Eldritch

More for sure if you include Darwin. Linux and BSD were largely similar for a long time. The divergence only really started the last 15-20 years.

It’s interesting to imagine where BSD would be today without all the litigation on the 90s. Would BSD be where Linux is today? Or would it still be in a similar situation due to it’s reluctance to break with system V traditions.

X11 is a display server. Wayland is a presentation layer. Different goals. I have run graphical multi-seat systems using x11. Something like that will never be possible in the same way for Wayland because it is out of the design scope

Oh absolutely. I said as much an earlier post they will coexist even if Wayland will be the default for most distros.

I’ve seen one Dunno about a large influx. But it didn’t last long.

I’m sure there’s a little column A and a little column b. The recent update to blender with Vulcan was amazing for instance. Though I don’t think under wine / proton Vulcan is the default yet. But one thing I know Wayland absolutely did help with was tearing under a few applications.

100% a system D like issue. And I get it. People tend to hate change. The old init scripts work okay back in the day. And if you’re familiar with them I can see why you wouldn’t want it to change. But system D really has brought something to the game. It’s so much easier to enable disable services. No having to dig through init scripts trying to find the one you’re looking for which might be called through a script of a script of a script.

And while I hate to see fragmentation between the Linux and BSD space. Part of that is on the BSD space. Reluctance to do anything different than the way it was always done can and will hold you back. Not that BSD has ever been fragment free on its own.

Yes for many it’s not. Lots of those issues, while actual issues. Are niche issues. Issues I’ve personally had brushes with in many cases. As someone who’s used Linux and BSD since the early 90s. I know I’m not the average user these days. And I know X had it’s own similar issues over the years. Still does. For the average person using a single screen who doesn’t steam Etc. Wayland provides a very good experience. All the edge issues will be addressed individually as they were with X.

While I would like to see BSD support as well. Part of that is on the BSD devs and community. Many who are against it. There’s lots of areas BSD is unfortunately falling behind in. But that’s not everyone else’s problem. I would love to be able to run a BSD desktop. But it simply doesn’t have the software or support I look for. And that’s okay

Respectfully, disagree. A lot of the new modern users are into gaming. Something which Wayland specifically does better. I’m not just speaking from personal experience. Yes you could game under X11 before. But it wasn’t as smooth or without issue. I 100% have seen performance increases and stability increases after switching to Wayland with regards to gaming workloads.

We’ll get there. Honestly I think in the long run Wayland will be easier to troubleshoot and maintain. But then that may just be memories of troubleshooting XFree86 back in the 90s. I still have flashbacks.

X11 would have needed almost a complete rewrite. Wayland made sense. Eject the technical debt and focus on your use case. We aren’t time sharing on a large central mini computer/mainframe anymore. And even then they generally are full single user systems run in parallel under a hypervisor these days. As wasteful as that might be.

But there’s still occasions when you need to run a legacy application on old AIX, Irix, etc, or vax Hardware. And need a workstation. Which right now Wayland simply can’t do without x.

Yep absolutely. It’s been years since I’ve done that myself. But there’s lots of Legacy software out there. Especially on Legacy systems that are not being developed for at all anymore. That will continue to require X11. One of the other more Niche uses which Wayland doesn’t support I believe are multi graphical users on a single system. Again probably something I don’t think I’ve messed around much with in the last decade. But it was a fun feature. Wayland is much more focused on a single session.

And X11 will never be ready for most modern users. They have different goals. But that’s the thing with open source. As long as someone somewhere needs it. Even if 90% of us don’t need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.

Not even that. It was because a disingenuous psychopath raised a big stink to the payment processors that Steam and itch rely on. As long as they want to process payments they unfortunately need the companies and have to appease them. The best thing we could do is raise a bigger opposite stink.

Sadly that is absolutely what it means. So indoctrinated that they can’t even see it. I still love PBS and NPR in general. But it’s undeniable how much worse they’ve gotten trying to appeal to people who want nothing to do with them.