It’s fucking weird people have such strong opinions about issues like X11 and systemd. They’re meant to be working in the background away from the user, and that’s exactly how I treat them. Actually systemd still provides some functions a user might have to interact with manually, for X11 I’m just baffled.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission.
Gnome forced me onto Wayland a few weeks ago and I’ve been dealing with issues ever since. Some issues even affecting the most basic level tasks like typing text, imagine dealing with that in 2025. Following your analogy, if the Uber with the fancy new transmission came to a halt every kilometre, you’d care too.
I was an early adopter years back, so I reported bugs while I could still switch back when I needed to (which ended up being once to screen share with Zoom)
If you had done this, you wouldn’t be forced into a buggy environment now.
I think the average user wouldn’t care, Linux just attracts nerds. And I think it’s totally fine and even good that people care how their computer works—it shows that users care about their software working for them, rather than just wanting to go along with whatever is given to them. I think a lot of the positions people take about these things are very silly, but I’d still prefer someone to have a silly opinion about X11/Wayland or pid 1 than to not have an opinion at all. It’s nice that users are being actively involved in deciding what they want their system to be; it’s a nice change from the average user who’s like “well microsoft is screenshotting my screen every 5 seconds and feeding it into copilot now, guess I’m going along with that”.
In my eyes, it’s the same deal as conservatives coping with the changing world. There is a version where they just shut up and let the rest of the tech landscape improve while they happily stick to the X they know (X.org or even XLibre).
Yes, the people who refuse to either upgrade to Win11-compatible hardware or move to an OS compatible with their existing hardware will eventually get left behind. Both in terms of security and compatibility. It’s happened many times, from the fall of AGP in favour of PCIE, to every time Intel inroduced a new CPU socket. X11 is the next.
Unless I’m terribly misunderstanding the word’s meaning (or anglophones once again redefined a word to reflect their current sensibilities), “conservative” doesn’t automatically imply politics, just that someone is resistant to new ideas. A person who only listens to music produced before the 20th century and goes into a rage when video game music composers are mentioned is a conservative, but not in terms of political views.
The issue is that in the political landscape, that word has shifted away from its social meaning. “Conservatives” in the US and parts of Europe are actually reactionaries, i.e. people pushing back against the status quo wanting to “return” to some idealized past that never existed like that.
So using the word “conservative” in its original sense might not be understood by people.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission. But I care what MY CAR has! Especially since there isn’t a shop for my car and I have to do all my own maintenance. Like, init/systemd is a huge architectural change, it’s weird to you that people who depend on their computer to perform whatever function gives their life meaning and viability want to have a functional grasp of their system? That’s a big change to absorb for essentially no practical benefit to the problem domain.
If you only live in the GUI layer, you aren’t the driver. The implementation details are abstracted away from you. Your software are the real uber drivers, you’re just being driven around.
I found that systemd actually simplified all the things I was doing on sysvinit. BUT, I did hold out until Debian testing stopped supporting sysvinit, and I think waiting gave me a better experience.
With X11 -> Wayland, the main thing holding me back finding a tiling compositor that will work under Plasma and is packaged for Debian and the learning at least the basics. My XMonad configuration isn’t that special, but I’m really quite used to not having to re-arrange my own windows, and being able to move/resize/refocus all with the home row and modifier keys. So, I’m probably going to wait until Debian testing ships a Plasma that doesn’t support X11, and have to do some learning then.
There are still existing issues with wayland that do not exist on X11. I’m talking, using last-gen consumer grade hardware that will break basic applications like, who knows, a web browser. Meanwhile the “upside” are extremely marginal to a lot of people. Different screen scaling isn’t implemented using proper DPI on most implementations, variable refresh rate is not something most people care about (I sure don’t care that my second monitor is capped at 120Hz instead of 144Hz because of my first monitor), etc.
So, yeah, for some people, it’s not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of having a stable, working system vs. a broken system where basic features are not a given.
If you took an uber and the car was a horse-driven carriage and your seat was a hole in a rotted plank, you’d complain.
I’d have to change desktop environments, because my current one only has “experimental” support in the latest version, and my distro is years behind, anyway. Your choices are pretty much KDE, Gnome or building your own desktop with a standalone window manager, and I don’t like any of those options.
Pretty much, yes. It also used to be lighter in resource use than GNOME, though IDK if that’s still true. XFCE and LXQt are definitely lighter than both Gnome and Plasma, they are a lot more stable in the sense that they don’t change that much from release to release, and they play nice with third party window managers (e.g. tiling WMs).
It’s fucking weird people have such strong opinions about issues like X11 and systemd. They’re meant to be working in the background away from the user, and that’s exactly how I treat them. Actually systemd still provides some functions a user might have to interact with manually, for X11 I’m just baffled.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission.
Gnome forced me onto Wayland a few weeks ago and I’ve been dealing with issues ever since. Some issues even affecting the most basic level tasks like typing text, imagine dealing with that in 2025. Following your analogy, if the Uber with the fancy new transmission came to a halt every kilometre, you’d care too.
Same here. All amd. 13 year old cpu. Wayland has a ton of issues and 0 noticeable improvements for me.
Nvidia?
Not even, amd on both my laptop and desktop, but still lots of issues. None of them major, but it adds up.
I was an early adopter years back, so I reported bugs while I could still switch back when I needed to (which ended up being once to screen share with Zoom)
If you had done this, you wouldn’t be forced into a buggy environment now.
I think the average user wouldn’t care, Linux just attracts nerds. And I think it’s totally fine and even good that people care how their computer works—it shows that users care about their software working for them, rather than just wanting to go along with whatever is given to them. I think a lot of the positions people take about these things are very silly, but I’d still prefer someone to have a silly opinion about X11/Wayland or pid 1 than to not have an opinion at all. It’s nice that users are being actively involved in deciding what they want their system to be; it’s a nice change from the average user who’s like “well microsoft is screenshotting my screen every 5 seconds and feeding it into copilot now, guess I’m going along with that”.
In my eyes, it’s the same deal as conservatives coping with the changing world. There is a version where they just shut up and let the rest of the tech landscape improve while they happily stick to the X they know (X.org or even XLibre).
I mean, I’d love to, but…
Aren’t there still maintained window managers that support X11?
Getting left behind is the natural and inevitable consequence of obsolescence.
Huh, why do I hear someone shouting about Windows 11 requiring TPM?
Yes, the people who refuse to either upgrade to Win11-compatible hardware or move to an OS compatible with their existing hardware will eventually get left behind. Both in terms of security and compatibility. It’s happened many times, from the fall of AGP in favour of PCIE, to every time Intel inroduced a new CPU socket. X11 is the next.
Bring in politics is a choice
You aren’t wrong though
Unless I’m terribly misunderstanding the word’s meaning (or anglophones once again redefined a word to reflect their current sensibilities), “conservative” doesn’t automatically imply politics, just that someone is resistant to new ideas. A person who only listens to music produced before the 20th century and goes into a rage when video game music composers are mentioned is a conservative, but not in terms of political views.
The issue is that in the political landscape, that word has shifted away from its social meaning. “Conservatives” in the US and parts of Europe are actually reactionaries, i.e. people pushing back against the status quo wanting to “return” to some idealized past that never existed like that.
So using the word “conservative” in its original sense might not be understood by people.
When I take an uber, I don’t care whether the car has an automatic or manual transmission. But I care what MY CAR has! Especially since there isn’t a shop for my car and I have to do all my own maintenance. Like, init/systemd is a huge architectural change, it’s weird to you that people who depend on their computer to perform whatever function gives their life meaning and viability want to have a functional grasp of their system? That’s a big change to absorb for essentially no practical benefit to the problem domain.
If you only live in the GUI layer, you aren’t the driver. The implementation details are abstracted away from you. Your software are the real uber drivers, you’re just being driven around.
I found that systemd actually simplified all the things I was doing on sysvinit. BUT, I did hold out until Debian testing stopped supporting sysvinit, and I think waiting gave me a better experience.
With X11 -> Wayland, the main thing holding me back finding a tiling compositor that will work under Plasma and is packaged for Debian and the learning at least the basics. My XMonad configuration isn’t that special, but I’m really quite used to not having to re-arrange my own windows, and being able to move/resize/refocus all with the home row and modifier keys. So, I’m probably going to wait until Debian testing ships a Plasma that doesn’t support X11, and have to do some learning then.
There are still existing issues with wayland that do not exist on X11. I’m talking, using last-gen consumer grade hardware that will break basic applications like, who knows, a web browser. Meanwhile the “upside” are extremely marginal to a lot of people. Different screen scaling isn’t implemented using proper DPI on most implementations, variable refresh rate is not something most people care about (I sure don’t care that my second monitor is capped at 120Hz instead of 144Hz because of my first monitor), etc.
So, yeah, for some people, it’s not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of having a stable, working system vs. a broken system where basic features are not a given.
If you took an uber and the car was a horse-driven carriage and your seat was a hole in a rotted plank, you’d complain.
I’d have to change desktop environments, because my current one only has “experimental” support in the latest version, and my distro is years behind, anyway. Your choices are pretty much KDE, Gnome or building your own desktop with a standalone window manager, and I don’t like any of those options.
Fair, although I never understood why people choose Mint and so on.
Plasma is so configurable that you can just make it look and act like you want, right?
So I guess it’s getting the GNOME experience (everything is simple, no setup) but with a classic desktop paradigm?
Pretty much, yes. It also used to be lighter in resource use than GNOME, though IDK if that’s still true. XFCE and LXQt are definitely lighter than both Gnome and Plasma, they are a lot more stable in the sense that they don’t change that much from release to release, and they play nice with third party window managers (e.g. tiling WMs).