How to install Wayland?

Beastie7 said:
what exactly is wrong with X.org? I keep hearing it’s a “security nightmare”
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It is because Xorg works across the network that it could possibly be hacked. Apparently because Wayland entirely lacks this feature that makes it more secure... ;)

Individual compositors are going to have to hack the "network aware" functionality in like pipewire. It will never happen. Xwayland on top of Wayland is likely going to be as far as Linux gets.
 
So how does one run wayland compositor (e.g. sway) with nvidia-driver? Starting it fails with inability to find drm devices -- are those required (i.e. is it limited to intel/amd on FreeBSD)?
 
Beastie7 said:
Besides performance, what exactly is wrong with X.org? I keep hearing it’s a “security nightmare”, but haven’t found a detailed explanation as to why that is..
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I don't know about nightmare, however any program running under Xorg has access to window contents and keyboard input for every other application. Wayland is supposed to have far more precise access controls.
 
kpedersen said:
It is because Xorg works across the network that it could possibly be hacked. Apparently because Wayland entirely lacks this feature that makes it more secure... ;)

Individual compositors are going to have to hack the "network aware" functionality in like pipewire. It will never happen. Xwayland on top of Wayland is likely going to be as far as Linux gets.
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Apparently there’s this project. Maybe I’m just naive, but how are application developers supposed to support all of these implementations of Wayland? it’s like they’re repeating the whole “GNU+Linux -> distro” fragmentation conundrum again. Seriously, do they not think about the implications of their design?

If AMD/Intel/nVidia drivers didn’t assume Linux interfaces and were easily portable; i’d write my own display server for FreeBSD out of desperation.
 
kpedersen said:
Ah that daemon forums post looks like one kids random vendetta against Xorg XD He is basically posting any vague news item he finds. What I find strange is that Phoronix would announce such a random bit of information. I just had a check of the repo here: https://github.com/freedesktop/xorg-xserver And I can clearly see even more development work on the Xorg-xserver than more Wayland projects. Bizarre. Must be a slow news day for Phoronix ;)
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Isn't phoronix just a linux fanatics/zealots web site? Xorg is NIH as far as systemd/linux is concerned so they hate it. Anything pro-wayland gets the obligatory love from the zealots. Ergo, it's understandable that website would peddle this ... crap.
 
mark_j said:
Isn't phoronix just a linux fanatics/zealots web site? Xorg is NIH as far as systemd/linux is concerned so they hate it. Anything pro-wayland gets the obligatory love from the zealots. Ergo, it's understandable that website would peddle this ... crap.
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Actually, no. Phoronix (well, it's a single person) is an incredibly clueless, but mostly inoffensive news site without any specific bias. That is, there is more Linux information overall because there is more Linux development going on. The associated forum, on the other hand, seems to be an experiment in zero moderation. That place is downright vicious.
 
Beastie7 said:
Apparently there’s this project.
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That project doesn't make the system network aware. It merely funnels a VNC style image across the network. VNC is far too slow and this will likely be similar.

That said, X11 isn't perfect either. Sadly the only real option for remote UI is Microsoft RDP. And now that Wayland has got in the way of any real progress in this area, I don't think open-source platforms will have an alternative to X11 or RDP for many years. If ever.
 
richardtoohey2 said:
It's a 30+ year old code base; not that simple. Who is going to test the changes on all the platforms etc.?

And usually when you try and fix something (especially to make it more secure) by re-writing it - you just introduce more issues.

lobste.rs

on abandoning the X server

49 comments
lobste.rs lobste.rs
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Quoting from the post referenced in that link
It is, however, uniquely well suited to a very long life as an application compatibility layer. Though the code happens to implement an unfortunate specification, the code itself is quite well structured, easy to hack on, and not far off from being easily embeddable.
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Sorry, the whole abandon Xfree86 in favor of Wayland thing still reeks of politics to me. Especially when he says this:
And if (a world where Xfree86 is abandoned is what) you'd like to see, please, come talk to us, let's make it happen. I'd be absolutely thrilled to see someone take this on, and I'm happy to be your guide through the server internals.
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In other words, I'll work with you happily, but only if you agree with me!

kpedersen said:
That said, X11 isn't perfect either. Sadly the only real option for remote UI is Microsoft RDP. And now that Wayland has got in the way of any real progress in this area, I don't think open-source platforms will have an alternative to X11 or RDP for many years. If ever.
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I don't really follow this because I'm not a graphics programmer, but that fella sure isn't a fan
The second dumbest thing is to use RDP. It has features. Lots of them. Even a printer server and usb server and file system mount translation. Heck, all the things that Xorg was made fun of for having, is in there, and then some. The reverse engineered implementation of this proprietary Microsoft monstrosity, FreeRDP, is about the code size of the actually used parts of Xorg, give or take some dependencies. In C. In network facing code. See where this is heading? Embed that straight into your privileged Wayland compositor process, and I will just sit here in bitter silence and be annoyed by the fireworks.
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Has anyone tried that X2go thing he mentions so favorably?
 
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Jose said:
I don't really follow this because I'm not a graphics programmer, but that fella sure isn't a fan
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In many ways I feel he is correct. But unfortunately with Wayland we are now getting even further away from a solution.
As for x2go, it is some older NoMachine NX technology (partially rewritten).
This stuff is very effective but traditionally useless because it only works on a few UNIX-like platforms. It obviously isn't portable or we would all be using it.

Saying RDP isn't the best because it is "complex" is a little bit of a defeatist attitude. Perhaps the simpler elements could be stripped from it and the rest of the random Microsoft cruft could be ditched. I guess the issue is that we would have to get Gtk+ and Qt to play ball... and they wont.

But yeah, Wayland isn't really a replacement for Xorg. It is more like a replacement for 50% of the underlying driver layer within Xorg. XWayland + Wayland could be a potential replacement but it is slower and doesn't achieve anything particularly useful. The best Wayland can do natively is screen scraping which is pretty poor.
 
kpedersen said:
In many ways I feel he is correct. But unfortunately with Wayland we are now getting even further away from a solution.
As for x2go, it is some older NoMachine NX technology (partially rewritten).
This stuff is very effective but traditionally useless because it only works on a few UNIX-like platforms. It obviously isn't portable or we would all be using it.

Saying RDP isn't the best because it is "complex" is a little bit of a defeatist attitude. Perhaps the simpler elements could be stripped from it and the rest of the random Microsoft cruft could be ditched. I guess the issue is that we would have to get Gtk+ and Qt to play ball... and they wont.

But yeah, Wayland isn't really a replacement for Xorg. It is more like a replacement for 50% of the underlying driver layer within Xorg. XWayland + Wayland could be a potential replacement but it is slower and doesn't achieve anything particularly useful. The best Wayland can do natively is screen scraping which is pretty poor.
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arcan-fe.com

A12 – Advancing Network Transparency on the Desktop

This article is is the main course to the appetiser that was The X Network Transparency Myth (2018). In it, we will go through how the pieces in the Arcan ecosystem tie together to advance the idea…
arcan-fe.com arcan-fe.com
 
It’s been fun reading through this thread. Sway, which represents the cohesive keyboard centric tiled WM I’m longing for, was the nail in the coffin that persuaded me to leave macOS for Linux. But then I thought “why would I go for Linux when I can have it all with native ZFS and more OOTB in FreeBSD?”

Just a visitor, dipping my toe in the waters here. How’s the temperature?
 
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