Re: [gentoo-desktop] questions and sundry gripes about X11 multihead (it's a rant)

[Brent Busby]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2013, Dominique Michel wrote:

> Each software you are talking about here is a particular case. *kit is
> a mandatory dependency of gnome and a few other desktops/window
> managers. I just don't install them, so I don't have *kit into my
> system. You can do that even on Debian.

For now, you can still fight it, but I have a feeling it's going to be 
like DBus (which I don't hate, but it still makes a good example for 
this):  It will become so integrated into the way Linux works that 
eventually, you just won't be able to live without it.  Most things like 
that I don't fight because I know you can only do it for so long.

> udev have much to do with the kernel. It is still possible to make an
> udev free system and manage a static /dev, and I know at least 1 user
> that managed to do that on a desktop PC. Also, an udev free system
> must be the way to go for many simple embedded systems, but that's
> another subject.

You can fight it, but is it worth it?  My main annoyance with udev is 
that it makes copying the image of an installed Linux machine to another 
machine more complicated than it really needs to be, due to the way it 
retains and depends on information about a particular PC's hardware that 
get configured at install time.  I've learned to work around it, but 
it's annoying.  Still...you can't fight upstream.

> Wayland is another issue. Due to the complexity of X and of all its
> extensions, wayland's compatibility layer will be a never finished
> job, which will break hundreds of good working software. Because of
> that, I think wayland may be a good move for the mobile or game
> market, but than for the desktop, X will remain in use for a long
> time, at least by experienced users. Or many of these experienced
> users will be looking for alternatives. Some already have done it, or
> are in the process to do it.

Just having big distros like Fedora and Ubuntu pushing it will fracture 
the Linux platform even more than it already is.  It's true that there 
will still be X and users who use it, but everyone will have to deal 
with a world where the first question about your Linux install will be, 
"Do you run X or Wayland?"  And from there, the fun begins...

> Another concern with wayland is windows managers. Most of them will
> just stop to work with wayland, and this is not an incomplete
> compatibility layer that will make them to work. My main concern here
> is fvwm, which is not only a wm, but also a tool-kit for the Xlib
> which let its users do whatever they can think about with it. I don't
> see anything like that coming with wayland. So for me, wayland is just
> not a viable alternative, and I am not the only one in that case.

Totally agree.  I love FVWM (and WindowMaker), and I think the ability 
to change to a whole different kind of desktop if you want is one of the 
greatest features of X.  I have a feeling Wayland users are going to end 
up with a desktop that's theme-able (in the way you can theme a Windows 
desktop), but not completely replaceable with any of twenty wholly 
different desktop/window managers.  Some people will say that's an 
improvement, since I've been hearing for years that Linux should have 
only one desktop, but the problem with those arguments is that everyone 
making it thinks their favorite window manager should be the one. 
Choice is good as long as it doesn't break things that used to work, so 
I think having a choice of lots of desktops is a great thing.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky