5 ms·

In the near future, probably nothing. Wayland is (probably) still years from getting adopted even by "bleeding-edge" distributions like Arch. Your everyday exp

by Spittie 13y ago

In the near future, probably nothing. Wayland is (probably) still years from getting adopted even by "bleeding-edge" distributions like Arch. Your everyday experience shouldn't get affected, hopefully. Wayland removes a lot of legacy from X, but their end result is pretty much the same, "display some stuff on my screen". And XWayland should assure this, since you'll be able to run applications that don't support X on Wayland in a seamless way. Most applications use some toolkit anyway (gtk, qt) that are getting ported to Wayland, so the author of that applications shouldn't do any changes to make it work on Wayland (beside recompiling it). At best, Wayland should be lighter than X, and it should fix tearing if you have some now (but this is already fixed by modern wm, at least on my computer). One of the biggest change that you shouldn't notice is security, X has tons of holes (every application can read/write into another application), which wayland fix (see here for more: http://mupuf.org/blog/2014/02/19/wayland-compositors-why-and-how-to-handle/ http://mupuf.org/blog/2014/02/19/wayland-compositors-why-and...). Same for Mir (but I dunno about the security issues that Wayland fixes), but upstream doesn't seems willing to accept Mir-specific patches, so Canonical might end with having to patch applications/toolkit/drivers downstream (but the user shouldn't notice any difference anyway).

shmerl 13y ago
Why "years"? KDE and Gnome are close to enabling Wayland support during this year. The only unknown is when proprietary drivers will do it. Apparently Nvidia is working on it. So they might finish this year as well. Things look good so far.
- hollerith 13y ago
  Most users of Linux on the "desktop" are more dependent on a web browser than on KDE or Gnome, so the drivers are not the only unknown.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    GTK and Qt are shaping up well too. Firefox is working on switching to GTK 3. And XWayland can help for those who lag behind.
    - hollerith 13y ago
      Can you point to any commits on the Firefox tree or is your evidence limited to blog posts and mailing-list messages? There are commits [1] on the Chrome tree designed to get Chrome working on Wayland, but for those commits to reach significant numbers of users will require the cooperation or at least the "non-interference" of the employer of most of the Chrome devs -- which is at this time an unknown. [1] https://github.com/01org/ozone-wayland/commits/master https://github.com/01org/ozone-wayland/commits/master
      - abrowne 13y ago
        Regarding Firefox Gtk3: Firefox Bugzilla bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627699 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627699 You can install a build on Fedora via this copr (like a PPA for Fedora): http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/stransky/FirefoxGtk3/ http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/stransky/FirefoxGtk3/
        shmerl 13y ago
        I think the only remaining problem is Flash. Hopefully Mozilla Shumway will cover that at some point.
      - shmerl 13y ago
        See: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/GTK3 https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/GTK3
- Spittie 13y ago
  I want Wayland to ship as soon as possible, I'm looking at the situation in the most "negative" way so that if it ship sooner than I believe, I'll be happy, and if it doesn't, I'll not be sad. (Wayland has been close to shipping for a lot of time now, remember when Shuttleworth wanted to ship it in 12.04 as a developer preview? The good old times when Canonical didn't suffer from NIH). Gnome should ship with Wayland considered as stable with 3.14, and (as far as I know), there's no plain to ship KDE on Wayland before KDE5. XWayland still need works, and without it no distro will ship Wayland. The proprietary drivers still need to come out (Nvidia might be at work on them already, but for all we know it might still be just some drawing on a blackboard - and let's not forget about AMD, that will probably take quite a bit of time). Also "normal" distro (Mint, openSUSE, Fedora...) will probably take their time as well to ensure that everything is working. I'd expect to see some kind of experimental preview, then a version with support to both (but with the default still being X) and then a version with Wayland (and an X failback). Probably I'm just being negative here, and if everything happens faster than how I think it will, then great! Also, probably just a generic "years" feels too much, my expected timeframe is/was 2-3 years.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    KDE5 is coming out in June, but initial release will not support Wayland in KWin. But it should come after as an update. I'm not sure about exact schedules though. See: * http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma/2014.6_Release_Schedule http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma/2014.6_Release_Sche... * http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/03/kde5-and-wayland/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/03/kde5-and-wayla...
- chronid 13y ago
  Closed NVIDIA/AMD drivers do not implement EGL yet, and that is IIRC a prerequisite for Wayland. That could be a reason, unfortunately.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Nvidia is working on it: http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2014-March/041534.html http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2014-March/041534.htm...
zokier 13y ago
> Wayland is (probably) still years from getting adopted even by "bleeding-edge" distributions like Arch AFAIK Fedora is planning to ship Wayland in version 21, scheduled for release later this year. Probably not as default, but still.
ape4 13y ago
How about speed? With less kruft it might be faster.

by Spittie 13y ago

shmerl 13y ago

Why "years"? KDE and Gnome are close to enabling Wayland support during this year. The only unknown is when proprietary drivers will do it. Apparently Nvidia is working on it. So they might finish this year as well. Things look good so far.

hollerith 13y ago
Most users of Linux on the "desktop" are more dependent on a web browser than on KDE or Gnome, so the drivers are not the only unknown.
- shmerl 13y ago
  GTK and Qt are shaping up well too. Firefox is working on switching to GTK 3. And XWayland can help for those who lag behind.
  - hollerith 13y ago
    Can you point to any commits on the Firefox tree or is your evidence limited to blog posts and mailing-list messages? There are commits [1] on the Chrome tree designed to get Chrome working on Wayland, but for those commits to reach significant numbers of users will require the cooperation or at least the "non-interference" of the employer of most of the Chrome devs -- which is at this time an unknown. [1] https://github.com/01org/ozone-wayland/commits/master https://github.com/01org/ozone-wayland/commits/master
    - abrowne 13y ago
      Regarding Firefox Gtk3: Firefox Bugzilla bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627699 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627699 You can install a build on Fedora via this copr (like a PPA for Fedora): http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/stransky/FirefoxGtk3/ http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/stransky/FirefoxGtk3/
      - shmerl 13y ago
        I think the only remaining problem is Flash. Hopefully Mozilla Shumway will cover that at some point.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      See: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/GTK3 https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/GTK3
Spittie 13y ago
I want Wayland to ship as soon as possible, I'm looking at the situation in the most "negative" way so that if it ship sooner than I believe, I'll be happy, and if it doesn't, I'll not be sad. (Wayland has been close to shipping for a lot of time now, remember when Shuttleworth wanted to ship it in 12.04 as a developer preview? The good old times when Canonical didn't suffer from NIH). Gnome should ship with Wayland considered as stable with 3.14, and (as far as I know), there's no plain to ship KDE on Wayland before KDE5. XWayland still need works, and without it no distro will ship Wayland. The proprietary drivers still need to come out (Nvidia might be at work on them already, but for all we know it might still be just some drawing on a blackboard - and let's not forget about AMD, that will probably take quite a bit of time). Also "normal" distro (Mint, openSUSE, Fedora...) will probably take their time as well to ensure that everything is working. I'd expect to see some kind of experimental preview, then a version with support to both (but with the default still being X) and then a version with Wayland (and an X failback). Probably I'm just being negative here, and if everything happens faster than how I think it will, then great! Also, probably just a generic "years" feels too much, my expected timeframe is/was 2-3 years.
- shmerl 13y ago
  KDE5 is coming out in June, but initial release will not support Wayland in KWin. But it should come after as an update. I'm not sure about exact schedules though. See: * http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma/2014.6_Release_Schedule http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma/2014.6_Release_Sche... * http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/03/kde5-and-wayland/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/03/kde5-and-wayla...
chronid 13y ago
Closed NVIDIA/AMD drivers do not implement EGL yet, and that is IIRC a prerequisite for Wayland. That could be a reason, unfortunately.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Nvidia is working on it: http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2014-March/041534.html http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2014-March/041534.htm...

zokier 13y ago

> Wayland is (probably) still years from getting adopted even by "bleeding-edge" distributions like Arch AFAIK Fedora is planning to ship Wayland in version 21, scheduled for release later this year. Probably not as default, but still.

ape4 13y ago

How about speed? With less kruft it might be faster.