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I have a worry of this turning out very badly.

by guest 16y ago

mahmud 16y ago
Wayland uses OpenGL ES for rendering, preparing Ubuntu for handsets. Ubuntu must be eying a future alongside Android, which is an excellent bet. There have been many attempts at X replacement, all well justified, and if Wayland is the best of them, it would still be better than the baroque X protocol. Like almost every C++ programmer working in the early 00s, I too hacked on Berlin :-|
- guest 16y ago
  The idea of Wayland growing and becoming a more usable platform sound terrific. The troubling part about this is ubuntu's history of doing what's good for ubuntu.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - mg74 16y ago
      Ubuntu Unity is a desktop shell replacement and has nothing to do with the Unity game development platform. Or was this a joke and I just wooshed it?
      - mahmud 16y ago
        Nope, not a joke. I am really that stupid.
    - almost 16y ago
      I dont think the Unity shell and Unity game platform are in any way related. Am i wrong? EDIT: Sorry, I thought I was the only one pointing out the error but looks like I formed part of a mob. Anyway, it's an easy mistake to make, you can hardly be blamed for not following every little detail of Ubuntu and the things that run on it :)
      - mahmud 16y ago
        I have already admitted to my error elsewhere, but just for the sake of intellectual honesty .. I do think Unity3D is somewhat of an under-appreciated technology.
    - akent 16y ago
      I think you're confusing http://unity3d.com/ http://unity3d.com/ with https://launchpad.net/unity https://launchpad.net/unity. Unity desktop is GPL3 / LGPL3.
      - mahmud 16y ago
        Please upvote this guy while you egg me on the face. BLOODY HELL! What a relief! But can you blame me given the name and purpose proximity? :-/
    - weego 16y ago
      Either I'm confused or you are: I was under the impression that when they talk about Unity they mean a replacement shell for Gnome and not the web plugin. Or is this a different conversation?
  - lhnn 16y ago
    Why is it troubling for a company or organization to do what's in their best interest? Ubuntu's goals do not seem to be nefarious, and almost everything they're pushing for the community is open-source, except Ubuntu One and the Software Center ability to purchase apps.
- _delirium 16y ago
  This seems less ambitious than Berlin in a lot of ways. One big difference is that Berlin aimed for network transparency (like X, but ideally done even better), while Wayland is local-only. That might simplify enough things to make it more likely to succeed. For me personally, now that nx makes X's network transparency actually usable, I'm not in a big hurry to go back to a non-network-transparent windowing system with a screenscraper like VNC layered on top. But I could see that not mattering for a lot of users, so it's probably the right choice.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    This seems less ambitious than Berlin in a lot of ways. Worse is better, and whoever ships a working prototype is best. Sacrificing network transparency for local performance should be a no-brainer, given the use-cases.
    - FooBarWidget 16y ago
      The bottleneck in X has never been network transparency. Local access has been accelerated through Unix domain sockets and shared memory for as long as I can remember. It looks like Wayland also has a client/server architecture which makes me suspect it's can be made network transparent just like X is.
      - loewenskind 16y ago
        It does make for a ridiculous API though. No one writes X for this reason, but I suspect it would speed things up a lot if everyone writing for the platform didn't have to go through multiple layers of better APIs to talk to the actual display subsystem.
        sedachv 16y ago
        What is the "X API"? Are you talking about Xlib? XCB? The protocol? Does this critique include XRender? There's really two parts to modern X programming: the window and event stuff, and XRender. The window and event system isn't bad, and it's fully asynchronous, which is a really big deal. XRender obviously can't be used for drawing by hand (that's why you have Cairo), but it's a really good design for a drawing protocol that supports a lot of possibilities for hardware acceleration.
- FooBarWidget 16y ago
  It looks like Wayland runs on top of X, not replacing X. Which makes sense. OpenGL is just an API, not a hardware wire-level protocol. Unless Wayland implements its own graphics drivers (which I find highly unlikely), it'll just make use of the same drivers that X uses for implementing OpenGL. And that still leaves things like input handling. From the Wikipedia entry it looks like Wayland uses X for input and rendering, but other apps can connect to Wayland to have things rendered. Kind of like how X itself works.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    It doesn't seem like that's mandatory, though it can run on top of X. From the project's front page blurb: The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself. The clients can be traditional applications, X servers (rootless or fullscreen) or other display servers. They do have fairly well thought out plans for a (probably lengthy) transition of interoperating with X applications, though: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html
  - mahmud 16y ago
    This is straight from this FAQ: Wayland is a nano display server, relying on drm modesetting, gem batchbuffer submission and hw initialization generally in the kernel. Wayland puts the compositing manager and display server in the same process. Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. That last part about integrating the compositing manager and display server into the same process .. that's your main point of departure.
    - metageek 16y ago
      >Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. Well, there's a bad idea. I suppose I could see an X replacement which incorporated window management into the server, instead of into a special client; but letting all the clients draw their own borders is a recipe for chaos.
fauigerzigerk 16y ago
The question is what worries you more. The somewhat stagnant, always lagging, always annoyingly close to usable Linux desktop experience or a pretty bold attempt at doing something about it.
- darklajid 16y ago
  Or - the possible collaboration/support problems. Someone else quoted here that Wayland needs toolkit support for lots of things (moving, resizing, decorating). Are we going to see that support (possibly contributed in parts by Canonical) in gtk (and QT/KDE, fwiw)? Or is this basically going for Unity only? In other words: I appreciate a more modern, desktop oriented architecture. X11 seems just too much "Mainframe terminal" focused. Which is nice - but not on my laptop/netbook or in the majority of private use cases, really. I fear, though, that this leads to a two classes of desktops for a while: The shiny Wayland one and the poor thing that still needs X11. Note that "fear" implies more emotions than reasoning - I don't know enough about Wayland support in other toolkits yet and don't understand how it could/would work with "arbitrary" setups (Open-/Fluxbox, lxde, one of the tiling wms). Update: I was reading up on Wayland - and completely missed the blog entry from Mark. The statement "We’ll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there’s no reason for them not to be there on day one either." removes most of my fears.
  - crs 16y ago
    Well it appears that waylands first deployment is expected to be in MeeGo OS. So that implies Qt support will be developed and pushed by Nokia and Intel. Furthermore if you checkout waylands site, you can see screenshots of various Qt and Gtk based applications running on Wayland.

I have a worry of this turning out very badly.

by guest 16y ago

I have a worry of this turning out very badly.

Wayland uses OpenGL ES for rendering, preparing Ubuntu for handsets. Ubuntu must be eying a future alongside Android, which is an excellent bet. There have been many attempts at X replacement, all well justified, and if Wayland is the best of them, it would still be better than the baroque X protocol. Like almost every C++ programmer working in the early 00s, I too hacked on Berlin :-|

guest 16y ago
The idea of Wayland growing and becoming a more usable platform sound terrific. The troubling part about this is ubuntu's history of doing what's good for ubuntu.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - mg74 16y ago
    Ubuntu Unity is a desktop shell replacement and has nothing to do with the Unity game development platform. Or was this a joke and I just wooshed it?
    - mahmud 16y ago
      Nope, not a joke. I am really that stupid.
  - almost 16y ago
    I dont think the Unity shell and Unity game platform are in any way related. Am i wrong? EDIT: Sorry, I thought I was the only one pointing out the error but looks like I formed part of a mob. Anyway, it's an easy mistake to make, you can hardly be blamed for not following every little detail of Ubuntu and the things that run on it :)
    - mahmud 16y ago
      I have already admitted to my error elsewhere, but just for the sake of intellectual honesty .. I do think Unity3D is somewhat of an under-appreciated technology.
  - akent 16y ago
    I think you're confusing http://unity3d.com/ http://unity3d.com/ with https://launchpad.net/unity https://launchpad.net/unity. Unity desktop is GPL3 / LGPL3.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      Please upvote this guy while you egg me on the face. BLOODY HELL! What a relief! But can you blame me given the name and purpose proximity? :-/
  - weego 16y ago
    Either I'm confused or you are: I was under the impression that when they talk about Unity they mean a replacement shell for Gnome and not the web plugin. Or is this a different conversation?
- lhnn 16y ago
  Why is it troubling for a company or organization to do what's in their best interest? Ubuntu's goals do not seem to be nefarious, and almost everything they're pushing for the community is open-source, except Ubuntu One and the Software Center ability to purchase apps.
_delirium 16y ago
This seems less ambitious than Berlin in a lot of ways. One big difference is that Berlin aimed for network transparency (like X, but ideally done even better), while Wayland is local-only. That might simplify enough things to make it more likely to succeed. For me personally, now that nx makes X's network transparency actually usable, I'm not in a big hurry to go back to a non-network-transparent windowing system with a screenscraper like VNC layered on top. But I could see that not mattering for a lot of users, so it's probably the right choice.
- mahmud 16y ago
  This seems less ambitious than Berlin in a lot of ways. Worse is better, and whoever ships a working prototype is best. Sacrificing network transparency for local performance should be a no-brainer, given the use-cases.
  - FooBarWidget 16y ago
    The bottleneck in X has never been network transparency. Local access has been accelerated through Unix domain sockets and shared memory for as long as I can remember. It looks like Wayland also has a client/server architecture which makes me suspect it's can be made network transparent just like X is.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      It does make for a ridiculous API though. No one writes X for this reason, but I suspect it would speed things up a lot if everyone writing for the platform didn't have to go through multiple layers of better APIs to talk to the actual display subsystem.
      - sedachv 16y ago
        What is the "X API"? Are you talking about Xlib? XCB? The protocol? Does this critique include XRender? There's really two parts to modern X programming: the window and event stuff, and XRender. The window and event system isn't bad, and it's fully asynchronous, which is a really big deal. XRender obviously can't be used for drawing by hand (that's why you have Cairo), but it's a really good design for a drawing protocol that supports a lot of possibilities for hardware acceleration.
FooBarWidget 16y ago
It looks like Wayland runs on top of X, not replacing X. Which makes sense. OpenGL is just an API, not a hardware wire-level protocol. Unless Wayland implements its own graphics drivers (which I find highly unlikely), it'll just make use of the same drivers that X uses for implementing OpenGL. And that still leaves things like input handling. From the Wikipedia entry it looks like Wayland uses X for input and rendering, but other apps can connect to Wayland to have things rendered. Kind of like how X itself works.
- _delirium 16y ago
  It doesn't seem like that's mandatory, though it can run on top of X. From the project's front page blurb: The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself. The clients can be traditional applications, X servers (rootless or fullscreen) or other display servers. They do have fairly well thought out plans for a (probably lengthy) transition of interoperating with X applications, though: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html
- mahmud 16y ago
  This is straight from this FAQ: Wayland is a nano display server, relying on drm modesetting, gem batchbuffer submission and hw initialization generally in the kernel. Wayland puts the compositing manager and display server in the same process. Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. That last part about integrating the compositing manager and display server into the same process .. that's your main point of departure.
  - metageek 16y ago
    >Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. Well, there's a bad idea. I suppose I could see an X replacement which incorporated window management into the server, instead of into a special client; but letting all the clients draw their own borders is a recipe for chaos.

fauigerzigerk 16y ago

The question is what worries you more. The somewhat stagnant, always lagging, always annoyingly close to usable Linux desktop experience or a pretty bold attempt at doing something about it.

darklajid 16y ago
Or - the possible collaboration/support problems. Someone else quoted here that Wayland needs toolkit support for lots of things (moving, resizing, decorating). Are we going to see that support (possibly contributed in parts by Canonical) in gtk (and QT/KDE, fwiw)? Or is this basically going for Unity only? In other words: I appreciate a more modern, desktop oriented architecture. X11 seems just too much "Mainframe terminal" focused. Which is nice - but not on my laptop/netbook or in the majority of private use cases, really. I fear, though, that this leads to a two classes of desktops for a while: The shiny Wayland one and the poor thing that still needs X11. Note that "fear" implies more emotions than reasoning - I don't know enough about Wayland support in other toolkits yet and don't understand how it could/would work with "arbitrary" setups (Open-/Fluxbox, lxde, one of the tiling wms). Update: I was reading up on Wayland - and completely missed the blog entry from Mark. The statement "We’ll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there’s no reason for them not to be there on day one either." removes most of my fears.
- crs 16y ago
  Well it appears that waylands first deployment is expected to be in MeeGo OS. So that implies Qt support will be developed and pushed by Nokia and Intel. Furthermore if you checkout waylands site, you can see screenshots of various Qt and Gtk based applications running on Wayland.