Welcome to Friendica.Eskimo.Com

Home of Censorship Free Hosting

 Eskimo North Linux Shells, E-mail, Virtual Machines, Web Hosting.

E-mail, Web Hosting, Linux Shell Accounts terminal or full remote desktops.

Sign Up For A Free Trial Here

Please tell your friends about federated social media site that speaks several fediverse protocols thus serving as a hub uniting them, hubzilla.eskimo.com, also check out friendica.eskimo.com, federated macroblogging social media site, mastodon.eskimo.com a federated microblogging site, and yacy.eskimo.com an uncensored federated search engine. All Free!
in reply to Katherine1

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@Katherine1 @pixeldaemon Mac has their own system, they do have an X-server available but their native display isn't, or at least wasn't in older versions, I haven't run MacOS since Lion. Anyway, with respect to Xorg being a fork of an earlier, yes it replaced XFree86, and now there is XLibre, I've been trying to get it operational but so far just black screen but I've got an Intel Arc B50 Pro video card which is an oddball.
@pixeldaemon @Katherine1
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

provectus

There is pheonix, and it is written fully in zig. I think it is a X11 protocol built from scratch, but will include modern features like HDR and VRR. It will also become compatible with Wayland apps along the way. I do not know the status, and I did not do much research on it.
This entry was edited (Sunday, August 9, 2026, 4:08 AM)
in reply to pixeldaemon

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@pixeldaemon I am hoping that something will come about that is both Wayland compatible and X compatible, and includes X Networking capacity, because this need is what keeps me using the Mode setting Kernel X-server and the need to be able to use that dictated my use of Intel Arc graphics.
@pixeldaemon
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

zarenki

Mir is a pretty notable example. In 2013, around the same time development on Wayland sessions was picking up for the other desktops, Canonical decided to try doing their own incompatible thing and designed their own display server system to replace X for the then-upcoming version of their Unity desktop.

Ubuntu switched from Unity 7 to Gnome 3 before Unity 8 and Mir were ready, leaving both projects abandoned by Canonical and handed off to the community. Long after it had already lost what little relevance it had, Mir eventually was converted into a Wayland compositor.

in reply to pixeldaemon

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@pixeldaemon Being old, (67), I am somewhat set in my preferences. At one time I primarily used Centos6 and Gnome-2, did not like Centos7 and did not like Gnome-3, then I discovered Mate which was basically Gnome-2 ported to newer versions of GTK and then Compiz which I really like but is finicky. When Centos8 came out it was so devoid of tools I liked and it was clear redhat was trying to dictate my workflow, I abandoned it in favor of Ubuntu as my workstation OS but I continue to use Ubuntu to this date.

But as I mentioned, I like Compiz, but under 24.04 the Canonical supplied Compiz was extremely unstable so I compiled from source and had been using that until I upgraded to 26.04, this had the unfortunate effect of upgrading some of the libraries my Compiz was compiled against such that the ABI's no longer matched and thus my Compiz no longer functioned.

So I decided to try the Canonical version again but found out their new version only had the configuration system used by Gnome and not that used by Mate built in. I went looking for source again and have not been able to find the complete source, so I guess I will use Canonical's source and just change the options to include the config options I need.

@pixeldaemon
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

ليتني كوري شمالي

Yes, NeWS (Network extensible Window System) from Sun Microsystems but it hasn't been maintained for years and had commercial licensing fees, and DirectFB used in embedded systems.

And as others mentioned Mir from Canonical which now implements the Wayland protocol.

This entry was edited (Sunday, August 9, 2026, 7:22 AM)
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

z3bra

There is arcan which is its own thing. I'm not aware of any mature application using it for the desktop though.

Otherwise if you assume that every wayland compositor basically endorse the role of a display server, there are plenty of them.

Arcan

IRC: #arcan @ irc.libera.chat
Arcan
in reply to daggermoon

lemmy - Link to source

deadbeef79000

Second System Syndrome otherwise know as 'throwing the baby out with the bath water'.

X11 is old, extraordinarily old for software. As such, the problems it solves are not really problems anymore.

Rather than gradually evolving X11, into say X12, the whole thing got dumped on the trash pile and a brand new entirely incompatible thing called Wayland was started from scratch.

Replacing software with literally hundreds (if not thousands) of person-years of development devoted to it over its lifetime is hard. Which meant that Wayland had an unfeasibly steep hill to climb, as such it's early days were tumultuous and it got a bit of a bad rap.

There is far more (qualitative and quantitative) history than will fit into this ~~margin~~ comment.

This entry was edited (Monday, August 10, 2026, 5:20 PM)
in reply to deadbeef79000

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@deadbeef79000 @daggermoon The real issue is the philosophy of Wayland, it was meant only as a local display manager, it was not designed to support networking. It is part of an unfortunate trend to try to make Linux Windows, why anyone would want to do this is somewhat beyond me, and even Windows you can run after market X-servers to achieve networking.
@deadbeef79000 @daggermoon
in reply to deadbeef79000

piefed - Link to source

BananaTrifleViolin

Well the other side of that is managing software with hundreds (if not thousands) of person-years of development over it's lifetime is also hard. There is a sunken cost fallacy with X11, and X11 was constantly extended to be what people needed it to be rather than the best design for the problems arising.

Having said that, I'm not sure Wayland is the ideal solution. X11 doesn't get in the way of solutions to problems, while Wayland really does. We needed a new and modern display server, but the Wayland project has decided to make that quite restricted - I personally think the security model is too far in the other direction from X11.

in reply to daggermoon

lemmy - Link to source

novafunc

Wayland wants to avoid problems that X11, Windows, and MacOS have. It deliberately avoids some "features" that application developers expect. A lot of it relates to security and privacy.

An example is that a window does not know where it is positioned on your screen and it cannot choose where to place its windows. Personally, I love this behavior. It means I can open an open and it opens in a consistent location (for most Wayland compositors, that's centered on the screen). But others don't like that. They would like the app to control where it opens; for some apps (a niche nowadays) you may have an application window and multiple more supporting windows, but on Wayland, they would all just get opened on top of each other rather than being placed around the main window.

in reply to novafunc

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@novafunc @daggermoon Security could be addressed by simply forcing ssh tunneling, I do this with X anyway but it's not forced, I force it by firewalling off the direct X port from the outside world. This is not a difficult problem to solve.
@daggermoon @novafunc
in reply to daggermoon

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@daggermoon I don't "hate" Wayland, but it lacks networking so I can't run an app on my server and display on my workstation with it, so I use the KMS X-server instead. The KMS is, like Wayland, fast and efficient but does not have Waylands interface, but does have networking.
@daggermoon
in reply to daggermoon

lemmy - Link to source

pixeldaemon

It was not truly ready for end users until the latest years but was shipped despite. It also broke some kinds (I mean a lot of) software, I cannot imagine how many lines of code had to be rewritten because of Wayland. And it also lacks screensavers. And is more resource-demanding.
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

edinbruh

no one cares if it's the protocol or the implementation. it just works worse than x11 on modest hardware


Actually, people that are not hell bent on using x11 do care... That is because the protocol is inherently more efficient than x11, and the compositor matters.

So if you try to run kwin or mutter, there's no doubt they are going to be more demanding than a plain xorg server (but not more than xorg+KDE or xorg+gnome). But if you try to use a compositor made for low hardware like labwc, it's gonna run laps around xorg.
And you can even use labwc on lxqt, so you get your familiar desktop environment but with a modern Wayland compositor.

Just try it. Dig up an old intel atom netbook and see if you prefer using xorg or labwc

in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

Communist

phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-W…

It was never impossible or difficult it's just nobody bothered because screensavers are actually bad.

Not all implementations are slower, only certain ones.

Linux Mint Ready With Its Wayland-Compatible Cinnamon Screensaver

Linux Mint developers recently outlined their work on developing a new Wayland-compatible screensaver for use with their Cinnamon desktop environment
www.phoronix.com
This entry was edited (Sunday, August 9, 2026, 11:25 PM)
in reply to pixeldaemon

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Nanook

@pixeldaemon @daggermoon No amount of code re-writing outside of Wayland can fix Wayland's lack of network support.

With X11, from my workstation in a terminal, I can ssh server, and on that server launch virt-manager for example to manage virtual machines. It is a graphical virtual machine manager and although running on that remote server can display on my local workstation via X protocol, Wayland simply CAN NOT do this.

@daggermoon @pixeldaemon
in reply to daggermoon

lemmy - Link to source

pixeldaemon

It simply looks cool. If screensavers are redundant, then LED keyboards, animated wallpapers, and a lot of other common things are as well.

Weird how people downvote my comment with obvious and objective reasons why people dislike Wayland, as if I personally hated Wayland. Why does shit like Wayland vs X11 become some kind of religion?

in reply to daggermoon

lemmy - Link to source

z3bra

Here's my 2cts as someone who (used to) hate Wayland:

The main reason is frustration. Using Xorg was simple. You install xorg-server (and its million dependencies), a window manager and you're good to go.
Fire up the server, and then run all the software you need. The window manager is just one of them (and is entirely optional).

Wayland is another story though. You don't "install Wayland". It's only a spec. Just like you don't install HTTP to browse the web. You either install Firefox, epiphany or dillo, which all support a different amount of that spec. For example dillo is ultra light but doesn't support javascript.
It's the same with Wayland compositors, except that the spec changes every week (or used to, back in Wayland's early days). And it was so frustrating to come from Xorg where everything works to another system where you couldn't even copy/paste between windows !

Wayland being only a protocol is it's greatest strength and main weakness. It's good because it's extensible and everyone's free to implement whatever extension they need. Unfortunately it went in all directions with everyone coming up with new extension everyday, causing fragmentation when there was barely 3 competitors (kde, gnome and wlroots). As a developer, it's ultra confusing, just like on the web when you used to add support for chrome, mozilla and IE. And requires a lot of effort because the landscape is constantly changing. So if devs are lost, imagine users...

Hopefully nowadays there's some kind of consortium that's voting Wayland extensions, which is a great thing. Things move at a pace that is okayish to keep up with, and most basic expected features are there (copy/paste, screen save/lock, desktop shells, etc...).

in reply to z3bra

lemmy - Link to source

provectus

I totally agree. Install xorg and wm, and boop startx. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a wayland compositor, and it is still troubling me. When I do have a Wayland compositor set up, it definetly feels like a cleaner setup. I do not hate Wayland, but consider it different.
in reply to pixeldaemon

lemmy - Link to source

Will

The register published an article about this last month. Titular "frame" is addressed first, but the story also describes XLibre, wayback, arcan, and others

theregister.com/software/2026/…

Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assembly

Joins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan
Liam Proven (theregister)
This entry was edited (Sunday, August 9, 2026, 8:41 PM)
in reply to Will

lemmy - Link to source

vas

"Frame" is AI slop. I think it was explained that the whole or most of the project is written by Claude Code. github.com/isene/frame#license

How many bugs there are and for how long it's going to be maintained, anyone can guess themselves.

GitHub - isene/frame: Pure-asm X11 display server for the CHasm desktop. No libc, no Mesa, no Xlib — just NASM, syscalls, and the X11 wire protocol.

Pure-asm X11 display server for the CHasm desktop. No libc, no Mesa, no Xlib — just NASM, syscalls, and the X11 wire protocol. - isene/frame
GitHub
This entry was edited (Monday, August 10, 2026, 9:01 AM)

This website uses cookies. If you continue browsing this website, you agree to the usage of cookies.

⇧