4 ms·

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 implement

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.
  - hencq 16y ago
    Isn't an X window manager just another X client too at the moment? Couldn't that system still work on Wayland? I might be completely wrong about this though, so someone more knowledgeable please explain. :-)
    - metageek 16y ago
      Yes, but it draws the decorations for other clients. The GP said that Wayland clients draw their own decorations.
thingie 16y ago
Well, it's an X server, in fact :-) It uses the parts of X server that were moved to the kernel in the last year or two (KMS, large part of graphic drivers). Wayland itself is very small, you can look into the source code to find anything you want to know, it's all there, easy to find. That's the good thing, perhaps, breaking that large and ugly X thing into small parts that we can easily understand, check, improve. I'm very glad of this and it's a great improvement. But it's still just a part, this whole idea that Ubuntu is ditching X server is so frightening. It's not happening, instead, they are breaking X into small parts, improving them, not having to deal with the insanely large X stack at once. Finally cleaning that large outdated codebase and so on. But. If you see it as 'we're getting rid of X11 completely, not coming back again', you are going to repeat every mistake made in the last 20 years. I'm afraid that's exactly what Shuttleworth and his minions are going to do :(
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Neither OSX nor Windows use X and both of them look much nicer. In my opinion the last 20 years of X were a mistake that should have been aborted a long time ago. Both Windows and OSX do remote desktop just fine for the minority who need it.
  - sedachv 16y ago
    "Neither OSX nor Windows use X and both of them look much nicer." What does the graphics design of OSX and Windows have to do with how X is architected? Which effects provided by the OSX or Windows interface cannot be done by a compositing X window manager? "Both Windows and OSX do remote desktop just fine for the minority who need it." X network transparency has nothing to do with remote desktop - as a matter of fact X doesn't have that notion or any support for it. The X protocol is strictly for per-application event and drawing. There is a huge class of problems that X can solve where remote desktop would be useless.
  - qjz 16y ago
    I guess I'm a minority of that minority, in that I love X for its ability to run single applications remotely over the network. Neither Windows nor OSX do this well (if at all). Frankly, I don't want a whole desktop when I can just run the desired application in its own window(s), well integrated with the platform I happen to be on at the moment. Currently, most Linux distributions support this out of the box, and it's easy enough to install Cygwin on Windows or XQuartz on OSX. Hopefully, this will still be possible under Wayland.
loewenskind 16y ago
That's not what I get from [1] at all. Maybe that was the case once but it looks like it replaces X now. [1] http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html

_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.
- hencq 16y ago
  Isn't an X window manager just another X client too at the moment? Couldn't that system still work on Wayland? I might be completely wrong about this though, so someone more knowledgeable please explain. :-)
  - metageek 16y ago
    Yes, but it draws the decorations for other clients. The GP said that Wayland clients draw their own decorations.

thingie 16y ago

Well, it's an X server, in fact :-) It uses the parts of X server that were moved to the kernel in the last year or two (KMS, large part of graphic drivers). Wayland itself is very small, you can look into the source code to find anything you want to know, it's all there, easy to find. That's the good thing, perhaps, breaking that large and ugly X thing into small parts that we can easily understand, check, improve. I'm very glad of this and it's a great improvement. But it's still just a part, this whole idea that Ubuntu is ditching X server is so frightening. It's not happening, instead, they are breaking X into small parts, improving them, not having to deal with the insanely large X stack at once. Finally cleaning that large outdated codebase and so on. But. If you see it as 'we're getting rid of X11 completely, not coming back again', you are going to repeat every mistake made in the last 20 years. I'm afraid that's exactly what Shuttleworth and his minions are going to do :(

loewenskind 16y ago
Neither OSX nor Windows use X and both of them look much nicer. In my opinion the last 20 years of X were a mistake that should have been aborted a long time ago. Both Windows and OSX do remote desktop just fine for the minority who need it.
- sedachv 16y ago
  "Neither OSX nor Windows use X and both of them look much nicer." What does the graphics design of OSX and Windows have to do with how X is architected? Which effects provided by the OSX or Windows interface cannot be done by a compositing X window manager? "Both Windows and OSX do remote desktop just fine for the minority who need it." X network transparency has nothing to do with remote desktop - as a matter of fact X doesn't have that notion or any support for it. The X protocol is strictly for per-application event and drawing. There is a huge class of problems that X can solve where remote desktop would be useless.
- qjz 16y ago
  I guess I'm a minority of that minority, in that I love X for its ability to run single applications remotely over the network. Neither Windows nor OSX do this well (if at all). Frankly, I don't want a whole desktop when I can just run the desired application in its own window(s), well integrated with the platform I happen to be on at the moment. Currently, most Linux distributions support this out of the box, and it's easy enough to install Cygwin on Windows or XQuartz on OSX. Hopefully, this will still be possible under Wayland.

loewenskind 16y ago

That's not what I get from [1] at all. Maybe that was the case once but it looks like it replaces X now. [1] http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html