Can you use Unix without X11 forward?

Do you need X(wayland) with X forward?

  • yes

    Votes: 10 58.8%

  • No

    Votes: 7 41.2%
  • Total voters
    17
Spartrekus

Spartrekus

Hello,

Soon or later, the desktop will change greatly. Wayland offers much better desktop in general.

Can you use Unix without X11 forward?



See here the faq of wayland:

What is wrong with X?
The problem with X is that... it's X. When you're an X server there's a tremendous amount of functionality that you must support to claim to speak the X protocol, yet nobody will ever use this. For example, core fonts; this is the original font model that was how your got text on the screen for the many first years of X11. This includes code tables, glyph rasterization and caching, XLFDs (seriously, XLFDs!). Also, the entire core rendering API that lets you draw stippled lines, polygons, wide arcs and many more state-of-the-1980s style graphics primitives. For many things we've been able to keep the X.org server modern by adding extensions such as XRandR, XRender and COMPOSITE and to some extent phase out less useful extensions. But we can't ever get rid of the core rendering API and much other complexity that is rarely used in a modern desktop. With Wayland we can move the X server and all its legacy technology to an optional code path.
Click to expand...

Is Wayland network transparent / does it support remote rendering?
No, that is outside the scope of Wayland. To support remote rendering you need to define a rendering API, which is something I've been very careful to avoid doing. The reason Wayland is so simple and feasible at all is that I'm sidestepping this big task and pushing it to the clients. It's an interesting challenge, a very big task and it's hard to get right, but essentially orthogonal to what Wayland tries to achieve.
Click to expand...

You will need soon to adapt your way of working, likely use more VNC, Teamviewer, tightvnc,... and any other solutions. libx11 will no longer allow regular things. It is largely accepted that it is prehistory and primitive to use X11 library(/-es) today (example: here sinus/cosinus/.... plot on x11, xclock, xterm, xedit, xcalendar, x* ... ).

Can you use Unix without X11 forward?

With best regards
 
SirDice said:
One has nothing to do with the other. UNIX is an OS, X11 is a GUI application framework (a set of protocols actually) running on top of that OS.
Click to expand...

Up to you to keep using Unix or not for X reasons and lack of features/functionalities.
 
Remote management of UNIX and UNIX-like systems is typically done using ssh(1). None of my servers have any X11 related stuff on them. Why would I run a fully blown graphical desktop on a server?
 
SirDice said:
Remote management of UNIX and UNIX-like systems is typically done using ssh(1). None of my servers have any X11 related stuff on them. Why would I run a fully blown graphical desktop on a server?
Click to expand...

I agree with you. FreeBSD is not dedicated for Desktops, however many core components are built to be so.
KDE, Gnome, ... can be readily installed and being operational.

Common habits are however to consider BSD as a Linux desktop machine, which is not actually.
 
Spartrekus said:
however many core components are built to be so.
Click to expand...
No, they are not. What do you consider to be "core components"? Nothing installed from ports/packages is a "core" component. All core components are part of the base OS and the nothing in the base OS depends on or uses X11.
 
Ports/packages are third party software, which means they can never be core components. So, the question remains, what do you consider to be "core components"?
 
If you really need GUI for some application on a server - a localhost web interface would fit the bill. Otherwise SSH/tmux is all you need.

There's no need to X11 on a server.
 
To be honest, I have already had a tinfoil hat moment and migrated some of my personal projects to use software rendering via vgl without X11, GLX or an accelerated GPU. I am quite confident that if it comes down to it, I can do without a stable graphics API.

If X11 does disappear, we will end up with an API that changes every year (like networking tools / systemd on Linux). So long as I can get a decent terminal, I actually could do without X11 and whatever replaces Wayland.

So I say... bring on the terrible decisions of the future! XD
 
BSD User said:
Yes. Even Microsoft has an option to install and run their server without GUI.
Click to expand...
What are the possible reasons for such a big change?

kpedersen said:
To be honest, I have already had a tinfoil hat moment and migrated some of my personal projects to use software rendering via vgl without X11, GLX or an accelerated GPU. I am quite confident that if it comes down to it, I can do without a stable graphics API.

If X11 does disappear, we will end up with an API that changes every year (like networking tools / systemd on Linux). So long as I can get a decent terminal, I actually could do without X11 and whatever replaces Wayland.

So I say... bring on the terrible decisions of the future! XD
Click to expand...
maybe give a try to GRX, which may run as well on DOS.
When all graphical libraries are replaced, DOS will still exist on FreeDOS or Dosbox.
github.com

GitHub - spartrekus/Fast-GRX-graphics-library-for-X11: GRX PI, Fast GRX graphics library for X11 (ideal for GCC, Raspberry PI and port to FreeDOS !!)

GRX PI, Fast GRX graphics library for X11 (ideal for GCC, Raspberry PI and port to FreeDOS !!) - spartrekus/Fast-GRX-graphics-library-for-X11
github.com github.com

It is the first time that I read this. This is not normal. Usually people consider it as good that X11 disappears.
"It must disappear because it is old."
Click to expand...
 
BSD User said:
Yes. Even Microsoft has an option to install and run their server without GUI.
Click to expand...
Spartrekus said:
What are the possible reasons for such a big change?
Click to expand...
It's not something new, every version of MS Windows can be installed headlessly. Server versions support serial port access. I used to install and configure Server 2012, and believe that earlier versions had such capability as well.
Spartrekus said:
When all graphical libraries are replaced, DOS will still exist on FreeDOS or Dosbox.
Click to expand...
DOS requires BIOS, all new computers have UEFI, it was discussed in another thread. So, it still exist but useless in this aspect.

Regarding the X11 forwarding: it's useful for simple GUI applications only, in most cases I needed it, it was absolutely useless if not on the same LAN, the latency makes complex GUIs unusable. So, that's a good feature, but for those rare cases I need remote GUI, I can use vnc/rdp.
 
aragats said:
It's not something new, every version of MS Windows can be installed headlessly. Server versions support serial port access. I used to install and configure Server 2012, and believe that earlier versions had such capability as well.

DOS requires BIOS, all new computers have UEFI, it was discussed in another thread. So, it still exist but useless in this aspect.

Regarding the X11 forwarding: it's useful for simple GUI applications only, in most cases I needed it, it was absolutely useless if not on the same LAN, the latency makes complex GUIs unusable. So, that's a good feature, but for those rare cases I need remote GUI, I can use vnc/rdp.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your post and giving feedbacks about X11 forward.

Today, there are probably some users using X forward. Poll may give some information, maybe.

The latency comes from the library spaghettis.

A good way to test the fact is by self compiling xmessage (or alternatives) and to try with ssh X forward.
More importantly. the fact of using x11 library only: xedit, xeyes, xfig, xmessage "hello world" ... work extremely fast over 5'000-10'000 km distance over ssh. This is ok for the classical X11 utilities and all software that are using X11 only.

what do you use then to see X11 applications ?

  • teamviewer
  • vnc
...
 
Spartrekus said:
what do you use then to see X11 applications ?
• teamviewer
• vnc
Click to expand...
Well, teamviewer is not native for UNIX-like OSs, I use it only to access Windows machines.
Vnc is the easiest. To access X servers I use net/x11vnc, if they are behind NAT/firewall I use ssh tunnels.
By the way, the official teamviewer works fine in wine as a client (haven't tried as server).
 
aragats said:
Well, teamviewer is not native for UNIX-like OSs, I use it only to access Windows machines.
Vnc is the easiest. To access X servers I use net/x11vnc, if they are behind NAT/firewall I use ssh tunnels.
By the way, the official teamviewer works fine in wine as a client (haven't tried as server).
Click to expand...

Aren't you worried about the necessity of higher hardware perfs to be using it?
 
Spartrekus said:
Aren't you worried about the necessity of higher hardware perfs to be using it?
Click to expand...
No, I don't since we're limited by the network performance which is on a par with, let's say, a simplest framebuffer. In other words, your accelerated graphics is not gonna help you in such cases anyway.
 
Wayland, by design, doesn't support 'Color Management', leave alone ICC profiles (apparently Wayland developers don't know what 'Color' is). If you wanna have any kind of color management in Wayland, you will need to embed and manage that separated in every single program.

A desktop without 'Color Management' is useless for anything remotely serious. I am sure they can add it later, but I am also sure it will be a hack. "Great design" from something that is advertised as the new morden, cool and hot thing for Linux desktops.

Well Xorg, with its err... 35 years(?), at least have some arcane but functional color management.

So, in short, Wayland is a joke.
 
SirDice said:
X11 is a GUI application framework (a set of protocols actually) running on top of that OS.
Click to expand...

I think, its more protocols than GUI application framework.

I have in my desktop, where the X server runs, the file .xserverrc (since a while necessary) with:

Code: 
# cat .xserverrc
exec Xorg -listen tcp

And I type there something like xhost +. Then connect my laptop with a cross over cable to the desktop, make the Tcp/IP connection and call from there for example env DISPLAY IP-of-Desktop:0.0 xterm, then I have in my Desktop windows from the Desktop and from the Laptop. I do continuously such things: THAT is the very X11, and not just a GUI.
 
For having only one terminal displaying windows for controlling many devices.

It is necessary because one cannot sit on many chairs at the same time.

It is also practical to have a unified display, you do copy and paste in the different windows.

That was the original idea of X, and not to do just a GUI.

And one need a standard protocol, it can be something different from X, but it must be something and X is something.
 
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