all 19 comments

[–]LarrySwinger2 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (18 children)

I'm not happy. We will never have the same kind of diversity of WMs under Wayland. This is one of the unique things about GNU/Linux. You don't need to adapt to some standard desktop paradigm, you can really make the system your own. Who's going to port all those old WMs to Wayland? Nobody. But the security concerns are justified and that really bugs me.

[–]TaseAFeminist4Jesus 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (17 children)

You sound like you understand how these things all fit together. I've long struggled with that. My laptop runs Gnome... is XWindows really sitting between Gnome and the hardware? WTF is the usefulness of that? What is it doing? When I read about the XWindows protocol, it reminds me of GDI. I can't imagine using GDI for anything I need to look good or run fast on 2023.

How does shit like alpha channels fit into this. XWindows supports that? The current version dates to 1987.

[–]bopomofodojo 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yes, basically XWindows sites between Gnome and the hardware.

X is basically the API that all desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.) talk to in order to do things like "draw an application window on the screen". It's the standard that allows there to be so much diversity in DEs because they don't have to reinvent the low-level wheels every time. That's the usefullness: a standard API for doing 2D/3D desktop graphics stuff.

You'd be amazed how forward-thinking X was, even back in the late 1980's. It's worth remembering that X wasn't developed for Linux, it was developed for Unix and the myriad of commercial Unixes in the late 1980's/early 1990's was the main impetus for adopting it as a standard. It wasn't running on paltry x86 systems either, it was running on big fat Unix workstations and such, so it could do a lot of things that look or looked impossible on 386's and 486's.

X.org is a particular implementation of X (the reference implementation), specifically X11, which is FLOSS and has become the defacto standard for X in the age of Linux. It likely does many things that aren't specifically mentioned in the X11 specification, but since it's the go-to version, they're treated as if they exist. I don't know the specifics of Alpha channels but I imagine those are one of them.

X11 is not without its drawbacks though, and performance is one, which is why Wayland came into being. But Wayland is still rough around the edges and missing a lot of useful X11 features. It's reallllly tailored for GNOME as well, hence the concerns about other DEs disappearing.

I hope X.org continues to get maintenance from someone, but it's an uphill battle. It's a very complex, very old system with literal decades of feature creep and bloat on it, so it's not exactly easy to jump into.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In what way was X forward thinking? Also, what features is Wayland missing?

Oh, by the way, I've encountered something related to performance on X.org a while back but never shared. I just made a post about it.

[-> Windows isn't the only system on which you can do this.

[–]Vulptex 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (13 children)

By all means X11 seems like it's not exactly optimal, and yet it still gives me noticeably better performance than Windows or Mac.

[–]TaseAFeminist4Jesus 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, that is part of my confusion!

[–]are 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

I doubt current X11 is at all "optimal":

stackoverflow.com/questions/4630104/need-help-understanding-x11-window-hierarchy-and-drawing-commands

its a chatty disorganized mess for its layering model

The Mac has about 20 predefined rendering compositing layers (including mouse cursor, screen saver, login window, etc), and user code can draw into any of them if needed. Apple supports zero monitors or even multiple monitors, for over 30 years! In 1991 you could stretch any window across 6 big monitors in one mac using 6 graphics cards and not all monitors needed the same color depth. It still can 30 years later.

THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS "XWINDOWS" it is called "The X Window System"

Look it up in any real reference book if you doubt me.

MOTIF on X11 at least looked nice, as did Open Motif

They all then strongly tried to copy the Mac looks

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Mac crashes like 5x more often than Windows and Linux and was always really slow for me. Mac has some specialty areas where it offers optimal performance, but everything else doesn't work well. Not to mention that it's such a locked-down OS that it's barely usable. And despite all of this, it costs 1000x more than every other system. The only thing Apple products have going for them is the brand. It's a complete and total ripoff. I switched to Linux once Microsoft started going in the same direction and forced Windows 10 on everyone.

X11 I know isn't optimal. But despite this, it still manages to work better than plenty of other window managers with algorithms that should outperform it, meaning something's not right with them.

[–]are 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

locked-down OS that it's barely usable

Wrong! It has a full blown real unix system for those that want to use it at that level.

And despite all of this, it costs 1000x more than every other system

WRONG. Nothing is as cheap as a macintosh per multiply-addition from and back to ram. NOTHING. Look at any benchmark of a M1 Ultra Mac Studio 2022:

  • 21 teraflop GPU/APU
  • 800GB/s of memory bandwidth to/from 128GB of memory
  • 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine

Mac crashes like 5x more often than Windows and Linux

Thats so untrue, now I know all you wrote was just nonsense.

The beloved Macintosh made Apple the biggest Company in the history of Earth valued at a $2.5 trillion dollar market cap!:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=aapl&ia=stock

Apple products are the best value for anyone who is not a pauper and values their TIME, not just their money.

That is why Apple is a bigger company than Microsoft.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They do overcharge for the hardware. You can pick a product from the Apple store and then increase the specs from the default setup, and you will notice that they charge ridiculous amounts for a bit of extra RAM, much more than those chips cost, and it's the same with storage. It doesn't help that so much is soldered on and you can't upgrade easily at a later point, so you're pushed to increase the specs and spend much more than you otherwise would.

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

A few Linux distros are "certified" unixes. The rest care more about functionality than conforming to some old standard. Mac itself only went through the effort to get certified due to some licensing issue, it wasn't always so.

Macs are like 5x the price for the same hardware, and both the operating system and the hardware are so restricted that it doesn't even feel like your device. It feels like a school or work computer. Apple barely tolerates you doing anything they don't specifically approve of, and they've tried to get people executed for jailbreaking their devices, and they want you to use ONLY Apple products and will do anything they can to force you to. It's a scam unless you're using it for its niches.

[–]are 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I explained to you, and you do not understand , that to achieve the same level of multiply-adds of large floats per second TO AND FROM RAM, gigabytes of values, a Mac is CHEAPER than any known PC. The reason is Apples memory design and chip design for computation (its used 5 nanometer for years, and in a couple months will offer parts of chip at 3 nanometers).

The fastest laptop from now on will probably always be a Mac.

Poor people make up lies about the worlds largest company in history... Apple. 2.5 trillion dollars built on quality products.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You can build a Hackintosh so that you don't pay a penny too much. It requires some initial effort, but then you get a stable system. MacOS has never crashed on me, not once. And X11 is a windowing system, not a window manager.

Not to mention that it's such a locked-down OS that it's barely usable.

It isn't locked down in any way. You're free to install whatever programs are available. There are lots of commercial applications available, there are people who develop open-source applications for it, and it's unix beneath the hood. There are three different projects that port GNU/Linux programs to macOS, namely Homebrew, Finch, and Macports. It's actually less hassle to get those programs running on macOS than it is on GNU/Linux itself.

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't buy that for a second. Maybe it's different if you have a Hackintosh, which FYI Apple would hang you for, but Apple products do not give you any freedom. Your system is the way Apple wants it, end of discussion. Customizing Windows is hard enough, but Mac makes it look like a piece of cake.

Linux can run not only UNIX programs, but also most Windows programs, in addition to making it super easy to do pretty much anything you want with it. It's also like 5000x faster than both Mac and Windows, and it's more relevant than UNIX these days, so all the "standard" tools are native to it. Most servers even have a Linux distribution on them, including this website in fact, because it just works best. In the near future probably everything else will fall into irrelevance.

[–]LarrySwinger2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

which FYI Apple would hang you for

They've never sued anyone merely for using Hackintosh, let alone instructing others how to do it. They only sue when you try to sell a hackintoshed machine. Either way, the EU forbids companies from determining what a user can and cannot do with software that they have acquired legally. MacOS itself is free, so that's all good. I wish Apple good luck trying to override the fucking EU.

MacOS runs just fine for me, including on the Thinkpad X220, which is a laptop from 2011. If you buy modern, compatible hardware, you aren't going to have a problem with it. I use both OSes and find that macOS provides a full DE while still feeling lightweight. In GNU/Linux there's an option between lightweight and heavier environments, and I experience stutters with the latter, specifically when I enable compositing on KDE. I'm glad GNU/Linux works for you, though.

You're right about servers, I'm not contending with that. Note that I'm not arguing macOS is an overall better system.

[–]WoodyWoodPecker 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The X Window System was released in 1985 and developed on Unix at the same time as Apple did the Macintosh project. Steve Jobs used The X Windows for NeXT and now it is part of macOS.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

MacOS uses Aqua. It's possible to run X.org on it, but it's in no way part of the system.

[–]are 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No. NeXT was written in Objective C and unrelated to the X Window System. In fact it used DISPLAY POSTSCRIPT and lacked pixels. Pixels were each floating point rectangles (yes rectangles, not squares). To draw a perfect circle on a NeXT, a oval was rendered , deep down in the drawing code!

UNRELATED!

[–]LarrySwinger2 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

I really don't have a technical understanding of this subject, more of a practical one. For a technical understanding, you can easily Startpage ChatGPT your questions. I can only tell you what I know.

X.org contains the basic instructions on how to present multiple graphical programs side by side, and window managers build on top of that. Gnome is a desktop environment, which is a complete suite of applications, and one of those is a window manager. The WM that Gnome uses is called Mutter. A WM provides things such as window titles by which you can drag the windows around, virtual desktops, keyboard shortcuts, etc. It extends on the basis that X.org provides.

You can see what X.org looks like without any window manager by making something else the root window, such as a terminal emulator. You can do this by creating ~/.xsession or ~/xinitrc with the content: "exec dbus-launch gnome-terminal", and then instructing your Display Manager to launch from that script. If you don't know how to configure your DM, you can instead enter a second instance of X.org. Save your work, then go to TTY2 with ctrl + alt + F2, log in, and type "startx -- :1". (The regular X.org is on socket 0, and with this argument, you're creating a new one on socket 1 which is usually empty.)

What you will see is a simple terminal emulator which covers part of the screen. It isn't centered but rather it looks like it's placed a bit randomly. There's no apparent way to drag it around either. There's zero polish. But your keyboard input goes to the application, that's one of the windowing system's tasks. So you can type commands for other programs, such as "nautilus", in order to launch those. A new window for that will be presented, and you'll see that that will take the keyboard input now, and that mouse input works too. But there's no alt + tab for switching between the terminal, that was the window manager's job. So when you're done with Nautilus, you can quit it with ctrl + q (this one works because it's provided by Nautilus itself) or through its menu, and you're left with the terminal emulator. If you close the that one by typing "exit", X.org itself will close because you closed the root window, and you'll return to the TTY. When you're done with this, type ctrl + alt + F7 to return to your regular environment (or reboot).

Let me know how this goes for you. As you can see, a WM is necessary for any multitasking. You could use barebones X.org in conjunction with a set of scripts that utilize wmctrl to do basic window placement / switching. You could use sxhkd to bind those scripts to keyboard shortcuts. It'd be a neat and educational hack. But that's more advanced, I recommend you take things one step at a time. But barebones X.org really encourages you to focus. In fact, simply writing about this makes me want to try it out. BRB.