Wayland and openbox

ohnonot · 2017-02-15 08:15:25

^it's not a feature of i3, it's a fork of the original i3.

but back on topic, can someone explain

WHY openbox "won't survive the switch to wayland"? what's the technicality that makes dana jansens say things like that (i assume she really did)?
will there actually ever be a switch to wayland, or will Xorg/wayland just be more user choice?
isn't it very far way still (even if fedora is already using it)?

Last edited by ohnonot (2021-07-02 08:42:24)

Unia · 2017-02-15 10:10:46

ohnonot wrote:

but back on topic, can someone explain
WHY openbox "won't survive the switch to wayland"? what's the technicality that makes dana jansens say things like that (i assume she really did)?
will there actually ever be a switch to wayland, or will Xorg/wayland just be more user choice?
isn't it very far way still (even if fedora is already using it)?

Simply put: Openbox is programmed against Xlib; Wayland does not use Xlib. If you do some research into what Wayland actually is (i.e. not just "the new 'display server'" (which it isn't)), it will become clear.
GNOME already made Wayland the default option. I don't know what others are doing, but I imagine that eventually it will be the default, with all the big players pushing for it.
I guess this depends on what you need/want/mean. GNOME is already usable (I'm typing this from a Wayland session I've been running for a few months now, without issues). KDE is almost there. Enlightement has a fully working Wayland session, as far as I know. Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, Budgie desktop and LXQt are the ones holding out still, of which at least Budgie desktop has plans to eventually move to Wayland. I don't know about the other ones. In any case, X is still going to be there for a long time. You don't have to use it just yet, if you don't want to.

cpoakes · 2017-02-15 17:32:00

ohnonot wrote:

WHY openbox "won't survive the switch to wayland"? what's the technicality that makes dana jansens say things like that (i assume she really did)?
will there actually ever be a switch to wayland, or will Xorg/wayland just be more user choice?
isn't it very far way still (even if fedora is already using it)?

As Unia pointed out, the design of openbox is interdependent with the X11 design. Not just a complete rewrite, but a complete redesign is necessary to switch to Wayland. When Jansen says "it won't survive" I take her to mean no one on the current dev team is committing to that project.

Openbox (like most window managers) is designed with server-side decorations. While Wayland does not require client-side decorations, Weston is designed that way (showing a GNOME 3 design bias) and there is no server-side reference implementation. A server-side reference implementation would have made *box adaptations that much easier. As far as I can tell, KWin is the only one to venture into the uncharted territory of server-side decorations in Wayland.

As for Xorg/Wayland, that will be a choice for stretch, buster, and bullseye: at least six years. Why? Given GNOME/mutter/wayland has yet to reach feature parity with X11 and the size of that (non-trivial) todo list, there is no way it can replace X11 for buster (the soft freeze is expected in a year and a half). Even when Wayland matures to default status, that release will keep X11 as an option: bullseye is the earliest release that can happen. Note that Fedora 25 offers X11 both as a choice and a required fallback in some instances. I expect this to be the case for years to come.

Wayland is certainly usable now with the right hardware (not legacy) and drivers (nouveau not nvidia). To those users I say "thank you" for beta-testing a product I won't employ for a long time to come. As a default with X11 parity it is still years away.

dolly · 2017-02-17 09:54:39

Do not worry guys, as long as Linux, or some equivalent is around. We will be fine.

ohnonot · 2017-02-19 11:15:41

unia & cpoakes, thanks for the detailed answers.

afaiu wayland takes over at least some of the tasks that are the windowmanger's on a classical Xorg setup.

so maybe the question "I see the big DEs, but what about minimal wm setups?" isn't quite correct.

anyhow, looking at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wa … top_shells there seem to be a few projects. however, i notice that they're practically all new names!

still, i cannot see any sort of "mood-meter" or "predictions" that would say for how long we're still good with Xorg...

interesting:
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html

The Wayland architecture integrates the display server, window manager and compositor into one process.

o9000 · 2017-04-13 09:28:41

cpoakes wrote:

Openbox (like most window managers) is designed with server-side decorations. While Wayland does not require client-side decorations, Weston is designed that way (showing a GNOME 3 design bias) and there is no server-side reference implementation. A server-side reference implementation would have made *box adaptations that much easier. As far as I can tell, KWin is the only one to venture into the uncharted territory of server-side decorations in Wayland.

Most KDE projects are tightly integrated, so even if they get it working, the code will most likely not be reusable in smaller projects. But aside from the KDE implementation, the Qt team has been working on a pure Qt implementation. They introduced it here and built a proof of concept miminalist DE that uses server-side decorations, screenshot. My impression is that they take this project seriously (the compositor library), because their compositor is used in many embedded system GUIs.

I don't expect it to be hard to add all the Openbox behaviour on top of it. It will have to be reimplemented, of course, but it should take much less time than the original project, since Qt is much easier to develop with than glib and Xlib. The bulk of the Openbox code draws textures and gradients, creates buttons and menus, has custom data structures to store colors and images etc. All this can go away when using a sane window rendering API, as offered by Qt. The code should be much cleaner too.

Edit:

Here is an older demo of theirs from 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FjuPn7MXMs If it can be used to build *that*, a box-style design should be a piece of cake.

Last edited by o9000 (2017-04-13 09:37:56)

cpoakes · 2017-04-13 17:38:09

^I like it! Seems a good candidate for recreating *box WMs on Wayland. I note the API is still experimental (not stable). Devs would need be prepared for breakage and recoding to cope with that evolution.

As for the QML interface, I have reservations. Experience with GNU Guile put me off interface specific programming languages. While useful to quickly create and prototype new implementations (where the original devs have a high degree of familiarity with the language), they can be a pain to modify or maintain (when subsequent devs have a low degree of familiarity). They "act like" or are "based upon" other languages with enough differences that modifying source often introduces surprises not quickly resolved. Glad to see there is a C++ interface even if it requires more verbose coding.

o9000 · 2017-04-13 17:59:19

I agree on QML. Even a C/C++ API can be troublesome if the abstraction does not expose enough of the lower layer for the same reasons (GTK comes to mind). But in my experience, most Qt libraries are well designed and offer a lot of flexibility.

As for the API status, it has actually been stable since Qt 5.8. Qt versions from the same major release (as in 5.*) guarantee API and binary backwards compatibility.

cpoakes · 2017-04-14 02:58:01

^Glad to hear about the API stability.

DustyB · 2018-08-08 05:39:36

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Nah, we're going with sway 8o

Just stumbled on this WayBox .. any thoughts or advice?

**Edit** there is a fork of this project already on github ..

Last edited by DustyB (2018-08-08 08:30:56)

Sector11 · 2018-08-08 16:40:09

DustyB wrote:

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Nah, we're going with sway 8o
Just stumbled on this WayBox .. any thoughts or advice?
**Edit** there is a fork of this project already on github ..

There is a fork of WayBox on GitHub already? Links please.

DustyB · 2018-08-08 16:51:07

Sector11 wrote:

DustyB wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Nah, we're going with sway 8o
Just stumbled on this WayBox .. any thoughts or advice?
**Edit** there is a fork of this project already on github ..
There is a fork of WayBox on GitHub already? Links please.

Fork WayBox on the top right corner of the page there is a button titled “Fork” with the number 1 next to it ... please click the number

Last edited by DustyB (2018-08-08 16:53:48)

DustyB · 2018-08-09 05:41:08

Ok probably a Baka question but .. will it be possible to install X11 and then openbox and get rid of Wayland and SwayWM when lithium comes out?

What would be the disadvantages of doing this and is this ill-advised?

ohnonot · 2018-08-09 06:50:02

^ don't panic.
i think bunsenlabs will still continue the way it does now (Xorg+openbox) for at least one more (debian) release.

i also think that Xorg is not just going to die the moment wayland becomes default on some major distros. my guess: for many years there will be installation options for both.

btw, openbox might not be under active development, but it surely is maintained (join the mailing list and see). and will be for a long while, for the same reasons as above.

DustyB · 2018-08-09 11:58:48

ohnonot wrote:

^ don't panic.
i think bunsenlabs will still continue the way it does now (Xorg+openbox) for at least one more (debian) release.
i also think that Xorg is not just going to die the moment wayland becomes default on some major distros. my guess: for many years there will be installation options for both.
btw, openbox might not be under active development, but it surely is maintained (join the mailing list and see). and will be for a long while, for the same reasons as above.

Thank you

johnraff · 2018-08-10 07:03:48

ohnonot wrote:

i think bunsenlabs will still continue the way it does now (Xorg+openbox) for at least one more (debian) release.

My guess too. No formal decision has been made, and some day, we'll probably have to jump to Wayland, but the longer we leave it the more, and better, the options are likely to be.

It would be tempting to have shiny new software for Lithium, but BL is supposed to be simple, transparent and reliable first of all. Xorg is messy and many people would like to see the end of it soon, but openbox, anyway, is still very much usable in Debian Buster.

I guess we should make that Official Decision fairly soon...

Last edited by johnraff (2018-08-10 07:05:11)

or1o9 · 2018-08-10 09:17:39

johnraff wrote:

but openbox, anyway, is still very much usable in Debian Buster.

Yes, very usable so far.

86400 · 2018-08-15 03:58:16

After reading about i3, I decided to give it a go. Spent 6 hours with it and liked i3, plus was able to tweak it to my liking. Something I found as unexpected is using 60 tasks in htop and same under OB. I reverted to OB since it does what I want with the same resources. Having tried i3, I have gotten to learn something new and that's always good. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Last edited by 86400 (2018-08-15 03:58:56)

ohnonot · 2018-08-15 04:37:58

i3 strives to be lightweight, but not as lightweight as possible - in fact it is not a minimalistic windowmanager. it is quite feature-packed, but it concentrates on functionality and not looks. it's all about the perfect workflow, i think.
i have never gotten used to it, the *box paradigm of floating + clicking + manual tiling + loads of keyboard shortcuts has always been my thing...

DustyB · 2018-08-16 03:02:05

ohnonot wrote:

i have never gotten used to it, the *box paradigm of floating + clicking + manual tiling + loads of keyboard shortcuts has always been my thing...

Same here ... I am so much used to Openbox's overall dexterity that I dislike every other environment ... this is a flaw in my habits and thinking but for me Openbox just works the way I need it to

#41 2017-02-15 08:15:25

Re: Wayland and openbox

#42 2017-02-15 10:10:46

Re: Wayland and openbox

#43 2017-02-15 17:32:00

Re: Wayland and openbox

#44 2017-02-17 09:54:39

Re: Wayland and openbox

#45 2017-02-19 11:15:41

Re: Wayland and openbox

#46 2017-04-13 09:28:41

Re: Wayland and openbox

#47 2017-04-13 17:38:09

Re: Wayland and openbox

#48 2017-04-13 17:59:19

Re: Wayland and openbox

#49 2017-04-14 02:58:01

Re: Wayland and openbox

#50 2018-08-08 05:39:36

Re: Wayland and openbox

#51 2018-08-08 16:40:09

Re: Wayland and openbox

#52 2018-08-08 16:51:07

Re: Wayland and openbox

#53 2018-08-09 05:41:08

Re: Wayland and openbox

#54 2018-08-09 06:50:02

Re: Wayland and openbox

#55 2018-08-09 11:58:48

Re: Wayland and openbox

#56 2018-08-10 07:03:48

Re: Wayland and openbox

#57 2018-08-10 09:17:39

Re: Wayland and openbox

#58 2018-08-15 03:58:16

Re: Wayland and openbox

#59 2018-08-15 04:37:58

Re: Wayland and openbox

#60 2018-08-16 03:02:05

Re: Wayland and openbox

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