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One of the things I loved in Linux was the ability to swap out the "window manager", the program that takes app's windows, draws decorations like title bar and

One of the things I loved in Linux was the ability to swap out the "window manager", the program that takes app's windows, draws decorations like title bar and window borders around them, and arranges them on the screen. I had fun with Compiz, I fiddled with Enlightenment, and I finally settled for Awesome because I decided Tiling Was The Best (tm). If I understand correctly from following the Gnome and KWin blogs, in Wayland it looks like the "window management" job is with the Compositor, which takes on a lot more of the display and input work that was traditionally handled by the X Server. So there's much more complexity to handle there. This would mean that we're unlikely to see the proliferation of WM experiments that X saw. Is this a correct assessment? (I'm personally waiting for a good tiling window manager/compositor to show up with Wayland before I make the swtich)

justinsaccount 10y ago
https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway ?
based2 10y ago
https://phab.enlightenment.org/w/wayland/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/w/wayland/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/enlightenment_of_wayland/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/enlightenment... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_prot...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  And? Since E17, E has pretty much been a DE in its own right. Fueled in large part because Rasterman ran afoul Gnome and RH office politics during his stay at RH labs. And E has a long history of supporting just about anything under the sun. You could even run its terminal "emulator" as an alternative tty on top of the Linux framebuffer if you so wanted.
  - AceJohnny2 10y ago
    > Fueled in large part because Rasterman ran afoul Gnome and RH office politics during his stay at RH labs. I recall Rasterman running afoul of pretty much every organisation he was part of... I recall issues with OpenMoko, an early linuxphone company, as well.
nacc 10y ago
There are a number of window managers for wayland already. The ArchWiki has a list of them [0]. [0]:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers_and_desktop_shells https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers...
lomnakkus 10y ago
> If I understand correctly from following the Gnome and KWin blogs, in Wayland it looks like the "window management" job is with the Compositor, which takes on a lot more of the display and input work that was traditionally handled by the X Server. This is basically right. However, you have to remember that the Wayland protocol is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than X11. It's also defined/specced using a machine-readable XML document which means that an implementation of the protocol can basically be auto-generated from the spec document -- thus making it a lot easier to keep your implementation up to date. > This would mean that we're unlikely to see the proliferation of WM experiments that X saw. Remains to be seen, I guess.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Give W as much time as X11 has had, and it will be of comparable size as X11 is right now. They will perhaps try to play semantic games by putting much of the additions into support libs that you "don't need", unless you want to run anything more than a decade old. Wayland, X11, SVGALib, F if i can tell a diff...
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    No. It's already basically feature-complete as compared to which parts of X11 are actually used these days[1]. X11 is burdened by absurdly obsolete extensions like drawing stippled lines, a font server, etc. See the talk by Daniel Stone[2] if you're interested in the kind of crud that's been cleared out. It's basically the kind of stuff that we will never go back to wanting in any type of server process. The trade-off between bandwidth and latency has changed fundamentally in basically all areas of computing, but especially anything to do with graphics. [1] Alright, there might be a few bits and bobs that are missing, but nothing major as witnessed by the very article under discussion. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Who gets to declare those things "crud"? I am sure that if you poke around you will find someone still relying on those features being present daily.
Tharkun 10y ago
I'm heavy Awesome user myself. Pretty much refuse to use anything else these days. It works, doesn't get in the way and goes really well with my workflow. It looks like the Awesome community currently has no plans for a Wayland port -- as it apparently wouldn't be trivial. Though someone mentioned that it might Just Work as a magical legacy X application. Can anyone confirm that?
lima 10y ago
> good tiling window manager SirCmpwn is porting i3: http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway
- cyphar 10y ago
  > > good tiling window manager > SirCmpwn is porting i3: It's not a port, it's a complete rewrite. You can't port i3 just because of all of the differences between X11 and Wayland. Also, I would recommend anyone who uses SirCmpwn's several projects that they donate to him (he even made a free software project for dontations): https://drewdevault.com/donate/ https://drewdevault.com/donate/
stinkytaco 10y ago
It also offloads several of the features of X to the clients. Including inter-process communication and networking. I suppose you can view this as good or bad, but it certainly much smaller and, in some ways, more efficient since I don't need to have the ability to network unless I load up an RDP.

justinsaccount 10y ago

https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway ?

based2 10y ago

https://phab.enlightenment.org/w/wayland/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/w/wayland/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/enlightenment_of_wayland/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/enlightenment... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_prot...

digi_owl 10y ago
And? Since E17, E has pretty much been a DE in its own right. Fueled in large part because Rasterman ran afoul Gnome and RH office politics during his stay at RH labs. And E has a long history of supporting just about anything under the sun. You could even run its terminal "emulator" as an alternative tty on top of the Linux framebuffer if you so wanted.
- AceJohnny2 10y ago
  > Fueled in large part because Rasterman ran afoul Gnome and RH office politics during his stay at RH labs. I recall Rasterman running afoul of pretty much every organisation he was part of... I recall issues with OpenMoko, an early linuxphone company, as well.

nacc 10y ago

There are a number of window managers for wayland already. The ArchWiki has a list of them [0]. [0]:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers_and_desktop_shells https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers...

lomnakkus 10y ago

> If I understand correctly from following the Gnome and KWin blogs, in Wayland it looks like the "window management" job is with the Compositor, which takes on a lot more of the display and input work that was traditionally handled by the X Server. This is basically right. However, you have to remember that the Wayland protocol is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than X11. It's also defined/specced using a machine-readable XML document which means that an implementation of the protocol can basically be auto-generated from the spec document -- thus making it a lot easier to keep your implementation up to date. > This would mean that we're unlikely to see the proliferation of WM experiments that X saw. Remains to be seen, I guess.

digi_owl 10y ago
Give W as much time as X11 has had, and it will be of comparable size as X11 is right now. They will perhaps try to play semantic games by putting much of the additions into support libs that you "don't need", unless you want to run anything more than a decade old. Wayland, X11, SVGALib, F if i can tell a diff...
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  No. It's already basically feature-complete as compared to which parts of X11 are actually used these days[1]. X11 is burdened by absurdly obsolete extensions like drawing stippled lines, a font server, etc. See the talk by Daniel Stone[2] if you're interested in the kind of crud that's been cleared out. It's basically the kind of stuff that we will never go back to wanting in any type of server process. The trade-off between bandwidth and latency has changed fundamentally in basically all areas of computing, but especially anything to do with graphics. [1] Alright, there might be a few bits and bobs that are missing, but nothing major as witnessed by the very article under discussion. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Who gets to declare those things "crud"? I am sure that if you poke around you will find someone still relying on those features being present daily.

Tharkun 10y ago

I'm heavy Awesome user myself. Pretty much refuse to use anything else these days. It works, doesn't get in the way and goes really well with my workflow. It looks like the Awesome community currently has no plans for a Wayland port -- as it apparently wouldn't be trivial. Though someone mentioned that it might Just Work as a magical legacy X application. Can anyone confirm that?

lima 10y ago

> good tiling window manager SirCmpwn is porting i3: http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway

cyphar 10y ago
> > good tiling window manager > SirCmpwn is porting i3: It's not a port, it's a complete rewrite. You can't port i3 just because of all of the differences between X11 and Wayland. Also, I would recommend anyone who uses SirCmpwn's several projects that they donate to him (he even made a free software project for dontations): https://drewdevault.com/donate/ https://drewdevault.com/donate/

stinkytaco 10y ago

It also offloads several of the features of X to the clients. Including inter-process communication and networking. I suppose you can view this as good or bad, but it certainly much smaller and, in some ways, more efficient since I don't need to have the ability to network unless I load up an RDP.