Since i see so much linux talk on lemmy i got curious and watched a video about the common distros. How true is the information in this video? The person hardly describes why debian and arch are just better than every other distro. At least i’m definitely now curious about Mint or something for gaming.
The basic GUI experience in X is provided by the window manager. It controls how your windows are placed ( eg. Tiling vs Stacking / Floating ), how they are decorated ( eg. Max / Min / Close buttons ), and how they behave ( eg. Click to focus ). In X, the window manager runs as an application on the X server. You can only use one at a time.
In Wayland, the “window manager” is the display-server too and is called a compositor. For smaller projects, there are compositor libraries that provide similar capabilities to what the X server did so that these projects can concentrate on the “window manager” part. You can think of a Wayland compositor as equivalent to an X window manager ).
A Desktop Environment comes with a window manager ( or compositor ) and adds other tools that run alongside ( or on top of ) the window manager to provide a full user experience. This may include panels ( eg. think Windows start button, icon bar, and status tray ), docks ( like MacOS ), global menus, notification applets, and the desktop surface itself ( eg. are there icons or other features on the desktop ). A DE usually comes with a standard set of basic applications like a file manager, image viewer, document viewer, media player, and the like.
If you start with a basic window manager then yes you have to add all this other stuff yourself. Of course you may not want some of it and so can have a much lighter experience. You can also just choose tools that you like. Of course, they may not match visually or work perfectly together.
If you use a DE, the experience is curated for you and everything is more likely to work well out of the box. That said, nothing stops you from swapping out whatever components you want. You can even use a different window manager than the DE default.
Hello, yesterday I officially released Louvre v1.0.0, a C++ library designed for building Wayland compositors with a primary focus on ease of development. It provides a default method for handling protocols, input events, and rendering, which you can selectively and progressively override as required, allowing you to see a...
I agree with your overall sentiment with the caveat that 20 years will be closer to 5. Early adopters are enjoying Wayland only benefits today. For example, the Steam Deck just launched with HDR and mainline support for Linux gamers in general will not be far behind.
Also, the list of window managers being left behind is starting to look less appealing than the list of window managers that are Wayland only. Hyperland is probably already more popular than WindowMkaer. As GNOME and KDE go Wayland only, they will continue to add features that regular users will want. I see more announcements for new Wayland compositors than I do for new X window managers.
Another factor that gets missed is that the main dev support for X comes from Red Hat. RHEL9 is already Wayland based. When RHEL8 comes off support in 5 years, Red Hat will abandon X. How long will X stay viable after that?
As the number of X users dwindle, we will see toolkits drop support for X. GTK5 for example. 5 years may be too soon for that but I cannot see it taking 20 years.
Wayland being “valuable to most users” will come faster than you think.
Firefox Is Going To Try And Ship With Wayland Enabled By Default (www.phoronix.com)
What do you think about this? (www.youtube.com)
Since i see so much linux talk on lemmy i got curious and watched a video about the common distros. How true is the information in this video? The person hardly describes why debian and arch are just better than every other distro. At least i’m definitely now curious about Mint or something for gaming.
Louvre: C++ library for building Wayland compositors. (lemmy.world)
Hello, yesterday I officially released Louvre v1.0.0, a C++ library designed for building Wayland compositors with a primary focus on ease of development. It provides a default method for handling protocols, input events, and rendering, which you can selectively and progressively override as required, allowing you to see a...