Wayland is a more versatile protocol. OP is misrepresenting a little bit, the base protocol v1 is finalized but desktop use will need and already does use many standard extensions.
Nothing about being assholes, just a bureaucratic design.
My understanding is that Wayland is more versatile in the sense of how a LEGO set is more versatile than a molded toy. Yes you can do a lot with LEGO, but a LEGO brick is just a LEGO brick at the end of the day. Similarly, Wayland lets almost all the "interesting" bits be up to the extension protocols[1].
Also, wayland builds only on the pure kernel abstractions for video drivers (DRM+KMS), which is (was) not supported by nvidia (which instead patched your xorg binary with their proprietary code). No sane person wanted to support nvidia’s way for a completely different render path, so it wasn’t initially supported, until nvidia came to their senses and also implemented the necessary linux subsystems in some of their drivers. So pretty much the same old “Linus middle finger” story, nothing specific with wayland.
Nobody is a "bad guy," even if we may disagree emphatically with their design decisions. Ultimately, however, we may feel we aren't entitled to those providing free labor to do so in such a fashion that their work product meets our specific needs or aligns with our expectations.
That said, having a bare-bones protocol that fails to include standard features, forcing each implementation to meet users' needs differently, is somewhat disappointing. Anything that reduces functionality for the sake of ease of maintainability is going to be unpopular with end users who have everything to lose and nothing much to gain directly.
The core is bare-bones, there are numerous standard protocols since, and many other are in standardization. Here is a site to review their state: https://wayland.app/protocols/
It seems like one of those politics things. Focus on PR to get the randoms behind it and get people to switch, doesn't matter the quality, how you talk about it is what matters.
Do we have a name for this yet? We had "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" for MS' playbook, but Red Hat's run theirs enough times that it seems like we ought to have a name for it (and it's definitely different from Microsoft's EEE)
The wayland devs ARE the Xorg devs. They all decided that Xorg wasn't worth maintaining because it has too much legacy baggage[0]. The rest is just a bunch of entitled whining users that dont like change.
It's entirely normal for users not to like change less yet when the benefits are nebulous even if justifiable and accrue to the developers while the users bear costs in terms of decreased stability, increased complexity, and fewer features.
melvyn2|2 years ago
Nothing about being assholes, just a bureaucratic design.
magicalhippo|2 years ago
[1]: https://wayland.app/protocols/
kaba0|2 years ago
Also, wayland builds only on the pure kernel abstractions for video drivers (DRM+KMS), which is (was) not supported by nvidia (which instead patched your xorg binary with their proprietary code). No sane person wanted to support nvidia’s way for a completely different render path, so it wasn’t initially supported, until nvidia came to their senses and also implemented the necessary linux subsystems in some of their drivers. So pretty much the same old “Linus middle finger” story, nothing specific with wayland.
michaelmrose|2 years ago
That said, having a bare-bones protocol that fails to include standard features, forcing each implementation to meet users' needs differently, is somewhat disappointing. Anything that reduces functionality for the sake of ease of maintainability is going to be unpopular with end users who have everything to lose and nothing much to gain directly.
kaba0|2 years ago
kelipso|2 years ago
yamtaddle|2 years ago
imran-iq|2 years ago
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)
slondr|2 years ago
I don't believe I, and the many users who share my preference, deserve insults for that.
michaelmrose|2 years ago