X Windowing System is used in XWayland still. X11 Xorg is no longer needed. RIP X11 Xorg, you served us well.
Edit: Thanks to the note in the comments. I obvously meant Xorg is no longer needed, which is the widely used implementation of X11 protocol. This always confuses the hell out of me.
lol, Wayland can’t even start a desktop session on my machine, whereas X11 has worked without issues since 2009 (the last time I ever had to edit xorg.conf).
Sure sounds like X11 is the one who’s “dead” around here!
Dead in the sense of development. I thought this was obvious. But I explained it for you, here you go. (Edit: I forgot to be nice. )
X11 is being actively developed, last commit on xserver was 7 hours ago, and it will probably continue being worked on for a long time
It’s not dead there either, although I’d make the argument that X11 as a project is “mature” or “finalized”, it doesn’t really need hyperactive development like the tiktok children are used to.
(There are very good arguments that a new software stack was needed, but I’d expect the result to at least do something; ATM Wayland is little more than literally a “everyone else do my work for me” project)
With Wayland, programs still can’t restore their window position or size. It sure would be nice if they could get basic functionality working.
Wayland is still incomplete, but that is besides the point I was making. X is still not dead, even living within XWayland, within Wayland. X11 is just one implementation of the X Protocol and XWayland is a new implementation.
Wayland itself is functional and working, just not 100% compatible to X11. The same could be said about X11, it would be nice if they could get some basic functionality working right; but they can’t, and that is why we need to replace it with something more modern and better. I think Wayland is working on a solution for restoring window position and size.
When X was created, there was no compatibility needed. Wayland on the other hand is in a different position, where it needs to innovate, make it more secure and keep as much as possible compatibility to X11, DEs and window managers. It’s just unfair to just say Wayland would not have basic functionality working. It also depends on the desktop environments and GNOME is often to blame for.
It will never be compatible with X because they are different designs. X relies on a central program (server) that accepts commands from programs. It is also a mess as it was built during the 80s for 80s hardware. It was expanded over time but you can only stretch the arch so far.
Wayland doesn’t have a server. You desktop talks to the hardware and then the desktop accepts connections from apps.
ELI5: what does this mean for the end user? Is there any simple test I can do with both to see this?
it means that you have to manually reposition every single window, every single time. for any and all apps, by design
Programs can’t set position or size of windows, period, at most they can ask and then hope they don’t get ignored and it’s good that way. Window management is responsibility of the compositor, not of applications.
At least KDE has support for it that’s about on X11 level, a proper-proper solution is still in the pipeline. And yes you’re seeing right it’s been there for four years.
Wayland kinda is an x.org project in the first place. AFAIK it’s officially organised under freedesktop but the core devs are x.org people.
x.org as in the organisation and/or domain might not be needed any more, but the codebase is still maintained by exactly those Wayland devs for the sake of XWayland. Support for X11 clients isn’t going to go away any time soon. XWayland is also capable of running in rootfull mode and use X window managers, if there’s enough interest to continue the X.org distribution I would expect them to completely rip out the driver stack at some point and switch it over to an off the shelf minimum wayland compositor + XWayland. There’s people who are willing to maintain XWayland for compatibility’s sake, but all that old driver cruft, no way.
Wayland kinda is an x.org project in the first place.
Not really. Wayland is fundamentally different from Xorg. Otherwise we would not need Wayland and create X12. It’s like saying mechanical hard drives are kind of Solid State Drives, just because they allow to do something similar. Even if the developers are the same, does not mean the technology is.
AFAIK it’s officially organised under freedesktop but the core devs are x.org people.
I’m not sure if this is correct. But let’s assume this is correct. Why does it matter? If Wayland was developed by different people than those who maintain Xorg at the moment, would not change the fact that we need Wayland, because it is different and solves issues that cannot be solved with Xorg without rewriting it. And nobody wants to rewrite Xorg or understand the code (other than very basic security maintenance).
And nobody wants to rewrite Xorg or understand the code (other than very basic security maintenance).
That’s precisely the point: All the devs got tired of it and started wayland instead.
X12 might happen at some point when wayland is mature, as in a “let’s create and bless a network-transparent protocol so we might have a chance of getting rid of XWayland in 50 years” kind of move.
