# What is the future of X / X11?



## Spartrekus (Dec 3, 2018)

Hello!

Wayland will replace X.org, X, X11,... (for older generations xfree). Soon or later X will no longer be used, maybe in 10-20 years or less. Let's talk about the future of X?

Best regards 
Good evening,
SP.


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## aragats (Dec 3, 2018)

Why it's worth discussing? You can keep using your X-oriented programs with x11-servers/xwayland.


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## yuripv (Dec 3, 2018)

Are you sure about wayland?  Or will it be another "great" piece of software from Poettering?

And indeed, I don't think it's worth discussing at the moment as even ubuntu switched back to X.


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## aragats (Dec 3, 2018)

yuripv said:


> another "great" piece of software from Poettering?


Do you see Poettering here? (-;
But you're right, I'm not sure.


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## kpedersen (Dec 4, 2018)

Once widget toolkits like Gtk+ and Qt drop their X11 backend then we might have to look at adding a shim but that will not be for a long time.

I am also quite convinced that Wayland will be deprecated and killed before X11. I am not saying that X11 won't be replaced one day, I am just saying that Wayland is likely going to be replaced first. Remember, one of the biggest flaws with Linux is that everything changes (for better *and* for worse) almost every year. Wayland won't be immune to this and does not have the backing and the deep underlying roots that X11 has.

Just because Wayland is newer, it doesn't mean it's lifespan will be longer than X11. Software does not work like this.

What I would personally like to see is an Xlib or XCB C wrapper library for Wayland. If they can get this working, then that would be a good start to a "responsible" X11 deprecation strategy.

Also Wayland doesn't support multiple sessions does it? I.e it doesn't have an XDMCP or protocol behind it, only allowing for VNC and rasterisation. This makes it a little bit behind X11 (and X10!) when it comes to "Cloud" or remote access. This is also the way that the world is going (unfortunately) so unless Wayland can solve this, it probably won't ever enter the enterprise (which is where Linux / BSD has its main foothold).


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## yuripv (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> Do you see Poettering here? (-;
> But you're right, I'm not sure.



Looks like kpedersen was kind enough to say exactly what I was thinking about wayland


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## aragats (Dec 4, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> I.e it doesn't have an XDMCP or protocol behind it, only allowing for VNC and rasterisation. This makes it a little bit behind X11 (and X10!) when it comes to "Cloud" or remote access.


Is XDMCP usable in real life? I don't think so.
I'm not talking in favor of Wayland, but X11 is becoming a dead end, especially for embedded systems.


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## SirDice (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Wayland will replace X.org, X, X11,... (for older generations xfree). Soon or later X will no longer be used, maybe in 10-20 years or less.


Wayland has been around for 10 years already. And while Xorg is really a fork of the old XFree86, it's only 4 years older than Wayland. 

And keep in mind that X11 is a protocol (a set of protocols actually), not an application. I can actually remember a commercially available X server for FreeBSD during the XFree86 period. But I cannot remember its name.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> Do you see Poettering here? (-;
> But you're right, I'm not sure.




It is very important that SystemD and Xwayland come to Linux, and then it should go and infect bsd, really Unix.
X11 should die to reinvent the wheel and make slow system. Our economy lives from remaking the wheel all over again. And slower and much less efficient !

Linux and BSD are too much similar  *in some areas*, because when it looks new and shining human programmers run for it.

Little by little you can learn to smoke. 

Poettering, do you mean apple, google (android) and MS?
- Sure they have all to win to see such beast into bsd or linux components.

In other words, you cannot avoid bloat. 99,99% Programmers are making bloat and ugly slow softwares, with  both complex compilation and library requirements.

The first start in our education system: early kids and students just have been educated from early begin to use close operating systems and products. If softwares for education system do not change, opensource software will be always at mercy of apple, ms and google (and more to come).


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## kpedersen (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> Is XDMCP usable in real life? I don't think so.



It is still used by many things but in ways you might not expect. For example:

```
Xvnc -inetd -query localhost -once
```


```
Xrdp -inetd -query localhost -once
```

I believe even NoMachine uses it. XDMCP is one of the only ways to handle multiple remote sessions. Yes, X11 forwarding is less used but XDMCP is still quite common.

Don't get me wrong. I am not actually that religious about X11. In fact, since the dawn of time I have had terrible experiences getting it working with the correct resolution (especially when widescreen laptops were becoming the norm; 915resolution was dark times indeed. xorg.conf still makes me shudder with seemingly random sodding timing values). However I will be a little bit baffled if the Linux kids adopt a system that works terribly over the network and enterprise environment in this day and age just so they can have their fancy themes and their games. That said, the budget tablet experience known as Gnome 3 has proven that FOSS desktop developers are no longer knowledgable in usability or professionalism :/

Not a fantastic argument either but for digital preservation; the RDP server in Hydra (Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server) has allowed this operating system to still be very usable even fully emulated in Qemu because the graphical calls can be passed out to be rendered on the native host (Being able to run i.e Windows 98 at 2048x2048 is impossible only because it doesn't support a display protocol). Separating the graphics system across a network brings fantastic benefits for emulation and keeping software alive. "Bash on Windows" would have also been more effective had the packages supported an X11 server like Xming rather than that Mir crap.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> her words, you cannot avoid bloat





kpedersen said:


> It is still used by many things but in ways you might not expect. For example:
> 
> ```
> Xvnc -inetd -query localhost -once
> ...



I use only x11 forward. it works anywhere.


Maybe time to move away from KDE and window-click and go easy solutions?


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## shkhln (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> I use only x11 forward. it works anywhere.



Afaik, it's synchronous and doesn't tolerate disconnections.


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## shkhln (Dec 4, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> However I will be a little bit baffled if the Linux kids adopt a system that works terribly over the network and enterprise environment in this day and age just so they can have their fancy themes and their games.



Wayland does not work over a network (by design), but hooking either RDP or VNC shouldn't be a problem. Why would it?


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## SirDice (Dec 4, 2018)

shkhln said:


> Afaik, it's synchronous and doesn't tolerate disconnections.


XDMCP doesn't like disconnections either. If you login through XDMCP, start an application and log off (or disconnect) the session is terminated (including any application that was started). This is a big difference compared to Window's RDP for example, where your session stays active, logged in and your applications keep running.


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## kpedersen (Dec 4, 2018)

You could use Xpra (https://xpra.org/) to solve the disconnect issue. It is basically GNU screen / tmux for the X11 world.

x11vnc can also be setup to not close on disconnect. This is still fine to connect to XDMCP for initial startup.

I am actually working on a faculty wide remote desktop system at work based on FreeBSD, XDMCP and tigervnc. Students can create Jails, connect to them via VNC and load "precanned" Jails full of relevant software from the staff. This supports disconnect (though we don't actually want it to prevent students from easily leaving torrent software open ).

Edit: Very early days GUI but... screenies!



My big issue is that FOSS desktop environments absolutely suck and I am currently wrangling Mate and ripping out all the crap that doesn't actually work (and never has!).


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> You could use Xpra (https://xpra.org/) to solve the disconnect issue. It is basically GNU screen / tmux for the X11 world.
> 
> x11vnc can also be setup to not close on disconnect. This is still fine to connect to XDMCP for initial startup.
> 
> ...



vnc?
Why to use FreeBSD like one would use windows. Unix is not really like Windows. 
Using VNC is really strange under *BSD. 

There is the terminal, which rules the Unix planet.

VNC would be unefficient, always, compared to a terminal.


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## aragats (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Why to use FreeBSD like one would use windows. Unix is not really like Windows.


VNC is a universal way to see/control a remote screen, it's available on all platforms.
Especially with remote help/troubleshooting you want to see the same screen as another person does.
In particular, net/x11vnc is very helpful in systems running X servers.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> VNC is a universal way to see/control a remote screen, it's available on all platforms.
> Especially with remote help/troubleshooting you want to see the same screen as another person does.
> In particular, net/x11vnc is very helpful in systems running X servers.



VNC is for graphical applications, but actually, ,likely there are good softwares for conssole. vim or emac power for instance, rather than gtk, kde,... evolved "notepad".


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> VNC is a universal way to see/control a remote screen, it's available on all platforms.
> Especially with remote help/troubleshooting you want to see the same screen as another person does.
> In particular, net/x11vnc is very helpful in systems running X servers.



vnc is very slow and less efficient than teamviewer or similar products.

Basically, do you need to see the unix/bsd/nix desktop to do troubleshooting, while you can do it over SSH. SSH is secured, VNC alone without security layer is unsecured.


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## aragats (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> vnc is very slow and less efficient than teamviewer or similar products.


When you ran Teamviewer in FreeBSD last time? 5 years ago? Maybe 10. (-;


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## Spartrekus (Dec 4, 2018)

aragats said:


> When you ran Teamviewer in FreeBSD last time? 5 years ago? Maybe 10. (-;


never - I used on windows, also know that it can run on  linux, but I guess no single package for bsd. I noticed that teamviewer is really fast (over sea) pc win to pc win.
But really do we need graphical applications today? Example, usage of what is not made for, a web browser is not the holy solution to do anything (file download, watching videos, file exchange, im,...). 
Efficient solutions are good method usually. It is better to have a dedicated C/C++ soft rather than a php, java,... slow applications over web browser.


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## kpedersen (Dec 4, 2018)

Spartrekus: You have a fair point and I generally agree.
As staff we actually run the SSH/ CLI version here: https://github.com/osen/pavelock
Simple C++ and very little else. The success of this actually allowed me to take the project further and make one for the students (The VNC version).

But unfortunately (I forgot to mention) we are the dept. of Creative Tech, and we specialise teaching OpenGL programming, 3D modelling and animation. This is all entertainment relying entirely on visual quality and this through the terminal is not entirely feasible .

Plus, students and "new" computer users have this (incorrect) preconception that computers *need* a GUI or they are incomplete. They will reject the terminal if we introduce them to it directly. This way, we can get the benefits of UNIX, avoid terrible Windows software management and get them used to environments other than Wintel and Visual Studio. Then as they get more familiar, they will start to use the CLI themselves.

So far I am doing well. I have introduced CMake, git, C++ and SDL2/OpenGL in place of Visual Studio, Dropbox, C# and XNA/Unity. Massive win for open-source and digital lifespan here


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## Spartrekus (Dec 5, 2018)

OpenGL / SDL may be used without xwayland, X11, ...  Raspberry makes a good example of running 3D on low perfs. hardware.

"Plus, students and "new" computer users have this (incorrect) preconception that computers *need* a GUI or they are incomplete. They will reject the terminal if we introduce them to it directly. "

Because Universities provide MS Windows operating system, the education rises up programmers for Windows.
Do not expect that they can learn termcap. It is ugly. Finally you land in an informatic env, which is purely rising funds of bill gates. The Linux desktop is as good, or must even better than the MS Windows. Linux desktop surpasses MS Desktop, but this "(incorrect) preconception" won't change, unless the education system gives a chance to opensource. All students say that close source has much better softwares than open source. Therefore BSD has a very limited chance to get popular in the next decades.

Only for running the home PS4 to play FPS.

Best regards,
I wish you a great, good day !


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## kpedersen (Dec 5, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> OpenGL / SDL may be used without xwayland, X11, ...  Raspberry makes a good example of running 3D on low perfs. hardware.



Unfortunately the Raspberry Pi can only run OpenGL|ES. We need the full fat version because that is what modelling tools like Blender requires. (There is work to make Blender work on ES profiles but not yet complete).

I don't want to subject anyone to my rants but we do have a slight issue at this Uni where the students prefer "brands" over standards. It is why dreaded kiddy "game making" software such as Unity3D is so popular.

One step at a time. The point for Pavelock is to ween them off Windows and Visual Studio / cl. If all goes well it will start to open them up to more CLI tools and "open" technology.


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## Crivens (Dec 5, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> However I will be a little bit baffled if the Linux kids adopt a system that works terribly over the network and enterprise environment in this day and age just so they can have their fancy themes and their games. :/


So basically you say it is inevitable.

What I think will happen is that wayland will be deprecated at 80% market share, the replacement at 60% and then the grumpy old admins will dig out the old Xorg or even Xvesa to keep stuff running. And then people will marvel at the clean design and the light resource usage (comparatively, sure).


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## SirDice (Dec 5, 2018)

I don't get why "new" things always have to "replace" the old, tried and tested, things. Can't they co-exist? Install and use Xorg if you need remote access or a more "traditional" Windowing system. Use Wayland (or something else) if you want a fancy desktop for games and 3D graphics. The both serve different purposes and I believe it would be bad to try and combine everything into a "single" application that can do everything.


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## shkhln (Dec 5, 2018)

SirDice said:


> Can't they co-exist?



There is XWayland and it's not going anywhere.


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## shkhln (Dec 5, 2018)

Crivens said:


> What I think will happen is that wayland will be deprecated at 80% market share, the replacement at 60% and then



That doesn't matter much, because the bulk of this effort consists of moving remaining input and display driver bits (and whatever) out of Xorg into Linux evdev/libinput/drm/mesa infrastructure. Wayland itself is inconsequential.


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## Crivens (Dec 5, 2018)

The problem this will create is that one interface of the applications will change. Yes, you can use Xwayland to run X apps, what will you do to make a wayland-only thing like, say, blender or libreoffice (once they switched over) run without it? Over X11?


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## shkhln (Dec 5, 2018)

We can't really fight Linux desktop. If they move to Wayland, we have to move as well.

Nvidia seems to agree:

```
% ls ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86_64-415.13/obj/ | grep wayland
10_nvidia_wayland.json
libnvidia-egl-wayland.so.1
```


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## Crivens (Dec 5, 2018)

Ahmmm  -  No.

Nvidia can decide to jump off a cliff, but being able to fly is beyond their power. The same applies to Linux and us, also.


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## shkhln (Dec 5, 2018)

I'm not quite sure what are you trying to say. I only mention Nvidia because they are the last holdout there. All Mesa drivers are basically ready.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 5, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> I don't want to subject anyone to my rants but we do have a slight issue at this Uni where the students prefer "brands" over standards. It is why dreaded kiddy "game making" software such as Unity3D is so popular.


A well-known web guy just had an article listing 10 sources of other web experts complaining about the same thing--sort of--in web development. Reddit  runts now claim no one uses javascript anymore cause everyone uses <insert framework/library here>.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 5, 2018)

SirDice said:


> I don't get why "new" things always have to "replace" the old, tried and tested, things.


This is another popular fallacy on amateur forums. If it's old it can't be any good. Another excellent article I read recently talked about how people seem to ignore the fact that so much software from UNIX, written decades ago, still lives today and you don't find that anywhere in today's software which falls out of favor and gets replaced on a yearly basis.


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## kpedersen (Dec 5, 2018)

In general I am not worried about Wayland. Again, I think it will have died before any real software deprecates X11 support.

That said I am a bit worried about some of the choices in the meantime. For example the Gnome 2 port in the past had shown that as a community, we are quite happy to break many things such as mounting and stability, just in the quest for staying in sync with upstream version. So long as we don't do the same again and are quite happy sticking with an older version of software that works 100% well with X11, then there will be no problems.

What might happen though is we try to keep all the software up to date with Linux / Wayland and hack together quick patches which break a lot of the functionality just so we can keep the version numbers the same. I personally would rather the older but fully working version.

The fact that Gnome 2 was ripped out and replaced with Gnome 3 when there were known issues with that version is in my opinion a reason to never use FreeBSD as a full fledged GUI desktop operating system again.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 5, 2018)

Like all inevitable, Xorg will die forever with all good X softwares.

(1) The MS Windows programmer is like this, like fanaticism. Windows is the best and nothing else is good.

(2) The Pseudo-Unix and Unix programmer will drop the good food, will go to mac donalds daily, because it looks good and tastes good, and get either heart issue or infestion. Then, he will complain.

It is inevitable to go to Wayland and to drop Xorg. It should be like this.

First Linux will get infection, then BSD. Like all junk foods in there: systemd, pulseaudio, all C/C++ with gcc/g++ bloat, modern graphical libraries, ...


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## aragats (Dec 5, 2018)

Don't be so pessimistic, Spartrekus !
The glass is half full (-;


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## Hakaba (Dec 5, 2018)

I'm confused (note that I did't have a clear view of the subject and my opinion is open).
When I read about X11 vs Wayland (or why not X12 ?) I found that X11 is too large to be maintained and is about too much things (printer, fonts, ...). That doesn't sound great for me.
So there is good reasons to replace X11 (or at least add a better tool that co-exists).
Why not Wayland ?
Is it a licence issue ? The development smell bad ? The way is not good ? The goal of the project is incompatible with portability or other important things (security ...)
Could you explicit you grief (as you compare Wayland to bacteria or virus) ?


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## Spartrekus (Dec 5, 2018)

Making (a) new solution(s) is Giving Up. if you give up, you fall in a fail path, which endlessly gets to giving up, and again.
Better to work on what is already existing.


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## SirDice (Dec 5, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Like all inevitable, Xorg will die forever with all good X softwares.


Nah, X, the protocol itself, has been around since the late '80s, I'm sure it's going to survive in some form or another. Xorg is just an implementation of version 11 of X. It's actually X version 11, release 6, which you may remember as X11R6. So, why exclude the possibility of an R7? Or X12? 

Could Xorg someday die? Sure, that too could happen. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. I'm not sure how long you've been using FreeBSD but there used to be a time when Xorg didn't exist and we were all using XFree86. Like XFree86 before it, Xorg is, simply put, an implementation of a bunch of protocols. 



Hakaba said:


> I'm confused (note that I did't have a clear view of the subject and my opinion is open).
> When I read about X11 vs Wayland (or why not X12 ?) I found that X11 is too large to be maintained and is about too much things (printer, fonts, ...).


X or X11 (and Wayland) is specifically not about things like printers or fonts. To quote the X Window System Wikipedia entry:


> X primarily defines protocol and graphics primitives – it deliberately contains no specification for application user-interface design, such as button, menu, or window title-bar styles. Instead, application software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces – define and provide such details. As a result, there is no typical X interface and several different desktop environments have become popular among users.





> (or why not X12 ?)


That's a million dollar question. Indeed, why not?


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## Spartrekus (Dec 6, 2018)

why x/x11/xorg should survive if debian will drop it soon ? It is like. sorry, we have no maintainer... we must drop the package.

x12 is visibly interesting replacement. It may yeah. Any X/Xorg/X11 needs to be replaced urgently. (Pseudo)-Unix programmers are really bored.
Maybe they should "clean up" and fix back all debian based distributions from the poettering mess. Lucky bsd did not adopt sysD.

All other distros will replace their xvesa with x/x11 in 20 years, because it just worked (not ideal, but worked).
xwayland will come and like poettering, after some time xwayland with be wayland, and users will use wayland. xwayland is for a given time only as stated.

In computer sciences, programmers re-invent the wheel all over again and again. It is maybe a sort of law of moore.


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

Xorg's mission is to support obsolete hardware, that must be installed every time, to not break that purpose. In that sense, Wayland can replace it more efficiently.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Xorg's mission is to support obsolete hardware, that must be installed every time, to not break that purpose. In that sense, Wayland can replace it more efficiently.



Your comment implies that we should not care about any kinds of hardwares, but focus on selected, specific, modern ones.

However, BSD is free, and if we be consistent and congruent, we must support old hardware as well.

>* Free opensource software means for **EVERYONE** without making differences. *<


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Xorg's mission is to support obsolete hardware, that must be installed every time, to not break that purpose.


Sure, that might be Xorg's mission. But you could fork Xorg. Don't forget Xorg is a fork of XFree86. It's been done before.

I like the principles of X:

    Do not add new functionality unless an implementor cannot complete a real application without it.
    It is as important to decide what a system is not as to decide what it is. *Do not serve all the world's needs; rather, make the system extensible so that additional needs can be met in an upwardly compatible fashion.*
    The only thing worse than generalizing from one example is generalizing from no examples at all.
    If a problem is not completely understood, it is probably best to provide no solution at all.
    If you can get 90 percent of the desired effect for 10 percent of the work, use the simpler solution. (See also worse is better.)
    Isolate complexity as much as possible.
    Provide mechanism rather than policy. In particular, place user interface policy in the clients' hands.
The first principle was modified during the design of X11 to: "Do not add new functionality unless you know of some real application that will require it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Principles

Apparently Wayland is trying to fill a need, something X currently can't provide. So, why not extend X? Based on the principles of X changes aren't excluded. Heck, there are real applications that require new functionality (first principle), so there's no reason to keep it exactly like it is now.


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Your comment implies that we should not care about any kinds of hardwares, but focus on selected, specific, modern ones.
> 
> However, BSD is free, and if we be consistent and congruent, we must support old hardware as well.
> 
> >* Free opensource software means for **EVERYONE** without making differences. *<


Hardware and implementations from the 70's, I believe.


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Xorg's mission is to support obsolete hardware, that must be installed every time, to not break that purpose.





Spartrekus said:


> Your comment implies that we should not care about any kinds of hardwares, but focus on selected, specific, modern ones.



I'm not familiar with any of the technical details, but why would keeping support for obsolete hardware exclude the addition of features useful for modern hardware?


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## obsigna (Dec 6, 2018)

The enemy of a good X would be a better ?. As long as we have no alternatives for X for a GUI on FreeBSD, the whole question is senseless. I would be more interested in a roadmap of Wayland on FreeBSD. Does it exist at all? Then, eventually we may perhaps talk about alternatives to X on FreeBSD, whether better or not is another question.


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## shkhln (Dec 6, 2018)

Depending on how often you update packages, Wayland might already be installed on your machine.


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## obsigna (Dec 6, 2018)

shkhln said:


> Depending on how often you update packages, Wayland might already be installed on your machine.


Yes, I know - see: Is Wayland becoming ready for prime time on FreeBSD? Until now, nobody answered my actual question. Please feel free to tell us some instructions, on how to build a FreeBSD desktop without X.org but with Wayland.


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

I vaguely remember that Wayland had less layers, and was more direct because of that, so in a sense was supposed to be efficient. Something like desktop applications more directly communicating with the display server.


obsigna said:


> Yes, I know - see: Is Wayland becoming ready for prime time on FreeBSD? Until now, nobody answered my actual question. Please feel free to tell us some instructions, on how to build a FreeBSD desktop without X.org but with Wayland.


I believe you can, but it won't be a functional desktop. It may hardly have any applications. Gnome may work with it, but it will bring in bloat, which will likely bring in or require most Xorg dependencies anyway.
I saw instructions for doing it long ago, but it may not have reached ports at that time, so it was do at your own trouble. I'm not going to search for obsolete instructions from years ago, that there are chances are it was deleted or hard to find.


SirDice said:


> I'm not familiar with any of the technical details, but why would keeping support for obsolete hardware exclude the addition of features useful for modern hardware?


 I think it builds on old protocols from the early 90's or maybe 70's from the first opensource window managers, that make it less efficient. But Xorg is kind of efficient for what it is: it's not bad.

I'm not entirely sure. This is stuff I remember being mentioned or that I read about a few years ago. It is often difficult to find old stuff, while it is easier to remember it, and that's a lot of information, that easily gets buried or lost, and often becomes obsolete.

If Wayland can do some things better, and can work with Xorg. I don't see why not. The Xorg updates that include Wayland dependencies, don't harm my desktop. It might be a little more efficient, and a little more smooth, but that's difficult to judge.


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## shkhln (Dec 6, 2018)

The way I see it, there is no reason to touch Wayland at least for another couple of years unless you want to debug issues. You should wait until it is widely adopted by mainstream Linux distributions. Eventually it will be forced upon us regardless of our opinion.


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

shkhln said:


> The way I see it, there is no reason to touch Wayland at least for another couple of years unless you want to debug issues. You should wait until it is widely adopted by mainstream Linux distributions. Eventually it would be forced upon us regardless of our opinion.


By then, most applications and toolkits that use it will be absorbed by a GPL. Little reason to wait to be influenced heavily by another community.


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## shkhln (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> By then, most applications and toolkits that use it will be absorbed by a GPL. Little reason to wait to be influenced by another community.



What?


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

shkhln said:


> What?


FreeBSD should decide whether they want to use or abandon Wayland. Waiting for GNU to adopt and integrate it into every application, will put too much influence on Wayland and bloat surrounding toolkits and applications. I know that Xorg manages its own software independent of other licenses, and I have the same expectation from Wayland. Applications and toolkits surrounding Wayland to integrate it into Linuxisms will still become much more bloated: then if we want to use an application, we'll have to download and compile useless unused code, instead of the FreeBSD community stripping that down to directly access the X server. If a Linux community forked Wayland, then Wayland (with the exception of parts already integrated into Xorg implementations by then) becomes obsolete, it can't be used with much.

Making the decision on whether GTK, KDE or Gnome work with Wayland is also a no-go in my opinion. When small desktops and toolkits work with it, then that would be a reason.

If you want to wait for something like that, you may as well abandon it now, or let them control influence to where it becomes a Linuxism, and deal with that headache later.

A few examples that apply, but have differences in their applications: OSS implementations that the one for FreeBSD got cleaned up for ports to use and graphics drivers.


----------



## shkhln (Dec 6, 2018)

That's completely ridiculous opinion, I won't reply any further.


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

shkhln said:


> That's completely ridiculous opinion, I won't reply any further.


You're right. Let's wait for Linux to fix and influence it. Then, and only then we should adopt it.


shkhln said:


> The way I see it, there is no reason to touch Wayland at least for another couple of years unless you want to debug issues. You should wait until it is widely adopted by mainstream Linux distributions. Eventually it will be forced upon us regardless of our opinion.


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## yuripv (Dec 6, 2018)

shkhln said:


> That's completely ridiculous opinion, I won't reply any further.



Indeed..


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

Of course you two agree, because you know absolutely nothing, and are likely Linux fanboys trying to justify that.

Waiting for them, lets them influence it, and leaves less room to influence it the way that fits efficiently with FreeBSD. It's that simple.


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## obsigna (Dec 6, 2018)

More than five years ago, we had already sort of this discussion:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/fosdem-2013-the-future-of-x-org-on-non-linux-systems.37464/

My comment at that time (I was user rolfheinrich, and lost my login name since) was:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...x-org-on-non-linux-systems.37464/#post-209040

My hope is that Wayland could eventually fit the bill. I hate X and in regards to Linux, for me it's name is already ugly.


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## yuripv (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Of course you two agree, because you know absolutely nothing, and are likely Linux fanboys trying to justify that.
> 
> Waiting for them, lets them influence it, and leaves less room to influence it the way that fits efficiently with FreeBSD. It's that simple.



I'm sorry for being so ignorant and uneducated.

What do you propose we do exactly?


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2018)

I think what sidetone is trying to get across is that we should adapt Wayland now. Or at least as quickly as possible. That way we (read: FreeBSD) might able to influence any future direction Wayland will take. If we wait until Wayland is fully integrated into the Linux desktop we (read: FreeBSD) may never be able to get rid of all the Linuxisms that would inevitably creep in. By adapting it now we could potentially stop it from getting too Linux-centric in the first place.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 6, 2018)

sidetone said:


> FreeBSD should decide whether they want to use or abandon Wayland. Waiting for GNU to adopt and integrate it into every application, will put too much influence on Wayland and bloat surrounding toolkits and applications. I know that Xorg manages its own software independent of other licenses, and I have the same expectation from Wayland. Applications and toolkits surrounding Wayland to integrate it into Linuxisms will still become much more bloated: then if we want to use an application, we'll have to download and compile useless unused code, instead of the FreeBSD community stripping that down to directly access the X server. If a Linux community forked Wayland, then Wayland (with the exception of parts already integrated into Xorg implementations by then) becomes obsolete, it can't be used with much.
> 
> Making the decision on whether GTK, KDE or Gnome work with Wayland is also a no-go in my opinion. When small desktops and toolkits work with it, then that would be a reason.
> 
> ...



Linux influence somehow FreeBSD/BSD, maybe some day releasing FreeBSD with the magical, shining, modern, high performant, super fast, highly resource preserving, so called "Wayland".

I believe that it would be high time to think about preserving UNIX entity and integrity. Maybe sort of FreeUNIX and leave FreeBSD integrate Wayland. In any cases, in few years, X11 will be replaced by Wayland by Linux. Less dev for Xorg.

What you call strong "Linuxism" influences a lot BSD development (unfortunately).


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## Spartrekus (Dec 6, 2018)

SirDice said:


> I think what sidetone is trying to get across is that we should adapt Wayland now. Or at least as quickly as possible. That way we (read: FreeBSD) might able to influence any future direction Wayland will take. If we wait until Wayland is fully integrated into the Linux desktop we (read: FreeBSD) may never be able to get rid of all the Linuxisms that would inevitably creep in. By adapting it now we could potentially stop it from getting too Linux-centric in the first place.



This is signing the letter of the devil. Do you want to really?

Did you see the movie?
Bedazzled (2000)  
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230030/


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2018)

Have plans to implement parts of it soon (as a little bit of it has been), or drop it. A little bit of Linuxism is ok, but for low level stuff, and displays, I don't think it should be saturated. For basic components, for example, there should be OSS or Sndio instead of Alsa, that later had to be fixed with more efficient drop-in support to OSS or Sndio. OSS has many implementations, and it took a while for the one from FreeBSD to be better recognized and fit with more ports. I wouldn't want to see Wayland be heavily influenced the way of Alsa, then FreeBSD later adopt it, because that would defeat the purpose of anything Wayland was intended to offer.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 7, 2018)

In order for FreeBSD to have any influence on the direction of wayland we have to actually start adopting and talking about it. Try to get a FreeBSD developer on the committers team... or the board of directors, anything we can leverage.

Also, with wayland - the display server and compositor are intertwined, so components *cannot* be swapped between clients if their WM incorporates wayland. You *must* use the full KDE, or GNOME stack, etc. So if Kwin or mutter are fully wayland compliant and we have no wayland port, we're screwed.

I think FreeBSD or the Lumina team should develop their own portable wayland reference compositor so that we have more choice in the matter.

edit: spelling


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## Spartrekus (Dec 7, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Have plans to implement parts of it soon (as a little bit of it has been), or drop it. A little bit of Linuxism is ok, but for low level stuff, and displays, I don't think it should be saturated. For basic components, for example, there should be OSS or Sndio instead of Alsa, that later had to be fixed with more efficient drop-in support to OSS or Sndio. OSS has many implementations, and it took a while for the one from FreeBSD to be better recognized and fit with more ports. I wouldn't want to see Wayland be heavily influenced the way of Alsa, then FreeBSD later adopt it, because that would defeat the purpose of anything Wayland was intended to offer.




A little bit of Linuxism is NOT possible.

It is like signing the death of tinywm :

```
#include <X11/Xlib.h>

#define MAX(a, b) ((a) > (b) ? (a) : (b))

int main()
{
    Display * dpy;
    Window root;
    XWindowAttributes attr;
    XButtonEvent start;
    XEvent ev;

    if(!(dpy = XOpenDisplay(0x0))) return 1;

    root = DefaultRootWindow(dpy);

    XGrabKey(dpy, XKeysymToKeycode(dpy, XStringToKeysym("F1")), Mod1Mask, root,
            True, GrabModeAsync, GrabModeAsync);
    XGrabButton(dpy, 1, Mod1Mask, root, True, ButtonPressMask, GrabModeAsync,
            GrabModeAsync, None, None);
    XGrabButton(dpy, 3, Mod1Mask, root, True, ButtonPressMask, GrabModeAsync,
            GrabModeAsync, None, None);

    for(;;)
    {
        XNextEvent(dpy, &ev);
        if(ev.type == KeyPress && ev.xkey.subwindow != None)
            XRaiseWindow(dpy, ev.xkey.subwindow);
        else if(ev.type == ButtonPress && ev.xbutton.subwindow != None)
        {
            XGrabPointer(dpy, ev.xbutton.subwindow, True,
                    PointerMotionMask|ButtonReleaseMask, GrabModeAsync,
                    GrabModeAsync, None, None, CurrentTime);
            XGetWindowAttributes(dpy, ev.xbutton.subwindow, &attr);
            start = ev.xbutton;
        }
        else if(ev.type == MotionNotify)
        {
            int xdiff, ydiff;
            while(XCheckTypedEvent(dpy, MotionNotify, &ev));
            xdiff = ev.xbutton.x_root - start.x_root;
            ydiff = ev.xbutton.y_root - start.y_root;
            XMoveResizeWindow(dpy, ev.xmotion.window,
                attr.x + (start.button==1 ? xdiff : 0),
                attr.y + (start.button==1 ? ydiff : 0),
                MAX(1, attr.width + (start.button==3 ? xdiff : 0)),
                MAX(1, attr.height + (start.button==3 ? ydiff : 0)));
        }
        else if(ev.type == ButtonRelease)
            XUngrabPointer(dpy, CurrentTime);
    }
}
```


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## kpedersen (Dec 7, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> A little bit of Linuxism is NOT possible.
> It is like signing the death of tinywm



I think I kinda get what you are saying and generally I am of the same opinion. However this kind of "enjoyment" of software is better served in an emulator sandbox where you can play around, learn and have fun without letting the dirtyness of the rest of the world in.

For example, we need to be realistic. The industry does not give two craps if tinywm becomes broken. The industry is not governed by people who enjoy the elegance or correctness of software. The world will simply move onto what makes it money and will generally sh*t on anything that is in the way, regardless of how good it is.

My only recommendation if your work and play do need to mix is to "stay light". Instead of investing time in X11; try to develop tools or GUI systems that are extremely portable to whatever crap the rest of the world has chosen.
That way when Wayland and X11 are finally killed off, you can ensure that your code (and enjoyment) can simply migrate to the new crap.

I hate to say it but one day, FreeBSD will be unable to run on computers natively. The horrible people that develop hardware simply do not allow it via the use of signed firmware and other unethical means. This may happen in our lifespans. So try to get you enjoyment out of POSIX or "portable" technologies rather than just FreeBSD itself because things like Cygwin or "UNIX-like layers" will exist on whatever crippled sh*tware we will be imprisoned with in the future. Unfortunately not the real thing anymore (unless in an emulator I mentioned above).

So enjoy FreeBSD whilst you can, but try not to get hung up on what the rest of the world throws at you in the future. You will become burned out or depressed. :/

But one thing I can suggest is.... stockpile "open" hardware whilst you can. This stuff will be like gold! Especially if you can repair it yourself! XD


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## Spartrekus (Dec 7, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> ...
> makes it money and will generally* sh*t *on anything that is in the way, regardless of how good it is.



It is exactly what the business made out of Linux : in the heart of the operating system (best example: systemd).

Any "new crap" may either just die or get just heavier, instead just believe in *small C compiler solutions*, *termcap, ncurses,...*

When FreeBSD will be a *Linux* close brother, developing a new sort *Free**UNIX*, really meaning *Free*dom, could maybe save the old unperfect X11.

Maybe, maybe in 50 years or more, one day the hardware industry will prevent notebook(s) to have something else than MS Windows and any other Android like systems. Politics could even support this, even to make vote laws against installing and using opensource software. Maybe sort of opensource resistance.   Everything could be possible, in name of $.


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## sidetone (Dec 7, 2018)

Xorg, or a potential fork that preserves its license, is not going to die easily. They preserve the licensed code, and they constantly maintain it. Many projects maintain the archives, so they don't get lost.

There may be an infinite number of ways to write hardware drivers. Writing good ones may be difficult, and the more they get encroached on by more restrictive license, the even more difficult it will be. I think hardware drivers have to be preserved long enough before being released or put into a permissive license so they can be developed before they get forked. Copyright is the focal point of license, and how many ways can 1 picture or event can be described that are all unique. If something is too obvious, minimal, generated by machine or maybe mathematical (logical) in a way to write something, much of that isn't eligible for copyright, so an MIT licensed project cannot be revoked from using a minor difference made by a GPL project that absorbed that MIT licensed project. Still, if another project absorbs one, and makes sufficient additions, that would have not been made otherwise without the project it absorbed, that can't be used by the old project, it makes it difficult and is a cause of concern (unless it is possible to rewrite it that it performs the same function and at the same time be different enough).

If you think about an ATI driver. The stack is under an MIT license. Then GPL took it, and what they added, we cannot put under a FreeBSD license. At least under the GPL license, that hardware cannot be taken over by a proprietary license and additions by copyright/patent hoarders. Also, in that case, I see little problem in forcing contributors to give back their code that does not go beyond hardware capability, because that is for capability of that hardware, which it should do anyway. However, the GPL code does lead to bloat, which can be stripped, and for the time put in doing that, at least that benefit should be put back in for everyone who uses that card. One problem can be if contributions that are beyond the hardware's capabilities are forced to be given back by GPL. An Apache license may be better than a GPL license for Hardware, with the exception, that that license is too complex in an attempt to achieve simple function. A GPL license isn't ideal for hardware, but it is better than it going proprietary. The license can be halfway between a GPL and a BSD license, like perhaps a BSD clear license.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 8, 2018)

Crivens said:


> So basically you say it is inevitable.
> 
> What I think will happen is that wayland will be deprecated at 80% market share, the replacement at 60% and then the grumpy old admins will dig out the old Xorg or even Xvesa to keep stuff running. And then people will marvel at the clean design and the light resource usage (comparatively, sure).



*BSD* is strongly influenced by the Linux community.

If Linux brings Wayland as The new standard, it might become as well into BSD soon or later. Many veteran programmers will be soon or later replaced by newer ones, and they certainly aren't used to clean simplicity of Xorg/X11. Matter of time.


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## Crivens (Dec 8, 2018)

Spartrekus - Sure, time changes and people also. They will do this. But that does not make it desirable.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 8, 2018)

I think we'll be fine IMO. If it were important enough to the developers - they'd fork it or create an alternative. Case in point; bhyve. We had every chance to fully port over KVM or Xen, but we created our own solution, and look how far we've gotten since it was created. It actually turned out to be the better solution also.

I would totally back an audited xorg in base with the API/ABI promise that we FreeBSD offers. It'd make my life so much easier.


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## sidetone (Dec 8, 2018)

I realized that hardware code needs its own license. Neither a BSD or GPL license. It would have to be compatible, or made a special exception for to work with any BSD like license. Then again, if GPL licensed hardware code can be included, there's no reason to disallow a license specifically for hardware.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 8, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> I think we'll be fine IMO. If it were important enough to the developers - they'd fork it or create an alternative. Case in point; bhyve. We had every chance to fully port over KVM or Xen, but we created our own solution, and look how far we've gotten since it was created. It actually turned out to be the better solution also.
> 
> I would totally back an audited xorg in base with the API/ABI promise that we FreeBSD offers. It'd make my life so much easier.



The crap is that if Xorg / X11 dies, we will have to re-make again and again, million times, our graphical applications. 

Example of the programmer, he started a large software in visual basic 4, then moved it to vb. 5, then, moved it to windows .net, ..and  what ever crap will come, he will spend his time to move from one crap library to another one. 

The best is to preserve something for graphics really : X11/Xorg.

It is important for the opensource community. 

Many applications are not longer maintained yearly, becuase they are replaced by shinining bloaty ones.


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## rufwoof (Dec 8, 2018)

The only reason I run X is in order to run a modern graphical browser - as more or less necessitated by the modern web - in order for all those adverts/whatever (that I strive to block).

OpenBSD base with its Xenodm that runs as user, with all setuid's turned off and cron disabled, not a member of root. i.e. X and browser are as good as a single program needed to browse the web. If/when browsers provide their own gui/framebuffer as part of the browser so much the better. Or if alternative protocols rise to being the more predominant protocol, so much the better. Or even more direct communication, ssh into a providers ssh server for instance with a secure gopher for searching would suffice.

http is increasingly owned by google and with that so it deviates from Unix concepts of everything is a simple task that works well and is like a text file ... towards more windows like complexities (everything is a complex gui). So that you can be more easily/comprehensively profiled/monitored in order for advertisements and monetisation.

Many companies feel they have to have the latest high tech web content, but in so doing lose out on those that are looking for just a simple text based interaction/experience. Perhaps when companies realise they're missing out on sales due to over complicating their web site, there may be a reversal of trend back towards more simpler textual content and less need for X and current java driven browsers.


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## aragats (Dec 8, 2018)

rufwoof said:


> If/when browsers provide their own gui/framebuffer as part of the browser so much the better


Qt-based browsers should already support: Qt's GUI backend can be set via environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM. I'm not sure how Qt package is compiled now, but you can definitely build its framebuffer support. I built a Qt browser which perfectly works in Linux without X11 (as a part of a commercial project), will try to do the same in FreeBSD soon.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

rufwoof said:


> http is increasingly owned by google and with that so it deviates from Unix concepts of everything is a simple task that works well and is like a text file ... towards more windows like complexities (everything is a complex gui). So that you can be more easily/comprehensively profiled/monitored in order for advertisements and monetisation.



Nice description. Are these methods and ads legal, by the way? It looks like to force users / people to be under manipulation, for using/buying given products.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 9, 2018)

rufwoof said:


> OpenBSD base with its Xenodm that runs as user, with all setuid's turned off and cron disabled, not a member of root. i.e. X and browser are as good as a single program needed to browse the web.



I wish this was done in FreeBSD.


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## Phishfry (Dec 9, 2018)

I was reading on this some and it seems Weston has not hit ports yet and with its Linux-isms i wonder if it ever will.
Truthfully I like Xorg the way it is and I see no attempt to have x-forwarding at the Wayland level.
So newer is not always better.
Weston underwent 3 major version numbers in one year.
Is that what we really want? Linux churn.

8 August 2017 Weston 3.0.0 was released
9 April 2018 Weston 4.0.0 was released
24 August 2018 Weston 5.0.0 was released


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## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

I like to say that the programmes today are offering 1200 MegaBytes for mathematical computations (Graphs, CAS,...).
For maths, there are today huge applications which can do things, but well, users are "obliged" to have the disk really full of things. Texlive is also a good example, which can take about 1200 MB. Well.

I had fun with plotting a graph without anything. It is about 1 or 2 Mb only.
Simplicity is just not accepted by new *Windows-fan* programmers:





Concerning X11 forward, it makes a good sense to have it for important operations, especially at a scientific level. There are two things *maybe* which aren't so much working together: sciences and business. Google tries hard to lock the user behing his web browser (needing a super PC, good high-speed internet connection, and user is locked forever for anything).  Maybe it is useful to have X11 forward to display things from a Solaris server, doing all the computational job. 

Nice to have x11 (still today)... but in future we will need SSD and super power computer to draw a pixel on the monitor


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## Phishfry (Dec 9, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Maybe they should "clean up" and fix back all debian based distributions from the poettering mess.


They did. It's called Devuan.

You want simple graphing (with an db). Have a look at databases/rrdtool. Outputs to png's. Very little in size.
https://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/polling-a-sysctl-value.63501/post-368867


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## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> They did. It's called Devuan.
> 
> You want simple graphing (with an db). Have a look at rrd_tool. Outputs to png's. Very little in size.
> https://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/polling-a-sysctl-value.63501/post-368867



Devuan is definitely cleaner. What about pulseaudio?


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## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

I don't know the reason behind the widespread of PulseAudio in the systems. 
I am sure that there are more log/scrapping things. 

So why no one care about it? Everyone use Android or Apple phone.

If we use an Android phone, all is spied, logged, and known by "big blue".


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## Phishfry (Dec 9, 2018)

Android phone listens to your TV in the background and serves you adds accordingly.
Them ones go to Google. They are competing for our most personal data.


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## sidetone (Dec 9, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> Android phone listens to your TV in the background and serves you adds accordingly.
> Them ones go to Google. They are competing for our most personal data.


If someone said that 10 years ago, it would sound paranoid. Say it today, and it's reasonable.


----------



## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

sidetone said:


> If someone said that 10 years ago, it would sound paranoid. Say it today, and it's reasonable.



But, man, why is this today accepted?

Even large companies use today Microsoft Products, with all their spying things. Onedrive is most evil really.


----------



## Phishfry (Dec 9, 2018)

A vast majority of the populous are technophobes. We are becoming so lazy we need the car to drive itself.


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## kpedersen (Dec 9, 2018)

I might be one of the very few that appreciates what PulseAudio was attempting to do.

Yes, it is poorly implemented and could be made simpler but being able to stream audio across a network along with visuals (aka VNC) is actually quite a useful thing to do in this "day and age of having to use VMs because hardware providers are a bunch of fsck(8)ers".

Where it went wrong is that it was implemented in a sloppy, awkward way with Linux in mind.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> A vast majority of the populous are technophobes. We are becoming so lazy we need the car to drive itself.



The main issue is in the close source way of the educating in computer sciences.  We teach programmers to use ready made solutions.
The very first mistake is to teach young programmers to start their programming live with closed source software on a close source operating systems. >=90% of education is  based on Microsoft. Mail servers...


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## sidetone (Dec 9, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> But, man, why is this today accepted?
> 
> Even large companies use today Microsoft Products, with all their spying things. Onedrive is most evil really.


Everything those who don't respect others get away with is accepted. I said his statement is reasonable. It is not that it's accepted, but that they have the capability to do it, which is alarming enough, but in every case, it may be difficult to prove or disprove. It is a reasonable concern.

In software, I see bloatware as opportunities for malware. If something takes 14 hours to compile because of unneeded dependencies, as opposed to it takes 5 minutes, do you think they debugged that software, when they couldn't figure out they have 14 hours of compiling bloat, that wasn't needed? Remove one dependency, and that made a difference between 5 minutes and 14 hours, because that wanted to pull in an operating system and compiler on top of another existing operating system and compiler. Sure, the dependencies that took 5 minutes to compile can also have bugs and malware, that could be hidden for years or wouldn't ever get found, but at least it doesn't offer every opportunity available.

Hardware or ROM doesn't have this advantage of being able to sift through code or hardware circuitry (at least not now). The best that can be done is using an AM radio to detect hidden cameras, or transponders.


----------



## Spartrekus (Dec 9, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Everything those who don't respect others get away with is accepted. I said his statement is reasonable. It is not that it's accepted, but that they have the capability to do it, which is alarming enough, but in every case, it may be difficult to prove or disprove. It is a reasonable concern.
> 
> In software, I see bloatware as opportunities for malware. If something takes 14 hours to compile because of unneeded dependencies, as opposed to it takes 5 minutes, do you think they debugged that software, when they couldn't figure out they have 14 hours of compiling bloat, that wasn't needed? Remove one dependency, and that made a difference between 5 minutes and 14 hours, because that wanted to pull in an operating system and compiler on top of another existing operating system and compiler. Sure, the dependencies that took 5 minutes to compile can also have bugs and malware, that could be hidden for years or wouldn't ever get found, but at least it doesn't offer every opportunity available.
> 
> Hardware or ROM doesn't have this advantage of being able to sift through code or hardware circuitry (at least not now). The best that can be done is using an AM radio to detect hidden cameras, or transponders.



Programmers do not care that much that it runs slow. They rather rely on better hardware.
Since they do rely and use already made available libraries, they need to have better hardware.

I agree with you. But, actually, it is not that bad. When you have the source code, you can always bring the bloatware to cleaner state.

The issue starts when you cannot fix and touch the code to design it the way that you would like to have (source code not made available).


----------



## Phishfry (Dec 9, 2018)

My PulseAudio rant was un-called for. But you asked so I delivered my opinion.
There is no know connection between Pulse Audio and any government agency.
Do remember where this software originates from. RedHat largest customer is the NSA.
This agencies job is to subvert all communications.


----------



## Spartrekus (Dec 10, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> My PulseAudio rant was un-called for. But you asked so I delivered my opinion.
> There is no know connection between Pulse Audio and any government agency.
> Do remember where this software originates from. RedHat largest customer is the NSA.
> This agencies job is to subvert all communications.
> Kangaroo courts are no challenge to these wordsmiths.



I cannot really understand, why Linux does use This NSA, might be, PulseAudio, Systemd,.. and that they can enter the Linux distribution(s). Actually most of them. Developers say that they do better and bring better. At which cost?
Gnome, RedHat,... large companies, but not so much with free software "Freedom" in mind and Unix.


----------



## toorski (Dec 10, 2018)

Wayland will go nowhere due to its lame name - lol
If they called it "Wayout", it would, at least, make a good hypetek brand name 
X* and Xorg sound more solid, intriguing, dangerous and mysterious, like Darknet,  and all the *Cons. X* will endure and run forever in my outdated systems to provide multicolor display - heh


----------



## DutchDaemon (Dec 11, 2018)

People, can we keep unsubstantiated political/governmental assumptions out of technical discussions, please?


----------



## Hakaba (Dec 11, 2018)

Correct me if I am wrong, as I discover the subject few days ago...
X11 is a protocol (Old protocol, so stable and solid, as Ethernet or HTTP...)
XOrg is the main (not the only, but alternative seems dead or too light) implementation of this protocol.

XOrg has a lot of old code / dependency / bad pratice that developer can not handle. (Wayland arguments)

So, as I am cartesian, I assume that a new implmentation of X11 (OpenX11 or FreeX11 ...  ) will appear to replace XOrg as XFree86 was replaced before.

My argument is very basic :If XOrg can not use latest graphic cards or create bad artefact when we move a window, I really doubt this rules are in the protocol.


----------



## Spartrekus (Dec 11, 2018)

*Is it good to remove the X11 Forward by having xwayland?  If we go to Wayland in BSD, BSD is no longer interesting for usage as main desktop.*

In fact, I hope that BSD will not become a sort of Linux, and it will keep X11 so much. If we have no X11 or no x11 forward, it really makes little sense to use Unix opensource.

We *must* protect and preserve X11/Xorg against Wayland.


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## jpierri (Dec 11, 2018)

Having some experience with C code using *Xlib* directly ( #include <X11/Xlib.h> ) I find it easy to use and full of features.
I sincerely hope that *X11* lasts for many years, specially here on FreeBSD.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 11, 2018)

I could never get that personally involved in debate over Xorg vs. Wayland, gtk, pluseaidio, etc. Maybe due to my own ignorance but if it works the way I like it to I'm happy. Change is not always good, as in www/firefox Quantum.

Speak of the Devil and up Intel Management Engine pops.


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## reddy (Dec 12, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> Change is not always good, as in www/firefox Quantum.



Why would anyone say that? I find Quantum amazing, it made Firefox a credible alternative to Google Chrome again. I switched back to Firefox thanks to Quantum.


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## xtaz (Dec 12, 2018)

Agreed. I really don't get why people are refusing to upgrade and sticking with the old versions. I have to admit I hated the squared off tabs when I first upgraded, but within a few days I was used to it and now the curved tabs just look weird if I see old screenshots. Other than that I have no problems and it works perfectly well.


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## Hakaba (Dec 12, 2018)

IMHO the future of X/X11 is not connected with Firefox exemple (as Firefox create new stuff to assure the future).

To really see where is the problem with X11, I just open the project and I start to read the source code (I'm not a C coder, but I have knowledge to understand).
And I have to admit that it seems like a haystack.

In the protocol the first request is _CreateWindow_.
I can find two function CreateWindow in the code (in composite and dix).
But a lot of *CreateWindow functions.

The main CreateWindow in 'dix' handle 9? different cases.

If I have to assure quality for this code, that is probably with a lot of efforts.
Clear the code is probablly a mess to.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 12, 2018)

reddy said:


> Why would anyone say that? I find Quantum amazing, it made Firefox a credible alternative to Google Chrome again. I switched back to Firefox thanks to Quantum.



The change broke every one of my extensions, the main reason I only use Mozilla based browsers to begin with.


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## reddy (Dec 13, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> The change broke every one of my extensions, the main reason I only use Mozilla based browsers to begin with.



Oh I remember the community discussions about the move to web extensions. I do not use any extension apart from ublock so I didn't feel the pain that much but it looks like a fair number of people are heavy users of extensions.

What I can say is that Quantum is a massive win from a performance perspective. Pages are rendered so fast and so smoothly, ram usage is so low, it is day and night with what Firefox had become. I am privacy-aware so I tried to go back to Firefox times and times again, but it had become a ridiculous religious choice compared to Chrome. But Quantum changed everything. IMHO the performance is even better than Chrome's, they have done a great engineering job, their blog posts describing the new architecture are interesting.

You should really give it a try if you haven't done so yet. Use it for one week. You may forgive them by experiencing the result. Also some extensions have been updated to use the web extension API since then but to be honest I think that a good number never will.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 13, 2018)

reddy said:


> Why would anyone say that? I find Quantum amazing, it made Firefox a credible alternative to Google Chrome again. I switched back to Firefox thanks to Quantum.



Both are slow and all web is slow. Better to stick to "Links", no user graphical interface and speed of light.


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## aragats (Dec 13, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> ...all web is slow. Better to stick to "Links", no user graphical interface and speed of light.


It's a self-contradiction: if "all web is slow" hence all browsers perform badly (-;
Anyway, everything depends on the purpose: I like and do use www/w3m and www/links, but in everyday life I have to use Firefox.
The same is with X: any remote use outside of LAN is simply nonsense, I have to use VNC or RDP.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 14, 2018)

aragats said:


> It's a self-contradiction: if "all web is slow" hence all browsers perform badly (-;
> Anyway, everything depends on the purpose: I like and do use www/w3m and www/links, but in everyday life I have to use Firefox.
> The same is with X: any remote use outside of LAN is simply nonsense, I have to use VNC or RDP.



There are many advantages to use "SSH -X -C" inside the LAN but as well outside.
VNC makes little senses, compared to SSH. For important things, ssh brings a lot : compatiblity, reliability,... security. 

Linux will make this, - with (x)wayland, what works disappear forever or almost on BSD Unix. BSD follows usually Linux in many points (except SysD).


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## aragats (Dec 14, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> There are many advantages to use "SSH -X -C" inside the LAN but as well outside.


It works in theory, but in real life is not usable when goes long path outside of LAN. It's just damn slow.
And again, as was mentioned above: if the connection gets interrupted you lose your session, with VNC you can simply reconnect. Depends on your purpose.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 14, 2018)

aragats said:


> It works in theory, but in real life is not usable when goes long path outside of LAN. It's just damn slow.
> And again, as was mentioned above: if the connection gets interrupted you lose your session, with VNC you can simply reconnect. Depends on your purpose.



If you use heavy lot of bloat, it won't work.

One has to be clever to avoid many heavy library requirements to make something work.

Kde, gtk,... are just bloat for the Windows user (using Linux like windows).
X11 applications run just smoothly that you are in antartica or kenya over your net cable.

This is why Unix should move to FreeUNIX. Leave newbies, windows user habits, to Linux and FreeBSD (becoming Linux like a windows like).

The real Unix lies on command line and terminal.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 14, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> This is why Unix should move to FreeUNIX. Leave newbies, windows user habits, to Linux and FreeBSD (becoming Linux like a windows like).



You sound like those stallman zealots who foam at the mouth when someone mentions using proprietary or non-GPLd software. Please be a little more open minded.


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## Crivens (Dec 14, 2018)

Guys? As long as nobody can bring a working crystal ball to the table, only time will tell.

Therefore, last round of comments, please.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 15, 2018)

1) Ok. Thanks. Let's try. (Beastie)

2) 





xtaz said:


> Agreed. I really don't get why people are refusing to upgrade and sticking with the old versions. I have to admit I hated the squared off tabs when I first upgraded, but within a few days I was used to it and now the curved tabs just look weird if I see old screenshots. Other than that I have no problems and it works perfectly well.


Maybe core programmers are bored, attracted by shining applications? Matter of mind settings, what is nice and fancy.

3) Heavy library dependencies are okay. However, it should be left some "older" softwares (library). X11 avoids loads of code and allows fast x11 forward. GTK versus x11, why not using x11 for simplicity.
Let's compare the simplicity of "older" X11 with modern GTK on wayland.

You can compile the above program with gcc using:    gcc base.c -o base `*gtk-config --cflags --libs*`

```
/* example-start base base.c */

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

int main( int   argc,
          char *argv[] )
{
    GtkWidget *window;

    gtk_init (&argc, &argv);

    window = gtk_window_new (GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
    gtk_widget_show  (window);

    gtk_main ();

    return(0);
}
```

versus


```
// cc xhello.c -lX11
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void) {
   Display *d;
   Window w;
   XEvent e;
   const char *msg = "Hello, World!";
   int s;

   d = XOpenDisplay(NULL);
   if (d == NULL) {
      fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open display\n");
      exit(1);
   }

   s = DefaultScreen(d);
   w = XCreateSimpleWindow(d, RootWindow(d, s), 10, 10, 100, 100, 1,
                           BlackPixel(d, s), WhitePixel(d, s));
   XSelectInput(d, w, ExposureMask | KeyPressMask);
   XMapWindow(d, w);

   while (1) {
      XNextEvent(d, &e);
      if (e.type == Expose) {
         XFillRectangle(d, w, DefaultGC(d, s), 20, 20, 10, 10);
         XDrawString(d, w, DefaultGC(d, s), 10, 50, msg, strlen(msg));
      }
      if (e.type == KeyPress)
         break;
   }

   XCloseDisplay(d);
   return 0;
}
```


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## Hakaba (Dec 15, 2018)

For X11, since there is no alternative to XOrg and XOrg decide to add wayland support inside X11 (I guess with lost of performance, security and so on), we know that supporting X11 is not a good idea today for new project.
In the computer history, the winner protocol is often the simplest one.

So the best alternative answer for the future of X11 is an alternative implementation of the protocol, but again, that is vaporware...


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## Spartrekus (Dec 15, 2018)

Hakaba said:


> For X11, since there is no alternative to XOrg and XOrg decide to add wayland support inside X11 (I guess with lost of performance, security and so on), we know that supporting X11 is not a good idea today for new project.
> In the computer history, the winner protocol is often the simplest one.
> 
> So the best alternative answer for the future of X11 is an alternative implementation of the protocol, but again, that is vaporware...



What could be possible alternative? Xvesa ?


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## kpedersen (Dec 15, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Guys? As long as nobody can bring a working crystal ball to the table, only time will tell.
> 
> Therefore, last round of comments, please.



OK, lets make this thread a sticky, lock it and come back to it in around 50 years. Perhaps we can get this set up in a poll 

I will start...

I predict the last person to write some X11 related code professionally will be 23 years from now (2041).

I predict the last person to write some Wayland related code professionally will be 11 years from now (2029).

Now you guys. The closest prediction wins a round of beers!

See you in 50 years!


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## Crivens (Dec 15, 2018)

Given some social currents, I doubt we have 20 years left, not to mention 50...


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## sidetone (Dec 15, 2018)

When I updated Xorg with Wayland components, I think my desktop ran a bit smoother. FreeBSD already had the smoothest running desktop that I've used. Wayland should be incorporated in to Xorg when it is efficient.



Spartrekus said:


> Kde, gtk,... are just bloat for the Windows user (using Linux like windows).
> X11 applications run just smoothly that you are in antartica or kenya over your net cable.
> 
> This is why Unix should move to FreeUNIX. Leave newbies, windows user habits, to Linux and FreeBSD (becoming Linux like a windows like).
> ...


I like the idea of GNU and FreeBSD coexisting, but for something under BSD to be able to continue without too much worry of being absorbed, then not being able to add back to that code. When BSD has its own programs, I would rather go with that as in Clang or its shells. As for Desktops, there are only so many general ways to have a desktop: taskbars, windows, tabs. I want to use a desktop, and the command line on a terminal. When it comes to sound or certain libraries, I'd rather see more programs drop down directly to something more efficient (drop-in replacements to sidestep bloat), which is common in the BSDs.


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## Hakaba (Dec 16, 2018)

IMHO only a new project can change the situation.
XWayland is a way to launch X11 program in Wayland system (assuming X11 is not installed in this system).
There is no way to launch Wayland program in X11 system.
So, even is X11 is a better protocol (I don't know if it is true), future system has more gain to have a Wayland native support than X11.
But the question is about the future of X11.
And again, why an OS can't support two efficient windowing system ?
That sound strange, but I see no reason to sacrifice X11 because the only implementation team decide to migrate to Wayland.
X11 is not the XOrg propriety, so X11 can have a future. The problem is who can assure this future and is it possible to imagine a future in the same system (or computer) ?
I mean, if you use KOffice and FreeOffice in the same computer, that ok, but if you want to install Wayland and X11, the OS doesn't handle this case (correct me if I'm wrong) ?


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## Crivens (Dec 16, 2018)

What do you think will happen when more than one driver tries to use the same hardware? DRM in this case?

I would not hold my breath for this.


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## Spartrekus (Dec 16, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> OK, lets make this thread a sticky, lock it and come back to it in around 50 years. Perhaps we can get this set up in a poll
> 
> I will start...
> 
> ...



Maybe 50 years ... or maybe not.

I wish that it could be true. There is this rule of simplicity. The simpler is a software, the longer it will be used.
Many examples such as vim, abook, ed, calcurse,... from terminal world,
But still : xfontsel, xpenguins, xcalendar, xedit, xeyes, xlogo, x.... from X world,
But also exists: gtk (gcalc, g... ),... since years and years.

So, any software (including X11 and Wayland) may still exist, or die.

Likely both will die, because Graphical Softwares are just reinventing wheels all over again.
About every year, it will be a new remake of something.

DOS: This is a no end: https://www.abandonwaredos.com/abandonware-list.php?tp=7&gen=application
DOS: Because it could not support different compilers + librairies.
All these marvellous code for DOS died, unfortunately. So much great softwares and source codes


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## Crivens (Dec 16, 2018)

And now we should all cuddle the xteddy and maybe smack some xroaches.


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## kpedersen (Dec 16, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> DOS: Because it could not support different compilers + librairies.
> All these marvellous code for DOS died, unfortunately. So much great softwares and source codes



Actually DOS is one of the best examples of software from that era to survive.

There are many emulators that can run DOS (DosBox, Qemu, bochs), even emulators written in 25k of C (https://github.com/adriancable/8086tiny)

Looking for an emulator that can run IRIX, Solaris 2.x and others is extremely hard. Again, like you mentioned; the simplicity of DOS is what has allowed it to survive.

Not to mention, DOS has loads of compilers; DJGPP, (including Virtual Memory); watcom, borland C. You can even run X servers on it using some of Desqview's software.


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