X11 Used To Be Incredibly Complicated To Use

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]So, you mentioned that So, I'm going to jump back through your your story. I think it's what we're going to do for like half this episode.

[00:00:07]Um >> [laughter] >> You mentioned struggling >> all over the place. No, no, totally fine. I like this episode. These are the good ones where I don't have to talk as much.

[00:00:16]>> [laughter] >> So, you mentioned struggling to get X set up. And I think people now sort of take for granted I guess the simplicity not only of setting up X, but setting up everything with their system. And you know, you can just install a package and for the most part, it's probably going to be fine. If it's not fine, you're probably missing a package.

[00:00:44]And even just using X itself things like Xrandr, for example, those didn't exist yet. So, if you want to My understanding is you wanted to reconfigure your monitor layout, you had to restart the X server.

[00:01:01]Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:04]Um and it was So, So, back then X um >> [snorts] >> So, you you you had the you had the driver for the graphics device, which which was Uh early on you we actually we actually had different executable X servers for different types of graphics adapters.

[00:01:26]Like you had the one for ATI, you had the one for Matrox, you had you know, and and then of course there was a generic one. So, uh but uh all those eventually got separated out into drivers that were then loaded by, you know, the X server. But the um sort of one of the rites of passage, so to speak, uh was getting X working and configuring your display, which everyone had. so I described how I would go and buy these parts. They're generic, you know, no brand or anything like that.

[00:02:06]That's where my monitor came from, as well.

[00:02:09]X did not know about that monitor. It didn't really know about anything except maybe like a dozen monitors that no one had, anyway.

[00:02:17]So, you were you had to write model lines in your XF86Config file.

[00:02:24]And you know, the X server will do what you tell it to do. So, you would write a model line, and you had to get the refresh rate, and you had to calculate all of this stuff for your monitor using the information from the manufacturer, and that might not be correct. You know, you may have gotten a manual with the monitor, but it could have been the wrong one, you know. So, you would write put all this info in, and then fire it up, and hope you got it right, but some unfortunate people would smoke their monitor. It would smoke >> about to mention, my understanding is you could you could pop some bad monitors.

[00:03:05]Yeah, and and that was, you know, that would that would certainly turn people off from uh uh using Linux, because now, you know, they've been told to try this, and now it has, you know, damaged their hardware beyond repair.

[00:03:23]Um but it was it you know, it was it was tough. Um you know, and it was just one of those things that you had to learn about. Now, you you you on a PC, you would take a um an operating system like Windows, you know, part of what Windows Microsoft would do for that product is they would just have a database of pretty much every manufacturer in existence, and have a way to automatically figure that out based on detecting it. And and there no at that point in time there were no real standards for getting that info but so they they would research it and they would build that into the OS. So that was where that sort of ease of use thing argument would come in where it's like, well, Linux is hard to use because I have to give it all this info. It's like, well, yeah, right now it is cuz we don't have all that info. [laughter] Um but we yeah, we got to we got to a better place within Linux um certainly with uh kernel mode setting um for the display and then the X server being able to uh you know, just directly use that. And of course, Wayland has improved things uh even further for modern displays uh cuz you know, we don't really have X was from a time period where we had uh CRTs. We didn't have LCD displays. And now you've got the ultra high def and you know, all kinds of other displays that X wasn't really built for. Um Wayland is taking into account, well, you know, maybe maybe displays won't always look like this, you know, you know, we should we should build in a way to to improve that. And and I think they've done that. My um I I actually I do still use X um and that's not because I'm anti-Wayland.

[00:05:10]It's because I haven't I still use software that does not work in Wayland even through the the X layer. And I know it will eventually, but I just don't care. I just I'm going to use whichever one is the path of least resistance for the software that I use and that that that's why I still have um X as my uh uh my graphical setup.

[00:05:37]>> [snorts] >> What software do you have that's causing issues?

[00:05:41]Um it's um uh some maritime software that that I use. Yeah.

[00:05:46]>> Okay.

[00:05:46]>> [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah, and and that's the problem is like it's just really um very specific low number of users and not a lot of those users are developers. So, it's one of those things where I like I fear that if I ever want to have that work on Wayland, I'm going to be the one that makes it work on Wayland, >> [laughter] >> you know, but um so a lot of these specific programs 4X that that are very, you know, maybe industry specific relied on stuff that was in X that now in Wayland is is sort of a different paradigm. So, things like getting input devices, window management, things like that just the whole paradigm's different in Wayland. So, that that that's one of the limiting factors right now.

[00:06:42]So, you know, it's not just a matter of changing your include lines and recompiling against Wayland, you know, you you have to kind of re-architect your software around a new environment.

[00:06:53]I actually you could probably think about it as like I have this program on on Mac OS or or Windows and I want it on X and that that's not a simple change.

[00:07:02]That's that's a new UI basically.

[00:07:05]What what desktop do you happen to be using right now?

[00:07:09]Um the one I have been rocking for a few years now is XFCE.

[00:07:14]Okay. [snorts] So, okay. Shout out to XFCE.

[00:07:18]Um I uh I've tried um a lot of the other modern ones. I tend to do that maybe once a quarter. I I should clarify, if anyone from XFCE is listening, please don't take that to say yours is not modern. I I know it's modern. I keep it updated. Um but I I really like the XFCE sort of simplicity paradigm and the panel at the bottom and and just it it it does what I want and stays out of the way. So, that that's what I like.

[00:07:51]I Before that I was using Gnome 2, uh which we had in in Fedora >> [laughter] >> That was a while ago.

[00:08:00]That was a quite a while ago.

[00:08:02]>> [laughter] >> It was a while ago, yeah. Um What with with Gnome 3 the change to Gnome 3, it was it wasn't In my mind it wasn't really a a simple upgrade. It was a total change of how you think about the environment and I I didn't really like that. I found it kind of jarring and I felt I was less productive. So, I was just like, I I'm not really interested in this. I'll I'll move along. Um but I you know, it's we have plenty of environments out there and and they all do very different things and you know, you can customize them the way you want. Uh But yeah, I guess I guess I have been on XFCE for a while.

[00:08:42]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, just a little bit. Just like Yeah.

[00:08:48]GTK versions.

[00:08:50]Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:53]>> [laughter]