So the good thing about Linux distros switching to Wayland long before Wayland is remotely ready is that contact with real-world users will make the "pain points" visible so they can be fixed. But the bad thing is. I do not actually believe the "pain points" will be fixed. Ever

@mcc I am a strong believer that this happens because peak Linux culture is where you gaslight yourself into believing it's all holy and perfect and then never report all the broken shit

@mcc today I watched a CTF at a big security conference where the mouse wouldn't work on one of the laptops and a room full of people were all like "ok yup" and it's like ????????????

@mcc one thing i noticed while trying to find a solution to my most recent injury is there's been bugs open for it for *years*

@mcc I hate the accuracy of this assessment.

@gsuberland @mcc they get reported, they just get fixed at a glacial pace, if they gets fixed at all.

@aeva @mcc I'm not even sure that this is true at scale

@mcc what are some of the pain points?

@sashin @mcc search my username and the string "wayland" and you will find plenty

@sashin @mcc and also a lot of swearing

@aeva @mcc so for example KiCAD used to have a metric shitload of bugs and annoyances and crashes, it was genuinely not good. and then a few of the devs decided to get together and run these community feedback things where they asked "what's the most annoying bug?" and such by email campaigns. and then devs took that feedback and turned them into bug tickets and fixed them. the bandwidth was always there, just people were putting up with the problems and never getting around to reporting them.

@aeva @mcc and part of that is bug reporting friction (especially bullshit like auto close bots because you didn't format the ticket exactly right, and stale bots and other stuff) but a lot of it is just people getting way too comfortable with things being broken all the time

@aeva @mcc another side of this is that new users who were coming in with fresh eyes would hit bugs and annoyances really fast and just bounce off using the tools at all, so they'd never feel invested enough to file reports in the first place.

@gsuberland @mcc the majority of my grievances with wayland have had bugs open for years and people pleading for them to be fixed

@aeva @mcc yeah I mean there are probably a bunch of things in Wayland that are missing and problematic for sure, based on my outsider view of it, my point is that there's also this endemic problem that leads to apathy across the board

@gsuberland @mcc and "actually the Philosophers created a protocol for this (which nothing implements), therefore this is not a problem" is a very common reply by wayland apologists when people complain about wayland problems

@aeva @mcc on this side of it I have no opinion because I don't use Linux at all (just FreeBSD and Windows in my world)

@gsuberland @mcc maybe there's apathy but it's not for a lack of awareness on the part of the maintainers

@gsuberland if you don't have an opinion don't express one

@gsuberland @aeva @mcc close bots are the single most user hostile invention in the history of software engineering

@azonenberg @aeva @mcc I would argue that Microsoft's product direction folks might give you several runs for your money on that one alone, but yeah, close bots are pretty damn far up the list in terms of ways to slap your users directly in the face.

@aeva I am not, I just didn't want to leave you hanging with no reply as if I had ignored it :)

@gsuberland @aeva We are describing a specific particular program (Wayland) and the bugs aeva and i are thinking of are already filed and not fxed

@mcc @aeva ah fair, sorry, missed some context (it's also 3.30am, I'm not firing on all cylinders, I should probably sleep!)

@aeva @gsuberland @mcc

It's funny because it's true.

By which I mean: there are not, actually, any magical infinite funds to support desktop Linux, because that has no commercial value whatsoever, but it's 100% free to shit on people who are volunteering their time to try to make things better as best they can. You can earn valuable Mastodon Snark Points for it, which you can cash in for fuck all in actually making things better.

Or you could, you know, not so that.

@mattdm @gsuberland @mcc buddy we are talking about problems we're actively experiencing that we can't make any headway on and you are the one who is kicking people while they're down

@aeva @mcc I'm pretty sure awesomewm was using wayland and I was using it 10 to 15 years ago. It's wild to me I am now hearing about major DE switchint to it, dropping X11 support and lot of big issue like "wayland have zero standard for screencapture". I do screenshot every week, if not every day. Sharing your screen in visioconference is like a major need at dayjob.