What comes after Wayland?
Posted by Karmic_Backlash@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 436 comments
This is something I've been thinking about for a bit and I'm not well versed in the development of ongoing technologies to know where to look. Basically, after wayland is eventually adopted en masse by the majority of users, what will be the "next big thing" so to speak.
I already hesitate to ask this question because it feels a little sensationalized to ask what the next big thing is, but after pipewire supplanted pulseaudio, and now wayland is more or less supplanting X, what might be the next major focus for the ecosystem?
I'm open to thoughts and opinions because I myself do not have enough knowledge on the topic to really have a valid say beyond asking.
metux-its@reddit
Something that requires yet another rewite of thousands of applications and keeping folks busy for another two decades.
_Sub_Atomic_@reddit
I wish there would be a strong enough contender and even more well thought out replacement for Systemd (Sys-D).
myownfriend@reddit
Maybe packaging is the next major focus. It feels like the thing that people are most divided on and is the biggest limitation of the ecosystem. There is widely used proprietary software that might only distribute ab official .deb package which isn't helpful to people on Fedora for example. Flatpak has some really nice aspects to it but a system with a lot of Flatpaks will use way more space than a system with all debs or rpms.
Other than that, all I can think of is maybe something to revamp the driver model so that they can get update out of sync with the kernel? I'm not sure how much of a pain point that is though.
It may just be that the next big thing is continuing to tweak what's there already to be faster and more refined.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
It won't take up THAT much more space since it uses shared libraries.
myownfriend@reddit
You inevitably have multiple versions of the same runtime that different apps are dependent on and each version is likely to have different but otherwise compatible versions of certain libraries in them. Other runtimes might also have some of the same libraries, too, and then of course you have the versions of those libraries that might be available for non-Flatpak apps. Then you also have Flatpaks hooks for graphics drivers and stuff.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
How many extra gigabytes are we talking here?
razirazo@reddit
Not really happening in scale of Wayland yet, but grub is oberdue for a system that aware that we are living in 2024.
Cyberkaneda@reddit
Sincerey, Whats wrong with grub?
Samonitari@reddit
Just like u/razirazo said.
But let me give you a simple example:
It can read btrfs and LUKS too, so you can install your linux, encypted, with only two partitions: /boot/efi (where grub goes) and a LUKS encrypted btrfs mounted to / (okay, technically it's three partitions, as btrfs is nested under LUKS...)
But I had to learn the hard way that for the sake of wahetever-is-dear-to-you, DO NOT DO THAT.
Crypto libs are, in software scale, ancient in GRUB, so they cannot use fast instructions of modern CPUs, resulting that it is - literally true! - an order of magnitude slower to decrypt LUKS, than initramfs (or kernel?) is.
From more than 10 seconds, it went to like 2 secs on a business notebook.
It was the first key slot used for decrypting, imagine if you have a FIDO2 key, password, and employer recovery key, etc. added to LUKS, and GRUB has to decrypt with the nth slot -> can be a minute easily.
Last time I checked LUKS2 support is also not complete in GRUB2, maybe you cannot use FIDO key for unlocking.
BTRFS and stuff are complex and have issues even in their main implementation their frontline devs concentrate. Good idea to reimplement it elsewhere?
It is a goddamn spaceship (as we say in our workplace for things too complex for their sake).
Cyberkaneda@reddit
I can state here that I'm not too deep in linux like u guys, reading that just make me know that I rly dont know haha, but your explanation was rly clear, I see why know, thx man!!
razirazo@reddit
To oversimply, grub is like emacs. It throws the entire universe to solve a simple task of booting a modern uefi computers.
Cyberkaneda@reddit
So whats the clean slim bootloader option that will replace grub? I know that systemd has something like that but there are ppl that not feel comfy using systemd
dack42@reddit
There are several of other UEFI bootloader options already, with systemd-boot probably being the most popular one. Or, thanks to EFISTUB, you don't even need a bootloader at all. UEFI can just directly load the kernel.
razirazo@reddit
Yeah that's what I mean. Grub should be used as fallback only on ancient l, non uefi systems. Efistub is kind of hit and miss though since it is going to heavily relies on the fact that your bios is behaving exactly as specifications, ie. bug free.
Some manufacturer bios are quite actually buggy. It work fine until we start touching something less commonly used. Just like my asus board. It doesn't like booting too many times directly from uefi, as it will generate redundant entries and refuse to boot after some time. The only way to escape from this loop is by disconnecting the drive to clear the entry. Not pretty.
Clottersbur@reddit
Is it weird that I like Grub? I use the Grub config to pass kernel parameters at boot. I can more simply customize my boot menu. It's easier to setup than systemd-boot for me.
I really just.. Don't mind it?
sparky8251@reddit
Never had issues with grub myself. Also, can systemd-boot boot windows and/or macos? Some people want dual bootable systems after all.
rafaelrc7@reddit
Sarin10@reddit
what makes grub overcomplicated for a normal user though? are we talking about on the configuration side of things, or the UX side?
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
grub is basically an entire mini os with it's own drivers. It's not simple to maintain.
whaleboobs@reddit
People hack on it so it can't be that bad.
rafaelrc7@reddit
Neither, Im talking about the software
ABeeinSpace@reddit
Systemd-boot will auto-detect Windows installs on the same drive. For Windows installs on other drives, you’ll need to employ an EFI script to boot it up. I have no idea if it will start macOS
SanityInAnarchy@reddit
EFI itself makes a decent dual-boot system. On boot, I can hit F12 to open a menu of what to boot, and it includes Windows. If we ever get a similar tool to
efibootmgr, then there's the nice side effect that you can have an easy "reboot into other OS" script -- it's easy to temporarily override what you boot next, or change the defaults, from within a running OS. It's not as good if you prefer that the menu always show up on boot, but for everything else, I'm wondering why I keep grub around.iAmHidingHere@reddit
I'd guess it's only easier because you are used to it. I switched on my UEFI systems and I would never use Grub again on UEFI.
Clottersbur@reddit
What makes grub worse on UEFI?
iAmHidingHere@reddit
Nothing. But system-d boot is just better and simpler in my opinion.
not26@reddit
Currently I like hitting the delete key a million times to choose Windows, but I imagine there is a more civilized way of choosing how I start my day.
Zamiatacz@reddit
efibootmgr -n 00x - select next UEFI entry to boot ;)
WellMakeItSomehow@reddit
systemctl reboot --boot-loader-entry=auto-windowsZamiatacz@reddit
Oh, I didn't know about that.
Thanks :D
witchhunter0@reddit
I was hoping for more mature U-BOOT so more architectures will benefit Linux
starlevel01@reddit
I've used systemd-boot since it was called gummiboot. I don't know why GRUB is even used anymore.
johncate73@reddit
Well, some folks don't use systemd...
Sarin10@reddit
i don't think systemd-boot supports themes, so i can't make my bootloader pretty if I switched to it haha
Sentreen@reddit
Check out rEFInd. It is much easier to configure than grub (you don't even need to configure it, it will just autodetect your linux partitions if they are in the proper place) and it is themeable. I personally don't theme it, but I don't get why more systems don't use it as it works great of the box with minimal hassle, while still being configurable when needed.
Sarin10@reddit
refind is very cool. i haven't experimented too much with it yet (but it's on the todo list) because the documentation is a PITA to go through.
i think most distros prefer to ship with grub over refind or systemd-boot because only grub supports BIOSes.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
grub is used since not all setups on different arches support EFI, so many distros keep using grub rather than supporting 2 different bootloaders at the same time.
Synthetic451@reddit
systemd-boot is kinda limiting. I hate how it demands that your kernel images be in EFI. Makes restoring system BTRFS snapshots a pain.
starlevel01@reddit
My kernel image is a standard
vmlinuz?Synthetic451@reddit
I mean that they have to be in the EFI partition. I prefer my /boot to be in my BTRFS root.
arwinda@reddit
Remember lilo?
gesis@reddit
LI
LowOwl4312@reddit
Still used by Slackware
HorribleUsername@reddit
I do. Do you feel as old as I do right now?
thephotoman@reddit
I’m definitely not okay with it having been 20 years since I did my first Linux installation.
SDNick484@reddit
This year will mark my 20th year running Gentoo as my primary distro. I had messed around with a number of distros prior (Fedora Core, Slackware, etc.) and have occasionally tried something new over the years, but I've never found anything else I want to be my main.
DinckelMan@reddit
I praise rEFInd any time I get a chance to. It's excellent. It runs fast, config is flexible, supports all kinds of options too. If there absolutely had to be something I needed to nitpick on, it's that
refind-installfails to properly configure you from a fakeroot/chroot. That said, you typically don't even need this config file to begin withHelyos96@reddit
I happily ditched grub for EFISTUB a while ago, works great. Though my motherboard has a native boot-select feature when needed, otherwise I might have stuck with grub.
tajetaje@reddit
Yeah, a more user-friendly systemd-boot would be a nice alternative as it seems to be very reliable and interops well. Unfortunately it does have some serious limitations and lacks support for anything other than a basic textual interface (not even color I don't think)
Windows_10-Chan@reddit
Would that not be rEFInd?
Not that I've had a need to use anything other than systemd-boot but still.
Michaelmrose@reddit
rEFInd doesn't actually boot the system it just selects from boot targets like a nicer version of the boot menu you see when you press a motherboard specific hotkey. EG you end up doing rEFInd -> grub /systemd-boot / zfsbootmenu
al_with_the_hair@reddit
False. rEFInd is both a boot manager and a boot loader.
Although possibly boot loader functionality is achieved through EFISTUB? It's been a while since I used it.
If you need boot loader configuration auto-generated when boot files are modified, I think it's more limited than GRUB or systemd-boot (which usually achieves auto-generation with something like a package manager hook). If your boot configuration is set and forget, you can certainly specify your kernel parameters and other bits in the text file, and there's no need to chainload.
Michaelmrose@reddit
right on the first page
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
al_with_the_hair@reddit
Right, well, I guess that's semantics for you. I did mention EFISTUB, and I guess that means what I said about being a boot loader isn't actually true.
Still, you absolutely can boot Linux directly from rEFInd. Chainloading GRUB or any other boot loader is not necessary.
Windows_10-Chan@reddit
Does it support a lot of things though?
Using that you could use efistub kernels, boot them with rEFInd, and that shouldn't require grub or systemd-boot.
Michaelmrose@reddit
This doesn't work in practice, is a supported configuration nowhere, wouldn't even work on some hardware if it was, and would be a loss of functionality if it did.
Windows_10-Chan@reddit
Ah that is unfortunate.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
I am typing this on a computer with Debian, using Xorg and Pulseaudio. Linux has evolved into quite a complex amount of legacy and backward-compatibility.
Linux for supercomputers, embedded, IoT, servers etc. are their own worlds.
Linux for the desktop is, too. However, there just isn't any major commercial forces behind it. And government initiatives (like the 'Asian OS' of 20 years ago) didn't really go much of anywhere.
I think expansion and integration of Linux across mobile phone, tablet, and PC is something for 'Consumer Linux' to work towards. In a way, we already see this (somewhat) with Linux-based Android and Chrome OSes. But it would really take some major players to go for it for this to happen.
I guess the trends for the desktop are immutable distros, containerization and cross-platform software (like flatpaks, snaps), and a continuation of sucking hindtit because all the hardware and software makers develop their goods with the needs of Apple, MS and Google in mind.
garf2002@reddit
"Linux has evolved into quite a complex amount of legacy and backward-compatibility" this is so concerning because a lot of my issues with Windows are directly caused by the obsession with being backwards compatible.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
With Linux the obsession has been the hardware. With Windows it has been all that software developed under the Windows label.
Zomunieo@reddit
The PopOS people are hoping to make a splash with COSMIC DE which will be a Rust-based desktop environment.
mglyptostroboides@reddit
I see PopOS fans talking about this all the time, but what's the big selling point with their new DE?
zeanox@reddit
Gnome without the attitude.
mglyptostroboides@reddit
I'm ootl. I use gnome every day and I never thought it had an attitude. Could someone fill me in?
zeanox@reddit
the gnome team has a strict vision of what gnome is, and they don't care if it's actually useful or not. Things like having a minimize button is hidden behind a program you need to install, there is no system tray (something that is needed for some programs) and their "solution" is just standard gnome stuff that is really not useful to anyone. There is no desktop, no easy way to have a taskbar/dock on the desktop. Core functionality is hidden behind extensions that are lackluster at best. pop and Ubuntu are trying their best to implement these features, but just comes across as janky. Then there are things waiting to be merged for years, that are taking so long that distro makers are implementing it themselves instead.
I think this is what makes cosmic so interesting. It's gnome, but customizable and with features people expect out of the box.
This is just my view of it. Can't wait to give the comic desktop a try.
mglyptostroboides@reddit
I'm gonna be honest, as someone who daily drives Gnome 45 (and has no dog in the DE fight), the only one of these that doesn't seem like someone just overly committed to obsolete 90s desktop metaphor trappings is the system tray thing. And even then, I think the problem isn't so much that it was removed, but that it was removed without an adequate replacement (and I will grant that this is a design decision I disagree with and hope will be rectified soon for the reason you mentioned). Everything else just seems like fear of change. Like, really ask yourself, do you actually NEED to minimize windows? Like if you have no actual desktop (again, something that is just a redundant vestige of the 90s), what are you trying to see? I can't really imagine a use case where someones work flow will be broken by not being able to minimize. You can even get the same "hiding your porn window from your boss" functionality by just switching workspaces.
extremepayne@reddit
My perspective is that if you think that these desktop-type things like a minimize button are outdated and unnecessary, a simple WM might be for you. DEs are for people who want the whole package. My TWM has no minimize button, but it also has no close button and no maximize button and in fact no titlebar at all. It gives me some screen space back but it certainly isn’t for everyone. Some people, like Linus himself, just want to use their damn mouse. DEs should exist to let them
mglyptostroboides@reddit
I don't think that's a great solution because equating the use of a tiling window manager to using stock gnome is.... extremely extremely misguided. The whole point of a tiling WM is to never use a mouse. Gnome, and other modern DEs, cannot be used without a mouse. So recommending users of one switch to the other just because they both lack the trappings of the desktop metaphor is deeply misguided.
Ok_Antelope_1953@reddit
Yes, I actually need to minimize windows. Sometimes the workspace on my 14 inch laptop gets too cluttered and I can't tell one window from another because there isn't enough distinction between active and inactive windows in Gnome. Libadwaita doesn't even support accented red close button on active windows so you can't quickly tell which window is active. I will keep using Gnome for the time being thanks to extensions, but Gnome devs thinking they always know better than everyone is why people are looking forward to alternatives like Cosmic or Plasma 6 (the latter may finally fix KDE's many Wayland issues).
Also other times I may be looking at thirst traps in a private browser and need to quickly minimize it so I don't lose the site URL. It's crazy that a minimize button on windows has to be justified. Apple/MS/KDE/GNOME/XFCE and whoever else solved core concepts of the desktop decades ago, they don't need solving anymore.
friskfrugt@reddit
Isn't
<meta>+<h>enough?Ok_Antelope_1953@reddit
one is a keyboard shortcut, another a UI element, so no, one isn't a substitute for another. i am not asking my dad to learn super+h nor i myself am using it when lazy-scrolling through reddit or youtube.
zeanox@reddit
You fit in so well with the gnome attitude :)
I'm not here to discuss desktops. This is just my take on why people are looking forward to cosmic, including myself.
ousee7Ai@reddit
Gnome is just a differrent paradigm. Many people like their decisions, me included. I run vanilla gnome.
tajetaje@reddit
My issue is when GNOME tries to push their decisions on other distros
RealAmaranth@reddit
That's not really how that works. GNOME makes software, the distros choose to ship it. They could ship KDE, XFCE, etc instead. The fact is they like 90% of GNOME but are pushing GNOME to change for the last 10% instead of accepting it or finding an alternative. The GNOME devs are unwilling to do so and then things somehow get spun to make GNOME the bad guys.
tajetaje@reddit
Meant DEs sorry
zeanox@reddit
never claimed that was not the case?
tajetaje@reddit
There’s also the issues GNOME has had with Wayland development, they have held up probably half a dozen of the most requested features that users often complain about because they don’t think it fits either their vision. As far as I can tell, GNOME is the GNU of the desktop space.
Kabopu@reddit
From all what I have seen so far:
ULTRAFORCE@reddit
Another thing was from a programming standpoint, System76 devs disliked how the way that Gnome Extensions work is javascript inside of a single environment.
No longer having a situation where if one plug-in crashes it takes everything down with it as well as allowing for multi-threading. By having extensions as separate processes. Sourced from an interview that Jeremy Soller of System 76 did
loligans@reddit
In addition to u/Kabopu answer it also uses a new UI kit based on Rust called Iced which is different from KDE and GTK. More choice in the ecosystem is good
AdventurousLecture34@reddit
It will be the main Desktop Environment of MIT licensed RedoxOS
sparky8251@reddit
That System76 doesn't have to fight with GNOME devs to implement things they want to. One thing specifically cited as being usability studies. Apparently, they actually pay for some studies and try to resolve the problems they find and GNOME tells them to pound sand since the fix doesn't align with their vision.
Personally, I dont expect it to be amazing or have some killer feature. I just expect it to be another solid DE choice anyone can pick from, and this one is already Wayland supported unlike lots of older ones.
sparky8251@reddit
That System76 doesn't have to fight with GNOME devs to implement things they want to. One thing specifically cited as being usability studies. Apparently, they actually pay for some studies and try to resolve the problems they find and GNOME tells them to fuck off since the fix doesn't align with their vision.
Personally, I dont expect it to be amazing or have some killer feature. I just expect it to be another solid DE choice anyone can pick from, and this one is already Wayland supported unlike lots of older ones.
gringer@reddit
Why call it COSMIC DE, when RusDE is just lying around being punny?
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
I'm hoping they are taking their time to get it very right, because they really are taking their time.
Analog_Account@reddit
IDK, how long have they been at it? A whole new DE sounds like a LOT of work. They're also making a bunch of the bundled apps, last time I paid attention they were talking about a text editor. I don't know how many new programs they're making from the ground up, how many they're just lifting from other sources, or how many they're adapting... but it does sound like a but of work.
Also they said they'll be releasing a beta this spring so we'll see. I'm really curious to see if its just going to be almost exactly gnome, or if its actually going to be different.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
They are trying to do what Elementary has so far failed at.
I will be using the new Ubuntu LTS soon and have pretty much lost interest in Pop.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
I think the interesting thing is that it will also likely be the default desktop for redox OS as well.
tajetaje@reddit
My money is on networking. It's worse than the old audio stack, there are like seven ways to do everything and not one of them is fully compatible with the others. I suspect there will (eventually) by a pipewire-like layer added to the network stack so that applications can reliably target a single networking interface. A lot of apps right now have issues with DNS tricks and other higher level networking concerns that aren't just basic UNIX functionality. On Windows and macOS there are standard ways of doing that kind of thing but Linux has dozens of ways to set up the networking stack.
Buddy-Matt@reddit
Networking is the one thing I really struggle with on my various bit of Linux hardware. Network manager, networkd, dhcpcd. I have no real idea how it all fits together (if at all) and the lack of consistency between distros is horrendous.
Definitely needs to be something that wins the "this is how we do it" crown.
sandeep_r_89@reddit
Actually you should take a look at Arch Wiki. You should only have one of those managing the network.
systemd-networkd can manage it all, there's just no GUI. If you want a GUI, then NetworkManager.
And then just use iwd if you want WiFi.
systemd-resolved if you want DNS.
Problems solved.
Buddy-Matt@reddit
It's more the lack of consistency between distros that gets me. I know you don't use both networkd and networkmanager at the same time.
But I've got various bits of hardware running Manajaro/Arch/Debian(or derivitives) and the networking stack feels like its different on all of them. And I don't really fancy changing it, because most of these are headless setups, where fucking up the network would be a massive ballache.
Fwiw, the solution I tend to gravitate towards is NetworkManager, as I prefer using the various interfaces ot gives me over directly editing config files. I've always assumed it uses dhcpcd under the hood. And as for configuring dns clients - never even occurred to me that was even a thing. Its always "just worked" with my only ever interaction being the very rare need to manually plonk a dns server in /etc/resolv.conf
But the fact there are two major tools in NM and networkd - as well as legacy things like wpa_supplicant that I still see used, really shouts that networking is in need of an overhaul to get it to some kind of standard for the average user. Much like systemd, love it or hate it, is pretty much the standard init system. Sure, there are alternatives you can go with if you want, and there always should be for power users, but average Joe knows what he'll be getting out of the box by default.
sandeep_r_89@reddit
For headless setups, systemd-networkd + systemd-resolved are probably the easiest inbuilt solution. I haven't done much configuration because what I do is mostly bog standard (connect to WiFi router or ethernet).
sandeep_r_89@reddit
We already have iwd and NetworkManager............
Although if we just had GUI interfaces for systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved, then that's all we need.
All hail systemd!
darklotus_26@reddit
I would say DNS to be even more specific. Only systemd-resolved handles per interface DNS and it hasn't been the smoothest for me with resolution failing intermittently and what not. I'm tired of fiddling with it for so many years.
tajetaje@reddit
Agreed, although changes to the DNS stack will need changes to the rest of networking due to the incompatibilities I was talking about.
james_pic@reddit
TBH, I think the tendency with networking generally has been to try and do less clever stuff with the host network stack, and push any remaining complexity into infrastructure (most obviously with cloud providers who give you a lot of flexibility in virtualizing networks). I think this is even truer for desktop stuff, where most users won't do anything fancier than fiddle with the routing table, configure an alternate DNS server, or maybe have Docker set up some iptables rules.
tajetaje@reddit
The problem comes when you want to do anything even slightly advanced and have to completely change your networking configuration/replace the whole stack.
Max-P@reddit
I guess it doesn't answer "there's dozens of ways" but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Most people only need the basics, but in the enterprise world that flexibility comes very handy.
That's definitely possible. The application can do it, the user can force it in a few ways. Flatpak could enforce that very easily as well.
It's the same as containers: just shove the app in a network namespace.
Not sure which one you're referring to, but I'm pretty sure networkd/resolved support most of those use cases. Otherwise, namespaces can definitely handle that as well, if anything with a mount namespace and a different
resolv.conf. For mDNS, there's Avahi or resolved also has the basics covered.Then we have things like macvlan, if you want an application to be its own entire network device on the network. You can even bypass the kernel entirely and talk directly to the network. There's also eBPF for even crazier shenanigans.
What Windows have is apps that are better integrated, mostly because the user base is there.
Now, it is complex and confusing, I'll give you that. I could see some nice UIs and tools to better tame your network coming around. But the tools are all there, and I don't foresee a major overhaul anytime soon unless someone comes up with something truely magical.
tajetaje@reddit
The problem is not that the network stack is complex, that’s absolutely an advantage; the pro is that it’s inconsistent and incompatible. Linux networking really has four or so separate stacks that absolutely could be united under a common interface; that just hasn’t happened yet.
SilentLennie@reddit
Only if it properly supports IPv6.
myownfriend@reddit
I had no idea that was the case. I never got too into the weeds with networking on Linux but if that's the case, I hope networking gets some love.
SurfRedLin@reddit
This works for years in the enterprise world. No fix needed. This will not be it. Also its already quite easy to do.
sparky8251@reddit
I'd say its high time ext4 loses its default king crown and is replaced with something more modern, like bcachefs or btrfs. Not sure if this is what will be a major focus of the overall ecosystem, but its def something I'd like to see get a lot more love and attention.
This sort of change would also remove the need to use LVM, which is honestly a bit of a pain at times... So that'd be 2 birds with 1 stone if this is where the ecosystem went next.
maep@reddit
Just because a piece of software is old does not make it obsolete, and we sould not replace major components just for the sake of modernity.
Ext4 is very robust, capable and suitable for almost most use cases. The fact that it does not cover some special cases does not make it a bad default choice. And there is something to be said for simplicity, BTRS and ZFS are very complex which comes with a cost.
ImperatorPC@reddit
Just want a drive I can format and put shit on. Don't personally want to deal with raid or sub volumes and that complexity.
Michaelmrose@reddit
That's a distro issue really. BTRFS. If it hasn't captured that position in the last 17 years its probably not going to do so and bcachefs is really new being stable only as of 2022. It's a shame it can't be ZFS.
centzon400@reddit
Isn't bcachefs supposed to be the next big thing in filesystems? It was just merged into the 6.7 kernel.
SilentLennie@reddit
Maybe, it currently has 1 main developer and some people looking at it, sending some small changes. Which means it will take 5 to 10 years to reach stable.
sparky8251@reddit
It has several main devs and hes actively working with the btrfs team to build shared kernel infra they can both utilize.
The guy behind it hired people hes training to reduce the bus factor because hes serious about it being a viable fs long term. Stop spreading this BS that Kent is some incompetent boob. I see it far too much.
SilentLennie@reddit
Great to hear they are making progress getting more people involved.
Who said he's incompetent ?
It takes at least 5 years if not 10 years to make sure a filesystem is stable and can be relied on this is normal.
But I guess a big change like Wayland also took so many years.
sparky8251@reddit
Lots of people spread lots of stupid ideas that they didnt bother correcting when it missed the initial 6.6 merge window. People made a lot of dumb opinions at that time, some that I still see today like that its a single person project.
I'm sure the apatite for adventure in FS' has dropped, but its reliable already, even in the extreme case of it screwing itself up unlike other FS'. Its own author has been able to help people recover data from otherwise borked filesystems used by huge render farms and thats why it has the "The COW filesystem for Linux that won't eat your data" moniker he gave it.
I'd say its got a chance at being adopted "widely" in the next few years outside of servers/enterprise ASSUMING the userspace tooling around it picks up in quality. Then a few years later, itll be fine for everything. So I'd say 5 years is probably the right time to know if itll make waves or not like you said. Which is pretty reasonable for such a core system default to change imo.
SilentLennie@reddit
The more users you add the more edge cases you'll into, so it takes time is what I'm saying.
useless_it@reddit
They never said that?
Michaelmrose@reddit
Yes but as something very new I'd prefer to rely on something more tested.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
ZFS isn't light enough on resource usage to be suitable for some cases where it would kinda have to be for default status to be reasonable.
Michaelmrose@reddit
What are you basing that on?
-quakeguy-@reddit
I am the biggest ZFS fanboy around, but you really shouldn’t be using it on a system with less than 4gb of RAM. And there are millions upon millons of Linux and Linux-based devices out there with much less RAM then that.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
Link? /s
al_with_the_hair@reddit
Well, I've run it. I don't have a source for you, but relative to other file systems, it's known to be more demanding for memory and compute. This shouldn't be surprising, as data center operation and large disk clusters are the really killer use cases.
For most decently powerful or fairly recent PCs, it should be amazing. I would be astonished if ZFS would be manageable on many low cost computers like my Raspberry Pi, which is admittedly a bit old but can't even manage some single disk setups with cryptsetup implementation tuned to what my laptop can do.
Michaelmrose@reddit
It's not
moderately-extremist@reddit
link?
Michaelmrose@reddit
You have made the statement and ergo ought to prove it
moderately-extremist@reddit
did not
Michaelmrose@reddit
Cute the prior poster did or you on another account and never backed it up. What was introduced without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Chloride5799@reddit
No, they didn't. The statement was that zfs needs more RAM. The burden of proof is on them.
Michaelmrose@reddit
Check up thread. Their statements
It's known is like "lots of people are saying" and is usually shorthand for I pulled it out of my ass. If I say "It's known that ___ sedans are less safe than ___ sedans and someone asks you how "everyone knows" you don't get to flip it and ask them to prove a negative.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
It is.
Michaelmrose@reddit
link?
sparky8251@reddit
Well, it is compared to like... ext4, but when you compare like for like such as btrfs, bcachefs, and refs its not any better or worse overall. But thats just cause ext4 does effectively nothing in comparison to the glory that is zfs.
sparky8251@reddit
Not knowing about the ARC and how it doesnt show on linux easily, or the idea that you need ECC RAM, or the idea you need 1GB of RAM per TB of space (which is only for dedup)?
I've got complaints with ZFS, but resource usage isn't one of them myself. Only real issue I've had comes from running low on disk space, but most of the fancier FS' suffer in that case, as do some older ones.
Michaelmrose@reddit
You don't need ECC RAM and only benefits from it in the same fashion as literally every other filesystem. Dedup requires lots of RAM which is one reason not to use it outside of specialized workflows.
sparky8251@reddit
Yes, I know. I use it without ECC on my server at home, and dont require tons of RAM because I don't use dedup. I was answering your question with common ZFS misconceptions around hardware and its system requirements.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
The cases I had in mind involve systems with very little RAM, to be clear. I have no expectation that resource usage is a meaningful concern for ZFS vs another file system on most computers.
sparky8251@reddit
Those arent usual situations, so a default being zfs-like feature wise wont be a problem imo. At that point, its on you to change it to handle the env rather than the few low powered envs holding back better defaults for the rest of us.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
It would seem that's a big reason why EXT4 remains mostly default, no? These decisions seem to be of the lowest common denominator sort. I suppose there is the fact that it was very mature compared to other candidates a long time ago, but I see no reason why this should influence decisions about new installations as long as alternatives remain in tree for whatever kernel is being used. Yet some factor clearly is effecting that.
Btrfs and bcachefs still aren't as mature right now as EXT was a while ago, so the time is seemingly not ripe. Seems to me like XFS should have been the clear choice for a while, but what do I know? Maybe distributions are looking to a copy-on-write future and don't want to make more than one switch before it's all over. I don't see what the big deal is for the reason I've stated, but maybe it can all just be chalked up to EXT inertia.
Michaelmrose@reddit
pardon I confused you with the other poster
al_with_the_hair@reddit
I see no reason why one would complain about resources on a system where they're pretty ample. Rather, I would not expect it to function as well in a constrained resource environment.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
I really dig this whole conversation about the technical merits of ZFS completely divorced from any acknowledgement of the unbelievably stupid license issues. This is much more fun.
SilentLennie@reddit
Only if you enable the caching feature.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
What Sun hath given, Oracle shall take away.
natermer@reddit
The fact that Oracle refuses to support ZFS on their own Oracle Linux should be more then enough to give people pause.
Negirno@reddit
"Problem?" - says Sun with a trollface.
sparky8251@reddit
As much as I love bashing Oracle, the CDDL license on the ZFS code was put there by Sun. They are the reason we cant upstream it on Linux...
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
At any rate, the solution lies with Oracle now.
henry_tennenbaum@reddit
shudder
PusheenButtons@reddit
It’s within Oracle’s power to re-license the base ZFS open source code that OpenZFS was built on top of though, migrating it to something compatible with GPLv2.
boobsbr@reddit
There was a competitor to ext4 way back then...
But we don't talk about it.
Michaelmrose@reddit
You mean the killer filesystem? Performance to die for?
boobsbr@reddit
A-yup,..
sparky8251@reddit
Lots of distros either supported in the installer or defaulted to btrfs. Its def got issues, especially with the writehole still existing to this day... It's why I am hopeful bcachefs takes over now that its in the kernel, then we can stop concerning ourselves with zfs and licensing BS.
RlndVt@reddit
Btrfs write hole is not something that isn't present in ext4+mdraid 5 (or any FS for that matter); because it uses the same raid5 technique. If ext4 can live to be the default while having this 'write-hole', it's a non-argument for btrfs.
Btrfs might not be perfect but imo perfectly ready for being a default.
Btrfs raid56 has issues on the scrub side of things. Reported disk read/write errors can be assigned to the wrong disk. Raid56 scrubs are also slow, where multiple read operations fight for disk IO.
slikrick_@reddit
BTRFS is not ready for default, it completely fails for the average user when the disk fills up
phord@reddit
Don't know why you're being down voted. This is 100% correct. I'm a btrfs fan and used it exclusively on my laptops for about 9 years. It's got some useful features, but space management and accounting is still wanting, and disk full collapse is a problem.
slikrick_@reddit
I don't worry about down votes, it's usually people who haven't used it in real world situations.
I used BTRFS on a laptop and my disk filled up and deleting data didn't fix it - this is what a normal user does. Thankfully I searched and found the solution, I had to run a command for it to be able to proceed first - bad. Commands should be for inspecting and fixing bad state, not getting yourself out of a completely normal operating state where the disk just filled up.
Negirno@reddit
Heck, according to this article, space management is a problem even with other file systems.
phord@reddit
That article is talking about application issues. Btrfs seems to have problems managing and accounting for used space internally in a meaningful way for end users. It's a hard problem, and there are performance tradeoffs to making it better.
Michaelmrose@reddit
Only Fedora uses BTRFS by default for everything. Opensuse uses it for the system but doesn't even use it for user files. This represents a single digit percentage of desktop Linux.
ousee7Ai@reddit
My opensuse aeon is btrfs only that i can see?
CNR_07@reddit
openSuSE uses it by default for the entire system. openSuSE doesn't create a home partition by default.
kyrsjo@reddit
Redhat uses XFS, do you know about the pro/cons? It also uses LVM
andyniemi@reddit
xfs_repair sucks
good luck on power outages
kyrsjo@reddit
Why is it used then?
sparky8251@reddit
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/managing_file_systems/overview-of-available-file-systems_managing-file-systems
Look for the "Comparison of XFS and ext4" section at this link. Itll explain a handful of reasons why while including some negatives.
Brainobob@reddit
Ext4 is excellent at power outage recovery! I have never had a problem and I get power outages regularly (because my power company sucks).
andyniemi@reddit
It's got a couple of advantages, but not many. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11ar65f/comment/kh1xjss/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
abotelho-cbn@reddit
They built Stratis.
Fr0gm4n@reddit
XFS cannot be shrunk, only grown.
Linux4ever_Leo@reddit
I always use XFS as well. I've found it to be a very performative and secure file system.
Brainobob@reddit
Agreed! I think zfs should be the default.
sandeep_r_89@reddit
I do like it's features, I guess it's more up to distros.
pikecat@reddit
How about ext5?
I like conservative for file system. Something that I know and know will be solid.
Known-Watercress7296@reddit
Bcachefs has the potential to do this.
No licence issue, in the kernel, modern features and has the stuff btrfs promised and never delivered over a decade ago.
Arseniuss@reddit
Just create a list of required features and write ext5
dale_glass@reddit
LVM is really not bad at all in modern times. It has all sorts of fancy features that aren't getting a lot of use.
For instance, you can set up:
disks -> RAID -> LVM -> LV
But you can also set up:
disks -> LVM -> LV with RAID
And it turns out the second option is a lot more flexible. You can choose which LVs use RAID and which kind, convert a LV to RAID at runtime, and you can add integrity data which means in a RAID1 you can actually know which disk has the bad data, unlike with standard MD.
sparky8251@reddit
Use subvolumes/datasets and tell me LVM is amazing. The ease of use difference between the two when it comes to snapshotting and resizing individual partitions is nuts.
In fact, one thing I HATE is that LVM forces specific partition sizes so I cant go from having lots of space on my / vol to lots of space on my /srv vol the next day, and thus have all kinds of space management issues that are just solved by wasting disk space in vsphere by adding more and more disks over time to shore up nonsensical crap zfs, btrfs, and bcachefs handle perfectly.
dale_glass@reddit
LVM is not amazing, but the nice thing about it is that deep down it's a pretty simple, very reliable technology not bound to a specific filesystem.
LVs can be extended at runtime. You don't need to add extra disks, you just extend what you have. And you can use thin provisioning. With thin provisioning space is only used from the underlying device if something actually uses it, and it's returned to LVM on TRIM.
BTRFS and the like are great if you go all in on that specific system. LVM is amazing if you have something like a VM server and want to have say, Windows VMs that obviously won't work on BTRFS.
sparky8251@reddit
This isnt the issue... its that I have to predetermine space and then hope i can skrink/expand the FS reliably when resource constrained on a given partition. I just wiped out my partitions on my personal machine and moved to bcachefs to avoid dealing with this guessing game and having to redo it whenever i guess wrong.
Its the same crap at my day job. Often dealing with lacking disk space on the root LV when really, LVs are a needless abstraction and datasets/subvols handle it so much smarter.
dale_glass@reddit
Use [thin provisioning] (https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/logical_volume_manager_administration/thinly_provisioned_volume_creation)
Got to actually manage your juniors then. With administrative access nothing is immune to being messed up.
shiftingtech@reddit
whether it still deserves it or not, btrfs still has a pretty nerve-wracking reputation... and at some level, that does matter. You want people to feel confident in their filesystem...
sparky8251@reddit
Right, which is why I said bcachefs, since thats now mainlined and has all the basic btrfs features already or is working on them actively.
Sucks that btrfs fell off due to its decade long write-hole problem and absurdly slow pace of adding features... Hopefully bcahcefs fairs better.
RoseBailey@reddit
With the murmurings of Arm-based PCs possibly rising in the near future, I suspect a translation layer and improved Arm support will become a community priority.
lp_kalubec@reddit
What translation layer?
RoseBailey@reddit
To translate x86 instructions to arm like Rosetta on Mac
lp_kalubec@reddit
We already have QEMU for that, but I wonder why you think x86 emulation on ARM is a priority for Linux.
On Mac, Rosetta 2 is there to support software that hasn't received native ARM builds. By the way, the ARM version of Windows also has its own x86 emulator.
In the Linux world, where nearly all software is open-source, we can recompile that software targeting the ARM architecture. It won't always be trivial, but in most cases, it will be just a matter of running the compiler.
There are already Linux distros, even major ones, that support ARM. For example, Ubuntu claims that their ARM build already has 50,000 native ARM packages.
ARM is already widely adopted on the server side. It's also quite common to use ARM Linux images with Docker. It's slowly becoming an industry standard.
FrostyDiscipline7558@reddit
Because there are still things you can't get on ARM Linux due to vendors not providing ARM builds. Like Slack and Zoom, for example.
lp_kalubec@reddit
Sure, that will happen with closed-source software. I'm just saying that this issue on Linux isn't as major as on Windows or Mac, where the majority of the software is closed-source. That's why I think that in the Linux world, having a proper x86 emulator isn't that crucial.
FrostyDiscipline7558@reddit
Until you need the official slack, zoom, and teams apps, sure.
For those of us issued these crappy M1 macs at work, where we end up running Linux in a VM to have anything close to a useful workflow... those app gaps hurt.
ThreeChonkyCats@reddit
Wayland 2.0
Pay08@reddit
Wayland 11.
NeverMindToday@reddit
W11 for short
rileyrgham@reddit
Then we can move to X11....
Irverter@reddit
It's funny, we already had moved from W (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_Window_System) to X.
Wayland should been named something with Y...
SMS-T1@reddit
Yland?
FrostyDiscipline7558@reddit
Whyland?
rhet0rica@reddit
Yutani?
james2432@reddit
but only after about 30 years and after people go kicking and screaming that W11 is fine and the new implementation breaks all things, even if it's not true
PhukUspez@reddit
Wayland does break things, that's why it has Wayland though.
rileyrgham@reddit
I wonder about the op thinking a lot about this issue....
Nick_Noseman@reddit
Just do WW11 for compatibility
rileyrgham@reddit
Well, the war hawks are aiming for wwiii... Thank God Zuckerborg has his underground lair... Mankind's in safe hands... 😅😜
proton_badger@reddit
Will there be a W3.11 for Workgroups?
i-hate-manatees@reddit
Funny enough, the predecessor to the X window system was the W window system
FrostyDiscipline7558@reddit
*shudder* The horror!
A_Nerdy_Dad@reddit
All the Wayland jokes and not one person has quipped Yutani....
ThreeChonkyCats@reddit
It's obvious isn't it... I really did expect the other Dev effort (Weston) to be called this, but was saddened to read the names come from a town and those close to it.
Makes me sad 😿
newsflashjackass@reddit
What comes after Wayland? Likely the same thing that led to Wayland.
"
$workingSolutionhas too much technical debt. We have decided to replace it with something lacking all that confusing support for soon-to-be-obsolete hardware."https://i.imgur.com/W6BmJ09.png
botford80@reddit
2 Way. After that 3 Way.
zSprawl@reddit
Waysea
ChalanaArroy@reddit
Next up, Wayair: Way wayer than wayland!
FrostyDiscipline7558@reddit
Hopefully an x12.
SciScribbler@reddit
My bet goes to something game-related, like some major change within OpenGL and MESA.
FluffyBrudda@reddit
look into NVK, it's the OpenGL replacement
that_leaflet@reddit
NVK is just a Vulkan implementation for Nvidia cards.
FluffyBrudda@reddit
wait im now confused whats nvk vulkan and opengl sorry im lost now
that_leaflet@reddit
Vulkan and OpenGL are graphics APIs, like Microsoft's DirectX. Vulkan is newer and more performant than OpenGL.
NVK implements Vulkan for Nvidia cards.
FluffyBrudda@reddit
ohhh, are opengl and vulkan foss
that_leaflet@reddit
Yes
Overflwn@reddit
AFAIK it‘s the OSS vulkan driver for NVidia
though I‘ve read in a blog post that they‘re thinking about adopting OpenGL into it somehow
FluffyBrudda@reddit
to my know ledge all the terminal commands are getting re-written in rust, NVK will replace OpenGL, hopefully systemd gets done with too
parkerlreed@reddit
That's not how ANY of this works...
NVK is an OSS Vulkan layer for Nvidia GPUs. Has nothing to do with replacing OpenGL.
FluffyBrudda@reddit
not free?
parkerlreed@reddit
OSS... Open Source Software...
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/24326
FluffyBrudda@reddit
whats that
DRAK0FR0ST@reddit
I hope it's something to replace PackageKit, because it sucks.
Wonderful-Citron-678@reddit
It will likely just die. Fedora plans on replacing it for DNF.
rokejulianlockhart@reddit
Then what happens to every GUI cross-OS package manager, like GNOME Software and KDE Discover?
Wonderful-Citron-678@reddit
Each OS will have to implement a backend. GNOME-Software is already modular: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/tree/main/plugins
rokejulianlockhart@reddit
I don't see any benefit to that. Having a common package management abstraction base between all the high-level package managers seems like a much better utilisation of resources than the alternative – if PackageKit is to be replaced, why not replace it with another project which is also separate? Certainly, why fragment development between stores?
Wonderful-Citron-678@reddit
Red Hat doesn't need to maintain other distros tooling. PackageKit isn't good for them. They have the resources to do a better plugin so they will.
rokejulianlockhart@reddit
PackageKit doesn't include any distribution-specific tooling. That's the entire point of it. The package manager maintainers maintain plugins for the core PackageKit module. Anything other than an extensible core would be monolithic for what benefit? The store maintainers maintaining a few of the most popular package managers' abstractions would be more work for them than the current system is!
Wonderful-Citron-678@reddit
Many backends are upstream: https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/tree/main/backends
rokejulianlockhart@reddit
Why do you state this?
theferrit32@reddit
If PackageKit itself does not continue, someone will make a similar abstraction, because it is a useful thing to have. Then it will be up to each high level package manager/store whether they want to use a shared abstraction library or write their own. It's probably useful to have a shared one so bugfixes and edge cases can be handled consistently. But they can try making their own and see how it goes and switch to a shared one later if they think that's better.
SnooCompliments7914@reddit
There shouldn't be. Either GUI for an OS-specific package manager, or GUI for a cross-OS package manager (e.g. Flatpak). But no cross-package-manager GUI.
rokejulianlockhart@reddit
Why?
ExpressionMajor4439@reddit
What is the value add of that? Do you have a source for that?
Wonderful-Citron-678@reddit
Couple things. For one it side steps some current bugs, like PackageKit maintains its own package cache separate from DNF so it can be out of sync, wastes time and space downloading.
Secondly DNF is going through improvements and exposes a new API, so the effort to rewrite already has to happen either in GNOME-Software or PackageKit.
The reason to choose doing it in Software would be simplicity and flexibility.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ReplaceDnfWithDnf5
HomicidalTeddybear@reddit
the next big thing underlying userspace has already happened arguably. That is Pipewire.
azeia@reddit
yeah, honestly i don't really see anything besides pipewire and wayland in the future. there's always going to be changes but the reality is that from the dawn of linux in the 90s, audio and x11 have been the two most significant clusterfucks that we've always had to deal with. audio had several solutions over time, but x11 kept sticking around and causing pain.
a lot of people have a tendency to think that just because linux has always had major breaking changes in the past, that this will continue into infinity, but i view it more as 'milestones' towards an actual stable base. wayland is probably the largest band-aid we've ever had to rip off, but i believe the pain will be worth it, and i don't buy the bullshit FUD of "oh in 20 years we'll have to switch again".
even if we had to switch to a new display server again in future, it will never be as painful as this because the biggest pain is due to moving from "mechanism not policy", to a policy-based design, which is a massive kick in the gut in terms of how jarring it is to more demanding power-user apps, but as i said, it will be worth it in the end once all the proper portals/etc are in place.
james2432@reddit
pipewire with video support is game changing
myownfriend@reddit
Absolutely. One thing that doesn't get mentioned enough is that Pipewire and portals work on X11, too, so applications can literally remove their XSHM and XComposite backends and X11-users won't actually lose any functionality. It has the potential to it's 10 or so Linux-specific sources for audio and video, and merge them into just four that all use Pipewire.
ancientweasel@reddit
"portals work"
I can't wait for that to be my experience.
slikrick_@reddit
Works fine on wayland
ancientweasel@reddit
The fact you don't seam to know the difference between portals and Wayland give my little faith in you response.
the_abortionat0r@reddit
Works on wayland is a valid response.
If you are trying to use X11 with newer features thats a pebkac issue.
slikrick_@reddit
Wow, just came back now and you really went off the rails huh. You need to chill out, but most of the others have gone into that lol
myownfriend@reddit
I don' think they're equating them. They're just saying that they tested it in a Wayland session I didn't get any issue but can't vouch for how it works in X11.
ancientweasel@reddit
If they can't disambiguate their opinion is very useful.
kor34l@reddit
I downvoted you for being rude for no good reason.
ancientweasel@reddit
You down voted me for saying a fact and then projected rudeness onto me because you don't like the fact.
As I said, it's like a cult. All the same toxic community dynamics we saw with systemd are repeating.
If it doesn't work for someone gaslight them. If your called out because your gaslighting show clearly you don't know WTF you are talking about then that person is being rude.
To say, 'Wayland works for me" after someone complains about the portals is 100% ignorant of how it works on top of being pure gaslighting. Wayland is a Protocol. Wayland doesn't work or not work. The implementaions; Weston or Mutter or Kwin or WLRoots can either work or not. On top of that, Wayland implementations don't manage resource sharing.
kor34l@reddit
buddy, you're the one projecting. I don't like or dislike your point of view, I don't even use Wayland, I just downvote when I see someone being rude and it seems uncalled for.
ancientweasel@reddit
Nothing I did was rude or uncalled for.
Malsententia@reddit
What's your reasoning behind thinking your downvotes are related to their comment rather than your attitude?
rbenchley@reddit
Exactly. You can challenge or disagree, but that doesn’t mean you need to be aggressive and rude.
ancientweasel@reddit
What's your reasoning to think you know what my attitude is?
C0rn3j@reddit
What problems do you have with them that you can't track to applications being built on outdated Electron?
ancientweasel@reddit
I have problems with them on the newest Firefox and Chrome. Mostly screen sharing just never initiates.
myownfriend@reddit
I'll have to try it when I'm on my computer.
ancientweasel@reddit
The biggest problems are with MS Teams which I must use.
If you down voted for sharing don't bother though. I have 100% had it with the BS of flaming anyone who says they have issues with portals (or Wayland by proxy). It's obnoxious.
AnsibleAnswers@reddit
It's software, folks. It's got bugs.
myownfriend@reddit
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Screen_Capture_API/Using_Screen_Capture#examples
I tried it with this demo and it worked perfectly. Try it out.
ancientweasel@reddit
Thanks.
I have spent probably 100 hours on this and backed out of Wayland and it's portals three times already. I followed dozens of tutorials. It's going to be a while again before I trust embarrassing myself in front of my VP and have him blame linux when he reboots winblows before half his calls.
myownfriend@reddit
What's your setup? Like what distro, DE, and GPU?
ancientweasel@reddit
What do portals have to do with GPUs?
myownfriend@reddit
It has less to do with GPUs and Portals and more to do with drivers. I can't find the specific issue where it explained what the issue is but the reason why, for example, screen capture on Nvidia (I think specifically on Gnome) is stuttery but window capture is smooth has to do with the Nvidia driver's support for DMA-BUFs being incomplete. DMA-buf is how applications do zero-copy buffer sharing and it's used by the capture portal so that becomes an issue. In the past I've seen other issues like only a black screen being captured.
ancientweasel@reddit
The issue is just that the portals and I have tried several are half baked.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal#List_of_backends_and_interfaces
If your not using Gnome or KDE there isn't a portal that is fully implemented. Sure they are supposed to fail over but they don't. IFAIK the portals are completely agnostic to the the GPU. Only the compositor is effected. This is a good design and every Wayland compositor I have tried has been awesome. The portals, not so much.
myownfriend@reddit
You'd be right that the portals themselves are GPU agnostic. Has the screencast portal never worked for you on any of the compositors you've used or is it just on your chosen compositor?
I have to say that I'm not used to having conversation about Portals that are about anything other than if they're a good idea or not lol
ancientweasel@reddit
Basically the KDE and Gnome portals work almost every time I've tried them. The ones you can use with sway or Hyprland are super flaky. You have to choose if you want a file picker or a screen grabber to work, or deal with both being flaky. The second annoyance is both Gnome and KDE have completely abondon the Unix philosophy of compossibility. I used to be able replace the WM in either Gnome or KDE with i3. Now you can't anymore. They only work with their own WMs. It's not worth the productivity loss to be without i3, sway or Hyprland. I'll just use Xorg until the portals are finished.
myownfriend@reddit
The coupling of the WM and compositor is a Wayland requirement and not strictly a KDE and Gnome thing. This was kind of bound to happen considering even the X12 page has said they would have gone compositing by default.
Now all you can do is try to swap the shell. I know XFCE worked on top of Mutter for example.
myownfriend@reddit
I didn't downvote anything. I also don't have a Teams account but any screen sharing portal issue in Firefox shouldn't be web app dependent so I'll try out Discord or some site specifically for testing that.
ancientweasel@reddit
You don't need to test for me :)
C0rn3j@reddit
Works fine here on Chromium at least.
Synthetic451@reddit
Unless you're on KDE X11, in which case Pipewire video capture doesn't work. I believe the portal isn't implemented.
unapologeticjerk@reddit
Right, but everyone knows everyone who is anyone uses GTK-based environments.
^Gnome sucks slightly less than KDE
LowAtmosphere8796@reddit
Pipewire…video? Got any links I am completely unaware of
james2432@reddit
https://youtu.be/LUbF-d77lAs?si=W5pXPBTjkstvLIMb
quick summary
LowAtmosphere8796@reddit
Holy crap this is incredible. Really is game changing.
AnsibleAnswers@reddit
Wayland + Portals + Pipewire = Modern Linux desktop
spacelama@reddit
I've been using pipewire for a couple of days now, having finally gotten ridden of all the dependencies that were stopping me upgrading my desktop to Debian bookworm earlier.
And it's proven to be very disappointing so far; as disappointing as it was in my earlier experiments.
As disappointing as pulseaudio was in the first 5 or so years. And as disappointing Wayland has been so far in its first decade.
I wish we'd just improve the existing shit instead of making new worse shit.
KrazyKirby99999@reddit
sudo apt purge pulseaudio
?
spacelama@reddit
First thing I did.
toomuchtbh@reddit
Exactly. Xorg worked for 30 years before dipshit developers decided to make wayland. Now we're stuck with garbage software that never works and never will work. Wonder why windows has never had problems like this? Because their developers are actually competent. Why would you use Linux when Windows just works? It's a developers job to maintain code. If they're not doing it, they shouldn't be paid. Linux developers know that AI will replace them very soon because AI can do everything a developer can but better, and it will actually listen to users instead of ignoring all concerns. Windows and AI is the future.
myownfriend@reddit
People knew that X11 needed to be replaced since the early 2000s. I even found an article from 2002 talking about how slow, inefficient and messy the protocol was.
If you knew anything about the development of X11 you'd know that it was designed for hardware that was completely unlike modern desktops and was largely kept feeling someone modern via extensions that worked around X11. Like it worked with GL because the GLX extension was created but that was built around a 2D acceleration model so DRI had to be created to circumvent the Xserver altogether. There's literally an extension just called XFixes at one point and protocol once even included an XPrint extension for sending things to printers.
X11 served its purpose but it was never made to last.
... wow I didn't even read until the AI part. I think I might have argued with you on hear or Phoronix because that sounds familiar. I'll tell you this much. I've tried using ChatGPT to help me when I was in a bind coding and I wound up spending most of the time correcting it about stuff it was confidently wrong about. AI ain't shit.
AnythingAnthingAnthi@reddit
You mean 'somewhat' modern.
myownfriend@reddit
Correct. Just fixed it. Thank you!
linux-ModTeam@reddit
This post has been removed for violating Reddiquette., trolling users, or otherwise poor discussion such as complaining about bug reports or making unrealistic demands of open source contributors and organizations. r/Linux asks all users follow Reddiquette. Reddiquette is ever changing, so a revisit once in awhile is recommended.
Rule:
arwinda@reddit
Right, steam engines worked for many years. Why progress to something better.
Please get professional help.
dirtydeedsdirtymind@reddit
Wrong subreddit.
ABotelho23@reddit
You need medication.
sparky8251@reddit
Sounds like you still have things to configure/work out... Pipewire has been fine for many people for at least several years now. For many, its been better than pulse or jack for things like BT audio devices and routing...
Clottersbur@reddit
It's an ancient Debian user screaming into the void. In 20 years from now when he's still trying to run the same hardware he'll be shaking his fist at the world about how X11 and Debian 3.1 is peak computing. Everything else was downhill and un-needed.
gogozero@reddit
i am a debian user since 24 years ago and i am pleased with how things are now. no fucking with OSS or hoping someone makes an ALSA driver for your specific card, no custom .asoundrc that must be right for your audio to work.
getting an mp3 to play out of your speakers used to be a trial, and now audio works more often than on a clean windows install.
spacelama@reddit
I believe I purged all of my system and user pulseaudio and alsa configs.
It does seem odd that something as popular as pipewire doesn't work out of the box on multiple user accounts and multiple hardware of various ages without tweaking quantum etc settings from their default.
archontwo@reddit
If you have been using Linux for a significant amount of time you will run up against the custom configuration problem.
That is to say, you probably installed some custom hacky way to do something and you have a dot file or settings file that is now incompatible, in the wrong place, has deprecated variables etc.
In cases like that you need to reset the service by wiping it out and configurating it again from a new login.
FWIW, that is why myself, I have a 'Guest's user whose configuration gets wiped out every time they log out. Meaning if something is broken in my own session and not easily fixable through usual resetting of settings, I can check the Guest user and make sure it is not something I did, perhaps years ago, to my config
sparky8251@reddit
Weird... I wish you luck in sorting it out really. Pipewire is honestly so much nicer if you do even the tiniest bit more advanced things with audio. Just being able to avoid mixer devices and route audio how I want is amazing when doing screen shares and such... Can cut out all audio except the audio of the thing Im sharing.
Plus, its kinda required for Wayland apps to function properly with sharing too...
PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit
Fedora 39 reporting in. PipeWire has been flawless for me for years, since at least Fedora 35, and on Manjaro before that.
myownfriend@reddit
Same. I started using Linux as my main OS in late 2020 with whatever the latest Ubuntu version was and it used Pulse. After finding out about Pipewire, I would compile it myself and would use it. The only issues I had were when I tried compiling it and fucked up somehow which broke my audio.
I already wasn't feeling Ubuntu and shortly afterwards I found out that Fedora was already using Pipewire by default, already had Gnome 40, and was going to have Nvidia's DMA-buf drivers on the day of release so I switched to whatever the newest version was at the time (34?) and I've had no problems with my audio sense.
Pipewire along with Helvum has made it a dream to route audio between applications and my mixer, too. It's one of the things I show people whenever they ask me about Linux.
RedditNotFreeSpeech@reddit
Why is this guy getting shit on for stating his experience?
Silvolde@reddit
How old is your hardware? Because I've got pipewire working on my pc, which has parts from the ddr3 era. Took a bit of tinkering though, particularly because I use hyprland. Perhaps you should try a fresh install or switch to a distro like fedora/nobara, that is more up to date than debian
ancientweasel@reddit
How dare you share your bad experience, huh?
archontwo@reddit
Switch to Debian Testing. It all works very well there and has done for over a year.
spacelama@reddit
Bookworm-backports is a more reliable means of achieving the same thing. I did indeed install that lastnight and it is... better than 0.3x. Maybe even usable - we'll see.
myownfriend@reddit
The old stuff literally couldn't be improved without making breaking changes anyway. I'm tempted to believe that you just installed Pipewire wrong and should probably be on a distribution that handles that stuff for you. I'm also tempted to believe that you don't develop stuff, you just use it so you're inclined to say stuff like "They should improve existing shit instead of making new worse shit"
smile_e_face@reddit
I have to say that I had the complete opposite experience. I hate PulseAudio. Like hate hate it. Out of all my biggest frustrations, painful afternoons, long nights troubleshooting, etc., with Linux or any other operating system, Pulse is responsible for at least a quarter of them. And I'm including all the years when Pulse didn't exist yet in that, too. I stopped using Linux for desktop a couple of years ago - at least partially out of exasperation with Pulse - and came back recently to Pipewire. And everything just...does its job. Everything works as I expect it to work, configures as I expect it to configure. And I have quite a few more audio devices than most people, as well as more old and weird ones. Nothing super professional or anything, but just stuff that used to throw Pulse for about five or six loops. It's been nothing but smooth sailing for the past few months with Pipewire. It sucks that you're having such a bad time with it.
omenosdev@reddit
It may be worth booting a live media device rather than your installation to verify if this is a problem for your setup in general or specific to your existing installation.
Sol33t303@reddit
Have used pipewire for years, ever since the first call for testers. Had crackling audio the first week, never a problem since.
tajetaje@reddit
Really sounds like a setup issue (or maybe a hardware thing), I would check one of the Pipewire graph viewers out there.
Also to be fair, both Wayland and Pipewire started off as updates to X11 and PulseAudio, but it was decided/realized that both were too far gone when it came to poor decisions and technical debt/protocol limitations.
VALTIELENTINE@reddit
Did you read the post you replied to? They already mentioned that
Carter0108@reddit
Pipewire is still too buggy for my liking.
edparadox@reddit
And where are going with this?
FWIW, Pipewire reached version 1.0.0 in ~3 months ago.
Carter0108@reddit
I'm not going anywhere. I'm just pointing out that it still doesn't work properly for me. My speakers don't work with Pipewire but work perfectly if I switch back to pulse. The fact it reached 1.0.0 is irrelevant if it still doesn't work.
lordofthedrones@reddit
Weird. I had the opposite experience; there is a race condition and sometimes I couldn't change speakers back and forth.
Is there a log?
edparadox@reddit
My money is on this, rather than networking, which I still trying to figure what's actually wrong with to justify rewriting it from scratch or add another layer.
makisekuritorisu@reddit
I'm excited to see Flatpaks becoming the norm, their permission management and sandboxing are sooo nice.
They have some issues right now, but seeing how much more stable they are (for me) now than they were around a year ago, I'm positive that all problems will be ironed out eventually.
joshuarobison@reddit
Immutable OSs such as VanillaOS, BlendOS etc...
NixOS will gain dominance immensely.
Every thing will be flatpak
But above all else, RESPONSIVE design for everything.
Plasma and Gnome will be redesigned with dynamic responsivity in mind, including all apps going forward.
We won't need special mobile OSs because by default everything will be respinsive as it should be.
friskfrugt@reddit
Adoption maybe, certainly not dominance.
joshuarobison@reddit
I have a tendency to embellish / hyperbolize.
I just meant that the hype would grow. I do think it will overtake Arch in adoption in a sense.
I see arch and nixos as having an overlap in the type of linux user who is attracted by them.
FluffyBrudda@reddit
why
FengLengshun@reddit
NixOS is basically Debian + Fedora + Arch all at once, at the same time. You can change what makes up your desktop in a config file, and it's easy to share that config file. The only thing missing is a slower update schedule - right now, there's Unstable, and 6 month Stable only. I would love to run my server with a 2yr stable NixOS.
ac130kz@reddit
Typed declarative configuration is wonderful.
henry_tennenbaum@reddit
Nix isn't typed though?
ac130kz@reddit
It is strongly typed, doesn't mean it has to be statically typed. You can have strong dynamic typing too.
henry_tennenbaum@reddit
You're right.
PureTryOut@reddit
That is the goal, but it won't be accomplished just because Plasma and GNOME are going responsive. The biggest reason for custom distros for mobile is that mobile phones are a pain in the ass. Outdated kernel forks with millions of lines of non-mainline code, proprietary userland Android-only drivers, etc. DE's can't fix that.
Netizen_Kain@reddit
Pipewire, btrfs (or something better than ext4), immutable distros
FengLengshun@reddit
Immutable distro, definitely. Right now, it is a lot like Wayland in the early days - it fits for some people, not much people use it, but there's immense potential in it that a lot of people don't really get until they see it mature.
Right now, the issue has been trying to cover usecases where the user really need to mess around with the base immutable system. For example, installing DaVinci Resolve, or kernel modules, doing a GPU passthrough, and others. They're possible - it's just people are working on a GUI way that doesn't require the user to read through so many documentations to understand how it all works.
But overall? I've been daily driving Universal Blue for quite a while now. Doesn't feel like I'm missing anything from back when I was using Arch-based distro. Worst case, I just use something containerized (flatpak, distrobox, nix, conty) to cover most of my needs.
stereolame@reddit
Btrfs won’t replace ext4. It’s more complicated and honestly not great. If you need a better in-tree fs than ext4 you have xfs already. If you want more complexity and don’t care about being in-tree, you have zfs which blows btrfs out of the water.
PusheenButtons@reddit
What if I want more complexity and I care about being in-tree?
I would love nothing more than ZFS being able to be mainlined into the kernel but since that’s unlikely to happen, I’m very interested in the possibility of Btrfs or Bcachefs coming along and filling that space.
stereolame@reddit
I’m interested in seeing what happens with bcachefs
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
XFS doesn't have the features btrfs or bcachefs have.
stereolame@reddit
Read my comment again.
FengLengshun@reddit
Flathub and Snapcraft accounts, together with Portals for everything. I'm willing to bet that, bikeshedding aside, we will converge on an Android-like model.
One that's complicated enough to satisfy the stakeholder's vision of their desktops, and one which slowly will get used more by native packages (installed by apt, rpm, aur) as well.
But overall really is just Android without being Android.
gamesharkguy@reddit
Way beyond land
sandeep_r_89@reddit
KnowZeroX@reddit
The next big thing is immutable
zbouboutchi@reddit
This, and a way to improve app isolation.
SilentLennie@reddit
the underlying infrastructure in the kernel already exists.
From userrnamespaces for containers (which is also used by snap, etc.), to apparmer, etc.
You could even go the eBPF route now.
bmwiedemann@reddit
also:
tajetaje@reddit
SELinux is something I’d be interested to see be made more common. Though probably not quite all of it; just some of the more advanced permissions capability
bmwiedemann@reddit
You could have a look at openSUSE MicroOS or Aeon that spent effort on setting up SELinux.
zbouboutchi@reddit
Yep, everything is available to make it append. It's more a matter of assembling things and produce a smooth UX.
BoltLayman@reddit
After Wayland? But Wayland is not adopted yet! 🤣
Crystall ball medium's predictions: You want adventures? Vulkan-2.0-VR-next is coming, all your RTX4090 will be obsolete rusty brakes in 5 years 😄😄
latkde@reddit
For desktop use cases, I'm hoping on increased adoption of Portals (which are already used by Flatpak, Snap, …). Portals make it easier to create desktop apps that work on lots of different desktop environments, allow stronger isolation of applications (great for security), and could eventually result in granular permission management as known from smartphones and browsers. This is already an ongoing thing (again: see Flatpak) wide-spread adoption would be a welcome change.
Portals are closely related to Wayland and Pipewire. E.g. a sandboxed app running under Wayland can't make screenshots itself, but can request screenshots via a portal. The webcam + audio portals use Pipewire.
skrba_@reddit
Yeah i agree with this. Flatpak is really awesome. Still much work to do, but future looks promising
blobjim@reddit
And a lot more portals are needed, so that's an area that will continually expand as people have time to work on it.
KingofGamesYami@reddit
Better permission management / sandboxing, please! In software development, we like to follow the "principal of least privilege", e.g. giving an application no more access than it needs. For example, if my application only needs to read data from a database, it's credentials are only assigned read access. If it needs to read and write, it's still not given access to drop the database or modify the schema.
You can technical implement this somewhat in linux, using user groups/flatpaks, but it's a massive PITA for less advanced users (who arguably need better security the most!) and could really use some TLC.
Apply this to desktop software and you get something more akin to the Android permissions model, which I think is a much better approach than we have to today.
i_lost_my_bagel@reddit
Hopefully a good replacement for X11
lp_kalubec@reddit
Like Wayland?
fsckit@reddit
No, a good one.
fsckit@reddit
Smithers, usually.
Wayland Smithers.
timrichardson@reddit
I don't know much more than you, but wayland has been designed to be future proof in some ways. Firstly, Wayland is a set of standards, not actual code. There are wayland compositors written in Rust, C++ and maybe C. So it's language agnostic. And projects have lots of room to be innovative apart from how them implement wayland.
Secondly, it is designed to be extended.
Thirdly, apparently the process of making changes is not really tied to one central body but is more by consensus, although a bit like the UN, some organisations have some kind of veto, but even then, it's just a veto over what is official.
Wayland was born of the need to offer different kinds of solution for different kinds of hardware. Already some next generation alternatives have given up and moved to using the Wayland standards (Mir and apparently Chrome OS).
The downsides of this are well known. There are multiple implementations (reinventing the wheels) and Wayland is more like a common denominator than a statement of 100% standardisation. But this is the price you pay for being flexible. There are parallel standardisation efforts, like XDG, which seem to somehow work with Wayland. And wlroots looks like being a widely adopted library, wayland doesn't look a mass extinction event for small, innovative desktop projects. For all these reasons, it seems like a much better innovation platform than what came before.
AsexualSuccubus@reddit
Wayland client library is actual code, unfortunately. You need to use it to take advantage of hardware acceleration. So, unless you're using something that can compile C you get to either replace the library wholesale and launch your application with shared library overrides or use a wrapper around C like usual. The situation sucks but it is what it is. I would like to not use the library because callbacks aren't my kind of thing and I find it all hard to read after writing it out.
PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit
I don't think OP meant X11 -> Wayland -> ????, but rather that there must be some other part of a complete Linux OS that is in line to be replaced. We've done init systems, window server, audio...what's next?
timrichardson@reddit
oh right. Basically a wish list for desktop users.
Well, big projects are working on immutable OS. Not sure if anyone is very excited about that. Generative AI integration?
How about modern authentication for logging on and modern ways of encrypting the device, with seamless passkey authentication for web services?
PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit
I'v seen that term, "immutable OS" thrown around a bit. What does that mean, exactly.
KnowZeroX@reddit
How immutable OS work is this, all stuff root normally has access to is done as a transaction. So the state of the operating system is always repeatable, you don't need to do any setup or worry about things breaking as you can just flash the new state or roll back the state
Much of the software is then moved out of the root folders into user accessible ones. Some do so via their own packaging like nix, while others use things like flatpaks/appimages/distrobox/other containers. This also insures software is portable as well.
So no more things breaking from updates, no more it works on my machine but not yours (unless it is hardware specific issue). You can also keep multiple versions of libraries and software without worrying about conflicts and easily create custom template environments and throw away environments
PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit
Interesting! That sounds pretty cool! Thanks for the explanation.
Dig301@reddit
At the basic level is is like a bootable CD/DVD [Think Knoppix http://knoppix.net/ ] You boot the OS then do whatever you like, then shutdown and boot again and everything is back to the way it was. My main understanding of the applications are kiosks, IOT devices. Your mobile phone, streaming device, and tablet are all likely similar in concept.
It is sort of interesting that we were more or less forced into this back in the before times when looking for a physically portable OS. Then we moved to Live USBs. Both have their pros and cons. The history of the BIOS system layer may be where we are eventually going to end up. The self healing bios functionality is neat.
More information: https://kairos.io/blog/2023/03/22/understanding-immutable-linux-os-benefits-architecture-and-challenges/
notaloop@reddit
An immutable distro has key parts of the OS locked down by default to be read only. You can’t sudo modify those parts. It encourages users to only make changes in the user space and use containers/layering on top of the read-only os to install apps and makes changes.
One key benefit (or may be considered a downside) is that the entire image is updated at once; you get a diff patch from your install to get to the latest image next time you reboot your boot from the new image. The image was tested as working by the owner so there is more of a guarantee that it’ll work properly, rather than something piecewise. Thanks to layering, the underlying known good image can be updated then your changes are layered on top.
I currently use kinoite, it’s been great so far.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
I don't think we're actually done with "init systems". Although really I'm speaking of the service managers like systemd. We still don't see many distributions that have adopted what lennart wrote all the way back in 2014-2019. I'd suggest anybody interested in evolving the base of modern linux systems to read his posts about factory resets, immutable base systems, and how he saw btrfs being used. I doubt he's the only one who ever thought about it, but he did put it all together in one blog, but there is sadly no index list of just titles so it's hard to go and find them all, so I'll just put these here. Really note the dates here.
https://0pointer.net/blog/projects/stateless.html https://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html https://0pointer.net/blog/walkthrough-for-portable-services.html
A lot of what folks are doing with docker and all is already done with systemd itself too. Even if folks don't wanna focus on systemd in particular, it really does show what we could be doing.
Karmic_Backlash@reddit (OP)
Basically what the other's said, I'm not so much asking what will come after Wayland, but what will capture the public attention next like wayland did currently.
tajetaje@reddit
I don't think OP meant what will replace Wayland so much as what will be next to get the Wayland treatment
Stairwayunicorn@reddit
Yutani?
watermelonspanker@reddit
Game over, man
A_Nerdy_Dad@reddit
Oh there it is!
That was my first gut response and I couldn't find it until way down on the comments list.
_sLLiK@reddit
I see what you did, there.
RoseBailey@reddit
To translate x86 instructions to arm like Rosetta on Mac
gn600b@reddit
Hurd
Ptipiak@reddit
Bear in mind Wayland as an X replacement means Wayland is going to be the default compositor for the next tenth~ish years, at least. Guessing what's the next thing... I would say a real ecosystem to link phone, pc, smart watch, connected roomba and whatever clever fridge all together in a glorious mess
asperagus8@reddit
Mainstream adoption of augmented or virtual reality, the metaverse, etc.
Roidot@reddit
Nothing. Wayland is where it ends.
sudogaeshi@reddit
Lincoln, with it's reference implementation Sudbury
and yes, this is a Dual County League joke
blobjim@reddit
I haven't tried them yet, but from what I've read(https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamepad), game controllers don't have seamless support yet. Hopefully there will be a Flatpak/freedesktop portal and standard wayland API for controllers or something like that.
Secret300@reddit
With valve pushing gaming forward on Linux Wayland has gotten more attention and it's finally getting where it needs to be. I'd say next would be audio but pipewire is already killing it. Packaging is figured out almost, flatpaks are great for user applications and improving.
I think the next big thing will be filesystems or drivers. With NVK making improvements on the driver side and btrfs & bcachefs improving rapidly I think more distros will either switch to them or we'll see an update to ext4. Ext5 soon??
totemo@reddit
I haven't kept up. The last decade, Lennart Poettering has been driving a lot of innovation, but then he went to work for Microsoft. However, one thing he mentioned before he left was to have home directories be encrypted at rest and have them automatically migrate from device to device. That sounded like it had some merit to me.
The other thing I think about is how once an attacker can get code to run as an unprivileged user, they get access to that user's dotfiles, including SSH keys. I'd like to see better access control within a user account, which I suspect means much more reliance on containers.
Flogge@reddit
I know he is a controversial person but honestly, most of the stuff he creates is just super clever and handy, and I'm always super curious about the new stuff he publishes.
MrAlagos@reddit
Poettering is still a big innovation driver on systemd and is very much still working on that project. Indeed home directory encryption is progressing in systemd, together with a lot more features...
...for example, this systemd feature by Poettering from two weeks ago might improve that.
totemo@reddit
Very interesting. Lots for me to learn.
msanangelo@reddit
while I totally get the idea behind that, that's definitely gonna ruffle some linux beards. lol they'll argue about bloat or loss of control. there'll be some distro hopping. a new one will spawn that strips the container stuff out like they did for snaps and whatnot.
humans are amusing. XD
Aviyan@reddit
Rewriting some or most of the apps in Rust. Personally I feel almost all the apps should be written in Rust as memory safety is critical and it will reduce vulnerabilities. Rust also has a good packaging system. It will make it easy for non technical people to build apps from source easily. Because currently C++ has no packaging system so if you are missing a dependency you have to figure out where and how to get it.
SurfRedLin@reddit
Wayland is not production ready ( as in a drop in replacement) for big companies its still not there yet. I would say maybe 2-5 years.. Or more.
Analog_Account@reddit
I think fedora already made the switch to Wayland as default. Ready or not the bandaid is being ripped off right now.
KingStannis2020@reddit
Fedora made that switch in like 2018.
KingStannis2020@reddit
There will never be a literal "drop in replacement" for Xorg and that isn't the standard for being "production ready".
MasterYehuda816@reddit
Immutable vs not immutable.
I can already see the arguments in my head
YaroKasear1@reddit
What I would like to see is the kernelmode virtual terminals get deprecated.
They're ancient code that nobody in the kernel team really understands anymore, and they had disabled the scrollback as a quick workaround to fix a security bug.
On top of that, the kernel VTs have pretty much zero modern functionality: No 24-bit color, barely any support for Unicode or wide characters of any sort, and framebuffer support is incredibly inconsistent on them.
When I read the Wayland specification, it actually talks about there being three types of compositors, only maybe ONE of which I actually see actually implemented: The session compositor.
But the specification talks about a "system" compositor which is supposed to more or less take the role of managing a graphics stack system-wide and I realize that's a natural choice for making a usermode virtual terminal system, which would allow for all sorts of insane ideas on how to "reimplement" TTYs on Linux or even allow you to switch them on and off with better granularity.
Right now the current "implementations" of usermode VTs are either very much dead upstream (fbterm and kmscon) or are a session compositor that can't provide the full functionality of a vt, such as actually logging in as any user, but only as the user running the stack to begin with (The "cage/foot" combo.).
If I had the knowledge, I'd probably start working on a Rust-based usermode vt that implements a system Wayland compositor that enables a much more modern virtual terminal system.
mixedCase_@reddit
I'm hoping Nix gets enough traction to make it suck less through a better language that is more friendly to both people and tooling.
It's such an obvious improvement over everything else, and it'd be a shame for less powerful immutable alternatives to prevail because of an UX problem. Worse is better is not a rule of life, it's something to fight against.
drfusterenstein@reddit
I hope the audio ends up rivaling coreaudio on mac os. Ableton and other daws won't have any excuse not to come to linux.
i-hate-manatees@reddit
We're all switching to Hurd
Last_Painter_3979@reddit
depends on what is the next big pain point. maybe it's obvious, maybe it is something we have no idea about.
each of those big projects solved certain issues. Wayland came to separate us from legacy X server which has concepts dating back to the 80s. it required hacking in multi-display support, acceleration, and some other features that came in between (per-display dpi scaling, etc. ). the legacy codebase just stopped catching up.
pulseaudio/pipewire came to fix the audio mess, especially lack of ability to hotplug audio devices and reconfigure them on the fly.
systemd solved the init system mess and the overhead of the initscripts - among other things. it also brought in a host of new problems, but that's another thing.
steam+proton really lowered the bar for gaming on linux. it's almost an out-of-the-box experience nowadays.
who knows, maybe we'll finally decide on one standard for 3rd party software packaging - for the apps outside of repository. there is flatpak, appimage, docker desktop and (i think) some other contenders in that space. appimage seems great for self-contained packages, and very easy to use. maybe also for proprietary ones.
flatpak seems more free software friendly due to support of dependencies.
maybe it will be networking. it's significantly less messy than it used to be but there is still no one standard for configuration.
maybe it will be some kind of unified service for file sharing with windows and other linux systems, across distributions and operating systems - natively. nowadays that involves a lot of work or specific 3rd party software.
PineconeNut@reddit
I don't think there will be a 'next big thing' on the scale of Wayland. Pipewire is good for primetime, SystemD is ubiquitous. Flatpak won the cross-distro packaging wars. Things are going to settle down a lot I think, which is not to say the innovation won't continue, just that it won't be so disruptive.
OnkelDon@reddit
F****f
ExpressionMajor4439@reddit
For people only following at a high level it will seem like things have gone stale but in reality the developers are just working their way through deeper parts of the long tail. Wayland itself will probably be around for a few decades before hopefully being replaced by something else but it just takes a lot of time and effort to first enumerate all the different things people will want to do and to then create comprehensive solutions for it.
Evol_Etah@reddit
WayWayWayyyyyFarOffLands
Sabinno@reddit
I'm hoping not much. Several major components of the modern Linux desktop has been supplanted - X11 with Wayland, PulseAudio with Pipewire, native packages with Flatpak/Snapcraft/AppImage (not entirely of course). I wonder if growth of the platform is sustainable if massive portions of systems keep changing underneath developers.
That said, as another user noted, networking could use some work. It's crazy, for example, that it's not supported for a hypervisor to talk to a VM over the network if said VM has a dedicated IP on the same interface. This is an OOTB feature in Hyper-V.
Zipdox@reddit
X12
RoboNerdOK@reddit
If it follows the Stone Temple Pilots model, Bennington.
stocky789@reddit
Since all the gurus are in one thread. Can someone explain to me the pros and cons for each common file system for Linux and also what differences you see in the system when using different file systems?
I've always just used ext4 and look past the others as I simply don't know anything about them and when you would consider using them
msanangelo@reddit
that's off topic and already been answered by a variety of tech websites.
denniot@reddit
DBus2, Ebus!
ac130kz@reddit
dbus-broker
nickik@reddit
NeWS with WebAssembly
xXConsolePeasantryXx@reddit
Surprised no one’s mentioned unified kernel images yet!
ellis_cake@reddit
systemd-desktop, systemd-filesystem, systemd-appstore, systemd-kernel \^^
Unsigned_enby@reddit
systemd-flamethrower
n3rdopolis@reddit
Replacing VTs with user mode consoles?
krokodil_hodil@reddit
Config files in .config directory.
murlakatamenka@reddit
Docker/Podman + containers as your PID 1 system.
blablablerg@reddit
For the desktop ecosystem, not that much really. Everything is slowly falling in to place, wayland, nvidia (esp. looking at NVK), VRR, HDR. It'll take another couple of years, but then the fundamentals will be mostly in place. It'll be up to the applications to make the desktop experience better (office, graphics software, etc.).
rufwoof@reddit
... some form of reinvention of the wheel. The over-complication of the everything is a file Linux philosophy simplicity. I'm content with vi, along with a framebuffer and sndio. Video and audio that are ... files, that can be piped, tee'd, redirected as desired with basic cli commands. With ssh and framebuffer vnc my laptop can connect to vnc server(s) and dump the pixels it is thrown onto my laptops display - giving the old/slow laptop the look-n-feel of it running at the speed of the hard wired/fast/accelerated graphics server. Simple, but works (very well). As 'common' wifi speeds increase into the Gbs speeds/rates increasingly end users/desktops will need less 'upgrading', be less expensive and 'automatically' improved (by service providers upgrading their servers).
But some will continue to 'improve' things. A hammer is a hammer - does its job, could last a lifetime. Some will change theirs perhaps yearly as a new colored handle, with digital readout of the pressure of each blow and number of hits ... whatever becomes vogue.
marozsas@reddit
I think the next big thing will be AI chips for mundane users case, processed locally, and It will be used to keep your computer updated and running without user intervention.
TylerDurdenJunior@reddit
yutani
void4@reddit
ditching linux kernel which will be irredeemably polluted by rust by that time
mrhappy200@reddit
What is wrong with rust exactly?
void4@reddit
unreadable unmaintainable code with fake sense of security, produced by community of programmers who don't know what they're doing
tajetaje@reddit
https://xkcd.com/378/
ghjm@reddit
Maybe GNU Hurd will be ready
zoechi@reddit
Declarative configuration like NixOS
Moses_Horwitz@reddit
What-land.
tajetaje@reddit
No, who’s on first
Snow_Hill_Penguin@reddit
This is when Bed Bath & Land becomes Bed Bath & Way Land ;)
Original_Two9716@reddit
X12
CappyWomack@reddit
I think wayland should at least be stable before thinking about moving onto a different windowing system. X was made in 1984 and celebrates 40 years in June. X11 since 1987. There wasn’t a need for a new system for almost 40 years, and tbh, it still works great today.
Wayland is cool, and clearly the next step, but I don’t think the need for further innovation is high enough to demand a rival windowing system.
Karmic_Backlash@reddit (OP)
I said this above, but I wasn't meaning what will come after wayland in the stack, but what will capture the public attention like wayland has.
CappyWomack@reddit
Ah I see. The title “What comes after wayland” comes across as what is the successor to wayland more than anything else.
Karmic_Backlash@reddit (OP)
Yeah that's on me
KnowZeroX@reddit
I suggest editing your original post then to be clear as you will continue to get misunderstanding
alerikaisattera@reddit
Arcan
Revolutionary_Yam923@reddit
E island.
damondefault@reddit
I wonder too. So systemd, Wayland, pipewire were all built to replace parts of the common GNU Linux stack that were found to be not really capable of supporting modern user and developer requirements. The network stack has been rewritten a few times, as has the firewall, and the security systems have been through a few separate iterations and there are at least a couple of competing implementations going around. App packaging is currently fighting it out between snap, flatpak and appimage.
I think the best contender really is gnome/KDE. Gnome is not pretty to develop apps on and suffers from the weight of historical decisions and compatibility. With KDE.. I don't know. I feel like it's stuck with it's windows, menus, icons and widgets paradigm and if Linux breaks out on to more device types and one of the alternative desktop environments supports that better, with better architecture and tools, and starts to invent a new API and standards for app interactions then perhaps that will be the next big switch.
But I haven't developed anything directly on KDE so I don't have a feel for how well their architecture would support it.
What else could there be I wonder.. I feel like the boot system is in a bit of a sorry state. The tools aren't great and a lot of hardware used to have poor UEFI implementations so perhaps a new boot manager or install tools for EFI stub kernels is on the horizon as all of that settles down.
I did have a job at one stage where I experimented with managing a fleet of centOS laptops that needed a lot of security controls. It was interesting to see how the available tools (redhat satellite, foreman, manually using ansible, that sort of thing) were really hard work and lacking almost all of the ease of use of the Microsoft stack and tools. I love the idea of Linux workstations for corporate development work so I really hope someone tackles those things as a group - security keyrings, security hardware devices, remote policy management, apparmor config, LDAP integration.
tshawkins@reddit
No display. You talk to your device and use ar sunspecs to view output.
PropagandaBots@reddit
I just turn on my computer, close my eyes, and imagine my screen. It's works great for me for years.
Capta1nT0ad@reddit
Something will happen, and I don’t think that predicting what will really make any difference. The Linux desktop will simply evolve as it needs to, as it did with Wayland/PipeWire.
longdarkfantasy@reddit
Bcachefs?