I'm going to document my own hatred for Wayland here, not that it will
make any difference to its unstoppable adoption and the subsequent
likely demise of FVWM. Note that I'm not an expert on the subject(s) nor
do I have the time or inclination to become one as I'm 100% convinced
that what I don't know, or any educated rebuttals to my arguments, won't
change my overall conclusions.
Wayland is the latest and greatest step in the destruction of the basic
design concepts that are why UNIX, 50+ years after its inception, is the
world's dominant operating system. It completely misses the point of
separating functionality into independent and interchangeable software
components. I have read the Wayland FAQ for years about why X11 needs to
be replaced, and it boils down to exactly two points:
1. X11 is old.
2. It supports stippled line drawing which nobody uses any more.
OK ... 1) what's wrong with that, and 2) update the API to deprecate
un- and under-used functionality.
Integrate the WM into the graphics server? What's next -- integrate the
server into the kernel? Impossible you say, Linus would never accept
that? Yeah, after years of him hating on C++ he accepted Rust because
it's memory-safe. (Insist on smart pointers in C++. Problem solved.)
I'll always venerate Linus for his contribution to computing -- the
Herculean accomplishment of cracking Intel's insane X86 architecture to
turn the toy Minix into a full-fledged virtual memory UNIX
implementation -- but 30 years of being worshipped as a demigod might
have gone to his head. (He recently demonstrated in one of his famous
flamings, justified because the pull request in question broke the
kernel, that he doesn't know how to read a stack trace.)
I need FVWM, and therefor by extension X11 as has been documented here,
because nothing else supports my customized desktop UI which allows me
to be twice as productive as the alternatives. Not so much the visual
look (an extension of MWM, perfect) but the bindings of the three mouse
buttons, and most importantly the ability to iconify applications to
specific positions on the desktop. All of the
Gnomes/KDEs/M$Windows/Apples with their taskbars and iconboxes (in FVWM
terms) require me to search by name or icon glyph through a constantly
changing arrangement instead of my intuitive muscle memory moving the
mouse to a known place on the screen and clicking there. I don't even
have to look.
Remote X11 rendering between two networked machines? I guess the Wayland
designers didn't understand that concept. Either they don't care about
high-end users in a professional environment, or they're only targeting
the 99.9% demographic of casual users. "A GUI application? You mean a
web browser connected to a cloud server, right?" I've long suspected
that all of these visionaries leading us forward from the same boring
old software technologies must have secret closets full of black
turtleneck shirts, Levis blue jeans, and white running shoes in
preparation for when they become the next Steve Jobs -- wealthy, famous,
and beloved by all humanity. See GNOME 3 for a precedent.
I'd like nothing more than to see a "Rebel Alliance" Linux distro that
maintains X11, GTK and Qt, System V Init, config files without D-Bus,
and everything else that already works (mostly) perfectly (plus any
needed fixes/updates/improvements). But the huge amount of effort
required (50+ highly capable and committed developers) probably means it
won't ever happen. And I'm far too over-committed with my own open
source projects to be able to contribute. "Retro" distributions already
exist, but as Thomas astutely points out, the nail in the coffin will be
when Firefox and Chromium stop working on them. You can have all the
Konquerors, Vivaldis, Operas, GNOME Webs, etc. you want, but you'll
eventually run into e-commerce, news, and governmental websites -- all
required to function in current global society -- that fatally inform
you your browser isn't supported and to come back when you're using
something else.
I suppose I'll hang on to FVWM/X11/etc as long as I can for my real
work, probably having to add a separate/dedicated "modern" Linux box
with Wayland and all the rest for online tasks. Maybe they'll keep `scp`
running for the rest of my natural life so I'll at least be able to move
important documents over to the "real" machine for inspection, analysis,
and archiving.
Sign me,
Disgusted
