They drop this use-case, but still use sockets for IPC, so I still have to pretend I'm doing network programming, serialize my messages over the "network" and "flush the stream" (insanity) but don't actually get any of the benefits of this model.

I genuinely wonder if they stopped to think why X11 has sockets or just blindly copied it over. Or are they unaware other forms of IPC exist, that don't require you to go through the kernel 13 times to send a byte to the other process?

Waypipe exists. Somebody needs to do the integration so you can run ssh -W though.

> Microsoft rdp is a great solution for this in windows land.

The people who put together TS/RDP are geniuses IMO, it's insane as to how usable it has been for at least 15-ish years...

https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

waypipe works very fine.

    waypipe ssh XXX

You can do GUI over the network in multiple ways with Wayland.

If you're fine with RDP, both KDE and GNOME have built-in RDP support on Wayland. If you want something closer to ssh -X, look up waypipe.

Arcan has a decent model for this.

Sunshine/Moonlight.

> I really wish people gave a damn about the “gui over the network” problem x11 solves.

Security-wise there are concerns but...

Early dial-up Internet days (early for me), 28.8k modem, I was already running Linux, probably on a 486. I also had a very old PC laptop (I think a friend of my parents gifted it to me after he got a new one from work), a 386 I think (with the horrible slow display/refresh rate: a TFT IIRC). I used a parallel cable and PLIP (Parallel Line IP) and X11 networking to send a window manager+browser from the desktop (the 486) to the laptop.

So my brother and I could both go on the Internet at the same time.

It felt like the future and, honestly, we've kinda seriously regressed when it comes to "GUI over the network".