René J.V. Bertin posted on Thu, 02 Mar 2017 11:42:37 +0100 as excerpted:
> On Thursday March 2 2017 10:31:54 Duncan wrote:
>
>>others will still have those one or two X-based apps they want/need to
>>continue to run on a modern Linux/Wayland-based desktop a decade, even
>>two, from now.
>
> If you have picked up the clamour not so long ago when a rumour made the
> rounds that remote OpenGL support was being removed from X11 you know
> there's a whole rather vocal community that relies on X11 for their
> work.
Indeed. But how many of them will still be doing so a decade from now?
Two decades?
Consider that we're coming up on the 13th anniversary of the first xorg
release (April 6, 2004, according to wikipedia). Sure, xorg replaced
xfree86, they're technically both X11R6 and thus a lot closer than xorg
and wayland, but how many people even think about xfree86 any more? And
that's with many/most of the drivers still labeled with the xf86-devtype-
brand pattern inherited from xfree86.
Still, I expect that at least a decade out, enough people will still have
that one or two apps running in a nested X on wayland (aka xwayland, not
having run wayland yet, I knew xwayland was one on the other, but
couldn't remember whether it was wayland on X, or X on wayland, until I
looked it up -- it's the latter), that it will as a practical matter
continue to be supported. Two decades out, I'm not so sure, but a decade
out, almost certainly -- and not just in some half-decade-stale
enterprise distro version, either, I expect most general-purpose distros
will still have it available, even if it's special-purpose enough by then
not to be installed by default, as I'd also expect.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
