[anton96]

I feel like the debate between Wayland and X always bring more a general discussion about technology refactoring and modularity.

To me be, the big question is not why freedesktop.org or redhat is doing all of this, they're a company and they have their needs. It is why distro maintainers have chosen to adopt those technologies(systemd,Wayland, others?), not that those options are especially bad but to me,but they really look like a clear bifurcation from the modularity and customization we used to see on the distro world.

I remember the mid 2000 and early 2010, when computing was still cultivating this cool image from the animations of Mac os Leopard and the aero style of Vista and the leader above all in the form compiz crowning Linux from far.

In the talks around Wayland vs X, the maneer Wayland proponent(not only its developer and also any linux user) dismisses critics of missing feature because 15 years later they're still not standardized or lack of composabilty between windowing and compositing is a stark contrast with the way we used to talk about free and open source software at the turn of the millennium.

We used to defend customizability and a certain form of freedom. Sure X11 lack security and should be replaced by something that works better. The Wayland shortcoming are defended in the name of security is some kind PR speak I wouldn't think I'd see in the linux world years ago. It comes as particularly bitter as other closed platform from wich we used to hear a lot corporate speak still allow apps to do more things with their own windows that Wayland does.

The fact that the same organization hosts flatpack but has not vision of how to use the capability model for Wayland really poses questions on the vision.

All in all, I wonder if things would have went more smoothly and in greater general agreement if those 15 years+ were spend make Linux work like plan 9.

Edit: typoes/syntax

[smoldesu]

Wayland is still customizable, and x11 isn't going away. If you want to trade in security and maintenance for features and capabilities, nobody will try to stop you. In that sense, distributions still don't hold much power over the user besides what they present as default.

> The fact that the same organization hosts flatpack but has not vision of how to use the capability model for Wayland really poses questions on the vision.

I disagree, and I'm a staunch GNOME skeptic myself. Flatpak and Wayland were both built as extensible systems from the start, and GNOME's implementation of both technologies is just one interpretation of the protocol. KDE is a good mirror example; their Wayland implementation exposes many features completely unavailable on x11, and their Flatpak permissions are integrated right in the Settings app.

Personally I don't like GNOME's approach to the desktop anymore, and I refuse to defend most of their more opinionated decisions. Those choices have a minimal impact on desktop Linux outside of GNOME though, and it more feels like Red Hat is displacing the amount of work put into keeping legacy systems alive.

[anton96]

Yes, technically nothing prevents someone to make a customizable Wayland compositor. You’re taking about KDE and I agree that it is certainly one of the most customizable Wayland desktops we have.

What I deplore is that those customization have not made their way into at least an extension of Wayland.

And as you say, hopefully I can still use X11 when needed but I wish the more modern option would carry everything I need.

[miloignis]

Wayland feels more customizable and modular to me, in that it is a set of protocols and optional extensions with multiple implementations instead of one server (Xorg) to rule them all. This feels much more in the Linuxy/FOSSy mindset to me. In fact, many, many people complain about the multitude of wayland implementations as fracturing and a division of work.

I'm not saying that I don't see the benefits of all building on a single server, but I can't say a bazaar-style development of multiple implementations and protocol extensions feels at all corporate.

[tmtvl]

Have you seen the Debian Init Case by GreatEmerald? You can find it here: <https://aaonline.fr/search.php?search&criteria[title-contain...>. It shows the debate over systemd vs upstart in an entertaining way.

Also funny that you say it's about customizability, having a bunch of implementations of the wayland standard seems more customizable than having the one X server.

[dsp_person]

What do you think of Arcan as an alternative to Wayland and X?