this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But Wayland isn't a thing on its own, there's no "Wayland server" or anything else equivalent to the X server. The compositors like Kwin or GNOME's Mutter are Wayland implementations fully responsible for handling the display output.

You can blame Wayland for the lack of universally supported global hotkeys or for issues with apps that need to know exactly where on the screen they are - these are issues with the protocol - but not for bugs in one compositor's implementation of display management.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

That's exactly the problem. Wayland is a set of standards, more akin to FreeDesktop.Org than to X. It lives and dies by its implementations, and it's so utterly dependent on them that "KDE Wayland" has started to become its own thing. KDE are pretty much forging ahead alone nowadays and when they make changes it becomes the way to do it. Also what they do can't be shared with other desktops because they'd have to use KDE's own subsystems and become dependent on its whims.

It wasn't supposed to be "Kdeland" and "Gnomeland" but that's what it's slowly becoming. We're looking at major fragmentation of the Linux desktop because desktop teams have and do stop seeing eye to eye on major issues all the time. And because there's no central implementation to keep them working together they're free to do their own thing.