alt Hacker News> Odd. Every few months, I see a new xorg-server version in my distro's package manager.
Yea these are security updates but the eco system requires a lot of desktop manager scaffolding in user space. That has basically stopped. It's baffling why you would run X11 today. The X11 emulation layer for Wayland works great too by the way.
Just as one example when you screen share from discord or zoom or Google meets there's now a pop-up that asks you to select the screen or window you wish to latch on to for streaming. This provides some security. With X11 anything can just take a screenshot at any time. Sure that's convenient but so many apps don't even support X11 anymore. As someone that made the switch three years ago I get how you might think the old system is better but in reality you haven't tried the new one so you don't really have a way to compare. I noticed so many quality of life fixes that I can't even imagine running X11 anymore.
> It's baffling why you would run X11 today.
As I mentioned:
> Sure that's convenient but so many apps don't even support X11 anymore.Really? If true, I don't seem to run any of them. I've certainly not noticed anything I've been running over the past couple of decades suddenly stop working on X11. Given that QT, GTK, FTLK, and other cross-platform GUI toolkits support X11, these must be particularly special programs.
> Just as one example[, screensharing...]
Sure, it is a bit nicer to be able to control which windows which other programs can see. I've been watching the slow-moving, many-years-long shitstorm that has been "actually get screensharing that works the way ordinary people need it to". It's been quite a show.
Thing is, I do know that the X Access Control Extension was standardized in ~2006 and updated through 2009 with the aim to make additional fine-grained access control modules [0] easy. I don't know how long it would have taken to use what existed (or even write something new) and update the major Desktop Environments with tooling to manage it... but I suspect it would have taken far less than seventeen years.
> I noticed so many quality of life fixes...
I'm sure that were I 16, I'd believe that I cared very much about that. Now, -mumble decades later- the fanciest things I want are OpenGL and Vulkan support with performance at least on par with what you get from Windows, a window manager that lets me Alt+mouse-button to move or resize a window, functioning global hotkeys that I can command to run arbitrary programs (and that I can permit any arbitrary program to hook into... permanently), and functioning screen-sharing (that can I can permit any arbitrary program to hook into... permanently). And it's so, so silly for me to feel the need to mention anything other than Alt+mouse-button. You'd think that the rest would be "table stakes", but the Wayland development process has demonstrated that many folks disagree.
[0] Ones that could -for instance- prevent undesired keyloggers and screenshot tools