GNOME's Mutter Adds Support For Toggling Byte-Swapped XWayland Clients

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME's Mutter Adds Support For Toggling Byte-Swapped XWayland Clients

Stemming from the X.Org Server change to no longer allow byte-swapped clients by default due to the feature being rarely used but of significant security concerns with being a large attack surface, GNOME's Mutter compositor has added optional support for being able to enable byte-swapped XWayland clients...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Byte-Swapped-XWayland

[tildearrow]

Typo:

Given different CPU endianess isn't too common

[Michael]

Typo:

Whoops, thanks.

[jacob]

I wish Mutter finalised its RT scheduling support and made it official.

[andyprough]

Didn't we just get done being told that swapping our bytes was BAAAAD and that we were all going to die because [checks notes] hackers with IBM s390x computers were going to break into NORAD's missile simulation computers and start a global-thermonuclear war???

Or was that just the plot of a really bad Matthew Broderick movie?

I can't keep up with all the twists and turns of security theater any longer. I need more Microsoft Pluton TPM chips on all my electronics or the l33t haxxors are going to steal my amazon password and order an endless supply of cbd gummies for themselves.

[elbar]

Next thing to do is to ditch UXTerm... And mark all apps(like in description) in repositories that requires XWayland to enable easy upgrade. But required step is that also older graphics who don't have Vulkan, only OpenGL could use Wayland... Then ditching XOrg would be easier(and maybe make some obsolete repository among main, universe, ....)...

[archkde]

Didn't we just get done being told that swapping our bytes was BAAAAD and that we were all going to die because [checks notes] hackers with IBM s390x computers were going to break into NORAD's missile simulation computers and start a global-thermonuclear war???

An attacker doesn't need an s390x. They can send out any mix of little-endian and big-endian from their attack software no matter tha computer it's running on.

[Sethox]

But there have been some that raised concerns over the change due to their exotic setups, but at least when running the X.Org Server the new configuration knobs allow restoring the old functionality.

At some point it's okey to abandon legacy setups because the user accepts the risk of no support anymore right (rhetorical)?
Exotic setups is just the comfort of not wanting to adapt in my opinion (one has to adapt to the rest of the world or conflicts will happen at some point).

[Alexmitter]

Didn't we just get done being told that swapping our bytes was BAAAAD and that we were all going to die because [checks notes] hackers with IBM s390x computers were going to break into NORAD's missile simulation computers and start a global-thermonuclear war???

Or was that just the plot of a really bad Matthew Broderick movie?

I can't keep up with all the twists and turns of security theater any longer. I need more Microsoft Pluton TPM chips on all my electronics or the l33t haxxors are going to steal my amazon password and order an endless supply of cbd gummies for themselves.

Which is why it is now disabled by default and Mutter now has a setting the user can turn on to activate this feature if he needs it.

[smitty3268]

Nothing against this change, but it seems like a pretty odd choice for Gnome given their historical pattern of cutting options in favor of making everything as simple as possible.

This was really the one optional feature they decided no one could live without?