It's Time To Admit It: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware (Phoronix Article)

Lounge
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I found this recent Phoronix article regarding the lack of development in X.org server and it could be considered an abandonware.

My biggest worry is Xfce, since there is ZERO development towards Wayland.

What do you think will happen to our favorite and flagship DE?

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Abandonware or not - there’s no way in hell X going anywhere for years to come, because there are to be honest no adequate alternative…

Wayland for now is unfortunately more of a dream, not reality… :anguished:
Still long way to come for full-featured and stable

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As long as X.org doesn’t go anywhere for the next 10 years (xfce’s usual development speed), I will be less anxious.

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I would think that if it will be 100% abandoned by current team for good - someone else would pick it up, because we still need it anyway :slight_smile:

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Intel blacklisting X isn’t cool, and the article says Red Hat prefer Wayland, and no other big tech is stepping up about maintenance either … pushing Wayland too fast could mean a world of pain ongoing for users across linux, not just fedora, with graphics and devices constantly being hit and miss. Expecting users to deal with all that is a bit much, I feel, especially when Xorg works perfectly well and can be at least not interfered with until any alternative is fully developed and stable. I’d prefer to stay with Xorg even if Wayland was fully ready tbh, with relying on graphics tablet fully and being used to it working so well with Xorg, but that’s a wait and see case I suppose.

Also hoping the big tech involved aren’t trying to push more of a Gnome Wayland default, that would see more traditional desktops abandoned. Again a wait and see, as many users like the traditional desktops, so there may be adaptations to Wayland.

BUT, to end on a more positive note, there’s no way they can just drop xorg … it’s intrinsic throughout all graphics/devices on Linux, so I’d not worry. It would take them a massive amount of time and work to remove xorg, and so much wouldn’t work, so I can’t see it happening for a long time.

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…looking at nvidia… :woozy_face:

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I think we are more likely to see Half Live 3 running on GNU/Hurd before we see Wayland replacing Xorg.

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You don’t wanna see that…

image

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Awww no … had just eaten. :rofl: The 'borg is perfect proof that aliens could possibly exist, lol; built somewhere, I’d put money on it (well, maybe 10p, as that surely can’t be so … ??? … ) Maybe the glassy look is him updating, or a permanent BSOD going on, if the updates are linked with MS.

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I probably don’t understand too much about the whole thing but here is EOS GNOME running with Wayland (AMD RX 580, amdgpu) and I can’t find any reasons to complain. Everything runs as usual with Xorg. Maybe the big problems only occur with NVIDIA?

Edit: The translation with DeepL is sometimes quite strange. When I read it against it, I am often in doubt whether the meaning of my sentences is still correct …

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Fedora is experimenting a lot with Wayland as is OpenSuse. I hope Xorg isn’t forgotten.

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Don’t know about the translation, but what you’re saying makes sense, so it must be okay. :+1:t2: AMD too, but haven’t used Gnome/a more Wayland-focussed distro, so am not sure if it’s an Nvidia issue or how it would run e.g. for graphics tablet … other things seem to be an Nvidia issue though, lol, so it’s quite possible it could be that.

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People are saying Ubuntu 21.04 could be Wayland by default too.

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I don’t know e.g. Mint’s views about Wayland, but, if they’re not wanting to move to it before it’s properly ready, it’s a really good job that they already have LMDE active. Hopefully others that have Ubuntu as their base have an alternative, too. Maybe we’ll see a lot of distros move to Debian as their base, as Ubuntu again trying to push what they want won’t be acceptable across the board, I imagine.

EDIT: I’ve just read that Mint intend to go to wayland, and Debian has already defaulted to wayland.

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Or is it not wayland after all? (because Xorg-driver):

[balder@arch-pc ~]$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] driver: amdgpu 
           v: kernel 
           Display: wayland server: X.org 1.20.9 driver: amdgpu note: display driver n/a - try sudo/root 
           resolution: <xdpyinfo missing> 
           OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX 580 Series (POLARIS10 DRM 3.35.0 5.4.72-1-lts LLVM 10.0.1) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.1
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Yes, I did wonder, as Wayland isn’t very developed or stable yet, as far as I understand. They seem to bring in bits of Wayland though, as I’ve noticed a wayland file being installed during updates, on Mate … on checking, it’s wayland, wayland-protocols, and lib32-wayland. One of the dependencies is wpebackend-fdo; backend for WPE webkit … custom license, not GPL. This is what I’m nervous of about Wayland … too much IoT focus, and the same rushing to bring it in asap, whether users want it or not.

From the wpewebkit.org site:
WPE powers hundreds of millions of embedded devices.
Embedded “browsers” are more than just a way that people can browse the Web as we commonly think about them: They power increasingly many of the user interfaces that you encounter every day. From cable boxes to automobile and airplane infotainment systems, to kiosks, digital signage, smart appliances and video game consoles—embedded browsers are everywhere.

I can’t even put into words how against smart devices, IoT, and things running via the browser, I am, plus I doubt opening up everyone’s systems and devices to run in these ways is going to be more secure, which seems to be the excuse used for rushing Wayland through. At least monthly there seems to be a big data breach, and always more pushing to data-mine, plus subscriptions, or forced sign-ups, e.g. MS bringing in that minecraft players must have an MS account to be able to play next year.

inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Navi 10 [Radeon RX 5600 OEM/5600 XT / 5700/5700 XT] 
           driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: ati,modesetting unloaded: fbdev,radeon resolution: 
           1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (NAVI10 DRM 3.39.0 5.9.1-arch1-1 LLVM 10.0.1) 
           v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.1

Thankfully running x11, phew. Hadn’t even thought to check, with being on Mate + I’ve not seen Arch saying anything about Wayland.

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It seems to work well in Gnome however they have it set up but on KDE it’s not quite as good and i also have AMD.

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Just in reference to earlier, saying concerns that traditional desktops might be kicked to the kerb, it seems Mate are going to become full Wayland, according to vkareh of the ubuntu mate team:

There is currently work being done to make MATE work with Wayland. That said, it’ll be a lot of work to get it to a fully functioning system on it, and a lot of components will need to be rewritten. So, maybe not the next release specifically, but sometime in the future we hope to be able to ship a Wayland-based MATE.
(reading on he seems to be saying something about having both options, possibly?)
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/will-mate-use-wayland-in-the-next-releases/19355/19

So it might be a good guess, @Mystic, that probably xfce will go to Wayland? I hadn’t thought Mate would, but, after finding the packages on my system, then reading what vkareh is saying (back in April 2019), it looks that way.

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And now, dated September 2019, there’s ubuntu talking about the details of porting wayland over for ubuntu mate, and referencing a snap. Hopefully they don’t mean into Mate itself also, just the ubuntu version. No way snaps will be on my system!

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/porting-mate-apps-to-wayland/12670

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Yep…Little too insane, given there are a lot of good programs which are old :upside_down_face:

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