or what ever it is they do now - is all it took. For the rest of their lives, that is all they will ever want to do. No one will ever dissuade them, lock them out, or shut them down. They can not walk away even if they wanted to. Whether or not F/OSS was involved in this pivotal moment, eventually it to enters into their bloodstream, and that to becomes a force far too powerful to walk away from. Given time, the thought of relinquishing the power of say Linux for a proprietary death sentence like osx, would be like a free man bowing down to a king.

How many of them are there? No one knows. We lurk in your schools and businesses. We hand out information and software to anyone who wants it. At air ports we see the sea of apple hardware, and actually desire not to be just like everyone else. At conferences we even show people how and why to overwrite the "X-based Desktop Linux mess" right on top of their windows and osx factory software, so that they too might also be free some day.

For what it's worth I've never said I was anti-wayland. My first post was stating that I think is going to help X development.

I'm really not even anti-osx. If we were in person, I would light up a cigar and open a bear with you, because if your actually reading my comments then you probably are either as bored or as distracted as I am.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 9:14 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (14 responses)

I will say though, that you should at least open yourself to the possibility that maybe, just maybe - PHP, game, and google developers do not constitute the core of "linux users".

No? WTH NO? These are the people who write and run software on Linux five days per week. Very few of them develop anything for MacOS. Yet they overwhelmingly prefer to use Mac to develop said Linux software. Don't it say you something about current state of affairs? Note that few years ago they all had iPhones, today a lot of them use Androids - and not just Googlers (where it's obvious choice because most of them get Androids as a gift from Google), but people on the other side of the fence, too. This means that Apple does not have a monopoly on good design and Linux (the kernel) is not the culprit. But something else is for such things don't happen without a reason.

How many of them are there? No one knows. We lurk in your schools and businesses. We hand out information and software to anyone who wants it. At air ports we see the sea of apple hardware, and actually desire not to be just like everyone else. At conferences we even show people how and why to overwrite the "X-based Desktop Linux mess" right on top of their windows and osx factory software, so that they too might also be free some day.

Well, that's good explanation of where Linux developers come from, not where Linux users come from. And while developers are always valuable it's the lack of users which is problematic. Till you have certain amount of users hardware companies ignore you, they don't publish specs and don't explain how to use the goodies - thus you spend your limited developer's resources trying to reconcile changes in "latest and greatest" hardware (made without Linux in mind because there are so few users) with your software, it's often broken, etc.

Linux on server obviously is big enough to keep hardware companies interested while Linux on desktop is not. And as FreeBSD example shows server may not be to keep given OS alive and thriving.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 14:52 UTC (Thu) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (13 responses)

-Anyone developing on a laptop full time is due for some serious hand, neck, and back injuries. (this is not flame bate, but a very serious warning from experience of many)

-Android != Linux

-knowing a bunch a people who work at google that use mac laptops + using one yourself != no one uses X11 linux computers

-developing "for linux" on mac, either means one is running linux in a vm, remoted into linux, or is doing cross platform development. For instance I do cross platform development for *nix, windows, and yes osx. I still hate osx, and only put up with on the last stages of compiling and testing. I also hate windows, which is why I, like zillions of others use, - wait for it - linux computers.

-Sure apple and google are popular and having their days in the sun. Look beyond the main stream in all aspects of life, and you will find so much more. Seek individuality, beauty, nonconformity, nature, books, the human being, and you will find these things do not come from advertisements, top 40, and expensive fashion electronics.

-One thing I do like about wayland is trying to simplify the programming model. Reminds of of SDL with the concept of frame buffers in windows.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 18:06 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (12 responses)

>-Anyone developing on a laptop full time is due for some serious hand, neck, and back injuries. (this is not flame bate, but a very serious warning from experience of many)

I've been doing it for more than 10 years. You can put a laptop on a table, you know.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 19:24 UTC (Thu) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (11 responses)

give it about another 6 years. Somewhere around year 17-18 is when I was forced to address the situation.

Sure just like "everything else" the con artists, lawyers etc, are out there with some just stupid comments, but that doesn't mean there isn't a real danger.

Of course this has much to do with how tall you are, how big your hands are, etc. Also most of the hand problems are actually do to unknowingly bending ones wrists while sleeping. Research has found people who type allot or play guitar for instance often start to do that. Eyes are another area to start taking care of.

Sure a quick session here and there is fine, but if your are going to sit down for the day its another story.

When I put one on a table, I put something under it to keep my neck from having to bend down, and use an external keyboard & mouse (preferably kinesis advantage and kensington trackball)

Leaning forward hunched over in the "oger position" will drop you for sure, given enough time. The blood flow in your neck being pinched off also exponentially increases your chances of a stroke.

These are not irrecoverable injuries though. It was actually the best thing that ever happened to me. After chiropractor + physical therapy, diet and exorcise put the lifestyle induced diabetes back in the closet. I've never been healthier.

No B.S. I tell these younger folks all the time about these things. If this is your career and you plan be able to do this for decades, then you really need to take care of your body. Stop eating the poisons, and get some real exorcise. Never underestimate how closely related your physical and mental health are either.

So in conclusion, X11 network transparency is a feature I like.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 20:23 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (9 responses)

Leaning forward hunched over in the "oger position" will drop you for sure, given enough time.

This is kind of strange, because people who needed to read a lot used lecterns for centuries - and if you open your laptop case to about 130-140° you basically get the same thing on about optimal distance from eyes. It's not as if human body is designed to only ever see the sky, you know.

I think the problems with laptops starts when people try to uncritically apply rules designed for desktops (screen is vertical, top of the viewing screen at eye level, etc). But laptop's screen is way below you! If you'll constantly bend your body in the position to put your eyes at the level with the top of the screen I'll be surprised if you'll manage even few years! Good keyboard is harder to find but this is where YMMV significantly: some people have trouble even with good ergonomic keyboards, some can live with laptops just fine. I, for one, find ThinkPad's keyboard easier to deal with then traditional Keyboard+Mouse combo - because I don't need to move hands to use mouse: trackpoint is right in the middle of keyboard, after all (if I need precision then mouse is obviously better, I'm talking about web surfing, text editing, etc).

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 20:31 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

you can get full size keyboards with a trackpoint (or with a touchpad below the spacebar, almost as good)

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 20:46 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

you can get full size keyboards with a trackpoint

There are very few of them and they are no better then ThinkPad's built-in one, so what's the point?

or with a touchpad below the spacebar, almost as good

Not even close. Either you need to use thumb to move mouse pointer (way less precise then when you use index finger) or you need to move hands (and if I'll do that then I'll prefer traditional mouse over touchpad becase, again, it's more precise).

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 21:23 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

> There are very few of them and they are no better then ThinkPad's built-in one, so what's the point?

the rest of the keyboard is much better

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 21:53 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

the rest of the keyboard is much better

How come? Most of the look like this - basically laptop keyboard without a laptop. Not exactly sure how separation of keyboard from laptop can suddenly make it "much better".

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 22:45 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

two things.

1. having it be separate lets you position it better.

2. I was actually assuming that you would get a 'real' keyboard. In the past I've seen full-size M series type 'clicky' keyboards that have the erasermouse pointer in them.

by the way, I somewhat question if a thumb on a trackpad is really that much less accurate than the erasermouse joysticks, but I guess that's a personal preference :-)

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 20:43 UTC (Thu) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (3 responses)

Using a lectern one is either standing, which has totally different muscle usage in the back (and you wouldn't do it all day), or has it closer to eye level than a laptop on a table. Reading is still a problem for me. Usually I have to sit a table to prop up my elbows and hold the book higher up. I'm an extreme case though. Sometimes certain car wreck injuries create the same problems for people. hunched over computer use leads to condition known as "upper cross syndrome", which can sometime be seen in swimmers and certain weight lifting patters. It's awful.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 20:52 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Using a lectern one is either standing, which has totally different muscle usage in the back (and you wouldn't do it all day), or has it closer to eye level than a laptop on a table. Reading is still a problem for me.

This may be the key difference. I have 20/20 vision (rarity today, I know) thus text on latop in aforementioned position is just perfect for me.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 21:08 UTC (Thu) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link]

> This may be the key difference. I have 20/20 vision (rarity today, I know)

as do I. (up until a few years ago it was even better than that). For many the issue is very much leaning forward to get closer to the screen. One of the many reasons I recommend monitor arms for desktop systems.

Torso height is the other big factor. If you sit with proper posture without bending your neck and your eyes can look close to straight ahead - then great! Many people have to sharply look down to do this which is unnatural to say the least. This causes the had to bend down, which eventually caused the back to slouch.

If you are reading this and you find your self doing this, please take the chance to start new habits.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 22, 2012 7:39 UTC (Wed) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]

I have a few co-workers that have their desks set up so they can stand up and work. I get the impression it's not so bad once you get used to it. Sort of like sleeping on a hard floor. It seems weird for a while, but doing that for a year or so improved some lower back issues I had quite a bit. People can stand for hours idling their time away on electronics... haven't you seen the lines at Apple stores :D ?

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 23, 2012 18:57 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

tstover, thank you for your very sensible comments about posture.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 16, 2012 21:02 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (guest, #2813) [Link]

This statement:

"and MacOS for the users who want actually usable *nix."

appears to fall under:

"And how we've entered realm of pure fantasy and self-delusion."

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 15, 2012 23:22 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> It's not 1990 anymore. The concept of X over the network is no longer as strange as you would like to pretend. The inclusion of a bad implementation of this idea in MacOS is ample demonstration of this. The network GUI concept is fairly commonplace in the corporate Windows world. If anything, people should be improving these features in Linux rather than trying to abandon them.
Nobody is trying to abandon anything. The X.org server will still run on Wayland, and if application or toolkit developers choose to abandon support for X11, you should blame them and not the Wayland developers. OTOH, Wayland is what finally gives us a chance to invent a new remote rendering protocol that, unlike X11, doesn't suck for modern applications.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 5:44 UTC (Sun) by AngryChris (guest, #74783) [Link] (2 responses)

You lost me here:

" For example you can count number of Macs (which don't support anything besides VNC) and PC laptops (which at least theoretically can support network transparency) on Linux conferences."

cbell@athena:~$ ls -ld /Applications/Utilities/X11.app
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jan 13 00:23 /Applications/Utilities/X11.app
cbell@athena:~$ uname -a
Darwin athena.local 11.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.3.0: Thu Jan 12 18:47:41 PST 2012; root:xnu-1699.24.23~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
cbell@athena:~$

I use X11 on my Mac all the time. I never use VNC.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 6:39 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

What you are describing is the same state as wayland currently. You can display remote MacOS apps via VNC and you can display and remote X11 apps but the native display protocol is not X11 and the X server is not where the graphics drivers live.

Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

Posted Feb 20, 2012 12:41 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Exactly. You will be able to run X11 on top of Wayland, the same way you can get it on OS X or even Windows.

The X11 protocol will still be used, but basically for where it really makes sense: applications running remotely on another host. Local applications will work better (less round trips, less display artifacts, less processes and contexts switches involved) on Wayland.