I think the issue isn't that you downloaded random hostile software, but that other software you do use has some sort of vulnerability (recent Unity vulnerability, browser sandbox escape, etc) and an issue like this would allow for privilege escalation.

Wayland doesn't need X11's vulnerability as its only argument, Wayland is a much simpler design that is easier to iterate on because it doesn't assume the client and server are on different machines. The fact that it moves privileged APIs like screen capture behind portals is a bonus.

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kelnos 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

So simple and easy to iterate on that Wayland compositors are still not as full-featured as X11 desktop environments after more then a decade, and can't be due to protocols no one is able to agree to implement.

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phkahler 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

>> Wayland compositors are still not as full-featured as X11 desktop environments

It depends what features you care about. X11 doesn't have tear-free video playback, HDR, or as good a security model as Wayland.

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toast0 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

X11 has options for tear free video playback; it's not in the base protocol, and not all drivers offer it, etc, but it's acheivable. Fundamentally, you need to send the next frame to the server and ask it to switch frames during vblank (+/- notification), on today's systems, this is more of a coordination problem than a technical one; there's plenty of video ram to go around to double/tripple buffer.

HDR would fit in the X11 model of many bit depths, however the specifics don't really; afaik, X11 has a maximum bitdepth of 32 for pixel values, which means either limiting to 2-bits of alpha channel or using palettes (I think I saw that indexed colors can be defined with 16-bits per channel). An extension might be possible (with everything that brings), but I think the ship has sailed.

I agree that Wayland's security model prevents some undesirable interactions that X11 allows, but it also prevents or makes difficult some desirable interactions, so it's a mixed bag.

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Imustaskforhelp 5 days ago | parent [-]

> I agree that Wayland's security model prevents some undesirable interactions that X11 allows, but it also prevents or makes difficult some desirable interactions, so it's a mixed bag.

That is so true, I wanted to have a typing sound from my pc everytime I typed on wayland and I looked at LITERALLY every single solution and none of them worked... simply because of the security model of wayland (so things like Mechvibes and alternatives don't work generally speaking)

On one hand, its a good thing to prevent things like password injection etc. but on the other, really?

I got frustrated and I created a lot of github issues on every such project if they said that they are working on wayland and I didn't care if it meant running it as sudo, I just asked them kindly if there was a way or not/ what's the issue here

There are still times where I get a lot of notifications simply because someone commented on those issues

So naturally a lot of people are/were frustrated about it. Not sure if its a good thing or not, but I 100% agree about this comment of yours

Another big issue imo to me feels like ssh, X servers ssh forwarding/vnc just works, Yet I haven't really found ways to do things like VNC on wayland on a server or something as easy (or even possible?) on wayland as compared to x servers, Please let me know if there are apps which do this though, I know about weston but I haven't found ways to work with it/make it work (maybe my skill issue)

Are there any solutions to these things though? Fundamentally that mechvibes things requires an app to view the key from every other application and make a sound, Nothing stops it from being a key-logger as well if it had that capability and Wayland was created with a better security model but as you say and I experienced, that security model comes up with its own compromises and I am not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing....

	▲	throwaway7486 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Another big issue imo to me feels like ssh, X servers ssh forwarding/vnc just works, Yet I haven't really found ways to do things like VNC on wayland on a server or something as easy (or even possible?) on wayland as compared to x servers Waypipe[0] for native Wayland applications, and if you need to forward X11 apps there's xwayland-satellite[1]. You can hook xwayland-satellite with Waypipe and forward X11 apps through Waypipe. This way you get even better performance than with traditional X11 forwarding methods. The other day I was playing Steam/Proton games through the network this way. Of course, X11 forwarding also works fine on Wayland with ssh -X, but as I said, consider Waypipe + xwayland-satellite. [0] - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/ [1] - https://github.com/Supreeeme/xwayland-satellite
	▲	prmoustache 5 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Another big issue imo to me feels like ssh, X servers ssh forwarding/vnc just works, Yet I haven't really found ways to do things like VNC on wayland on a server or something as easy (or even possible?) on wayland as compared to x servers, waypipe just works too. That replaces any reason to do SSH forwarding. Also some desktop like Gnome (maybe KDE has similar feature?) offer remote desktop. In Gnome's case it is using RDP protocol instead of VNC.
	▲	toast0 5 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		With the caveat that I haven't used Wayland ... [1] Waypipe is supposed to help replace things like remote X. I'd be surprised if there's no vnc server that offers a wayland desktop... that would be a big missed opportunity. For your noisemaker, I think you might have a better time integrating at another level. Either intercept the inputs before the display server gets them, or integrate into the display server itself. X was more flexible, but as long as it's just typing -> noise, you don't need it to have the same architecture as it did in X. [1] Wayland has no compelling features for me, and X remains viable for me as well. At some point, hardware support might be compelling, or IMHO, something will come to replace Wayland and X that is compelling.
	▲	yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Another big issue imo to me feels like ssh, X servers ssh forwarding/vnc just works, Yet I haven't really found ways to do things like VNC on wayland on a server or something as easy (or even possible?) on wayland as compared to x servers, Yes, this should be workable, assuming your compositor is compatible (a meaningful caveat, but not insurmountable): * To forward one application like `ssh -X`, you want waypipe * For VNC, it really depends on your compositor, but wayvnc works for many of them. (And GNOME does their own thing and I think KDE has their own official option)

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jitl 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I remember watching tear free HD video in 2011 on a netbook I dug out of the e-waste dumpster in the UC Berkeley CS building basement. Chrome/Openbox/X11. That laptop was literally trash.

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mikkupikku 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Using a compositor fixes screen tearing, no need to use Wayland for that.

	▲	phkahler 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>> Using a compositor fixes screen tearing, no need to use Wayland for that. Right, and that abandons the whole X drawing API in favor of passing around client drawn bitmaps. That was one of the big points of Wayland too - X has a whole bunch of stuff that no modern apps use anyway so lets throw it out and build up a better version of the capabilities we need. If we abandon the X drawing API and half an OS included (memory management) and use KMS, all that's left is the features that are security holes.
	▲	marmight 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Even a compositor is unnecessary to fix screen tearing these days: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...

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imtringued 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aren't you just doubling down on Wayland being simple? X11 is the kitchen sink here.

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jonway 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What missing features? Xforward?

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uyzstvqs 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Wayland is the way to go. The same applies to Flatpak, Pipewire, systemD, etc. I'd say that this is obvious, and doesn't even need to be argued, to 99%+ of those who actually use the Linux desktop. The only opposition to this is a small group of decelerationists with a major, irrational aversion to change.

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vacuity 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Having only two major options, X and Wayland, doesn't mean either one is correct. It is generally true that X needs to be replaced, but Wayland is not necessarily the replacement we need. It would be good to have more competition.

On a separate note, I think it's probably true that Wayland has significant drawbacks that preclude it from being an obvious replacement.

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LtWorf 5 days ago | parent [-]

I see wayland as the pulseaudio of display.

Everybody is pushing it and trying to convince the people who have problems with it that it's completely fine and their problems aren't important (like blind people being completely unable to use the computer).

At some point the pipewire of display will come along and we'll all forget wayland was ever a proposed solution.

	▲	dTal 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's not really how any of this works. Pulseaudio is both a protocol and also an implementation of that protocol. Pipewire also implements the pulseaudio protocol, hence its compatibility with all existing software. Wayland is a protocol only. Every compositor - and there are many - implements it "from scratch". The "pipewire of display" would simply be yet another Wayland compositor. No one is going to solve the problems of Wayland in one fell swoop by releasing another Wayland compositor. What is actually happening is that problems are being gradually solved by the introduction of protocol extensions, which usually get adopted by other compositors after achieving success in one.
	▲	krupan 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Man I hope you're right

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mx7zysuj4xew 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Everything you listed is bloated, slow, incompatible, unfinished or unstable. My system worked fine 20 years ago on far less capable hardware. Now even with high end workstations systems lag, crash or have strange behavior

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gf000 5 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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okanat 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

We are running systemd with all bells and whistles on Raspberry Pi based 1 GB RAM systems. systemd-networkd, iwd, timers etc. The base usage barely touches 350 MiBs. Our actual application is containerized with systemd thanks to broad set of options increasing system security quite a bit. It works great.

You know what's bloated? Replacing all those functions with custom bash scripts or worse system services.

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yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> We are running systemd with all bells and whistles on Raspberry Pi based 1 GB RAM systems. systemd-networkd, iwd, timers etc. The base usage barely touches 350 MiBs.

Er. I have Linux boxes that have 128MB of total RAM doing useful work in my house (not using systemd). This is not the win you think it is.

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gldrk 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>systemd-networkd, iwd, timers etc. The base usage barely touches 350 MiBs.

That’s absurdly high for a headless system that’s doing nothing. There are countless millions of embedded devices doing useful work today with 1/10 the RAM. They run modern Linux just fine without the ridiculous bloatware.

	▲	gf000 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Who said that systemd doesn't run on it? Also, what's bloated about systemd? It's a C binary, while I suppose you are into a ridiculous line-by-line textual interpreter?

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Imustaskforhelp 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My thoughts on systemd are complicated but I wasn't around at the time of systemd Personally it is my opinion that Linux really split in two due to systemd partially because of the idea of the sheer size of systemd code

There are things like https://github.com/Sweets/hummingbird which, I, not even a C person can understand and appreciate its simplicity.

I am not saying that we always need such simplicity, but that I am merely giving an opinion that there are people who actually want to understand what they are running as their root and this sense of "control" really is so hard to get from things like system-d

System-d is also thus a little "bloated" compared to other inits which really show in systems like containers etc. where most developers if possible try to have alpine containers (I have seen this especially so much in golang/rust communities partially because golang is mostly static available and rust can be done the same too or compiled with musl pretty easily)

As such, personally, I can understand both systemd and other init systems, I feel like there are some guides which prefer using hummingbird etc. (https://github.com/comfies/tldrlfs) and I feel like for actually understanding "linux" from linux from scratch, other inits can be good.

Another minor nitpick I have of systemd is that its glibc based, Glibc has some of the weirdest complexities I have ever seen and a lot of package management in my opinion has been built around it and personally it feels like the decisions were made in a different era where different types of resources were constrained and updates weren't as widespread but now it has been a mess which is why we need so many linux distros in the first place with their opinions and package management

I genuinely prefer musl for this, So I prefer things like alpine/void in the process as well yet to me, freedom matters a lot. There should be a freedom of choice in such matters and systemd severely restricts it for many.

I feel like systemd is way too ambitious and which is why it requires glibc to be more feature complete in the first place, not sure if its a good or bad thing but I am merely stating what I feel like.

As I said, I have nothing against systemd myself but I am just giving the nuance I felt like, as I was trying to build my own linux distro trying to make it hyper compact and I came into this rabbit-hole, My philosophy almost was out of curiosity regarding what are the smallest systems which are still functionable (Hint: its tiny core linux which is an absolute pleasure although it isn't "secure" partially because they run everything as root If I remember correctly but )

>We are running systemd with all bells and whistles on Raspberry Pi based 1 GB RAM systems. systemd-networkd, iwd, timers etc. The base usage barely touches 350 MiBs

Okay but what are your thoughts on alpine, Alpine's motto or the first thing you see in bold letters on their website (https://alpinelinux.org/) is

Small. Simple. Secure.

Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.

Combined with either gcompat to run glibc or personally I genuinely prefer golang/rust applications (mostly golang) like running gitea on alpine etc. and I found it to be an absolute pleasure server side to work with mostly, except sometimes software download especially python when I was running alpine on android using userLand was a somewhat-issue but maybe I had skill issue or something but I genuinely learnt a lot trying to install python on it.

Bun/Deno just works out of the box, in fact deno is even available in the apk format of alpine out of the box

I truly love alpine/appreciate its message. I feel like systems should be small partially because that means that such software could run even on much older systems just out of the box

Alpine features raspberry pi images and there is dietpi which has some decent low iso file sizes, Check them out as well if possible

Personally I love alpine but I also love the idea of using debian or some immutable distro which uses systemd and then running alpine in container, it seems to be the best of both worlds really.

	▲	herewulf 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You might be interested in Devuan (Debian but with OpenRC init), or for immutable, Guix System (Shepherd init).
	▲	LtWorf 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		When distributions started to use systemd, it was extremely buggy. The first 24h of me using it, I found 3 different bugs in journald where it was losing data. I'm currently using systemd, but it was far from being ready when all the fanboys with very basic use cases were insulting anyone who complained about it.

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anthk 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

350MB? I run a CWM under 350MB under OpenBSD plus Dillo and a few of terminal tools under i686.

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5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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mx7zysuj4xew 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	tomhow 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		WTF? You can't address people like this on HN, and comments like this are completely unacceptable. You might not owe containers better, but you owe the community better if you want to participate here. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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anthk 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Wayland won't run fast on my n270 CPU based netbook. Pipewire it's good but sndio it's much faster. And SystemD it's a joke compared to the simple setup at /etc/rc.conf under OpenBSD and rcctl.