GNOME Merge Requests Opened To Drop X11 Session Support - Slashdot

GNOME Merge Requests Opened To Drop X11 Session Support

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• Re:

  What are you talking about? Wayland has screen shot support. Its just gated for security. Give it permission, then you have screenshots.

  And yes "Cant take screenshots if the user doesnt permit it" is absolutely a feature.

  • Re:

    Pretty sad commentary that someone can't trust the software on their own computer...
    
    -Modern computing.

    • Re:

      I might completely trust the software on my own computer if I'd written it all, never connected it to a network, turned it off and stored it in a grounded Faraday cage buried in 5m of concrete.

      It wouldn't be very practical that way though, so I'm stuck to managing trust, like everyone else. The principle of least-privilege is vital.

      • Re:

        You don't understand what you are doing then. You're not "managing trust", you're "managing risk."
        
        Computers run code written by others. That's a fact. (You can write your own full stack, but ~99.9999999% of humans never will.) In that case, the best option is to start from a known low risk (i.e. good) state. If you have to second guess the defaults, that's not a low risk state, it's a high risk state by your own admission. The issue isn't the OS providing the ability to take a screenshot, it's the fact t

    • Re:

      How about a scenario where you were admin for machines which connected to services which held secrets (whether this be commercial, military, GDPR etc). You might not want users to take snapshots, for obvious reasons.

      Whether the default is correct is up for debate - but the ability to prevent someone taking snapshots is quite reasonable.

      • Re:

        I highly doubt the Military would be wanting to use some untested new fangled crap for "the hacker OS" as a base environment for storing their top secret info. If they are, $DEITY help us.
        
        As for everyone else, why should the option be forbidden to everyone? Why can't there be a system policy option to disable / enable screenshots by default?
        
        Further, there's this new fangled thing called a smartphone. It tends to have a camera that can be pointed at a screen. Unless you are actively monitoring the end-u

    • Re:

      Come on dude. What century do you live in. Hostile software has been a thing since the 1980s.

      The reason that is security gated is because keyloggers and screen stealers are standard tooling for rootkits. By ensuring that permission is given, you foil the rootkit, and potentially expose it in the process. Theres a reason why OSX and (to a lesser extent) Modern Windows get very little malware compared to the bad old days,. Because the virus has to ask permission now.

    • Re: About time.

      No, you canâ(TM)t. You canâ(TM)t inspect the binaries. You donâ(TM)t inspect the source of everything. You donâ(TM)t know what bugs are present. Even in the best case scenario, where the software there is 100% made with good intentions, you donâ(TM)t know what zero days are out there. Restricting what a process is allowed to do to the set of things you expect it to do is an entirely reasonable sanity check and security measure.

  • What are you talking about? Wayland has screen shot support.

    No it doesn't. Wayland simply doesn't have it. The compositor has to offer it which means now Wayland applications have to also support all the compositor protocols. So now there's an additional "shit wayland doesn't support" c library which brings back all the library versioning problems which x11 has that Wayland claimed to solve, and of course the claimed simplicity of wayland is out the window because of all the necessary support libraries for it to be even vaguely on a par with X there's actually far more code.

• Re:

  Not a feature, but rather a specific lack of feature that has no place being implemented in the compositor itself. Look you can't have it both ways. Either follow the UNIX way (TM) and have small special purpose tools that do one job and do them well, or embrace X11, and with it you champion the approach of systemd and Windows of having one app try and do everything.

  One of the most amazing things about Linux is how it brings out hypocrisy in people who can't stand change.

  You want a screenshot? Download one

• Re:

  > Screenshots

  Really?:O

  Wayland cant even do that? I had no idea. Oh let me guess, Wayland is just a protocol design and it's the compositors job.

  Well, why don't they do basic stuff like screenshots yet?

  Do we even need compositors?

  I prefer how Plan 9 does GUI's. Thats really cool