Can someone please eli5? Why do I never hear anything about the window manager in windows and macos? Why is all the fuss on our side on Linux? I’m genuinely asking.
In addition to what the others have said, windows has already had its big paradigm change (“similar” to the change from x11 to Wayland that is happening) in the past. It was around 2007 with windows Vista. They also didn’t get it quite right on the first try, but because Microsoft can do whatever they want, and in Linux you must convince the community that something is better, it was easier for them to just change everything under everyone’s nose.
It is being discussed because we’re in the middle of the transition from X to Wayland. Before there wasn’t much discussion. In a few years when it settles out there probably won’t be much discussion.
Windows and Mac have never had a choice. There might have been significant changes to a window manager layer, but it would have been part of a larger version upgrade. Like between windows 3.1 and 95 or OS 9 to OS X. The visible changes would be closer to desktop environment like KDE and Gnome in Linux.
Thank you so much. One more question, why do we have so many issues with scaling, font rendering and all stuff and windows and macos just do it? Why aren’t we doing similar?
A compositor is a program responsible for displaying program windows and things like the desktop on your PC. On Linux, the compositor is just a program that starts when the system starts. There are multiple desktop environments available, like Plasma or Gnome, each comes with their own compositor, you can choose which you want to use.
Wayland is a protocol that the programs use to communicate with the compositor. Everyone decided to use Wayland, because if each compositor had their own protocol it would be silly, eg some programs would work only on Plasma or Gnome.
It’s a replacement for a much older X11, which could no longer keep up with requirements of modern apps.
You never hear anything about compositors on Windows or Mac because there’s only one available, you can’t choose.
Actually, Windows does allow you to use an alternate “compositor”— a feature which is used quite frequently in the industrial/embedded space. Windows calls them “custom shells”. The default is Explorer, but it can be set to any executable.
Can someone please eli5? Why do I never hear anything about the window manager in windows and macos? Why is all the fuss on our side on Linux? I’m genuinely asking.
In addition to what the others have said, windows has already had its big paradigm change (“similar” to the change from x11 to Wayland that is happening) in the past. It was around 2007 with windows Vista. They also didn’t get it quite right on the first try, but because Microsoft can do whatever they want, and in Linux you must convince the community that something is better, it was easier for them to just change everything under everyone’s nose.
It is being discussed because we’re in the middle of the transition from X to Wayland. Before there wasn’t much discussion. In a few years when it settles out there probably won’t be much discussion.
Windows and Mac have never had a choice. There might have been significant changes to a window manager layer, but it would have been part of a larger version upgrade. Like between windows 3.1 and 95 or OS 9 to OS X. The visible changes would be closer to desktop environment like KDE and Gnome in Linux.
Thank you so much. One more question, why do we have so many issues with scaling, font rendering and all stuff and windows and macos just do it? Why aren’t we doing similar?
I’ve seen enough blurry software on Windows to know this is not quite true 😅
That’s actually true. I’ve seen it, too. So, I guess I’ll take my question back. Lol
A compositor is a program responsible for displaying program windows and things like the desktop on your PC. On Linux, the compositor is just a program that starts when the system starts. There are multiple desktop environments available, like Plasma or Gnome, each comes with their own compositor, you can choose which you want to use.
Wayland is a protocol that the programs use to communicate with the compositor. Everyone decided to use Wayland, because if each compositor had their own protocol it would be silly, eg some programs would work only on Plasma or Gnome.
It’s a replacement for a much older X11, which could no longer keep up with requirements of modern apps.
You never hear anything about compositors on Windows or Mac because there’s only one available, you can’t choose.
Actually, Windows does allow you to use an alternate “compositor”— a feature which is used quite frequently in the industrial/embedded space. Windows calls them “custom shells”. The default is Explorer, but it can be set to any executable.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/customize/shell-launcher