From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim Cross Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Abysmal state of GTK build Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2022 09:25:07 +1000 Message-ID: <86k06y48ic.fsf@gmail.com> References: <8735dn30if.fsf@gmail.com> <87pmgr8m3t.fsf@yahoo.com> <83pmgr88sk.fsf@gnu.org> <87sfln6t3p.fsf@yahoo.com> <83ilmj873l.fsf@gnu.org> <8735dn6rp7.fsf@yahoo.com> <87edx7hu15.fsf@telefonica.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="20193"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: mu4e 1.8.9; emacs 29.0.50 Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar?= Fuentes Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 24 05:38:40 2022 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1oQhE0-00054i-8b for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 24 Aug 2022 05:38:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:39120 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oQhDy-00034I-VS for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 23 Aug 2022 23:38:38 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:45210) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oQhCy-0001vn-Aa for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Aug 2022 23:37:36 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-pg1-x52c.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4864:20::52c]:40611) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:128) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oQhCk-0004YJ-67 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Aug 2022 23:37:35 -0400 Original-Received: by mail-pg1-x52c.google.com with SMTP id w13so8840812pgq.7 for ; Tue, 23 Aug 2022 20:37:21 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=content-transfer-encoding:mime-version:message-id:in-reply-to:date :subject:cc:to:from:user-agent:references:from:to:cc; bh=8YTOQL+WgAqkmZ+EoEJma/TSjxJjQdcvnV3sKfBti7s=; b=olRPZhXop7RVMY5RU9u6KyUb+2audkDZGlv+cRb5XZ41VTItowoKWc0R+5nI6bDhp1 Swlm/7S87T6713HZQ5avwvz9skMk7yhFFqn8wTIrh0sDHdY5tUXTty401f4N++TFr/pA 2jPr8I24b/6ORJsyfOGYc6WoiXYztmB0v5yXJd+tSR06P8Ah41JCdzCMSr296+x71ngE xtFIoWWnGx1q2DkDAG4YU2lvRlTMLqDTRQKTu1LRcjxMKVATIx0kRKmEZLXIwCrb48Je CYB3gz+QiHzk0UzCx+mVLOtrt6k8bOPksPQVMLgauoaKmB2Z464uqIYECXzW4qRQQkoF mJ5A== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=content-transfer-encoding:mime-version:message-id:in-reply-to:date :subject:cc:to:from:user-agent:references:x-gm-message-state:from:to :cc; bh=8YTOQL+WgAqkmZ+EoEJma/TSjxJjQdcvnV3sKfBti7s=; b=0JFa0ODUhCXKMU6UHmgrlQivW8DlSMddP7GCcSw1WF0ygzLatp0DfcUVu9nH1s9xfN NlGqeyxVFxxHdlkcb5Y19CzwxAllrq00H7dHbwFrr2VfjBatejNZPzS0RqsTYQBzRtYA horbk31Svc4neOcc2yB+D2CVShtXYEAmIDX2SenNbXt6LEUQ6oKGLFmMA2FSpTXhPVRL SiEzD0L63Tc1A4S5jFO1Qm4HOpBCRRaiZ8s0tDb+yjUkofLsKHIJQtJiWYvGje5IFpEk KX5hqLXkxbvd5Sfj969faGmWr/lKNdpjDQMZrk7Gg9PQhpyJXTK58cxVT1qA8hu7eejj IHfg== X-Gm-Message-State: ACgBeo2kiYuBWVyDFYVNMmE9g9qtJtGxjdEKx277k4W/YVEPw5GEMBY7 NL9VfOpMMS81k0swzxIXGFvg4r2eSl5oUA== X-Google-Smtp-Source: AA6agR565Xp/BKHR4nfqVEZCT4wePfaDyQRxyvf/xoOZBL+aIU/QeqhBYJbljDYl2rQpT9tR4cpEMg== X-Received: by 2002:a63:e255:0:b0:41c:c80:53cb with SMTP id y21-20020a63e255000000b0041c0c8053cbmr22635140pgj.448.1661312239913; Tue, 23 Aug 2022 20:37:19 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from dingbat (2001-44b8-31f2-bb00-842a-7361-87c7-2662.static.ipv6.internode.on.net. [2001:44b8:31f2:bb00:842a:7361:87c7:2662]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id q18-20020a170902f35200b0016be834d54asm11155214ple.306.2022.08.23.20.37.17 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Tue, 23 Aug 2022 20:37:19 -0700 (PDT) In-reply-to: <87edx7hu15.fsf@telefonica.net> Received-SPF: pass client-ip=2607:f8b0:4864:20::52c; envelope-from=theophilusx@gmail.com; helo=mail-pg1-x52c.google.com X-Spam_score_int: -4 X-Spam_score: -0.5 X-Spam_bar: / X-Spam_report: (-0.5 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DATE_IN_PAST_03_06=1.592, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE=-0.0001, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE=-0.01 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:293935 Archived-At: =C3=93scar Fuentes writes: > Po Lu writes: > >> I guess you misunderstood what I said. I just said alternatives to X >> shouldn't be made the default, since almost everyone will be using X for >> the forseeable future. > > The 90% X Firefox user share you mentioned several times was a statistic > of dubious relevance when it came out 6 months ago and is pretty much > irrelevant now. The Mozilla Telemetry guys said at the time that it is > not truly representative, for several reasons. And, more importantly, > Wayland adoption is gaining momentum, with major distros (such as > Ubuntu) defaulting to it and KDE joining Gnome as a stable Wayland-based > desktop environment. > I agree. We have to take any analysis based on firefox usage with caution as despite the importance of firefox wrt free software. it only Firefox represents a small percentage of users - something which may have e= ven gotten worse since the move to snap based packaging in Ubuntu which makes loading firefox excessively slow i.e. 25 - 30 seconds (seems quite a few people have switched to chromium, brave, qutebrowser etc.)=20 The momentum for moving towards Wayland has also greatly benefited from the resolving of the nvidia issue. Lack of nvidia support in Wayland was a fairly big impediment for distros switching to Wayland. However, Fedora 36 comes with nvidia support for wayland. I also suspect the nvidia announcement about releasing their linux drivers under a dual GPL/MIT license might also have some impact on nvidia wayland support (though nvidia doesn't have a good track record here and has gone back on such announcements in the past IIRC). > I'll say that by 2025 Wayland will be more popular than X by a wide > margin, and then X will have a hard time with basic maintenance by lack > of manpower (some insiders say that it already suffers from that.) > There certainly does seem to be some real momentum towards wayland. Not sure if Wayland will be the more popular by 2025 though. Suspect it may be the majority of new installations, but existing installs will likely still be using X and still be the majority. As I tend to see GNU Linux installs last a lot longer, it could be closer to 2030 before we see Wayland with a majority of GNU Linux systems, especially as most distros are unlikely to switch to Wayland as part of a distro update, only defaulting to Wayland on fresh installs. There is also a reasonably large user base for non-mainstream window managers who will stick with X because they want to stick with the WM they are familiar with - for example the many tiling WMs like awesome, qtile, xmonad, dwm, stumpwm etc. > This doesn't mean much for Emacs on the short and medium term. Emacs > works on XWayland, and XWayland is improving so applications running on > it doesn't suffer from a degraded user experience compared to native > Wayland ones, apart from the constraints related to being based on X. > > Another claim you made several times is that distros will stop providing > GTK2 packages soon. This is hard to believe, since other major > applications (such as GIMP, as you said) also use GTK2 and distros still > provide packages for libraries way more ancient and obscure than GTK2. > Given that some fairly popular DE are still based on GTK2, I'm not confident it will be removed any time soon. A lot of people have not been happy with Gnome for some time now, which has resulted in other desktop environments like mate, cinnamon etc. IIRC a number of these are still based on GTK2. There are also a couple of reasonably popular packages still based on GTK2 who are also unhappy with the direction GTK took from v3 onwards and who have not updated to v3 support. Likely distros will need to continue GTK2 support for longer than they or the developers would prefer.=20 > Finally, it seems to me that your experience with some GTK developers is > influencing your technical discussion on this thread. There does seem to be growing dissatisfaction with X in various developer communities, especially Gnome and GTK. Some of the criticisms do seem valid, some less so. I also get a sense from posts in the x.org community of concerns regarding on-going maintenance, code complexity and some legacy limitations which are becoming increasingly more difficult to work around as hardware, environments and user expectations evolve. However, we also often see how inaccurate predictions about change can be. I'll bet the Perl community didn't expect Raku (Perl 6) to take so long to see the light of day or that the move from Python 2 to 3 would be so long and complicated or how challenging nailing the lid on the IE coffin would be or the fact we still have GNU Linux systems which only have partial systemd support and lets not mention IPv6. Personally, I'm quite surprised how far Wayland has got - I expected much slower progress. The only thing I'm really confident about is that our predictions are likely more wrong than right and why we must not bet everything on one winner.=20