On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 2:35 PM Steve Litt via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Giles Orr via Talk said on Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:10:33 -0400
Tiling window managers have existed for a couple decades. (I said "window managers," because the "tiling" paradigm long predates Wayland.
Wayland is a specification, not a piece of software like X11. So to create a compositor, you need to include most of the functionalities formerly handled by X11, plus the functionalities of a normal window manager. But wait, there's more: You have to be familiar with the entire Wayland *specification* to create a compositor. So, with all this work to do, is it any wonder that most of the compositors created by non-huge entities follow the simpler tiling layout? It's not that tiling suddenly became great: It's that overlapping was just too difficult to achieve for smaller project in the Wayland ecosystem.
Wayland was a suboptimal solution to a very real problem. First of all, X11 itself should never have been a server. For those who simply must ssh into a GUI, there should have been a small, thin interface that made X available through a server. If X hadn't been a server, it would have eliminated most of the security concerns, and could have been run by a normal user, etc.
Second, X11 has acquired way to much stuff, from what I hear. Like KDE and systemd, it has become an entangled mess in a black box. A lot of user requests should have been rejected.
I think Wayland could have some potential moving forward. Somebody someday will create a Wayland-compliant module that performs the base functionalities performed by X11. I don't mean plug in compatible with X11, and I don't mean XWayland, I just mean encapsulating the part of current compositors that doesn't, or shouldn't, change from compositor to compositor. It should have a nice, simple, thin, non-dbus interface to the part of the compositor affecting user interface and user interaction.
Somebody will also write a module to handle software interactions, so something like Tk, and as simple as Tk, can be used in software written for Wayland. Given that the module encapsulating the former functionalities of X11 would probably have most of the same functionionalities as X11 (nice sentence so far, huh?), it's possible Tk can still be used with only a minimum of changes.
Here's the problem. These nice, neat, thin-interfaced modules that would have made life so much easier will almost certainly get hijacked by FreeDesktop.Org and its corporate buddies, and turned into hypercomplexificated dbus-laden monstrosities, perhaps even dependent on having a certain init system (guess which one).
Well - - - in my searches I have not found that wayland is able to use serious multi-monitor setups. So until it does - - - wayland is a neat looking puppy that I'm really not interested in. (Have been running X mutli-monitor for about 15 years now.) Regards