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49 points 1una | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source | bottom
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not_your_vase ◴[] No.35928051[source]
> Yes, not every random app and feature you use on Xorg will have a Wayland equivalent. Deal with it.

In general this sentence is why the Year of Desktop Linux won't come in this millennia. Not only XOrg vs Wayland. Many such cases. Sad!

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imiric ◴[] No.35928227[source]
That quote is exactly why Linux will never reach mainstream adoption. Arrogant Linux developers who pick a hill to die on because they feel technology X is "better". They refuse to acknowledge that none of it matters if it negatively impacts user experience. This "deal with it" attitude is beyond obnoxious.

User experience is ALL that matters. Apple has this ingrained in their ethos. While the OSS communities are bickering over X vs Y, they chose to pick what's usable and polish it until it delivered great UX.

Last time I checked, Wayland was broken in fundamental ways on my NixOS/KDE machine. So I went back to Xorg, that for all its ancient faults, delivers a better UX _today_. I'll keep trying Wayland every few months, and when it becomes an improvement, I'll consider switching to it. No, I won't "deal with it". Why don't YOU fix it?*

*If you tell me that it's not up to you, but to application developers to add support for Wayland, I'll drop kick your sticker-infested laptop, and curse whoever came up with this ridiculous system.

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rektide ◴[] No.35928996[source]
This feels like a nightmare conflict. I would be so less interested in trying to drive open source tech forward if I had to actually deal with such as this.

Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working? Which compositor were you try to use?

This all reminds me so much of ESM Vs cjs. Tech sometimes direly needs a kick in the ass. The situation cannot hold with something old & not good & the new works for most people, but also there's 1% valid problems. The world deserves to be able to eventually move on. The world can be bold & progressive & make changes, it should, and we should expect more of each other about being timely, about doing thr right thing, about making shifts. But we become so trapped by such resistance & unadaption, by staying where we are. Progress is a spirit I think should be Integral to open society & especially open source, but people don't see themselves as part of the bigger thing, they view themselves as merely at ends.

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imiric ◴[] No.35929424[source]
> Do you have any open bug reports you can point to for "Wayland" not working?

No. Why should a user go hunting for bug reports, or make an effort in making them to begin with? Developers shouldn't expect users to report every issue they run into. Most users will see something not working as expected, and move on to something that does. Fighting with software to make it work, a.k.a. "dealing with it", is a behavior exclusive to technical users and tinkerers. And even this cohort won't be bothered to do so when they just want their machines to work.

> Which compositor were you try to use?

How should I know? All I know is that I selected "Wayland" in my login screen, and ran into a half-dozen UI issues in less than 5 minutes, which I can't be bothered to list now (I posted about it here a few weeks ago if you're interested to know the details). Switching back to Xorg fixed all of them.

With the complexity of a DE like KDE, I, a technical user, wouldn't even know where to look for the culprit. Was it KWin, XWayland or Wayland? When Firefox had UI issues, is that because of Firefox, XWayland or Wayland? Or something with my combination of hardware and drivers? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Developers shouldn't expect users to debug their application issues. Users are not testers.

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1. rektide ◴[] No.35931113[source]
I feel like a commercial OS is a better fit for attitude/desires.

You should know to be able to type `journalctl` which will almost certainly give you a report on what just happened.

Filing a big report feels like a pretty low barrier to me. It's stunning to me to see such a strong rebuttal, expecting developers to mind read & inuit every possible thing a user might run into. To shun openness, to remain closed & curt & expectant, feels more like a consumer relationship, where you don't have any real ability to speak or be present. But do have that ability, you can provide info that would make things better for everyone, and to me that barrier to helping feels extremely low. Not a burden.

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2. michaelmrose ◴[] No.35936036[source]
Time is precious. Users aren't owed a desired feature and developers aren't owed a bug report. 99.99% of users who aren't explicitly beta testing software when they encounter a deal breaker using software they aren't heavily invested in will move on without comment or complaint. Not having debugged or written up an issue doesn't invalidate the persons impression that the software just didn't work well for them.
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3. rektide ◴[] No.35941362[source]
Open source as open society deeply deeply motivated & interested me. Open source isn't only for open society, but I think it's best & can only ever hope to advance itself aptly & with good calibration when society sees themselves as reasonably staked in too, as more than just a consumer consuming something given to them.

I feel like people spend more effort trashing & talking down software in forums like this, than it would have taken to make an even mostly-constructive tiny little data point that could actually help open source, and open society. The author, a NixOS user, almost certainly had plenty of basic technical chops they could have brought to bare within mere seconds to get some first level idea what happened, which they refused. The malice/concentrated-negativity, combined with the lack of effort, to me, invalidate my willingness to take someone seriously.

There are plenty of good valid useful ways to share the view & be part of open society. Just trying to tear out the supports of the building & make it crash down- anger- is not an acceptable enduring view; it's an ok initial reaction, but eventually realer more mature cycles have to begin (unless despair & ruin is the objective)

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4. imiric ◴[] No.35942133{3}[source]
I agree with you on the philosophy of open source, and how important it is, but allow me to defend my viewpoint.

As a passionate long time supporter, user and developer of OSS, my reaction was purely based on that "deal with it" quote from TFA.

All software, regardless of its licensing terms, should first and foremost deliver a usable product. The expectation that users of free software (in both meanings of the word "free") are somehow under moral obligation to test the software and report issues to the authors is wrong, just as OSS developers aren't under any obligation to implement specific features or provide support. These freedoms go both ways.

But when a developer takes the hostile stance of prioritizing their QoL over their users', as in TFA, that is the attitude that's hurting users, and the adoption of OSS. I appreciate the effort the Asahi team is making, but this is a toxic attitude that shouldn't be part of any project.

Most of the time, I do take the effort to diagnose issues and report them where appropriate. But as you can see detailed below[1], the issues I experienced were so obvious that I assumed they had already been reported. Given the complexity of an environment like KDE, it would have definitely taken me hours of my time to properly diagnose and report these issues. And sometimes, I just want to get work done, without "dealing with" my machine... The reality is that most users feel this way, so this response shouldn't be surprising.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932839

5. michaelmrose ◴[] No.35942648{3}[source]
This whole sub-thread is rich in verbiage but doesn't have enough meaning were it broth to nourish a mouse.

User: I tried it and it didn't work well don't care whose fault it is I just care that it didn't work.

Response: Every developer that flings non-working buggy software into the void is entitled to the free labor of their users who will test said software and write bug reports so that in the fullness of time it may someday be worth using. If you by the mere act of downloading something once don't see yourself as part of that developers community then your opinion is clearly invalid because you are like unto a leper unclean and outside the nourishing light of our lord!

A proper reproduction of the bug, troubleshooting, research into existing bug reports and possible causes both in the immediate and upstream project and writing it up could easily be half an hour not seconds. Meanwhile 17 other things have claims on our time. It is perfectly acceptable to shoot the shit on a forum about how you dropped a non-working project like a chicken nugget with a human finger in it without also opening an issue.

Do you know what people do when they install your software and it crashes on first run. They delete it without comment because they are not indebted to you by being granted to privilege of non-working software and running something else is liable to be a better investment of their time. This isn't abnormal or malicious its absolutely normal. This is also why your software which has a bug that effects 10,000 people gets 5 bug reports. It's not because the other 9,995 people noticed the bug had already been filed its because none of them bothered.

Pretending this is something abhorrent and invalidating is quite frankly a gross failure of analysis committed in service of invalidating a negative perspective that seemed to stick in your craw.

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6. rektide ◴[] No.35942949{4}[source]
Then the user gripes complains & badmouths, and are left behind.

But quickly their position crumbles. No advocates for their position maintain. What they were doing stops working. The user is swept under the sands of time & forgotten.

This putting all the onus on the developers is insufficient. The user doesn't have to advocate for themselves, no. Time happily can ignore their plight. We don't need them. The rest of the open society world is participating onwards.

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7. michaelmrose ◴[] No.35958249{5}[source]
This is a discussion thread. We aren't herein trying to address issues or our concerns to decision makers or effect change in the wider world. We are merely giving our personal perspective on matters without the reasonable expectation that comments negative or positive will find their way to sympathetic nor hostile ears. All our commentary was always destined to be forgotten.