xpolitical
----------

Back when I was studying visual arts at University - more
than 30 years ago, it was - the phrase "everything in
political" was much in vogue. Generally followed by the
caveat "but not everything is critical", one came to
anticipate its utterance at least once in every seminar and
crit one had the privilege to attend.  I will confess that
in time I grew a little wearied by it, even once going so
far as to ask my peers how the politics of my painting would
have been different had I chosen a lighter shade of cerulean
blue for the sky.

I was reminded of that phrase, and the concept it embodies,
by recent news of a titanic struggle between two divergent
visions for the future of old-school window management in
Linux.  Truly one of the most important battles of our
times, I hear tell the forces of light and darkness are
lined up in opposing camps: one aligned with a fork of Xorg
called "XLibre", and the other with an enhancement to
Wayland called "Wayback". [1]

All else being equal - which is to say, if these were just a
couple of fun programming projects - I would be rooting for
them both.  I will confess to being a fan of old-school X
aesthetics, and have lately been saddened by the prospect
that one day in the foreseeable future all my favourite X
stuff will no longer work - FVWM, Xplanet, xclock,
XscreenSaver and (every December) xsnow ...  Liking change
as little as I do, these new projects have me enthused about
maybe yet being able to run my old 90s-style Linux
environment until I shuffle off this mortal coil.

What is it I like so much about this rather dated UI and
these decades-old applications, you probably didn't ask?

Well, I will tell you.  I am drawn to 1990s computer
aesthetics partly by nostalgia, I will admit ... I still
recall booting up Linux for the first time back in '97 or
so, and how it seemed so intriguingly unpolished, its
academic/research roots still very much in evidence,
inviting deeper exploration.  But it's not all nostalgia.  I
like the fact that much of its software is not anonymous
corporate product, but is credited to real people, some of
whom I can and do follow on Mastodon.  I like the sometimes
amateurish icons (hello, xbiff) and graphics, for their
charm and folk-art qualities that are the antithesis of the
boring corporate logos that festoon Windows, MacOS and many
modern Linux desktops.  I like that there are visible
corners to grab, and scrollbars to scroll.  I like the
aesthetic for the same reason I like Paul Klee's paintings -
there's a certain rough-edged DIY quality that's more
concerned with invention than style.  I like how I can still
be productive - heck, often more productive - working with
tools that haven't much changed in decades, showing how much
of the "progress" in UI design of recent years has simply
been change for the sake of change.  I like the
customizability of it - how I can make FVWM look like MWM,
or something else altogether, and it's entirely my choice. I
like the fact that all my config files are just text files,
making it easy to reconstruct my environment any time I
switch to a new computer.

Now, this may mark me as a tourist, but just as I don't much
care if I'm running systemd or init.d, I also don't much
care if I'm running Xorg, Wayback/Wayland, or, ghod help us,
XLibre under the hood. At least, I wouldn't much care, but
for "everything is political".  Or politicized, more like.
So yeah, Wayback it is then, though I will continue to
regard the politicization of this particular sphere of human
endeavour to be approximately as absurd as politicizing
varying shades of cerulean blue.


Postscript
----------

Shortly after writing the foregoing I came across a post
from Wayback's lead developer, Ariadne Conill, who writes:

     "wayback was not started for political reasons, and
     basically we talk about fixing bugs, not politics.  this
     framing of wayback being some political opponent to that
     other one is annoying." [2]

So that makes at least two people who don't much care for
the politicization of wayback, and at least one person whose
opinion actually matters.

And since you can't really have a conflict unless both
parties agree to participate, I guess there isn't one, after
all.  So why the heck do folks insist on framing it that way
... ?


References
----------

[1] The Register has a good backgrounder on this vital issue:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/12/the_price_of_software_freedom/

[2] Ariadne Conill
https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/114843864327457139

Sun Jul 13 15:53:18 PDT 2025