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0 pointsMister_Snuggles8y ago0 comments

You're absolutely right that the problem isn't unique to Linux, it was just the easiest example I had on hand and was relevant to the discussion. I could just as easily fire up a variety of programs on my Mac that feature different file pickers and GUI conventions.

Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there as Microsoft is very reluctant to break backwards compatibility.

> Wayland is very restrictive for many uses and actually lacks several useful features compared to X11 - some it pushes towards the applications in the stack (so instead of a single solution that is shared among -say- 1000 clients you get 1000 solutions), while other stuff are simply impossible (unless you are XWayland which gets special status, leading to the ironic situation that even under Wayland the X APIs provide you with more functionality :-P).

I will admit that I haven't dug into Wayland very much, but this is my impression as well. I try it (the Wayland KDE on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) periodically, but it seems a lot crashier than X.

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badsectoracula8y ago

> Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there as Microsoft is very reluctant to break backwards compatibility.

I don't think they need to break backwards compatibility, they just need to focus on one of their existing tech and try to make the other stuff behave similarly. There is no reason for example why they cannot provide new window classes (as in RegisterClass) that implement controls that look and behave similar to the UWP stuff - after all there are already a bunch of 3rd party "Metro/UWP style" components for other toolkits. It is just that none is "official".

They need to provide some unification (even if underneath things are less than ideal) and this needs to cover all the tech they've made so far - Win32, MFC (which can build on Win32), WinForms and WPF (and others, if i forget anything).

> I will admit that I haven't dug into Wayland very much, but this is my impression as well. I try it (the Wayland KDE on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) periodically, but it seems a lot crashier than X.

The implementation aren't really a problem since they can be fixed, the issue is at the protocol level and even some of the goals/mindset that lead to it (e.g. the inability of clients to talk or share resources is considered a feature, but this is one of the thing that you need to implement reusable programs that work as components).