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Comment by jbb555 | Hacker News Reader

I don't really want to use wayland or mir. I'd rather keep using the current perfectly fine software.

This isn't relevant to users, it's relevant to developers. Getting rid of X11 is important, and if you don't know why it's not relevant to you.

It's a big mistake to think that way. If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade, it's a lot harder to get the install base large enough where developers can confidently switch over.

Users will switch over when their distro starts using it by default, the same as they would for a new version of the kernel , a new init system or any other lower level software.

The fact is that the design of X is archaic and not well designed for the needs of the modern era. The benefit to end users is that rich multimedia software becomes much easier to develop for Linux so they get more of it.

Wayland's design as such is that every window manager implements their own compositor. Your regularly scheduled updates will get you on board, though I assume it'll be in compatibility mode with XWayland for quite some time.

> If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade

I'd like to use keycodes > 255 please.

>This isn't relevant to users

Wayland has crippled customizability compared to X11. This customization is much more important to the user because, as you said, the improvements of Wayland are not relevant to the user.

Crippled at the moment (because Weston is the only option) or crippled by design?

Crippled because it doesn't specify a uniform interface for elementary things such a changing the keyboard layout or mouse settings.

X11 has many problems. For example, it has no GUI isolation. Any client connecting to a X server can control other clients.

Years ago I worked in a IT department where all the developers had X-terminals. 20-odd folks running full desktops off of one server. A common prank was to run little programs that would cause all the windows to "melt" and puddle at the bottom of the screen, or flip around to mirror images, etc. by setting the display to someone else's terminal.

> by setting the display to someone else's terminal.

Bad sysadmin probably put xhost + in the main xinitrc.

Common rookie mistake, but don't blame X for that weakness.

We did something similar, but it was years before xauth and xhost.

It also wasn't anything malicious, just a prank, when you run xeyes on someone else's terminal. They would laugh a little and then continue with their lifes. Nothing serious, requiring sysadmining.

I did the same for sunview in 1992: pushing the windows outside of the screen. Windows were entries in /dev.

Which is a good thing. It lets you do automation on GUI tools that otherwise don't support automation (xdotool). It's something I hope Wayland and MIR will support. Of course there should probably be some kind of permissions system. E.g. you need to start a process in a special way so it can do these things or there is some kind of white list of programs that are allowed to do this.

Oh and another application: Mapping a gamepad to keyboard and mouse for games that don't otherwise support gamepads. (See http://qjoypad.sourceforge.net/ and my fork with additional features https://github.com/panzi/qjoypad)

You have to admit that it is a big security problem.

How? A program that runs on your computer has access to all your files anyway. How is it anymore of a security problem if it can't just access your files, change configurations, run other programs but can also send X11 events to other programs?

If I can't use something like QJoyPad under Wayland/MIR I won't use Wayland/MIR.

> A program that runs on your computer has access to all your files anyway.

This is also a security problem. If I have the means to run a program (downloaded from the internet; don't fully trust) in a sandbox that restricts its filesystem access, it'd be nice to also not allow it to control my whole GUI session.

Well, yeah. A sandbox should be able to control restrict, but in principle I want to have the ability to control other windows.

I'd rather keep using the current perfectly fine software.

If it's perfectly fine, then you don't have to upgrade.

Your perfectly fine software(X11), lets windows spy on each other and read keystrokes to other windows. Any client can pretty much control the entire server.

This is a general problem in Linux. Non-root programs have too much power across the board. A more Android-like permission style solution would be much better.

And you need something like wayland or mir to have such permission systems work. X11 is from a different age like bash ;)

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