Re: [Sawfish] Your future plans? (Wayland)

[Robert 'Bobby' Zenz <Robert.Zenz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I don't really see any chatter about everyone's plans once X is gone.
> The head in the sand approach has suited me well, but now Fedora is
> rumbling that it'll ditch X for GNOME, whatever that means starting
> with 40 or 41?  That's 2024/2025.
> 
> Now, maybe they mean the GNOME desktop itself cannot run on X, but the
> GTK apps still can.  If that is the case then maybe I have until
> Fedora 42 or 43 (2025/2026?) before they just yank all X support.

You got some terminology mixed up there. GNOME has two "session
options", X11 and Wayland. They **greatly** favor Wayland because
"pixel perfect frames" or something. GTK can either draw to X11 or
Wayland. What happens when you have GNOME-Wayland running and open a
program which still uses X11 is that it is attached as Xwayland client.
Basically a X11 server alone for that client. So it works, however,
Xwayland is quiet limited in what it can do and not. For example, it
can't sport window managers as the other windows are not exposed to
programs.

I always liked how the implementation of Arcan worked, because that
sounded much more sane.

However, nothing stops you from using a different desktop environment,
even a "cobbled together" one on top of a "bare" X11 session. GNOME is
not the center of the Linux Desktop Universe, even if they try hard.

> Extra/aside: so the stumbling block to wayland-sawfish is not wanting
> to write a whole compositor?

Yes. The reason you're looking for is "time".

> So why not steal an existing compositor as the base and tack
> sawfish-like things on top?

The reason you're looking for is "time".

> Why reinvent the whole wheel?

I hate this saying with **SUCH A PASSION**! The wheel is **constantly
reinvented**, or did anyone see a Formula 1 car sport the same wheels as
a Fiat Cinquecento?! Or a Mercedes limousine with wooden cartwheels?

> Ya, not easy (I get it, I'm a programmer by trade), but surely not as
> daunting as writing an entire compositor which would include many
> things sawfish users don't care or need to tweak or modify.

The reason you're looking for is "time".

It's not done within a week, or a month, I imagine. wlroots has been
*the* go to library if you want to write a Wayland compositor, and I
just saw something very discouraging as their README opens with:

> Pluggable, composable, unopinionated modules for building a Wayland
> compositor; or about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write
> anyway.

That last part is, ufff. Wayland is a moving target, and it is a
fragmented target, too (compositor specific features, dumb
client library decisions, ...). So "being done" like with Sawfish here
is at least a decade off, maybe longer. That's not encouraging, I guess.

> Clearly if GTK or the "big apps" like Firefox or LO stop compiling in
> X support then it officially becomes dead for all intents and
> purposes.

That should be a few years off, though, like, 15? 20? Firefox for
example has to face *exactly* the fragmentation problem, for example
for screen sharing.

-- 
Sawfish ML