Oh, so it basically displays a remote window manager in the browser? For a moment, I thought it was running the compositor directly inside the browser with extensions or something like that, hahaha.
I saw it basically months ago, so don't remember 100%. To not say the wrong thing, you can read about the architecture here: https://greenfield.app/pages/design/
Also, here is a video. The dev demonstrated it's fast enough for gaming https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3219-greenfield-wayland-in-the-browser-an-update/
I agree, all the apps I use run natively on Wayland, but I think there will always be some legacy X11 apps that won't get ported. So, I think I'll implement it, but it is definitely not a priority.
While I understand the need for legacy, I also think at some point legacy should be left alone. If it is really needed for some old app to run, VM should do fine. I don't think missing xorg is ever going to be an issue in 2025+ (well, Electron apps maybe). Yet added and not used features (or seldom used features) is offset with future maintenance burden and/or security issues for no good reason.
This also applies to OpenGL comment. Every code path introduces a maintenance burden. While support of more devices is good, supported devices are super old in this case and the question is - is it worth it? Vulkan drivers should either way be in a better state.
Looks very interesting! I wonder how it works, so I definitely will check it out.
Is super cool, there is a presentation in one of the conferences about it. Architecture is explained somewhere in the docs. Anyway, if you do implement it - this would be a good alternative to https://guacamole.apache.org
Who knows, maybe it would be a money opportunity.
Why?
It's not Microsoft, but actually an open source community running open source forge. Also, it's way faster to use in browser.
If we are talking ideas, I would propose the following:
- focus on the future instead of the past
- get rid of everything Xorg (including xwayland). Reasoning: recent app upgrades to gtk4 and qt6 support Wayland just fine. Gnome has it by default, I'm not sure where plasma stands. Few things that don't work, people can probably live without (like chromium which has Firefox as a working alternative)
- replace OpenGL with Vulkan (that means get rid of OpenGL completely if possible). Reasoning: things sold in the last 10 years support vulkan.
- not sure what is the state in smaller distros. Maybe it would be good to reach out to LinuxMint, lxqt and others to see what would it take for them to switch. If you could implement needed features easily...maybe they would switch.
- RDP?
- Html? E.g. https://greenfield.app/
- consider moving to codeberg?
I know dropping xwayland and opengl is unpopular, but this is where things are going. It's on the gnome Todo sometime because as far as I read, there is development for mutter to be built totally without xorg support. Plus they recently switched gtk4 to use New vulkan rendered by default.
Another question came to my mind: how is video processing handled? There were some changes in Mutter and/or gtk4 so it would be efficient, any chance for louvre to have it?. E.g. https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-46-Beta-Released
This looks awesome.
Looks like it could be a very good alternative to mutter and kwin.
Questions:
- what about Vulkan instead GL? Should be more performant and use less battery. Especially if it is meant to also work on mobile.
- is Louvre drawing those window decorations?
- there is some overlap with https://github.com/winft/theseus-ship - any idea for a collaboration there?
- there seems to be a company behind, while I didn't investigate, are there plans for further development that you would publish, is there a way to influence those plans (suggestions, donations, some other way)
- any plans to make a shell around it?
- it is mentioned that this is a library, but obviously there is a working compositor. Regardless if this is a technology demonstrator, would it be possible to publish a compositor with decent theming and a few distinct layer modes (classic windows with taskbar, windows 8 like, Mac, gnome, ubuntu). I guess many smaller Linux DEs would consider it then...
- how does it compare to kwin/mutter?
It has SJ in the description
Mozilla, partners, and participants will explore threats AI poses to democracy and social justice https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/togetherness-and-solidarity-explore-the-mozfest-house-amsterdam-program/
While somebody needs to do this, somebody also needs to do the browser development. And Mozilla has been neglecting and deliberately decimating firefox market share with stupid decisions. Funding Mozilla meant funding everything else except Firefox.
This way we may get the chance to fund exclusively Firefox and not other nonsense.
Let's hope this enables direct donations to Firefox and not to some sjw activities or Baker's salary/bonus
Who owns copyright for this photo? I really like this one and would like to (maybe) use it on a website
I would argue that gnome is pretty stable in recent years. Don't remember when was the last time something crashed.
This might would probably be true for Extensions.
KDE has been unstable for me on Wayland in the past.
The only thing i missed was some KDE apps since they look butt ugly on gnome so you have to find alternatives. Krita comes to mind.
You don't have Krunner, but when you press meta/start button, you get a text field in the overview that works similar. I used krunner only to start the apps and gnome overview gave me exactly the same functionality. So the thing that changed is keyboard shortcut: instead alt-f2, you would use meta/start and just start typing.
Just try it out and see if there is something you miss.
If you do switch, try to use it as meant by gnome ux, do not force it to be something it is not. This is what I did initially and after suffering for a while (I missed the start menu so used extensions etc) I dropped all extensions and tried to use it vanilla. After a month or two, workflow really stuck and I prefer it to windows and kde. Simplicity of it works for me since I don't use it for anything but starting other apps: browser, terminal, files, vscode... Also, when you add apps to dock, you can start them with alt-number (this works in kde and windows as well), so even the dock I find irrelevant.
You also get something more in functionality, apps and stability (not that you only lose stuff moving off kde). E.g. accessing Samba shares with smb:// works well in gnome, where you can open movies from the share directly. While you can open the share in dolphin, you cannot open the movie directly from the remote location, you need to copy it first. (At least my experience before plasma 6, maybe it changed...). Another example is gnome boxes for VMs which is great.
Edit: one thing I do miss - systray.
I agree with you sentiment here. That's why I wrote 'relative terms' in my comment.
Since Nadela took over, Microsoft did some open thing which benefited community. So, Microsoft opened somewhat.
During the same time, under Pichai, google went the other way: they focus more on monetization and try to control stuff the apple way. Manifest v3? Google also didn't do anything really worth mentioning in the last 10y in terms of products. Well, except 'attention' article. And even this they didn't believe in and they cannot deliver a decent product. I just tried google advanced Gemini and it's, to put it politely, shit. Google also had some positive actions like mainlining a lot of stuff in Linux Kernel to more easily upgrade android.
So, while google is closing down and making mistakes, Microsoft is opening a bit up.
If you look the state from the last year and the state now. Microsoft improved. Google went the other way.
Microsoft doesn't care about open source, they care about the money Cloud Services using open source bring them. I don't think google cares as well. For reason read this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
Probably people think this is a troll or something.
I wrote it because I was surprised, especially since I'm not a fan of microsoft and their policies. Lately, I have the feeling Microsoft is better than Google (relative terms) when it comes to oss.
What is additionally surprising is the breaches of Microsoft services in the last year. There is one every few weeks or so... And then they pick up a backdoor because login took 0.5 instead of 0.1s.
Anyway, his findings are amazing.
I think he made it interesting to younger generations with much shorter attention span. Even though I am not that generation, I still find it interesting because it is more dynamic. It doesn't have the moral/ethical dilemmas like in TNG, DS9 and others though.
He made it interesting. Unlike what they did with Discovery
This draws parallels with tolerance paradox.
So this wasn't a joke?
This was a great talk (video you linked, not the article). Wonder what Linus would say about C being a wrong thing today.