Ubuntu Delays Wayland Plans, System Compositor

An anonymous reader writes "The Wayland-usage in Ubuntu 12.10 via setting it up as a system video compositor has been delayed to at least Ubuntu 13.04. Developers made progress on running Ubuntu on Wayland (there are experimental packages available), but they need more time to complete their work and ready Wayland. For those wanting to try out Wayland on Linux, there is a specialty Wayland LiveCD."

Comments

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit sux. X11 for life! Stop crapifying Linux with stupid eye candy trying to chase MacOS SUX and Windoze.

Re:lol

[fnj]

Post is insightful you stupid moron moderators.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit sux. X11 for life!

Yo, homie! Lets represent on Slashdot!

X11 FOR LIFE!!!

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Young whipper snappers...

Teletype machine is always going to be best for hard core gamers, Hunt the Wumpus is so much less immersive with a display.

The only thing I don't like is the way the teleprinter sometimes makes the needle arm jump on my phonograph.

Re:lol

[fnj]

Insightful post, keep making idiotic mods if you must.

Re:lol

[fnj]

Post is still insightful.

The plan for your lady...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take her out to a romantic dinner. Whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

Later, when you've retired to the bedroom, ram it in the back door, With no warning given, no apologies offered. Trust me - your wife will thank you afterwards.

$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Anonymous Coward]

Disproof of all apk's statements: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040729&cid=40949719
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040697&cid=40949343
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040597&cid=40948659
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3037687&cid=40947927
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040425&cid=40946755
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038791&cid=40942439
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3024445&cid=40942207
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038597&cid=40942031
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038601&cid=40942085
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040803&cid=40950045
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040867&cid=40950563
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040921&cid=40950839
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041035&cid=40951899
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041081&cid=40952169
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041091&cid=40952383
AND MANY MORE

$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.

I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.

Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.

Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.

I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.

If Natalie Portman is not measurable, She is Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, i

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Anonymous Coward]

So /this/ is what it's like to be insane...

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you need to fuck off.

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Anonymous Coward]

No, THIS is what it's like to be driven insane.

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Anonymous Coward]

oh come on.. this is hilarious.

HOST files you say? tell me more! I've never heard of such a thing.

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[Nikker]

I agree I am intrigued by these host files how do I sign up for your newsletter?

First Microsoft and now Canonical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the new and better GUI that we the public have been demanding never arrive?

At this rate, it'll be Apple.

Re:First Microsoft and now Canonical...

[Grishnakh]

Wayland has little to do with GUIs; it's the software layer underneath the graphics.

Re:First Microsoft and now Canonical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wayland is stillborn thanks to the open source release of CDE!

Now GNOME and KDE will die their much deserved agonizing deaths!

Haha, seriously though, they've got wayland to fuck with. I wish they'd leave fucking X alone and at least have kept the goddamn DRI1/XAA support for older hardware that hadn't gotten updated. Besides which the latest X releases I'd imagine don't work on pre-3.x kernels, which means some people whose hardware is unsupported can no longer update to the latest version for patches/security fixes. Nevermind the bloat. Have you guys looked at the archive sizes for the 3.3.x X released, then compared them to the 4.x and now Freedesktop releases? They've like 20-40x larger! And if you go and look at the supported video platforms you might ask yourself *WHY*.

Wayland will just be more of the same.

Re:First Microsoft and now Canonical...

[Anonymous Coward]

x.org folks will kill X by trying to compete with Wayland. I think the GNU zealots should move on to Wayland and leave the rest of us alone. Linux can have it's own graphics system at this point. I was worried about stagnation for every other UNIX like OS, but at this point it may make things simpler. At least we wouldn't have to change to the technology of the week.

What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know I can Google, but a one sentence description would've made the summary far more useful.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here, useful summaries are for other sites.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Requiem18th]

Wel basically it's a display server, like X11/X.org, except it's optimized to run locally, unlike X11/X.org which has it's origins in networked environments and tries its best to work either locally or remotely.

Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around, yet W, or Wayland, tries to get rid of that aspect completely.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[aix tom]

Well. I think the quote on Wookieepedia sums it up best:

"Wayland is where Emperor Palpatine's secret toy-box was. All kinds of nasty dark side things on Wayland."

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around, yet W, or Wayland, tries to get rid of that aspect completely.

From the 10,000 ft view it sure looks like wayland is just reinvention for reinvention's sake and is likely to run into a whole host of problems that X figured out 20+ years ago.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know I can Google, but a one sentence description would've made the summary far more useful.

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[MBCook]

Wayland is designed to fix a lot of the problems that X has. X, for historical reasons, does a TON of things. It has network transparency, it's responsible for input, for setting up the graphics card's memory and registers, drawing various primitive shapes, font rendering, etc.

But today 99% of the time people don't use the network transparency stuff in X, they run locally. But all sorts of memory has to be shuffled around. X mandates all sorts of bitmap formats that must be supported. Today the kernel, through KMS, can setup the graphics card. We have libraries like Cairo to draw basic shapes. Then there are all sorts of weird things that have been hacked into/onto X to support common features like resizing and rotating your desktop.

Wayland basically started with a blank slate. The kernel can setup the video card, so it won't do that. Most people don't use network transparency, so it doesn't do that (you can run an X client on Wayland, for when you still need the feature). The GUI toolkits and OpenGL libraries already draw everything, so it doesn't do that stuff.

LWN had an article from two years ago about what Wayland set out to accomplish. Things may have changed since there, here are two updates from LWN describing Wayland earlier this year.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to Google, OP! The Mighty Wikipedia has the answer: "Wayland first appeared in Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire novel. The planet was home to the Emperor's Mount Tantiss storehouse, which contained a cloaking device and cloning chambers that Grand Admiral Thrawn used in his war against the New Republic. Wayland was also home to the insane clone of the Jedi Master Joruus C'Baoth. The Mount Tantiss storehouse was eventually destroyed and C'Baoth killed. Wayland is the homeworld for the Psadan and the Myneirshi." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(Star_Wars)#Wayland) In short Canonical has cowardly decided to forego its interstellar invasion plans.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around..."

Pardon? I might be missing something, but

localhost $ ssh user@machine.with.x11.net -X
machine.with.x11.net $ xterm

works just fine for me on machines whose sshd has been configured to allow X11 forwarding.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question here - I keep hearing that Wayland will have a built-in window manager. Will this WM be programmable / extensible / customizable? I'm an AwesomeWM user - if there's no way to re-implement this for Wayland, feature for feature, count me out... I couldn't care less about how programs get remoted, but being able to customize the behavior of the window manager is _required_ - that's the killer feature... So I assume that I can run Awesome under Wayland, but it will only manage X clients; can Awesome be ported to Wayland itself, so that it manages X clients and native Wayland clients?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about ancient X-related limitations that live and annoy the shit out of people to this day?
Ever heard of ridiculous limitation of 4 active keyboard layouts max? Long time ago someone decided that 2 bits in X11 protocol should be enough for everybody.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically the idea of wayland is that by using the wayland libraries the window manager becomes the display server. There are no restrictions on how the window manager works, other than that it is a compositor. The end result is that you can have tiling window managers like Awesome but they will leverage the GPU a tiny bit for the rendering. From an end user perspective there is no reason you should see a change given that the devs are halfway competent.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fm6]

I don't think TPP was asking you to run Google for him. He was giving the editors a hard time for not answering an obvious question (WTF is it?) in their summary.

Not that Googling did you much good, since the Wayland web site is also sloppy about describing what they're doing, and you came away with the weird impression that it was about reinventing X on a different model. Not even close. Here's a much better summary from the Ubuntu site:

Wayland is a new protocol that enables 3D compositors to be used as primary display servers, instead of running the 3D compositor as an extension under the (2D) X.org display server.

Or, in layman's terms, it assumes you're using a 3D desktop from the start, instead of bolting on 3D capabilities to an 2D framework.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[JesseMcDonald]

can Awesome be ported to Wayland itself, so that it manages X clients and native Wayland clients?

Yes, but with a twist. Wayland doesn't have window managers as a separate process. Instead of porting your preferred window manager to work with Wayland, one would implement the Wayland protocol support in the window manager, with help from libwayland for the common parts. Supposedly the Wayland support only requires about as much code as the boilerplate for an X window manager. Of course, X core rendering and XRender will be unavailable. If the WM already uses a portable library like Cairo, GTK+ or Qt for rendering that shouldn't be a problem; otherwise all the drawing code would need to be ported as well.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wayland was also home to the insane clone of the Jedi Master Joruus C'Baoth.

Just as an FYI, the Jedi master was Jorus C'Baoth. If memory serves, he was lost when his extragalactic exploration ship exploded.

His insane clone was named Joruus C'Baoth. It may be that the insane clone had an insane clone, but in that case the apparent naming convention would suggest that the clone's name would be Joruuus.

Just some memory flotsam from the late 90's that washed ashore when I saw your post...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[interval1066]

likely to run into a whole host of problems that X figured out 20+ years ago.

Too bad the Consortium never implemented an effective solution for most of 'em. I think that's the reason Canonical decided to use Unity. Shame they decided to almost completely re-design the UI. Mad bastards.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wayland is an attempt to remove the network transparency of X... in a world where everything is networked.

Some people might consider this utterly retarded.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

I just realized why I ignore Wayland: every comment in favor of Wayland, somewhere in the comment, will have the same fallacy about the network feature of X being a problem. Myself and lots of others user the remote X feature on a regular basis. I and thousands of IT professional use remote access constantly on other platforms, mainly windows. Using any of the remote technologies available for windows makes me grind my teeth constantly since I was ruined by using X first and know how it should work instead of what I have to use every day. I assume I'm not alone or even just part of a small crowd in that respect..
If there's some good sources for the % of users who don't want it, that's fine. quote 'em and I'm glad to read up on it. But, most times I hear just claimed lack of need for it when I know at least for myself and many others remote X is one of the most valuable features in X. If there was at least SOME info on Wayland that either left off the comments about how bad remote X is or showed some facts to back the claim, I'd pay more attention. Unfortunately I've seen no comment yet for Wayland that does more than say "I don't know of anyone who uses remote X, so most users don't use it"
And, one day Wayland may actually catch on and take over the desktop in Unix. Now matter how good it is, it will be a sad day since a useful piece of functionality is thrown away when it used to be included for for free (free in terms of performance cost, free in terms of setup, free in terms of no effort needed for developers to support it, etc.). Doesn't make it easy to look forward to Wayland right now. This comment was at least less inflammatory than most and the rest of the comment was very informative, but I still would like just once for someone to back the claims against the network feature since I value myself quite a bit and have heard many others say the same.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and people like you ignore the fact that you will still be able to run X11 apps on Wayland. Stop being a drama queen.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[nurb432]

For those of us who use the network transparency of X11, its a attempt to 'return' to a simpler less functional time where your windowing sub-system assumed that you were all alone and had no friends.

A throwback, an abomination. It should have never been allowed to get this far, and the people responsible taken out back and 'dealt with.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Desler]

Too bad the Consortium never implemented an effective solution for most of 'em. I think that's the reason Canonical decided to use Unity.

That makes no sense. Unity runs atop X11.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around,

Excuse me whilst ssh to a machine in New York and run something which will display here on my machine in Scotland...
As I've been able to do so (without having to think too hard about it), oh, since around 1993 ('95/96 with ssh), with various incarnations of X11 running on various flavours of various linux distros, BSD distros, Solaris Distros, Irix distros, Digital Unix distros, etc. etc. etc.

yet W, or Wayland, tries to get rid of that aspect completely.

Then it's about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit and about as useful as a catflap on a sub.

The minute any Linux distribution takes this sort of shit seriously enough to offer it as the primary display system will mean some work for me as I'll be removing it from all my machines.

Mind you, the POS that is known as Ubuntu isn't installed on any of my systems anyway, either at home or at 'work' (had a long discussion with the CEO once about this, as he'd caught the 'Ubuntu good' BS bug a while back, finally persuaded him [after setting up a test machine with the then current stable versions of both distros] that we'd be better off talking to the organ grinder, not the monkey, so stuck with Debian for the desktops).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbc]

But what about native Wayland aps? (Is there such a thing?) Will I be able to run those across the network? (Asking, I don't know.) Like the GP, I use X over the network. If I can run *every* graphical ap on my machine over the network, then, sorry, no sale.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[interval1066]

Unity does, and it will run on top of Wayland as well, to make the transition from X11 to Wayland "transparent" for all of us. Never the less I personally hate it.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Wayland is meant to move X and other legacy stuffs out of the local rendering path, making X second-class (and optional) citizen. This is one (big) difference between Wayland and previous attempts is that it is actually meant to work with X. Rather than removing X, It replaces X's position from being the center of the rendering universe. I don't know if Wayland would succeed, but it would satisfy both the network transparency AND the local desktop crowd. It seems like a very sane way to progress to me since I don't believe you'd want to run a lot of composite apps over X network protocol anyway. I think Wayland deserves the hype for what they're trying to accomplish.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Desler]

Yes, but your statement still made no sense. So because the X Consortium didn't fix bugs in X11, Canonical switched to Unity? WTF does that mean?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[oakgrove]

Each to his own I guess but the more I use Unity the more I like it. I even like the dual monitor support everybody else hates.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mdmkolbe]

If Wayland catches on, there will be no more X11 apps. Everything will be Wayland apps.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just inspired me to log into my server and start an xterm. Strangely satisfying.

Goddamn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess we must have a Wayland fanboy as a moderator today.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[oakgrove]

about as useful as a catflap on a sub.

But I am a catflap on a sub you insensitive clod!

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[MBCook]

Wayland supports X11 in the same way OS X does. There is an X server running as a Wayland client. It would work like a normal X server, doing all it's own compositing, etc., and then send the output to Wayland to be composited with all the other programs/windows.

If you launch the X client, normal X programs should continue to work.

I believe they specifically decided not to even try to make Wayland network transparent. I think you'd either have to run the program on the remote host and transfer everything VNC style, or implement your own GUI/processing separation and handle the networking between the two yourself.

There are people who use X forwarding, you're obviously one. I believe Wayland was designed from the ground up to make things easier for the client.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[MBCook]

That's my understanding as well. It would work like OS X where the X server is just another application you can launch that then handles the X clients.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jones_supa]

But what about native Wayland aps? (Is there such a thing?) Will I be able to run those across the network?

No.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wayland developers have repeatedly said they will support network transparency. Stop being a fucking drama queen.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jones_supa]

Here's a method by which something similar might work in Wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

A thousand or thousands is anywhere near the millions who don't.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

The big piece of evidence is the failure of network transparency to become a killer feature of Linux. I started using X in '88 and was using it daily by '92. I thought X was amazingly cool the ability to send windows around change displays. I've seen corporate settings where these features are integrated into applications and made real use of. And certainly for system administration the ability to run X applications remotely has been useful particular to monitor. I thought this would be Linux's killer feature.

But in the end, X network transparency doesn't work very well over Wan. It doesn't work very well over MPLS. In general it doesn't work all that well for the situations where you couldn't just be using some sort of remote solution. X wasn't able to handle the security problems and so the whole infrastructure of remote X and remote shells has gotten more complex and thus less useful. So today even Linux apps use a web interface or a thick java client to do client server work. Which means network transparency failed to deliver an alternative to client server. I still use it a couple times a year, I certainly think its better than what you get on non network transparent GUIs when trying to operate them remotely. But ultimately if network transparency doesn't let you avoid the problems of web or thick clients, what's the point?

The main thing about Wayland is allowing applications to control drawing and make judgements like they do on non-network transparent systems. That technology works and is important. For simple apps that work well over WAN today there is no reason for them to ever move away from X, and Wayland will support X. But for the rest, something is better than nothing. Yes it is a pity that network transparency couldn't or wasn't made to deliver on its potential.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

Optional is the issue. With X remote is available ANYTIME it's needed. Or are you saying there's no way apps will be written directly for Wayland? If that's the case, why have it anyway?
Otherwise you're saying Wayland has a well designed and/or written migration path....but it's still migration AWAY from the feature that I and many others feel is important...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fippo]

there are already vastly many things which you really cannot run over a remote X connection, but you seem to conveniently ignore this

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fippo]

you already generally have to use something like VNC or xpra (layered over X, not really using it) in order to get reasonable performance or to detach and reattach remotely. X might seem like the answer until you try to use it... it isn't good enough because it's nowhere near usable as GNU screen.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fippo]

X is remote "any time it's needed," except for all the many many times when the app was specifically not written to support it, or was written in a way where the performance is unusably bad when run remotely.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

I haven't had the best performance with everything, but they all ran. And I've tried a lot....even xine runs OK remote....Doom3 ran, not playable, but then again, I was not on the same local network when i tried it. Menu's were fine. What have you ran into that does not work?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

I'm not sure I understand "written to support it". That's my comment on X: written for X, it works remotely. What have you run into that didn't work? This is a serious question, since I haven't ran into any native X apps that didn't at least run. Network speed makes many perform bad, but it still works for the things I've tried....even Windows apps via Wine at least used to work, but I haven't tried that trick in a while.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they originally wanted to call it gayland but realized (unlike microsoft with 'metro') that would hit just a little too close to the truth for their wheel reinvention, so they changed the g to a w.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[epyT-R]

then, really, what's the point of wayland?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[firewrought]

I've used X's network transparency; and I have found it useful. But sometimes an amazing way-ahead-of-its-time technology stagnates and becomes a worst-of-class-drag. You can launch a program remotely, but you cannot connect to an already running program nor can you leave it running after the connection is severed. RDP turns out to be a more user-friendly approach, and it will also pull your printers/sound/hard drives/USB devices over. Why can't open source OS's have nice things? Build Wayland, and then build a better RDP with new features like proper multi-monitor support, resolution switching, and optional seemless windowing.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around, ...

What does that mean? A remote X client still works perfectly well with Kubuntu 12.04.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

There's no question remote X has issues. Like you say, the networks and computing environment of today give X a lot of challenge. My big push and the original complaint in this thread is that every Wayland comment includes the remark that remote app usage is not important enough to be a base feature. I disagree and get tired of someone saying the feature is useless when I know it's not.
Right now, there are work arounds for the issues X has, but they are still work arounds. What X does needs to be done better and can be. Extra software and better coding of the X apps can go a long way, but there are limits. If someone wanted start from scratch and recreate a window system, I'm not opposed to that. I just disagree with the remote/network feature being called unneeded and unused. Wayland comments always seem to do that, and usually (not always) follow up with statements from people who do not use it and/or do not understand how it works.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

I agree that the "unneeded and unused" is BS. The people who support Wayland are proposing eliminating network transparency in exchange for other advantages having to do with higher refresh rates. I agree with you it would be more honest to just say they believe on balance this is the right trade off. X existed when most modern GUIs which made the same tradeoffs were built. Wayland supporters are just saying that Commodore, Microsoft, Apple, IBM (OS/2),... were right and SGI, Sun, Digital, HP, IBM (AIX).. were wrong in figuring out the right balance of features. Wayland supporters are basically saying that ultimately, even in 2012, its all about ramming as many triangles through the video card as possible, and doing that with predictable timings; that anything that slows down those triangles, like networking must go overboard.

Similarly X has 30 year history of really really doing a bad job of delivering a smooth GUI experience. That while in theory the network protocol shouldn't cost much, in practice it often seems to complicate design tremendously. X supporters IMHO and experience have trouble often admitting how many GUI projects fail or take 10x longer than they should because of the complexity of working with the X / multiple window manager / multi GUI stack.

If everyone were putting their cards on the table, then we could have an honest conversation about tradeoffs. Because X servers can run on top of X it might be possible to even come to an agreement about which applications should remain network transparent and which shouldn't. I suspect most supporters of network transparency could care less if games and video editing software went local only. And I suspect that most supporters of wayland could care less if server monitoring and server installation software remained X forever. Longer term though the tradeoffs become real. Gnome and KDE will either be built around Wayland or built around X, its going to be impossible for them to do both well. If around Wayland then Linux will be a system of local GUIs with at best a few networkable applications. If around X then Wayland will be a hack run in place of the GUI or only in full screen mode, for real time rendering.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has network transparency,

Which costs virtually nothing. Not to mention all the other popular platforms communicate between client and server processes with IPC, the same way that X does.

it's responsible for input,

As a window system does, and again, as the other guys do.

for setting up the graphics card's memory and registers, drawing various primitive shapes, font rendering, etc.

Again, that sounds like a windowing system. (Although modern X does some of this, such as font rendering, with client libraries ever since the late 90s and early 2000s, so I think some of your argument comes from a criticism of pre-199 X.)

Overall I think you're pretty confused. If you work in software engineering please quit. Otherwise please surrender any geek badges. It's very obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

No drama queen, just pointing out that the reason for getting rid of X11 is bovine excrement. Wayland is a shiny new thing for the sake of new shiny thing for those who spend their time making new themes for Gnome/KDE and think it's heavy duty programming. The same people who ask why Math is required for a CS degree, because they never have used it. Yeah I need to insert a piece of borken linux software in between the hardware and X11 so I can spend my time figuring out what's wrong with Wayland rather than keeping the network/cluster running and doing the coding I should be doing.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[swilly]

I haven't had any luck with programs using OpenGL or with compositing, but then again I haven't tried all that hard, so there might be a way to do these things. Wayland supports remote desktops, which I find more useful than remoting individual applications, but I can see why network transparency matters to some people.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, No, yes and maybe. FAQ is useful. http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_8

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "some people" you just mentioned probably think OS X is utterly retarded too. The rest of the world will pass you by and call you guys the retards.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

about as useful as a catflap on a sub.

But I am a catflap on a sub you insensitive clod!

One quick Google later...

Ah, that particular usage of the term 'catflap' is quite new to me, so my apologies.

I was thinking more of the device which would allow for free ingress and egress to the boat for those of the more domesticated members of the ailuroidea who chose the life subaquatic..
I suppose that, as (AFAIK) sub crews are still all male, the other type of 'catflap' may be quite a useful member of the crew (and, ahem, in some quarters probably most 'welcome' ).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[oakgrove]

+1 Funny to you!

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[whoever57]

But in the end, X network transparency doesn't work very well over Wan. It doesn't work very well over MPLS. In general it doesn't work all that well for the situations where you couldn't just be using some sort of remote solution.

X works very well over a LAN, and, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, problems running over a WAN will go away.

X wasn't able to handle the security problems and so the whole infrastructure of remote X and remote shells has gotten more complex and thus less useful.

Now you are showing that you are out of touch. Tunneling X over SSH resolves the security problems and makes things much more simple (no more "xhost +" ). Over the LAN, I see no lag when using remote X tunneled over SSH.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to this. And no, 'but you can always use X as a client if you need it'is not the correct answer. Once essential parts of the desktop are a wayland app the the built in remote accessebility of any unix desktop will be dead and it will be a sad day indeed. Wayland has some nice ideas and could possibly be more efficient but please please please don't throw away useful functionality 'just because'.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, why remote the entire desktop?
I can't see a use case other than, wow, that looks cool.

I use RDP and X forwarding every day, X forwarding is much, much nicer.

Just use windows if that's what you like...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[whoever57]

The Wayland developers have repeatedly said they will support network transparency. Stop being a fucking drama queen.

Their FAQ disagrees with you:

Is Wayland network transparent / does it support remote rendering?

No, that is outside the scope of Wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

Except that X has been tinkered to work for desktop systems for so long that there little of that network oriented code left around

It was never there to start with because the design is to use local sockets for local stuff and network sockets for network stuff. The big thing with X is network stuff can work as if it's on the local screen, but for some reason some people get that virtue backwards and assume that means local stuff is double handled.
Wayland is a different way to get stuff in the framebuffer without some of the features of X and presumably a few new features of it's own.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

I haven't had any luck with programs using OpenGL

I had problems too. Then I put a video card with 4MB of memory and some 3D acceleration into my machine. Then I could use 3D visualisation software run on a big SGI machine and operate it from my crappy pentium 60 in another building. That was in 1999 and very easily fixed with old donated hardware.
Anyway - crap drivers are crap drivers and some of the MS Windows implementations of X are crap at OpenGL (Exceed? maybe they finally fixed that) while others are not (everything else).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

The big piece of evidence is the failure of network transparency to become a killer feature of Linux

I don't know about you, but that IS the killer feature that got it placed onto everyone's desks in my workplace. A lot of scientific and engineering software that needs some CPU power behind it never got ported to MS Windows. A lot of it makes more sense running on big noisy stuff in server rooms instead of desktop PCs anyway.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[ais523]

ssh -X has some restrictions for security reasons. If you trust the other end, try using ssh -Y instead, which lets it do things like run code on the local GPU (which OpenGL probably cares about).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[binarylarry]

Would they then be an Insane Clone Posse?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for -Y, which is correct for forwarding. AIGLX allows remote composting and acceleration etc if the endpoint supports it.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mdmkolbe]

I suspect most supporters of network transparency could care less if games and video editing software went local only.

I agree that I don't care about those ... until the day that I do. Suppose I need to test the installation of some game or video editing software. ;-P Or for example, one day I had office hours downstairs, but needed to run a program off my machine upstairs (yes, actually happened and X worked like a dream). There is no reason to believe that the monitoring-installation vs games-video-editing division or any other division that you can think of will be the correct one for all use cases. Such a division makes a policy (i.e. functionality) assumption about user behaviors that shouldn't be made(*). I'd rather have the mechanism for the user to do either.

It's a shame really. I would like to see a good replacement for X, but I live on the network. I would like to believe the people behind Wayland are smart enough to incorporate network transparency, but they seem to rather stubborn in omitting it(**).

(*) Aside from the problem of meaning the community now has to permanently support two graphics stacks (X and Wayland).

(**) No, VNC isn't good enough. No, having the app implement the network doesn't work as that requires having the app installed locally and not all apps will implement a network (which gets us back to the start of this post). No, back patching network transparency into the protocol "later" isn't a good way to go about design. No, hoping that someone else solves the problem isn't a good design philosophy either.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case Wayland should integrate with Facebook... in a world where everything's integrating with Facebook.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mellyra]

Wayland is an attempt to remove the network transparency of X... in a world where everything is networked.

I just don't get why they are so keen to get rid off that faeture... When I was in uni (just four years ago) our department had a powerful Sun server that mostly powered the computer lab's thin clients but also allowed ssh access from the outside. Being able to log into that server via ssh with X forwarding and run Maple, Mathematica, ... was awesome and saved me the expense of getting any of that software myself.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me whilst ssh..

Urgh, an obvious 'I' missing there..' whilst I ssh' it should have read.
in my defence, the cat had barfed over the keyboard (probably a reaction to the '..little of that network oriented code' statement)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd either have to run the program on the remote host and transfer everything VNC style, or implement your own GUI/processing separation and handle the networking between the two yourself.

Possibly better than VNC style, you could just make another server present the wayland api which just serializes it over the network. Of course if the api is sufficiently stupid, you could end up moving even more data back and forth that way, but then you can probably optimize stuff at the api call level better than using only raw on-screen pixel data.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dkf]

you already generally have to use something like VNC or xpra (layered over X, not really using it) in order to get reasonable performance or to detach and reattach remotely.

X might seem like the answer until you try to use it... it isn't good enough because it's nowhere near usable as GNU screen.

Quite apart from the fact that terminals are a heck of a lot simpler than a GUI system, there are plenty of cases where high performance and detaching simply aren't needed. So what if the program goes away when you close the connection? You can run it again when you connect again, no problem. That's worked fine for all the cases in the past 5 years where I've needed remote X (such as installing engineering simulators or running certain types of performance monitors).

But the fact that you're comparing X11 to screen merely indicates that you're an insightless noob. Me? There's a lot about X11 that I don't like and there are some design decisions that are starting to look like really bad limitations, but that's because I've actually written toolkit code that uses X11; I know where many of the bodies are buried. Yet instead of kicking at the open door, you're trying to attack X11's strengths.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dkf]

Similarly X has 30 year history of really really doing a bad job of delivering a smooth GUI experience. That while in theory the network protocol shouldn't cost much, in practice it often seems to complicate design tremendously. X supporters IMHO and experience have trouble often admitting how many GUI projects fail or take 10x longer than they should because of the complexity of working with the X / multiple window manager / multi GUI stack.

That's an interesting assertion you're making there, that supporting a networked protocol causes excessive complication in the server. Would you care to provide (or point to) some evidence for that?

In my experience, the hard parts of making GUI code are dealing with multiple platforms (why would you want to write code for a single platform?) and going from functional-but-dull to snazzy-and-usable. The networking side of things (or not) is nowhere on that map.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[makomk]

Of course, this means that the graphics card has to be on the same machine as the applications, and that it has to have kernel drivers that support not just KMS but also DRI2 graphics acceleration. Without DRI2 support, there's no way to pass images of windows to the compositor and therefore no way to actually display anything. Precisely none of the existing closed-source drivers support the KMS or DRI2 interfaces that Wayland needs, so they can't run on it. In fact, for licensing reasons they can't actually support KMS at all.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[makomk]

Since Ubuntu's apparently planning on having a system-wide instance of Wayland that starts at boot and keeps running until shutdown, presumably the only way to change your window manager would be to do it system-wide. It doesn't look like there's going to be any way to support individual users setting their own window managers.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Electricity Likes Me]

This still seems like a backwards step though if we're not even going to be considering how Wayland should deal with running programs over a network.

We're in the world with rising tablets and "cloud" computing usage, so the need for an easy to use remote desktop/application system seems more obvious then ever. Where is the sense in developing a new display server and not including in the design some type of road map as to how this feature would be supported from the get go?

If you're starting from a blank slate, surely now is the time to learn some of the lessons from X and make sure the protocol will work well and fast for a remote desktop/application experience.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Lennie]

Basically every program currently uses compositing (sometimes the toolkit/libraries does it for the program) or can easily do so.

Compositing seems to be the most efficient way to do it, but compositing was something that was added later to X as an extension.

They want to get rid of everything else in X and just use compositing as everything else can already be handled by the Linux kernel (this means wayland won't work for Unix as I understand it).

X just has a whole lot of legacy code and some overhead.

The reason why it is possible to build Wayland (replacing X is really big task) is because Wayland just does this small thing, compositing and all the other stuff can be handled by other parts of the system because in the years support for that has been added to the kernel or toolkit-libraries and so on.

The reason why Wayland does not do networking... is because again, other systems can handle that. RDP, X11, SPICE and even VNC.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[gaelfx]

Nice job clipping that response to suit your needs. If you bothered to read the second paragraph:

This doesn't mean that remote rendering won't be possible with Wayland, it just means that you will have to put a remote rendering server on top of Wayland. One such server could be the X.org server, but other options include an RDP server, a VNC server or somebody could even invent their own new remote rendering model. Which is a feature when you think about it; layering X.org on top of Wayland has very little overhead, but the other types of remote rendering servers no longer requires X.org, and experimenting with new protocols is easier.

Now, call me crazy, but isn't a large part of Linux about the user being able to choose how their machine does the work that they ask it to do? It seems to me Wayland isn't trying to force anything on anyone, rather, just trying to open up more choices that would otherwise be limited.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

X works very well over a LAN, and, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, problems running over a WAN will go away

Its not generally a problem of bandwidth alone. Even with tons of bandwidth latency is a problem over WAN. IPv6 will make that somewhat better by reducing latency. Moving to fiber will make it somewhat better. On the other hand introducing more satellite, over the air, and wifi will make it worse. Now an MPLS will solve jitter but if jitter it gets even worse.

Now you are showing that you are out of touch. Tunneling X over SSH resolves the security problems and makes things much more simple (no more "xhost +" ). Over the LAN, I see no lag when using remote X tunneled over SSH.

SSH adds latency on both sides. Try doing 1080p real time video over SSH, and manipulate it and you'll notice some lag.:)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

I don't know about you, but that IS the killer feature that got it placed onto everyone's desks in my workplace. A lot of scientific and engineering software that needs some CPU power behind it never got ported to MS Windows. A lot of it makes more sense running on big noisy stuff in server rooms instead of desktop PCs anyway.

That's easy enough to implement as client server. You have a display client and a server which does the noisy stuff.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying anonymously not to lose my moderations.

The point of Wayland is NOT to remove network transparency. The point is to get a better rendering infrastructure so each app is responsible for its own drawing instead of the hogdepodge in X11 that no modern apps are using anyway.

You could try reading this answer: http://askubuntu.com/a/11877

There are some people who'd like a slim, easy to maintain graphic infrastructure in Linux, one that makes sense on constrained devices too. Imagine you are sitting on an old hairy code base which is at the core of your company, and gradually it turns out almost nothing of it is in use anymore, and what is still is suboptimal because the division of responsibilities don't match reality anymore. But you can't kick any of it out because it's hairy and you may need backwards compatibility. That's the situation the X developers are in, at last as far as I understand, and that's why they want to see Wayland happening.

It's most unfortunate the network aspect hasn't been answered yet, otherwise we'd all be cheering. The one in X sucks pretty hard over high-latency links too, so it's not that the situation is impossible to improve.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

I agree that I don't care about those ... until the day that I do. Suppose I need to test the installation of some game or video editing software.

You live with something like VNC. The people who use those types of software have decided remote management isn't a feature they care about enough to sacrifice performance.

I'd rather have the mechanism for the user to do either.

You aren't really addressing the problem. Choosing to use X is making policy. Its making the policy to drop lots of frames in the video editor.

I would like to believe the people behind Wayland are smart enough to incorporate network transparency, but they seem to rather stubborn in omitting it

Its not a question of smart enough. A lot of the people implementing Wayland are the people who currently maintain X and have added features to it. It was working with X, and seeing how much harder it was to get X than Aqua or GDI to do something that convinced many of them that X had to go. What's happened is that on balance they've decided the disadvantages of network transparency outweigh the advantages.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[olau]

Have you any actual experience with a networked server? The actual protocol is easy enough to do. Sending data from one party to another and parse it is easy.

The real problem is that you go from a situation where all components can talk to each other quickly to a situation where everything you do must be carefully analysed because each time you cross the boundary between local and remote you take a possibly big hit from latency and possibly also bandwidth if it's a lot of data.

I have a Master's degree in distributed systems, and the mere term "network-transparent" is probably a fallacy. In face of the huge performance implications of a network, the local-remote split most likely has to be explicit in some way, just like it is with web. Unless you don't crappy performance.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not a single thing of all that is implemented, planned or even started planning for.

It's all been hand-waved off the table down into the "someone else's problem" bin, and thus utterly fucking meaningless.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

In my experience, the hard parts of making GUI code are dealing with multiple platforms (why would you want to write code for a single platform?) and going from functional-but-dull to snazzy-and-usable. The networking side of things (or not) is nowhere on that map.

I don't write software where I have to push large numbers of frames through per second either. On the other hand I use software where large numbers of frames per second matter. Interestingly enough I just got the mac retina. Because the retina is doing virtual adjustments (i.e. there are several virtual screens being drawn to by applications and those those are re-rendered to another virtual screen which gets pushed to the physical screen) I could easily see frame rate problems in even day to applications like video inside a web browser while scrolling before the driver improvements in OSX 10.8. What Apple did in 10.8 to get rid of those problems, would be impossible under X.

Kristian Høgsberg who wrote a lot of the X acceleration you are probably using was the one who started Wayland. He was frustrated about what he couldn't do. Under X applications are not able to control rendering. They cannot make decisions required to avoid visible tearing. They cannot force the X client to draw potential windows in advance to avoid lag.

Another problem is either the client and server (to use X terminology) share a video memory buffer or they don't. If they don't you pick up a lot of time passing information between them. Your CPU is probably no more than a few gigabytes per second, that is the maximum speed you can get data from one buffer to another under best conditions. And with screens that are 5 mega pixel x 4 bytes of color per pixel, every one way trip is is 1/100th of a second under perfect conditions. You aren't getting perfect conditions and 2 round trips is common. And if X wanted to implement something like the resolution system Apple for retina then it would be worse (though the CPU speed for memory is likely about double) because you could be rendering virtual screens as large as 14 megapixel with some round trip being 4 hops.... you could be talking flicker over 1/10th of a second.

I hope these two examples help. They have a good discussion: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[EvilNTUser]

If everyone were putting their cards on the table, then we could have an honest conversation about tradeoffs.

Sometimes it seems like people don't even know what cards they're holding. All these arguments are missing the point from a usability perspective.

When I type "ssh -X", I don't actually care what protocol is used. All I care about is that it works on every single computer *by default*. The solution is obvious: modify the Wayland spec to demand that every system that implements Wayland also includes VNC integrated with SSH. Problem solved, everyone can be happy.

Yes, performance won't be exactly the same, the specified protocol might not end up being VNC, etc. but these endless arguments about Wayland are much worse. We have the software to implement this, so let's just please standardize on *something* so we have usable systems out of the box. It's not going to prevent someone from manually installing a better network protocol in the future, so Wayland trying to remain neutral on network protocols is just ideological posturing.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could just run their own wayland instances.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly for you, your own stupid opinion does not have any impact whatsoever, and the smart people who actually know what they are talking about and are walking the walk by actually writing the code, will go on doing what they do and you can go on yelling at kids to get off your lawn.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screen starts a server that one or more clients can connect (attach) too and can use SSH to forward its terminal display over the network. See any similarities? Sure, it runs on the remote machine instead of the local machine, but the principle of operation from the user's point of view is the same.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the software planned to replace X suggests running X on top of it? Sounds like Wayland is the Linux version of Metro...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok i am the 1% of linux users that does an ssh -X ? It's more flexible than vnc, already configured, secure...are you sure nobody uses it?

I am sure almost nobody uses multi seat computing, hook up one keyboard and mouse and a monitor and fire up another x session, with an ad hoc X layout you have 2 independent users on the same machine.

I guess wayland does not do it, it's a huge potential loss, IMHO, when people start realizing the potential of linux boxes.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some other people may think this first group is not in their right mind when they are still working like technology has stopped in time 40 years ago.
After all... This is a world, where everyone is using the X-clients and X-servers on the same system, certainly when they are using systems that aren't connected to the same network/internet 24/7.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

modify the Wayland spec to demand that every system that implements Wayland also includes VNC integrated with SSH. Problem solved, everyone can be happy.

I don't know if it should be part of the spec nor do I know if Wayland can demand anything but...

I think that's a great idea for a strong suggestion! Wayland be default should support VNC. ssh by default should use vnc (-v is taken, I think -X should remain with X11/X12 but I have no problem with -Z which is free). That solves most of the problem. I agree with you 100% FWIW.

Hopefully the distributions do this. This sounds like something RedHat (or interestingly enough Apple, which is big on VNC) might go for.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[eric_herm]

On the other hand, rdp as a protocol is pretty neat, it can forward sound, it can forward disk. If I need to run a remote application, being able to take my local document directly is a handy feature. Spice is doing it at the moment, for linux so this can be done, but i would not say that X forwarding is much better in all case.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Curupira]

(you can run an X client on Wayland, for when you still need the feature)

...I can't help but assume that I've missed an "yo dawg" joke in that explanation :P

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

VNC type stuff generally sucks badly for those sort of situations but there has been some success with TurboVNC over WAN. Of course they are VNC sessions of X session displaying X apps that get updated so rarely that some of them still only work in 8 bit colour, so stuff in that niche won't be replaced with anything else any time soon.
For other stuff, fine, but the network transparency of X is the reason I have a job with linux, solaris and AIX in the first place and why linux is at least on some corporate desktops. Those 64 core monsters with 128GB are now around $9000 so more people can afford to use them, but nobody wants to sit next to one, so network transparency is becoming more important all of the time.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jon3k]

There's lots of ways to remotely access a desktop (eg VNC). We don't need the overhead and complexity for everyone when 99% of people never access it remotely.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

I'll add the entire point I should have put in to start - the people doing all the stuff that require X to run their (in my case geophysical) remote applications are not just running it on one host and they are interacting with it in real time. Just showing one other desktop does not cut it especially when they are writing reports etc and cutting and pasting to something running on their local machine or a different remote machine. They could VNC into some sort of head node and do everything as if they are on a thin client but that really sucks for stuff with local usb, cdrom, sound etc - it's better to have the remote stuff remote and in it's own window the way X does it instead of everything remote or everything local.
That's just my opinion and the niche I'm in, but in that niche the desktop computer is somewhere to display stuff from several machines at once in addition to local work. That means even the MS Windows7 desktop machines have X. Even the technical assistants will have windows open to several machines - they know to display TIFF images of scans remotely on something with a lot of memory instead of trying to run an image viewer on their local machine with 4GB total and lock the whole thing up.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Hatta]

X, for historical reasons, does a TON of things. It has network transparency

That's not there for historical reasons. That's there because it's extremely useful.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jon3k]

Actually, it's a very smart way to handle supporting legacy applications while you give developers time to transition. Similar systems have been used many many times (Rosetta, WoW, etc)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Hatta]

We're not talking about transitioning from legacy applications. We're talking about a permanent universal solution for network transparent apps. X has it. What is Wayland's alternative?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Hatta]

isn't a large part of Linux about the user being able to choose how their machine does the work that they ask it to do?

Yes, and I'd like to choose to be able to forward any arbitrary GUI app over the network. Nobody's forcing you to forward anything over the network, and the capability doesn't cost you anything. That is choice.

Forcing someone to load another GUI layer in order to network a set of deprecated legacy apps while new apps are completely un-networkable isn't choice at all. It's shit.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Hatta]

What overhead? Show me the data that suggests that network transparency is what slows down X, and not the bloated toolkits people use (and will still use on Wayland). When X is used locally, it's as fast as anything else.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[DrXym]

Nothing to stop you using X11 over the top of Wayland for your atypical scenario. Most people *do* use their desktop locally. It's also likely in time that a network transport will turn up which offers similar remote functionality in Wayland.

X11 is a dinosaur. It's already worked around for the most part (e.g. cairo, freetype etc.) meaning it's largely obsolete. I don't see the harm with doing away with it entirely given that it is a performance bottleneck.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

What overhead? Show me the data that suggests that network transparency is what slows down X, and not the bloated toolkits people use (and will still use on Wayland). When X is used locally, it's as fast as anything else.

neckbeard

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Hatta]

anything that slows down those triangles, like networking must go overboard.

Where's the data that suggests that networking is a problem? From what I'm aware an efficient API will be trivially networkable. Since X uses shared memory locally, it's about as fast as anything is going to be.

There might be a case that X is shitty and hard to work with, but we shouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can have both speed and network transparency. Didn't Valve just port Source to X and get better FPS than on Windows? What exactly is the problem here?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has no proof. The simple fact is, its PROVED what you are saying is true and PROVED what he's saying is a lie.

X uses IPC which tests have proven on Linux is almost as fast as shared memory. So what he's saying is, X is slow because its the speed of memory.

X ONLY has performance problems when making games. Period. BUT, no one makes serious games for X. Period. Rather, in ALL situations where X would be a performance bottleneck, games specifically sidestep the bottlenecks in X and go directly to frame buffers and/or video cards. One popular such method of doing so is OpenGL. All of the areas where X would have performance issues, simply don't use X. Therefore, saying X has performance issues is basically stupidity wrapped in a lie because NO ONE uses X where these performance issues actually exists.

Basically all this boils down into two camps. One, 80% of the people who have no fucking clue about these things and yet pretend to be intelligent by unintelligently regurgitating the barf they've heard some other idiot repeat. And then there are the minority, people like you and me, who actually know what's going on and understand the issue.

The simple fact is, Wayland is a dumb fucking idea. Period. X11 can be fixed to address the few rough areas which currently exist. Wayland is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, plus your neighbor's kid too, just out of stupidity and spite.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dkf]

Have you any actual experience with a networked server?

Yes. That's the day job.

The real problem is that you go from a situation where all components can talk to each other quickly to a situation where everything you do must be carefully analysed because each time you cross the boundary between local and remote you take a possibly big hit from latency and possibly also bandwidth if it's a lot of data.

Yes, but you've also got to handle the fact that you're in potentially-different security domains. That's where things get much trickier because you can't necessarily put the code where it makes things fastest. (Sandboxing technologies have come a long way, but it's still a real worry.) It's also the case that any solution for the remote case probably ought to be applied to the local case too.

I have a Master's degree in distributed systems, and the mere term "network-transparent" is probably a fallacy. In face of the huge performance implications of a network, the local-remote split most likely has to be explicit in some way, just like it is with web. Unless you don't crappy performance.

You the verb there. Just sayin'...

"Network-transparent" is a lie. You can't conceal their presence. (See NFS and SMB/CIFS for examples of leakiness of abstractions.)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[martin-boundary]

So, let me get this straight...

Wayland's reason for existing is to improve X11, optimize the performance of graphics on (mostly) Linux machines. Why? Because X11 is too slow and bloated. Wayland gains speed by doing not much at all, it just calls.... X11 to do the work.

Doesn't that make the Wayland + X11 combination doubly slow? And why do we need Wayland again?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wayland supports X11 in the same way OS X does. There is an X server running as a Wayland client. It would work like a normal X server, doing all it's own compositing, etc., and then send the output to Wayland to be composited with all the other programs/windows.

This is the common comment provided by idiots who support Wayland, yet have no fucking clue what the hell they are saying.

When applications start directly writing to the Wayland toolset, applications suddenly lose the ability to directly render in a network transparent way. Thusly, you're forcing people to use second and third rate tools like VNC and RDP, all in the name of achieving imaginary gains.

Basically, supporters of Wayland are ignorant idiots who was something new and flashy for the same of "newness." Wayland only removed features without providing any real benefit. That's the facts. Period. Wayland is a harmful, disruptive technology which is only supported by foolish people who have no fucking clue what they hell they are talking about.

Honestly, once you've used X on a network, you'll laugh at the stupidity which is RDP, X11, and the various other wanna-be replacements for what is the awesomeness of X.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[makomk]

Except that the comment you're replying to is right. The Wayland developers have no plans to develop any kind of support for network transparency, they're just hoping that someone else will do the hard work of bolting it on top at a later stage - and it's going to be very hard work, because the Wayland compositor gets passed images of the windows it needs to render as buffers within GPU memory that it may not even be possible to read back efficiently, let alone figuring out what parts of the window have changed...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dkf]

Try doing 1080p real time video over SSH, and manipulate it and you'll notice some lag.

So you're going to claim that GUIs cannot possibly work over networks because you can't stream 3Gbps over the open internet in a sustained fashion without hitting some problems with bandwidth and latency? Hmm...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly X has 30 year history of really really doing a bad job of delivering a smooth GUI experience. That while in theory the network protocol shouldn't cost much, in practice it often seems to complicate design tremendously. X supporters IMHO and experience have trouble often admitting how many GUI projects fail or take 10x longer than they should because of the complexity of working with the X / multiple window manager / multi GUI stack.

Factually been proven to be a complete lie. Nothing you said is even close to accurate.

The Linux Kernel is known to be the issue with smoothness. Period. Don't believe me? Go spend some time on the kernel mailing lists. Its an issue the kernel developers have owned for over a decade.

Long story short, people who say X has performance issues are either ignorant or lying. Period.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who use the network transparency of X11, its a attempt to 'return' to a simpler less functional time where your windowing sub-system assumed that you were all alone and had no friends.

Ah, you mean like the good old days of Sunview?, which, many millenia ago, thanks to the CAD software we ran on a couple of the machines back then, I had to maintain on a couple of Sun workstations long after the civilised world had moved to X11R4. then R5.

A throwback, an abomination. It should have never been allowed to get this far, and the people responsible taken out back and 'dealt with.

Afuckingmen to that!.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[makomk]

Which still says exactly what the person you're replying to claims it says - the Wayland developers have no plans to add any kind of network transparency or remote desktop support to Wayland ever, not even the equivalent of VNC. They're hoping that someone else will do all the hard work of writing the hypothetical "remote rendering server" which would make it possible. (I doubt that using X as the remote rendering server would work, due to Wayland relying on DRI2 buffers which can't be sent over the network - Wayland under X is probably one of the few apps that does actually manage to break X's network transparency.)

Make no mistake, it is going to be hard work. The Wayland compositor is given buffers in GPU memory representing the windows of Wayland clients. In order to offer even just the equivalent of VNC, you'd have to read them back (possibly over a really slow AGP bus from a graphics card designed under the assumption you wouldn't want to do that, given the age of some hardware out there) and scan it for changed areas. That's going to offer really sucky performance compared to VNC on top of X. If you need anything more advanced, the official advice basically boils down to "replace Wayland with something different and totally incompatible".

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[grumbel]

I just don't get why they are so keen to get rid off that faeture...

They are not. This is not about replacing X, it's simply about splitting the graphics and input code out of X and moving it over to the kernel and Wayland. You can still run X11 apps under Wayland. So it's really more a pragmatic approach to getting the Xorg code based cleaned up, then an abandonment of network transparencey.

Also in general X11 network transparency is bit overrated in my opinion, as while it is good for things such as basic thin client computing, it is completely useles for basic everyday uses like screen sharing or moving applications from one display to another. It's also rather useless for multimedia, be it video due to the lack of bandwidth or sound due to the X11 simply not handling sound. Wayland won't solve them, but a clean code base means that it will be easier for other people to attack those problems.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[aled]

X, for historical reasons, does a TON of things. It has network transparency

That's not there for historical reasons. That's there because it's extremely useful.

Some questions come to mind:
extremely useful for how many people?
That functionality
Also isn't it possible that X design principles after almost 30 years must revised to achieve a better implementation?
Functionality that can be replicated in a better way perhaps (more modular, more portable, easier to implement, etc)?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish all those people who feel that Microsoft, Apple, Commodore, and all those other platforms got it right would go use those platforms. In a way, it reminds me of corporate takeovers: The acquiring company always chooses a business thay want to take over because of its appealing qualities, and then as soon as they own it, they change everything that made it special enough to be appealing in the first place. Soon after, the acquired company finds itself in a state somewhere between redundant and pointless.

Maybe the developers who have such envy for the way other platforms do things may want to consider that during the last 25-30 years, a population of users has sprung up around UNIX (term used in the broader POSIX sense) that uses it *because* it's UNIX. It seems that the common theme in the reasoning for much of the changes in the software that have happened in the last ten years or so has always come down to variations along the lines of: ...Windows users would like it more if... ...on Windows, they handle foo by doing bar, and we could do that... ...nobody else does what we're doing, so what's wrong with us...etc.

Up until now, it's been possible (ironically, due to the flexibility of UNIX) to work around this lameness. But if you make X-Windows a deprecated environment, you will take a very large step toward making Linux (and soon after, every other flavor) so much like the other platforms you envy that many will find themselves wondering why they're running it.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

VNC... The software we had to use in the bad old days, because Windows 95 was never designed to be a networked OS.

Well, I guess some people do long for those days.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[caseih]

Yes people keep saying this like it's somehow a useful feature. What good will running an X server on wayland be if all my apps are wayland apps? The X Server would only be useful for connecting to other legacy X11-based OS's out there.

Wayland is capable of network transparency if someone adds it. The framework is capable of accommodating such things.

I'm not opposed to something like VNC for network transparency, provided it was per-app (individual windows) and had good integration with the clipboards. Having transparent file system integration and device integration (sound, printers) would be slick too.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's just as useless on OSX. Basically, it's only for people who really want to run *nix software, but somehow ended up with a Mac.

Come'on, show me Finder running on a remote display. Or Photoshop.... iTunes... Anything. Nope, you can't. Do you think it's going to be any different running a Wayland application from Ubuntu with a remote display?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

Nope. While a small minority of loud retards were repeating other people's outdated arguments, most of the rest of the world recreated the network transparency of X. Now you have a corporate environment where doing Unix-y things from 20 years ago is commonplace.

As much as I despise Windows, it does do the remote desktop thing well enough to be useful. I can't say the same for Macs.

The rest of the world has finally caught up with X. It's the people that want to dump X that are really living in the past.

It turns out that in a highly networked world, network transparency is actually a very handy thing. Dumping it just because you're an Apple wannabe is just stupid.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

VNC sucks. It's slow and unusable.

Actually try to use Macs sometime.

If you are actually be a an Apple wannabe, then actually use their products. They aren't all they're cracked up to be.

RDP on Windows works well because the remote desktop use case is part of the underlying system design. It's no longer something that was just ignored and bolted on later.

Every time I see someone try to say that remote desktop usage is not commonplace I wonder if they are still in middle school and still live in their mother's basement. Clearly they haven't been inside of a corporate computing environment lately.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, yes and maybe", but according to the FAQ, it's a clear NO, but of course some crappy hacks can be implemented, the same way as VNC was hacked on top of Windows 95, an OS that was never designed to live in a networked age.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

Here is a perfect demonstration of the "clueless retard" mentality in this discussion. Running X on top of Wayland doesn't help you. It's like running X on Windows or running X on MacOS. It only allows you to run those apps still coded to use X.

Running X on Wayland doesn't allow me to run Wayland apps remotely.

It's just like how running X on a Mac doesn't allow me to run iTunes on one of my Linux boxes.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Bengie]

X uses IPC which tests have proven on Linux is almost as fast as shared memory

Which is still magnitudes worse. Wayland latency is low tens of nano-seconds(passes around pointers), X is low micro to high nano(copies buffers via IPC/shared memory). HUGE difference.

Working with scalability problems helps one appreciate latency. Processing power keeps scaling, but latency keeps increasing relative to throughput. X used to be good for local machines back when latency was in harmony with throughput.

X won't be "replaced" any time soon by Wayland as they currently solve different issues. They do have overlap, but they're not the same.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Wayland's alternative?

There is none. That's what Wayland supports constantly refuse to acknowledge.

Running an X server on top of wayland is only HALF a solution. They don't seem to understand Wayland is not a complete solution. Period. Once people start developing applications with the wayland toolkit, you have ZERO solutions. Which means wayland's aim is to lose network transparency completely. To get it back, everyone wants to offer yet another half ass solution (RDP, VNC, SPICE) on top of it. Anyone who has seriously used X11 absolutely fucking hates RDP and VNC because they are dramatically inferior. And yet ignorance says half the solution is to offer an dramatically inferior solution with absolutely nothing to address the other half of the problem. This is what layman call absolute stupidity. And yet, that's the wayland solution - absolute stupidity.

If Wayland is such a solution, how come, without fail, Wayland goes out of its way to avoid answering the very problem its creating? People rush to apologize and hand wave for wayland and yet there has NEVER been a complete solution offered from Wayland. Not once. Period.

To date, wayland is a half assed solution looking for a problem which largely doesn't exist while at the same time, creating an entirely new problem which X11 addressed three decades ago.

Until Wayland supporters collectively pull their heads from their asses, Wayland is only a problem, not a solution.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

Promises are worthless and you are a moron for trusting them.

Either Wayland is accounting for network transparency NOW or it's never going to happen. At best it will be an unusable mess like you see on Macs.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect most supporters of network transparency could care less if games and video editing software went local only.

I agree that I don't care about those ... until the day that I do. Suppose I need to test the installation of some game or video editing software. ;-P Or for example, one day I had office hours downstairs, but needed to run a program off my machine upstairs (yes, actually happened and X worked like a dream). There is no reason to believe that the monitoring-installation vs games-video-editing division or any other division that you can think of will be the correct one for all use cases. Such a division makes a policy (i.e. functionality) assumption about user behaviors that shouldn't be made(*). I'd rather have the mechanism for the user to do either.

This is absolutely correct. The reason network transparency is so effortless on X11 is exactly because it's there all the time and it's impossible to not have it -- therefore, all apps support it unless they're pulling some kind of special trick like hardware 3D or video playback windows (and even then sometimes they'll fall back to simpler rendering and work over the network anyway). The minute you start deciding that network transparency is something you only want to support some of the time and in some cases, those will be the only times it will work right.

I would like to believe the people behind Wayland are smart enough to incorporate network transparency, but they seem to rather stubborn in omitting it(**).

That's another thing that makes me nervous about all of this -- not just the technical inadvisability of it, but the way the developers seem to be insisting on it in the face of all reasonable opposition. It kind of gives you that sinking KDE4 feeling all over again. And why is Ubuntu all hot to adopt this as their desktop before it's even out of the cradle? And I thought Gentoo folks were supposed to be the bleeding edge ones...!

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

Vastly many huh?

Too bad you can't think of any obvious examples right now.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

The paragraph that explains how it can be hacked on top, like VNC was hacked on top of Windows 95, doesn't change anything. The answer is still NO.

Wayland will not do network transparancy, the same way as Windows 95 didn't do network transparancy.

Yes, being able to choose how our machines does the work is a large part. So, tell me how I can decide to use my silent desktop machine with the huge screen to show this number-crunching heavy Wayland-only software, that I want to run on the big noisy machine in the basement with enough CPU power to run the program, and an old 14 inch monochrome screen for console. You know, the whole being able to choose thing, which Wayland is intended to do away with.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Pascal Sartoretti]

A throwback, an abomination. It should have never been allowed to get this far, and the people responsible taken out back and 'dealt with.

Nobody will force you to use it. If your favorite Linux distro switches to Wayland, you will be free to switch to another one still using X11, or to make your own X11 fork.

That's the beauty of open source : the agenda is not dictated by a company (see Windows'8 Metro), but by what the users choose.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

> You live with something like VNC. The people who use those types of software have decided remote management isn't a feature they care about enough to sacrifice performance.

That basically leaves you with a small minority of the market and kind of blows away the whole "but no one cares about it" argument.

People care enough about it that this part of Windows got "fixed".

Now "helpful" types want to rip it out of Linux just as serious Windows users have gotten used to having this feature.

That kind of blows away and externally focused argument for "fixing graphics in Linux".

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Wayland is an attempt to remove the network transparency of X... in a world where everything is networked.

Some people might consider this utterly retarded.

X11 was released in 1987, in a world where the web did not exist, and the internet only used by a few scientist (including me).

So, Linux today is still using a graphical subsystem designed 25 years ago. Some people might consider this utterly retarded.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jedidiah]

The problem here is the Wayland Mentality. These are people that seem to be completley out of touch with any sort of serious computing or anything beyond Macs. This must be the case because remote mangement and graphic terminals are very common in Windows shops.

How can you be employed in technology and not have encountered use cases for graphics terminals and remote management?

Now the clueless do-gooder Wayland Mentality will also likely dictate (for the sake of usability) that there only be pretty GUI interfaces for managing things. So you will suddenly find yourself dealing with a remote system and only having one option of dealing with it: a GUI.

Thanks to The Wayland Menality, this will be painful and unpleasant because this "obscure" use case was ignored during design of the new standard.

A better X would be cool. However Wayland is not that.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

I'm not saying VNC, I'm saying real client server.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

People care enough about it that this part of Windows got "fixed".

Huh? Windows has high performance video that's not transparent. Not sure what you mean.

That kind of blows away and externally focused argument for "fixing graphics in Linux".

AFAICT the argument for Wayland came from within the X11 community not externally focused. It came from X developers who were implementing features of other GUIs and it taking 10x as long as (in their opinion) in should have to try and deal with the complexity of X saying they just wanted to toss X and start over. Most everything else is sort of post facto justification for X developers saying, "I want a smaller easier codebase". This isn't externally focused.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Bengie]

You're lying and ignorant! cwhatIdidthar?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

Since X uses shared memory locally, it's about as fast as anything is going to be.

No it isn't. Moving data between memory buffers is expensive if you want high frame rates. I'm on a laptop with 5mega pixel x 4 bytes of color. It uses screen virtualization which means it is drawing as many as 5 virtual screens for every physical screen. The fastest CPUs are still under 10 gigabit per second. I'm not seeing how shared memory is free with those ratios. Now consider next year we have retina 30" screens and 20 megapixel is going to need to be supported. And often multiple monitors....

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

Solaris, SunOS, SGI, AIX, NeXT all had to implement custom solutions around X as well to get performance.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

First off this move towards Wayland is coming from the people who program X11 today. This is not a group of outsiders these are insiders. The people who support X11 as it exists today are not the people who have to handle implementing these features in the X11 codebase. Wayland is credible because of who is involved. This is not people saying Windows users would like X, but rather people saying Linux users would like X. This is not about appeal to the masses.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

The claim that I was responding to was that there was no lag over a LAN, not the open internet, a LAN. I gave a quick scenario to generate lots of lag on a LAN. That was the claim.

Talk to the people advocating for X11 to not make insane comments about no lag over LANs.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[JesseMcDonald]

The AC is correct; Wayland instances can be layered with minimal overhead. The idea is probably to run one system-wide instance for the login manager, which would also deal with compositing separate screens for things like fast user switching, and a separate per-session Wayland instance for each user. That not only allows customization, but also separation of permissions—the per-session instance can run under the user's account.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

Thank you. this is the most interesting comment on network transparency I've seen for Wayland. It actually makes me interested instead of bypassing Wayland again.
What I'm interested in is how that would work...is there some examples, pseudo examples or FAQ's that give an idea of what that would look like? With X11 on top of Wayland, specifically how would I run a Wayland App remotely under what you are describing? Is there a Wayland app equivalent of "xterm -display remote.pc:0.0" when I want to run an app off, say, my phone and display it on my pc?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

X works very well over a LAN, and, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, problems running over a WAN will go away.

No, it won't. The problem with X over a WAN is latency, and no amount of technology is going to change the fact that light can only go so fast.

The company I work for has a *very* fast WAN between offices, and X over the WAN is still a dog. The problem is that X is to a large degree synchronous, and operations involve multiple round trips. So no matter how much bandwidth you have, you get killed by latency.

The solution to this is to either use a framebuffer-based protocol (VNC and friends) or to use an asynchronous compressing X (NX). Neither of which is really taking advantage of the network features of X.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[whoever57]

The claim that I was responding to was that there was no lag over a LAN, not the open internet, a LAN. I gave a quick scenario to generate lots of lag on a LAN. That was the claim.

No, the claim was that I can see no lag. To which you provide an absurd corner case and then claim that other people are making insane comments?

I use X11 over a network all the time. Losing this capability would make me much less productive. The idea that I should start a VNC session on every machine and then connect to that: laughable. I don't need or want a full desktop to start just one program on the remote machine, let alone all the issues of running a desktop as root (yes, mostly I use X11-based GUIs for administrattion on machines that have no user logins configured for good reasons).

As for the comments about persistence of X apps across sessions -- this is easily solved by using a VNC session and sending the display to the VNC session. I can then connect and disconnect to the VNC session.

Frankly, if Wayland become mainstream and X is no longer supported, I might as well go from using Linux as my primary desktop to using Windows.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[whoever57]

The solution to this is to either use a framebuffer-based protocol (VNC and friends) or to use an asynchronous compressing X (NX). Neither of which is really taking advantage of the network features of X.

Actually, the solution is a combination of X and VNC. I have a persistent VNC session on the LAN, to which I send the display from mulitple X11 apps running on many differnet machines, and then, I connect to the VNC session either over the LAN or over the Internet (VPN or tunnelled over SSH).

The idea of multiple VNC sessions, one on each machine that I would run an X program, but cannot if Wayland replaces X, is complete FAIL.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

"Its not a question of smart enough. A lot of the people implementing Wayland are the people who currently maintain X and have added features to it. It was working with X, and seeing how much harder it was to get X than Aqua or GDI to do something that convinced many of them that X had to go. What's happened is that on balance they've decided the disadvantages of network transparency outweigh the advantages."

This kind of statement is exactly what makes me nervous even antagonistic about Wayland and it's supporters. The developers of a platform decided that is is not worth supporting the feature based on....what? From your statement it sounds like it's based on THEIR preferences, not users of the platform, not on developers that write programs for the platform. Now, if that's not the case, then that's fine...I just don't hear it when Wayland is pushed in comments. I'd love to hear that app developers want to drop the network piece (lots don't like writing for X true, but is that because of the network piece?), but I don't. I'd even love o hear that users don't want it, as long is was more than blind statements or anecdotes because I've heard plenty of anecdotes disagree with that. From the statement you made, it sounds (maybe I'm reading too much in) that yet another platform group is deciding what is best for their users and doing what THEY want to do, not what users want or need...

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple exercise... try running an X11 client/server connection over a modem connection ( ~64Kbit/sec).
Now try the same thing with an RDP or VNC connection. My conclusion: X11 isn't even an efficient protocol to provide the kind of network transparency most users think of.

Projects such a 'dxpc' an X11 protocol compressor, back in the day '97 attempted to address the problem but the main issue is the X11 protocol requires a round-trip for a number of operations (like creating Graphics Contexts XCreateGC(3)) which causes a network pipeline stall. This is because the design of the protocol was based on Xerox ethernet speeds in the 1~10Mbit range. Many of these problems are fixable by creating a new version X.12.

In the era X11 was invented people were happy to be able to draw lines and curves on a screen, instead of the 80x25 text terminal. The "main" computer was a single expensive resource that was shared by multiple users using cheaper dumb terminals. Times have changed and X11 didn't keep up its had 25 years worth of band aids applied to it.

What changed... well the standard PC gained the necessary local computing power for an affordable price. People no longer needed to share the expensive main CPU that the application ran on.
Since that point in time the graphics bandwidth between the application and the graphics hardware has remained faster than any comodity network bus (that include 10GBit ethernet cards available today, modern comodity integrated graphics can push 10Gbyte/sec which is 8 times faster for a few dollars).

So for a long time applications have already been working around X11 limitations when it came to trying to utilize the potential. So now it is time to relegate the X11 protocol as an optional module in the graphics stack. This makes using it now optional. It is time to make networking support a module, there are many solutions on this X11, VNC, RDP.

More importantly is that the Linux graphics stack will be a better place for other users, such as OpenGL and gaming. They no longer have to co-ordinate with (the optionally running) X11 server but instead a simpler arbitrator of the graphic subsystem that is wayland.

I'm a 20+ years supporter of linux and even I now admit that Windows provides a better GUI based IDE development environment when you take an application like Eclipse IDE and use it everyday. The only reason for this is that X11 is slow, laggy, pointer grabbing is annoying. I look forward to switching back to Linux for this purpose.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

To which you provide an absurd corner case and then claim that other people are making insane comments?

That's not an insane corner case. Video is one of the primary uses for computers. Accelerated video processing is now standard on Arm and becoming standard on Intel CPUs for a reason. This discussion is about whether X can offer acceptable performance for high demand work: games and video. Everyone knows X11 is fine for the kinds of video in system administration. Those sorts of uses aren't the reason to change video systems.

As for X being supported. Wayland includes an X11 Server. The issue is whether the applications will drop X11 apps, Wayland itself isn't the problem here.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fool - a complete, ranting halfwit.

Windows applications work remotely. But they designed, built and optimised it for the most common case... that is LOCAL FUCKING USAGE.

So not everyone has to deal with the ghastly inefficiencies of a system designed for remote access (X) when hardly anyone uses it. Linux/Unix on the other hand have been saddled with this shit for years... good fucking riddance.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

Its both. Think of it this way.

A) There exist a list of 500 things that end users want in their display system that X11 didn't do or doesn't do well (circa say 2005).
B) People working on X11 are (or would be) able to do 100 easy, 100 really hard because of X11 legacy code, 100 really hard because of support for network transparency, 100 medium hard because they have to use a different approaches than Windows or OSX, 100 are just impossible because of limitation in X11.

C) This group finally says, it simply is not worth it to keep fighting the battle with X11 anymore.
D) Canonical loves the idea. Suse, Red Hat... think its a good idea because they want their 500 things. (These are end users for X11).
E) The Wayland project starts and Canonical commits to be a flagship client for it.

Most app developers in Linux today don't push the video system hard, those that do prefer Wayland. Most app developers target KDE and Gnome and both of these platforms like the advantages that Wayland creates over X11 in terms of potentials for advantages things like cut and paste, drag and drop... But they are concerned about making their platforms (i.e. desktop and applications) non network transparent forever to take advantages. So consider them cautious supporters. The application developers for Gnome and KDE are all over the map but they are mostly too far downstream.

I don't think most Linux end users do use network transparency. There are a huge number that talk about the lack of various video features and attack X11 in sort of vague terms for things that quite often have nothing to do with X11. I don't know where they stand on these issues, but ultimately they do seem to want the X team to be more efficient.

Finally this is open source. End users get to decide the direction of a platform when they pay for it. In open source developers always get to decide. If you object to the direction, then jump in. In this case jumping in would be in 2015+ creating X / network transparent version of applications that migrate to Wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They are not. This is not about replacing X, it's simply about splitting the graphics and input code out of X and moving it over to the kernel and Wayland. You can still run X11 apps under Wayland.

That's great as long as no one ever writes native wayland apps.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

There is no advantage to running X11 applications on Wayland. The advantage is for Wayland applications which will be much faster.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

And looking back at this. You actually specifically claimed this was a bandwidth problem, i.e. "when bandwidth becomes cheaper" not a deep structural problem.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

We have solutions that work for applications remotely. Things like J2EE actually accomplish what X was aiming for. Run the client locally and pass state information back to the server. If you need to distribute the client use something like Java, Flash, ... designed to push binaries remotely.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[spauldo]

Linux is still using an operating system design that's about 40 years old.

It, and most programs for it, are written in a programming language that's even older.

We're communicating using http, which is twenty years old.

That moves over TCP, which is about ten years older, give or take.

Your computer is gets its power from the wall, where the standards written for it are over 100 years old.

What was your point again?

(Oh, and guess how old the win32 API is?)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not about replacing X,

Actually, it is. Why is this being done as a big bang change? In software this is rarely a good idea and, software being soft, rarely necessary. Why aren't X12, X13 etc. being released with the appropriate sub-systems obseleted and the appropriate sub-systems added? Unfortunately second system syndrome and NIH both seem to be in play here. I've seen some reasonable arguments for some of the changes in Wayland and as a result I'm somewhat supportive of changes however I think it could be better organized. There are massive investments in X11 and that investment should be part of any plan.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

I'm trying to say the problem is many servers to one client, while a single client server relationship (eg. VNC) has limitations that prevent it from replacing X in some situations.
The transport sucking is a different issue that could be dealt with by using something else. For example, both TurboVNC and some X extensions wrap just a bit of stuff around OpenGL to send it in ideal situations, which is what another client-server situation could do.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[unixisc]

As per Wiki, existing compositing window managers, such as Compiz, KWin, and Mutter are expected to implement Wayland support directly, to become Wayland compositors / display servers. If MATE is to be supported on it, that team would have to do the same for Metacity. I'm not sure whether Cinnamon would automatically get supported as a result of Mutter being supported, or whether it would need something else. But yeah, Awesome, WindowMaker, et al would need to implement the Wayland protocols within themselves to run on Wayland w/o the X support.

One thing I am wondering - once the various Window Managers support implement Wayland protocols, would they then automatically run on whatever OS there is, be it Linux, BSD, Minix, HURD, et al or will Wayland have to be separately 'ported' on to these various kernels separately in order to take advantage of their respective kernel mode services?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[unixisc]

Wayland is designed to fix a lot of the problems that X has. X, for historical reasons, does a TON of things. It has network transparency, it's responsible for input, for setting up the graphics card's memory and registers, drawing various primitive shapes, font rendering, etc.

But today 99% of the time people don't use the network transparency stuff in X, they run locally. But all sorts of memory has to be shuffled around. X mandates all sorts of bitmap formats that must be supported. Today the kernel, through KMS, can setup the graphics card. We have libraries like Cairo to draw basic shapes. Then there are all sorts of weird things that have been hacked into/onto X to support common features like resizing and rotating your desktop.

Wayland basically started with a blank slate. The kernel can setup the video card, so it won't do that. Most people don't use network transparency, so it doesn't do that (you can run an X client on Wayland, for when you still need the feature). The GUI toolkits and OpenGL libraries already draw everything, so it doesn't do that stuff.

LWN had an article from two years ago about what Wayland set out to accomplish. Things may have changed since there, here are two updates from LWN describing Wayland earlier this year.

This is a far better description of Wayland than what I've read to date either here on /. or even on Wayland's own website. Thanks for explaining it so succinctly.

Question - is Wayland support then going to be something that the designers of the various window managers will have to implement, or will the various kernel teams, like Linux, BSD et al have to implement them? Or do the creators of Wayland have to port Wayland to all the different kernels to make sure that they can make use of all their kernel mode services?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[unixisc]

With an X12 or X13, there would be the expectation of compatibility, which can't be wished away. With Wayland, they are starting w/ a clean slate w/ all the local capabilities of X plus some, and then for remote login services, the Wayland server can support a remote X11 client that still uses those protocols. That just leverages X11 for the X functionality that Wayland won't include, while having a clean implementation for just the essential stuff that Wayland will include

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[unixisc]

Well, NeXT didn't use X as all - they used Display Postscript, and currently, OS-X uses Quartz. I wonder whether SunOS used X during the time they had NeWS

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Linux is still using an operating system design that's about 40 years old.

It, and most programs for it, are written in a programming language that's even older.

Yes, but they did at least evolve. X11 is still X11. And there is no X12 :-)

We're communicating using http, which is twenty years old.

That moves over TCP, which is about ten years older, give or take.

Your computer is gets its power from the wall, where the standards written for it are over 100 years old.

Lower-level standards.

(Oh, and guess how old the win32 API is?)

If you want to compare Win32 to X11, you need to compare it to DirectX, Direct3D, DirectDraw, and all their multiple versions.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Spacelem]

I do very much the same, frequently running xmaple (which is only installed on the server) and octave (when I'm doing heavy duty stuff) on the server.

It works brilliantly, why would we want to lose that feature?

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

You aren't following client server. VNC, X11... are all applications designed around remoting a single user application. A client server application is one where there is a server interface and then an actual client program. Assuming you use an email application that's an example where you use client server. You are running a real honest to god application on your local machine which is doing light data manipulation and passing data back to another system which is doing the more serious / global data manipulations for multiple users.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

That's what I mean by custom solutions around X. They couldn't get what they wanted from X. SGI ripped out huge chunks of the code and replaced it with a frame-buffer approach in Xsgi.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[dbIII]

We're having a real communication problem here. What is it about the behaviour of the VNC client and the VNC server that is not client-server? You email example doesn't really point out any difference that I can see, so how about you put it in terms of what you mean with Wayland instead of an analogy.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jmccue]

Please see this for FreeBSD: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=25723

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to prove the fallacy that you claim. Sticking a network interface between the application and the GPU is a performance bottleneck I certainly don't need. Hardware is topping 150Gbytes/sec and no network interface can compete. Using X11 over a remote low bandwidth connection makes my teeth grind, using RDP or VNC over the same is usable. Network support in the graphics stack should exist and it should be optional (not mandatory). X11 protocol support should exist and it should be optional (not mandatory). Wayland is not the end of the world as you know it, it is a less encumbered world.

Take a good look at how VNC server support if provided in the X11 server. This is exactly the solution to be provided in the wayland stack.

To get the experience you need to make an evauation you should write an X11 application using Xlib, there is no easy ticket to explaining that is worth my time on you. You can remain being a pundit and your opinions will be weighed as such. But those who write and maintain X servers and other elements of the graphics stack have a different opinion to you.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

" Gnome and KDE will either be built around Wayland or built around X, its going to be impossible for them to do both well."

Speaking from the KDE and therefore Qt perspective.

Rubbish!

Qt has already proven it can write a good widget set on top of any graphics subsystem. Take a look at how many they already support. I also would not blame them if they dropped X11 completely in order persue the best of breed. If users want efficient X11 maybe Xaw (Athena Widget Set) would be better for them, since any toolkit any more complex than it isn't really using X11 anymore (hint: they are composting client side and bliting the results and just happen to be using X11 to do it).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[fikx]

You need to prove the fallacy that you claim. Sticking a network interface between the application and the GPU is a performance bottleneck I certainly don't need. Hardware is topping 150Gbytes/sec and no network interface can compete. Using X11 over a remote low bandwidth connection makes my teeth grind, using RDP or VNC over the same is usable. Network support in the graphics stack should exist and it should be optional (not mandatory). X11 protocol support should exist and it should be optional (not mandatory). Wayland is not the end of the world as you know it, it is a less encumbered world.

So, RDP and VNC does not put a network device between the app and GPU? To me, adding those to the end of your comment is proof the network feature can work, not an argument against me. After all, when running X11 local, no network device is involved.

Take a good look at how VNC server support if provided in the X11 server. This is exactly the solution to be provided in the Wayland stack.

So, how does that let someone run Wayland apps remotely? Will there be a pseudo Wayland-VNC desktop that can be exported when no local Wayland desktop is available?

To get the experience you need to make an evaluation you should write an X11 application using Xlib, there is no easy ticket to explaining that is worth my time on you. You can remain being a pundit and your opinions will be weighed as such. But those who write and maintain X servers and other elements of the graphics stack have a different opinion to you.

So, if I understand, you are saying that the network/remote feature (which is what I was talking about) that X11 has adds the complexity of xlib no matter how it's implemented? a different implementation would have the same issues xlib has? X11 has the feature. Wayland does not. my problem is the feature not in Wayland and the reasons for it not being included are always expressed badly. I'm not sure I agree with your claim that any implementation of the network/remote feature would add the complexity of xlib, but I am no expert. Otherwise, you are not understanding what you are replying to. That's either reading my comments incorrectly, myself writing incorrectly or just plain confusion on the direction this is going.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

OK. We are kinda mixing here.

2 tier = server passes data to client all processing is done on the client
client server = server does some processing and other processing is done client side. All graphic work is done client side.
distributed = server passes graphical information to client all processing is done on the server but complex rendering is done on client.
undistributed = server passes graphics to client. Processing and rendering done on server.

X11, the way you are using it is is undistributed.
VNC is undistributed.

I'm saying you should be using client server.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

How good is the QT support for Core Audio, Core Video, Core Animations? QT like most generic widgets offers a "least common denominator" approach except on its native platform X11/Linux.

How many of the best Mac and Windows applications use QT? QT is likely the best non OS specific C++ widget set out there. That doesn't mean it holds a candle to platform specific.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[badkarmadayaccount]

KMS implementation is required.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Using Wayland does not preclude implementing a remote desktop protocol, they are perfectly orthogonal, nobody here can be arsed to inform himself.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[spauldo]

Yes, but they did at least evolve. X11 is still X11. And there is no X12 :-)

Forget something? Like maybe that letter R and the number after it? You don't think that might be significant?

There's quite a bit of evolution hidden in that number you've so conveniently left out.

Lower-level standards.

Yes. X11 is a lower-level standard as well. Your point?

If you want to compare Win32 to X11, you need to compare it to DirectX, Direct3D, DirectDraw, and all their multiple versions.

It's exactly like win32 with all those other bits. Try using old win32 calls in Windows 7. They (mostly) work. Just like old Xlib calls still work. There's newer functions that add functionality, just like in X. DirectX and company has its equivalents for use in X, and there's well-used ways of applying them for X applications.

Ever program with Xt? You still can. You can use Athena and Motif widgets to your heart's content. Pretty much no one does, because there's new ways of doing things that most everyone agrees are better. That's just like how you can use win32 widgets that date all the way back to OS/2 version 1.x (which predates NT 3.x), but most people use the more modern set introduced in later versions.

Comparing, say, X11R4 with X11R7.x is like comparing the graphical systems of Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 7. The same old calls are there, and some of them are still used, but there's also a lot of newer stuff available.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[badkarmadayaccount]

https://lwn.net/Articles/491509/

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[badkarmadayaccount]

https://lwn.net/Articles/491509/

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[CAIMLAS]

Case in point, X does 'network transparency' which, in practice, is still kinda inferior. Over a slow connection, high-compression/low bitrate VNC is better. RDP, even Xrdp, is way, way better (faster, more responsive, etc.). So while it was designed wtih such uses in mind, soemthing about it makes it not all that useful in practice and a different approach needs to be taken.

Enter wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mattrope]

This is true to an extent, but keep in mind that most modern apps you run on Linux aren't "X apps" or "Wayland apps" but rather "{insert toolkit here} apps" that are written completely in something like QT or GTK and never make any direct calls into the X11 or Wayland API's. The same app can often run on both X and Wayland without modification as long as it's built with a toolkit that has both Wayland and X backends.

It's certainly possible to write pure GL + wayland (or shm + wayland) apps without using a toolkit, so your concern is valid there, but apps of this form probably won't be very common (the most likely cases will be things like 3d games and such that don't need a toolkit, but those aren't the kind of apps you'd be running with indirect rendering on X anyway).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Right but not all applications will ever be forseeably designed this way, and to some extent its questionable whether we want to require all things to need to be.

90% of applications essentially render themselves by requesting the drawing of arrays of different types of vector graphics - and the rise of "retina" displays ensures that trend will accelerate.

The more I look into Wayland the less I like it. If you're going to go to the trouble of rendering everything in OpenGL of some sort, then why not commit to it and process out everything as OpenGL commands, and then let us stream that from client to server?

That to me, seems like the more sensible approach if you wanted to simplify X, since it doesn't eliminate functionality, but it does put everything in a language which can then be tackled by the rendering device however it wants. Wayland seems like it'll eventually head that way, but it's going to be left stuck with applications drawing themselves as big bitmaps to pixel buffers - blowing away a nice fast user experience when remoting.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

The more I look into Wayland the less I like it. If you're going to go to the trouble of rendering everything in OpenGL of some sort, then why not commit to it and process out everything as OpenGL commands, and then let us stream that from client to server?
That to me, seems like the more sensible approach if you wanted to simplify X, since it doesn't eliminate functionality, but it does put everything in a language which can then be tackled by the rendering device however it wants. Wayland seems like it'll eventually head that way, but it's going to be left stuck with applications drawing themselves as big bitmaps to pixel buffers - blowing away a nice fast user experience when remoting.

Not in specific but in general that's the way Wayland is heading. Implementing something like RDP. So high level commands go between client and server and the client handles complex rendering. There are no pixel buffers being passed. But to do that requires going above the composition engine, the RDP level would exist at the GUI i.e. the Waylnad versions of Gnome or KDE not at the composer that wouldn't know the source of the high level commands.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[spitzak]

Wayland does not call X11.

The X11 emulation on wayland will call wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[spitzak]

The server is able to control where the buffers are allocated. If the server needs to read them then it will place them in memory that can be read.

You have to face the fact that current X applications are acting exactly like this. The ONLY drawing api they use is XDrawImage. I can assure you that X does not magically make this fast over the network. Wayland is designed to implement this necessary api fast and cleanly. I believe Wayland's design will allow lossy compression of the images, something that cannot be done by X now (it can be done by full-desktop rdp but that is not what anybody wants).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[unixisc]

That's a pity, b'cos PC-BSD sure could have used Wayland.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Unknown Lamer]

The main reason IPC is slow on GNU/Linux is because TLB flushes are expensive. Modern processors have nice tagged TLBs (designed for virtualization, but nothing stops a kernel from using it as a PID tag) which could eliminate most of the overhead.

That, and Linux suffers the same problem Mach has: it's too damn big to fit into cache so the essential parts of the kernel for IPC/task switching in general don't stay in fast memory.

Wayland works around the "task switching is expensive" problem by papering over the real issues and just moving stuff into the monolithic kernel (terrible idea... the display server need not do modesetting, but it should be a user space task if you ask me) and making the compositor/window-manager/display-server a single task. You gain a performance hack, but you lose proper process interface separation and other nice things. I suspect you could fix a lot of the latency issues in X11 with a synchronous IPC protocol change for window managers and compositors (ala jackd... you could then avoid copying and just use shared memory segments to shove pixel data between the few processes).

But, ey, I guess it'll work. I'm still not convinced Wayland will ever take over: the X11 developers seem to be working on a lot of stuff to negate the need for Wayland (e.g. the multi-pointer input model fixes the broken focus model, glamour replaces DDX with Mesa, a new xkb standard is on the way, etc.).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Anonymous Coward]

But today 99% of the time people don't use the network transparency stuff in X, they run locally

And not too many years ago 99% of PC users used Windows. This kind of argument is an attempt, IMO, to bypass difficult and sometimes complicated discussions about features and value.

I for one use X network transparency daily. Wayland offers no comparable feature, and external solutions like VNC are in many instances impractical and inferior. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to improve upon X11. But replacing X11 with Wayland as it's currently designed strikes me as similar in flaw to forcing desktop computer users to use a tablet optimized user interface.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mdmkolbe]

creating X / network transparent version of applications that migrate to Wayland

Either you are suggesting that apps should implement their own "network transparency" or you are suggesting that applications should be linked so they switch between using X and using Wayland depending on what is available. Both these ideas are often suggested by Wayland defenders, but both are bad ideas.

Expecting applications to implement their own network transparency is a bad idea. If you put network code in the app, then the app has to be installed on both ends (this means I can't run most Linux apps from a Windows "client" (i.e. what X11 calls a server)), most apps won't implement it (Murphy's Law will ensure the app you actually need doesn't implement it), apps that do implement it will do so poorly (insecure, poorly defined protocols etc). It is far better to implement it once in the input/graphics stack, then to expect every app to implement it's own.

I could go into why expecting every application to support both X and Wayland is a bad idea, but I hope it is self evident. Remember this wouldn't be some transitional state; you would have to make every app keep supporting X just to get the network transparency.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[badkarmadayaccount]

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2010-November/000037.html

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

Let me start with your last line:

you would have to make every app keep supporting X just to get the network transparency.

Actually no. That's one of the major advantages of X11 over something like VNC, that remote applications are at the application level not the desktop level. Its entirely possible that only a handful of applications support X and those are network transparent. We have framebuffer applications today on Linux and those are not network transparent even though the vast majority of applications are. Network transparency is a per app choice, not an OS wide choice.

And I certainly wasn't suggesting they implement their own solution. In 2015 and for many years thereafter you'll still have a situation where people are running X11 on top of Wayland. For those apps that need transparency (which I contend is few or none) they offer to compile to a X11 version. For example on OSX the xplanet port can compile to an x11 version an aqua version or both using a shared library. This situation could and would persist for many years on Linux.

So no, I'm not expecting every application to support both X and Wayland. I agree that's not going to happen. And moreover it defeats the purpose. Once Wayland exists it is going to quickly (say within 5 years) offer video services that X11 doesn't. And applications are going to want to take advantage of those services. It that doesn't happen, Wayland is a failed project. There are two reasonable intermediate states IMHO once Linux desktops are X11 running on top of Wayland which I think will happen in this order:

a) Linux desktops run mostly as X11, with a few high performance apps running at the Wayland level and not using X11. Which is essentially the situation we have today but with say 3-10x as many applications using the local system.
b) Linux desktops run Wayland with a few apps that want to support network transparency still using the legacy X11 interface.

I think getting to (a) is absolutely vital to Linux, because right now there is no good solution to those application that need performance. I'm not sure where you stand on the issue of permanently unsolvable performance problems with X11 which impact high performance applications. In my option they exist and those impacts are about to get much worse as we double pixel density, moving to "retina" displays. In theory at that point there is going to be a low number of applications. Part of this debate is a question of fact. The X11 supporters argue that there are no high performance applications damaged by X11 and here would be their chance to prove it (though Apple also creates an equally good chance today where you have an excellent local system right next to an excellent X11, window manager). Since in the case of Linux, we are talking open source here, and X11 developers who believe that network transparency is important or even ideologically wanted to prevent (b) could port those high performance applications from Wayland to X11.

The next step is that the GUIs (KDE, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE) create Wayland versions and either do or do not have a way of compiling themselves to X11. At that point, during the move from (a) to (b) end users really do have choices. This will be a point where end users are going to get to vote. And that was my point to the GP post who was concerned that end users don't get any kind of meaningful say. Lets say that Gnome 4 can be compiled to X11 and Wayland how people respond determines if Gnome 5:
i) doesn't supports X11 at all
ii) supports X11 with greatly reduced functionality
iii) supports X11 but with slightly reduced functionality
iv) supports X11 with full functionality

And again doing this sort of legwork to make sure Gnome 5 supports X11 is something X11 supporters can do (assuming their theory is correct that X11 doesn't hamper functionality).

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mdmkolbe]

Ok, we agree that having an app support both X11 and Wayland is a bad idea. (I only included it because I wasn't sure what you were suggesting.)

We also agree that having apps implement their own "network transparency" solution is a bad idea.

These two stipulations then mean that every app will have to choose between X11 and Wayland. (This of course brings us back to my original comment.) If scenario (b) never occurs and we stay in scenario (a), then perhaps things are fine. You won't be able to run Quake across the network, but for the most part apps support network transparency. That is fine. Right now, there is a cultural bias against using the framebuffer so only those apps to use it are the ones that really need it. It's conceivable the same could happen where developers avoid using Wayland and use it only when really necessary. However, if Wayland lives up to its promise and is much better and easier to support and maintain than X11, then there will be a strong incentive to move to scenario (b). Not only is having the community continue to support both would a waste of developer resources, but with all the PR that Wayland has been getting, there are plenty of developers (some justified and some not) just waiting to play with the new shiny. This would be a disaster for network transparency.

For those apps that need transparency (which I contend is few or none) they offer to compile to a X11 version.

Apps don't need transparency. Users need transparency. The other day I had to run Firefox remotely in order to deal with an IP based subscription. You wouldn't peg Firefox as an app needing transparency. Or for example, I used to do a lot of work on a cluster machine. The cluster was in a server room upstairs for cooling reasons, and for various reasons the disk wasn't shared for remote access, so development work for that cluster effectively had to be done on the head node of that cluster (the head node acted as a shared multi-user server and also controlled and acted as a gateway to the other nodes which did the actual super computing). Some days that meant using DDD or a PDF viewer. Other days it meant using the GnuPlot GUI or Gimp or even OpenOffice Calc. In none of these cases was it a property of the app that determined whether I wanted to run it across the network. It was a property of the surrounding context and use case. Any app that someone might use to do development or analysis was fair game.

I'm not sure where you stand on the issue of permanently unsolvable performance problems with X11 which impact high performance applications.

I don't have a stand. I've seen people claim they exist, but I've not seen them explained. Thus, I don't have enough data to evaluate that claim for myself.

Finally, I have to call foul on the following:

And again doing this sort of legwork to make sure Gnome 5 supports X11 is something X11 supporters can do (assuming their theory is correct that X11 doesn't hamper functionality).

Network transparency supporters are not necessarily X11 supporters. This isn't X11 vs Wayland. It is network transparency vs not. I would love to see a good alternative for X11 take over (be it Wayland or otherwise), but I still want my network transparency. In light of that, the debate isn't whether X11 hampers functionality. It is whether the network transparency should be widely supported in the Linux GUI ecosystem be that via X11 or something else. (I'd love to say "via Wayland", but the developers seem dead set against it.)

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Not in specific but in general that's the way Wayland is heading. Implementing something like RDP. So high level commands go between client and server and the client handles complex rendering. There are no pixel buffers being passed. But to do that requires going above the composition engine, the RDP level would exist at the GUI i.e. the Waylnad versions of Gnome or KDE not at the composer that wouldn't know the source of the high level commands.

See this approach can work for Windows or Mac OS though because it's a closed eco-system at that level, whereas *nix and open-source software pretty much by definition can't be. The benefit of dropping things down to a lower level is that the opportunities for fragmentation are minimized, and (personally) I think the user-experience is improved because we know what's going on there. The alternative is the approach you indicate - high level stuff - but in the open-source ecosystem that means we either have to support everything inefficiently (VNC) or we end up with dozens of protocols everywhere which don't agree with each other.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

We are agreeing on a lot. Let me start on what could be another area of agreement?

Network transparency supporters are not necessarily X11 supporters. This isn't X11 vs Wayland. It is network transparency vs not. I would love to see a good alternative for X11 take over (be it Wayland or otherwise), but I still want my network transparency. In light of that, the debate isn't whether X11 hampers functionality. It is whether the network transparency should be widely supported in the Linux GUI ecosystem be that via X11 or something else. (I'd love to say "via Wayland", but the developers seem dead set against it.)

Let me just clarify something here since you seem like a reasonable guy. What you seem to mean by "network transparency" is not full network transparency but rather "the ability to run applications remotely" i.e. on a per application basis being able to run applications on your native desktop and get sane (but not necessarily great) performance. That Wayland does intend to support, though indirectly. They want that supported with a mechanism similar to Microsoft's RDB. So for example at the Gnome level or the KDE level that sort of remote application management would exist. And similar to DBUS the hope then would be a cross Unix mechanism. So to use your example Firefox could be remoted on KDE or Gnome even though it is using the XUL widget set.

So they are 100% against network transparency, they aren't opposed to remote applications. When the Wayland people say they are opposed to network transparency they mean in the fully formal sense: having the application buffer and the video card buffer not have to reside on the same machine. That's the feature of X11 they want removed, not remote applications. I.E. the debate is over the mechanism by which X11 provides remote applications not over whether remote applications should be offered. They aren't going to be offered by Wayland, but they are going to be offered by Wayland GUI's (like in my hypothetical Gnome 5). For that to happen though the GUIs have had to at least be seriously supporting Wayland features.

. However, if Wayland lives up to its promise and is much better and easier to support and maintain than X11, then there will be a strong incentive to move to scenario (b). Not only is having the community continue to support both would a waste of developer resources, but with all the PR that Wayland has been getting, there are plenty of developers (some justified and some not) just waiting to play with the new shiny. This would be a disaster for network transparency

Let me just compound this by mentioning the strongest support for Wayland is coming from within the X.org development group. I think it is quite likely that when Wayland hits 1/2 usable, Wayland will pull way ahead because:

a) Wayland allows Linux GUI guys to emulate the mechanism used by Microsoft and Apple and not have to invent technology.
b) X11 is allowed to stagnate, since the developers who actually know a lot about X11 are focused on Wayland.

Most of the anti-Wayland people believe Wayland will be terrible and this won't happen. So it can't be assumed in these debates. So if by 2015 Wayland is on par with X11, by 2020 there will be no comparison and Wayland will be well more than a decade ahead.

As far as your firefox example, I understand. And in fact I used Firefox over X11 this year and it saved me having to think of an alternative approach. Ultimately though there are 3 situations:

a) Running an application on a machine sharing ram with the video card.
b) Running applications on a machine close enough to the video card that the latency between them is lowish and the bandwidth is plentiful and performance is irrelevant.
c) Running applications on a machine where either the latency is high or the bandwidth is limited

X11 does terrific for (b) in exchange for damaging (a) and (c). X11 was designed in a world where (b) is common. Your example is from the world of (b). Back in t

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

I think we are going to get both. Obvious VNC already exists. After that Gnome is going to implement a solution for Gnome applications, KDE a solution for KDE apps. The freedesktop group will probably create a standard so that the two desktops, Firefox, OpenOffice... can use either the Gnome or KDE standard to some extent. But yeah I can easily see that Linux's RDB ends up being GUI specific and KDE's only really works right for KDE/QT apps and Gnomes really only works right for Gnome / GTK apps.

But what you were suggesting for OpenGL would still require a protocol to make work. And the apps need to know about it at the messaging level which requires the event handler and... This isn't an easy problem in practice. You are getting 80% of what you want, not 100%.

I think:
VNC = 100% computable lousy performance
GUI specific = 50% compatible good performance
client server = specific to the client excellent performance

is a rather nice lineup.

I'm not sure what adding
X11 = 95% compatible lousy performance under most situations but for a few good performance.

really adds. Obviously the perfect world is the performance of frame buffer with ubiquitousness and compatibility of X11 but that's not possible to achieve.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[Wolfrider]

--Your " 99% " is wildly overstated. There are a lot of people who -do- use X remotely.

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[mdmkolbe]

What you seem to mean by "network transparency" is not full network transparency but rather "the ability to run applications remotely" i.e. on a per application basis being able to run applications on your native desktop and get sane (but not necessarily great) performance.

Agreed, though I'll qualify that I want it pervasively (e.g. like with X11 where it is possible but very rare for an app to break network transparency). Having only 95% of apps work remotely is almost worse than having 0% of apps work remotely because with 95% you come to depend upon it only to get bit by the one app that you didn't foresee not working across the network. It needs to be a very rare event to find an app that doesn't work across the network.

My main concern is that the way the Wayland development process is being run will make it hard for their to be a remoting solution that is both pervasive and good. (VNC is pervasive, but it is not good at integrating remote apps with the local desktop.)

That Wayland does intend to support, though indirectly. They want that supported with a mechanism similar to Microsoft's RDB. So for example at the Gnome level or the KDE level that sort of remote application management would exist. And similar to DBUS the hope then would be a cross Unix mechanism.

OK, let's dissect this. If Gnome and KDE independently implement their own network layer, then chances are they won't inter-operate. Having something like DBUS would be better, but then we need to ensure the use of this DBUS-like layer is also pervasive. If it were integrated into Wayland or if from the start Wayland had this extra layer on top that all (minus epsilon) apps had to use it, then we would be OK. However, the Wayland developer's seem to be heading in a direction that makes that unlikely (even if only because they are ignoring the issue).

So they are 100% against network transparency, they aren't opposed to remote applications.

Last I looked into this, the plans for remote applications were along the lines of "well, maybe someone will come along and do it for us, but we're not going to do it ourselves, and are certainly not going consider it in our design choices". Has that changed? If not, then it will be hard to get a pervasive remoting solution (e.g. market timing, temptation for developers to bypass the networking layer and write directly to Wayland, chance of the Wayland developers inadvertently making it unnessisarily hard to implement such a solution, etc.).

I can understand limiting the scope of your project, but remotability needs to be given just as much consideration as things like input methods, clipboards, window managers, etc. Sure, they aren't part of the core rendering pipeline, but you can't just ignore them and expect to be able to bolt them on later. You need to at least have some reasonable plans for them so they can inform your design process. It's even better to have implementations so you can find unexpected complications. (OK, well, I guess X11 did bolt a few of those things on later, but that's not an example to emulate.) In fact, remotability is probably one of the least easy to bolt on after the fact. Maybe the developers have changed their attitudes (and I would love to see evidence of that), but last I checked they were rather blithly ignoring it.

Most of the anti-Wayland people believe Wayland will be terrible and this won't happen. So it can't be assumed in these debates.

Hmm, I hadn't noticed that, but my perspective is of course different. (Mostly I'm too busy wading through the widespread but ignorant arguments defending Wayland's lack of network transparency (e.g., "just use VNC").) I would actually be very pro-Wayland (it seems to have more support than other X11 replacements), but remotability is a deal breaker for me.

Today for me and for most people (a) and (c) are much more common, so common t

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[jbolden]

OK good so we agree that you aren't really interested in network transparency what you want is good remote applications. That's a lot of progress because network transparency is impossible with Wayland while it is entirely possible that the Linux community 2015-2020 creates a good remote system like RDB. It more or less comes down to how much they care.

Let me open up by saying a good deal of your response is based on the assumption that it is possible for Wayland to implement their solution (i.e. RDB for KDE and RDB for Gnome) at the compositor level. It isn't. At least it isn't meaningfully possible. In some theoretical sense you could do it with a GTK version specific Wayland that also knew a great about Gnome and QT version specific Wayland that also knew a great deal about KDE and a XUL version specific Wayland that also knew a great deal about Firefox/Gecko... Part of abandoning network transparency is abandoning this is something the compositor should be doing. Rather the success of RDB proves it is better done at the GUI level. In other words do it at the rendering level . Now the good thing is both KDE and Gnome support the shift to Wayland and both of them have indicated they agree it should be done by the GUI level, so as much as open source projects can meaningfully commit to stuff, they've committed to doing it.

Now in terms of pervasive. That really is a choice the Linux community makes after KDE and Gnome develop remote rendering and after (if they ever do) create the equivalent of DBUS. At that point other widget sets have to decide whether they want to adopt the standard. For example wxWidgets are based on GTK they could use huge chunks of the Gnome code... but it is going to be up to wxWidgets to decide. Mozilla will have to decide whether it is worth it for XUL. In 2007 I'd say they would likely want to be one of the first to implement it and be on the committee. Right now in 2012 they are in a trim the fat mood desperately trying to keep up with Apple, Google and Microsoft now those 3 are spending a lot on browser development. In 2020 maybe they've fallen so far behind that they are comfortable being a niche browser, or being a Linux only solution and are like they were in 2020. But maybe they aren't and they have fallen behind but consider catching up their #1 priority now that Apple, Microsoft and Google have slowed down browser improvements; or whatever the future holds.

The other issue is of course whether Wayland goes in the direction of Microsoft or Apple. Both roads exist once X11 is abandoned. Apple implements pervasive integrated video and integrated animation. The Clutter project wants to bring this to X11 but its hard so they are failing. GNUStep while being essentially Linux only always (more or less) follows Apple standards so they are one that I can see being resistant to a Linux standard for application portability regardless but this would be a moment for them to shine. And we don't know how Linux users feel about video and animation once they offered these things being silky smooth and available at all levels of their GUI. They may very well become like Apple users who consider it a vital part of their computing experience and won't give it up for better remote access. Wayland creates this fork in the road between the Microsoft and Apple way of handling the desktop that doesn't exist today. The Wayland guys like Microsoft's approach but once you create the choice, we don't know which door Linux picks. In 2001 when I switched to Apple, I never would have thought how much I love integrated video. I'm not a visual guy but by about 2004 my taste has definitely changed. When I'm on Windows or Linux and don't have it, everything feels so 1995 and clunky to me. I'm fully functional on those alternate desktops but never comfortable.

So lets assume as a thought experiment that the Linux community does consider remote important and that Linux application tastes more or less don't change. So I propose for the purpose of argument

Re:What the hell is Wayland?

[aled]

A better X would be cool. However Wayland is not that.

Since nobody else has gotten any better ideas and because sometimes you need to break some old things to do new things it seems this is the new X.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I see a screenshot of Wayland, I see rotated windows. Is that its only feature?

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/screenshots.html

Try harder.

Re:Sigh

[nzac]

It's so far from ready, this is what its currently achieving. When you are remaking a compositor from the begging these are significant steps.

I have been waiting from this announcement from Ubuntu since they said they were trying to use it next release. It might be close to being ok for a 2d no accel window manager but trying to run unity was never happening in 6 months.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/screenshots.html

Try harder.

Hmm. That's really... not very impressive. I'll assume those shots are old.

Re:Sigh

[dkf]

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/screenshots.html

Is it just me or do some of those screenshots show significant rendering bugs like a failure to erase text correctly? (That's in the VTE demo.) Aside from that, are there any impressive demos?

Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual Ubuntu practice is to jam incomplete, beta quality changes (grub2, upstart, plymouth, unity, etc.) into release and fix them them in subsequent
releases. This decision is a welcome change.

Or maybe Wayland is so un-ready that even the usual Ubuntu powers-that-be couldn't allow it to be foisted on users, in which case we'll see beta quality Wayland in 13.04.

I'm betting on #2.

Not that I'm complaining, but there is wisdom in adopting realistic expectations.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[ilikenwf]

Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world, with Canonical being equivalent to Microsoft.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[DarkOx]

Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world, with Canonical being equivalent to Microsoft.

The only difference is Windows for all its warts, flaws, and promised features never delivered, is actually a usable platform. Where as Ubuntu is just a broken version of an otherwise useful Debian.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yadda yadda, I want to stay the only person in my neigbourhood using Linux.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[somersault]

Does that make OSX the Linux of the Windows world? What a weird analogy..

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[lister king of smeg]

way more pragmatic answer, if they switch to wayland they will piss of valve who is working on porting their games onto ubuntu. they piss of valve there will be no games, as a consequence there will be no year of the linux desktop for a long time. linux as a big force in the desktop space is ubuntu's goal. so no xserver means no valve means no steam no games and now no games.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think Steam is going to make the mythical "Year of the Linx Desktop" happen, you're going to be sadly mistaken. By next year we'll be hearing about the new shiny thing that will bring Linux to the domination of Microsoft.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[oakgrove]

If Linux ever comes to dominate the desktop it'll be in some form that just comes out of nowhere the way Android did* and made Linux a huge force in the mobile space. Windows would be a lot harder to displace than the iPhone though.

*Yes to people on here Android was old hat by the time it actually appeared but to most consumers it just appeared out of nowhere one day in 2008.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[MBCook]

My understanding of Wayland says that it wouldn't bother Valve at all.

If you use a toolkit that has been ported to Wayland, you use the toolkit and nothing changes.

If you use a toolkit that hasn't been ported, you'd just run the X server that runs as a Wayland client, so things keep working.

But the important thing is running OpenGL, which works just fine in Wayland (which is built on OpenGL).

Unless Valve is writing their own rendering directly against X (which seems like it would be an idiotic thing to do in general, especially considering Wayland has been coming for over 2 years), I wouldn't think this would really effect them. In fact, they could decide to go Wayland only (assuming it's done enough at that point) and avoid whatever hassle X might have given them.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[jones_supa]

The usual Ubuntu practice is to jam incomplete, beta quality changes (grub2, upstart, plymouth, unity, etc.) into release and fix them them in subsequent releases.

Usually desktop Linux distros are so buggy that they would count as alpha quality by commercial software standards. In that bunch Ubuntu+Unity is actually quite solid.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to stay the only person in my neigbourhood using Linux.

And what's wrong with that?

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Microlith]

made Linux a huge force in the mobile space

It didn't make Linux a huge force in the mobile space. Google made Android huge in the mobile space. The kernel has simply been utilized, with little flowing upstream into it from Android and frequent GPL violations by Chinese ODMs.

It is, otherwise, incompatible with what's commonly referred to as "Linux."

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[binarylarry]

Windows 8?

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[binarylarry]

Aw man Google made Linux incompatible with Linux?

Bummer for Canonical, their Ubuntu on Android WILL NEVER WORK NOW.

You should email Mark Shuttleworth about this, oh uberhacker.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[oakgrove]

It didn't make Linux a huge force in the mobile space. Google made Android huge in the mobile space. The kernel has simply been utilized, with little flowing upstream into it from Android and frequent GPL violations by Chinese ODMs.

It is, otherwise, incompatible with what's commonly referred to as "Linux."

I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux

-- Linux Torvalds commenting on his blog about his at the time newly acquired Nexus One

I will politely defer to his opinion over what anyone else thinks in this matter.

Full sentence for context:

At the same time I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux, and I've had a number of them over the years (in addition to the G1, I had one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones) etc.

That's as close to an explicit declaration by Torvalds on Android being Linux as I can find. If you have something where he says otherwise in a more direct way I'd be happy to see it. Otherwise, if the Nexus One with Froyo Android on it is said to "run Linux" by the creator of Linux then that's case closed.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[oakgrove]

And of course I typed Linus' name as "Linux". *facepalm*

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[gaelfx]

Please mod parent up

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[BanHammor]

It's elitism.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[makomk]

But the important thing is running OpenGL, which works just fine in Wayland (which is built on OpenGL).

For values of "just fine" equal to whatever the available open source drivers for your graphics card can manage, which probably isn't going to be good enough for Valve. Actually, I seem to recall that Wayland uses OpenGL ES, which means that you're actually stuck with a fairly restrictive subset of what the open source drivers for your hardware can manage, and a fairly badly tested one too at that. I believe Valve's games are going to requires full-fat OpenGL 3, which means that they need a whole bunch of stuff that just plain isn't available in OpenGL ES.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Ubuntu gets to be a beta, I'll wait till it makes at least a consumer preview.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[lister king of smeg]

If Linux ever comes to dominate the desktop it'll be in some form that just comes out of nowhere the way Android did* and made Linux a huge force in the mobile space. Windows would be a lot harder to displace than the iPhone though.

*Yes to people on here Android was old hat by the time it actually appeared but to most consumers it just appeared out of nowhere one day in 2008.

thats just it to all of us here on slashdot, we already know all about ubuntu but the general average joe still doesn't and only sees windows and mac if the OEMS where to make a successfully push, (not like they did with halfbaked netbook crap that was only there to kill vista and let them keep selling xp) it would seem, like android, to be this new wonderful system for you average user.

Re:Did the grownups prevail this time?

[spitzak]

The wayland compositor is restricted to OpenGL ES.

But applications can use any rendering library they want to draw into their window images. Thus full OpenGL if they want.

The biggest trick is that the window image must be in gpu memory where OpenGL can draw into with hardware acceleration. But wayland allows this to be set up.

so sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so sad about this. I wanted my crappy Unity look to be better! lol

Just be patient

[asmkm22]

Things will get better once the Yutani Corporation enters the picture.

Re:Just be patient

[Hsien-Ko]

Game over man! Game over! What the fuck are we gonna boot now?!

Thank you for the update.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear timothy,

Thank you for the update. You may continue about your business.

Yours faithfully,
System Compositor.

Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[ilikenwf]

I thought this was a hardcore tech site, but Ubuntu is a pile of crap, and anyone who has tried other distros (crap like CentOS doesn't count) usually likes the other distros better. Debian, Archlinux, Gentoo - these are distros that don't suck, don't go into dependency hell every upgrade, and don't make a gui for everything, with ads and daemons and useless crapp tossed in.

If I wanted my mom or dad to use Linux, I'd give them Ubuntu, but for anyone who knows what their doing, anything but would be a better choice.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[icebraining]

I use Ubuntu server at work, does that count?

It seems pointless to me when there's Debian (which I use in all my systems), unless you want to keep the system without upgrading to a new version for more than three years, which we don't.

That said, it's not that annoying either. And I actually like Upstart, for now, at least.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Ubuntu Server LTS on personal and business servers. It's Debian regression tested and provides a nice support guarantee. My only complaint is Plymouth hiding boot messages. Everything else is fine.

I have made multiple attempts to use Ubuntu on desktop machines. The issues are legion and each time I gave up after fighting hard to beat the mess into submission. So it's Mint and OpenSUSE (employer preference) on desktops. Both work well with reasonable levels of effort.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find ubuntu to be great. My computer illiterate wife can use it. Hell, shes even starting to use the CLIMy 3 year old daughter can use it, and with a little fine tuning and patience I even found it acceptable.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Rob_Bryerton]

>> I thought this was a hardcore tech site

Oh no, you're right: it actually was at one time. Now /., being a shadow of its' former self, exists pretty much to inject politics and religion into nearly EVERY story/summary in order to troll the readership, thus driving revenue via ad impressions. /tinfoil

>>If I wanted my mom or dad to use Linux, I'd give them Ubuntu...

You'd do that to your mom and dad? I'd at least have the decency to set them up with, say, Mint...

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Tip the veal & try the waitresses!

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at work, but I've been using it at home for years. I stopped upgrading when they left me with a choice between Gnome 3 and Unity, and I'll have to switch to Mint soon.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[jones_supa]

I thought this was a hardcore tech site, but Ubuntu is a pile of crap, and anyone who has tried other distros (crap like CentOS doesn't count) usually likes the other distros better. Debian, Archlinux, Gentoo - these are distros that don't suck, don't go into dependency hell every upgrade, and don't make a gui for everything, with ads and daemons and useless crapp tossed in.

I don't see choosing some particular distro that important. They all carry mostly the same software and have somewhat similar mechanisms for package management and maintaining the system.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped upgrading when they left me with a choice between Gnome 3 and Unity

and KDE4 and XFCE and TWM and RatPoison and MonadWM and FVWM2 and Enlightenment and ....

Any or all of those are an apt-get install away and will integrate with GDM to give you the choice at login.

Curse such lack of choice!

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[gaelfx]

It would be hilarious to me, if it weren't already infuriating, that so many people decry how crappy Ubuntu is, and go on to complain about the user interace. If you're a hardcore user, it shouldn't matter what distribution you're running, you can change whatever you want about it, that's what's great about Linux. But some people need to show how big their Linux Organ is by dumping on a somewhat popular form of Linux. Don't like Unity? There are TONS of other DM out there, try one. If you still hate Xubuntu or Lubuntu, go with any other distro you want, but be aware that you're just choosing a different package manager (if even that). If you think that no distro has it right, then get going with Arch and spin your own web of desktop doom for others to rag on. Basically, what I'm trying to say is shit or get off the pot.

Re:Anyone on /. Actually Use Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

My biggest beef with the Ubuntu project is its reaction to user complaints about poorly configured, buggy subsystems.
Rather than have someone on the team learn, say, alsa or grub and configure it properly, they rush to adopt flaky beta versions of replacements like pulseaudio and grub2. As they still don't have anyone who understands the replacements they too are shipped in a poorly configured manner, introducing a whole new set of frustrations.

Will replacing X with Wayland fare any better? Not unless Ubuntu configure it properly.

Readiness

[valros]

It's not really a case of Wayland itself not being ready, more like the graphical driver ecosystem is way too fragmented and spotty for Wayland to be implemented on all(maybe most) systems. And I believe Qt and GTK are not fully ported to Wayland, let alone all the other applications and libraries that interface directly with X.

Unfortunately the GNU ecosystem is too dependent on X, thus Wayland seems impossible to implement at this time, but a fresh clean window manager is a big step in the right direction.

And no Wayland is not a GUI.

Re:Readiness

[jones_supa]

On the other hand, the Linux software stack changes very rapidly, so I presume it won't take forever to have the proper structures around Wayland too.

Waybuntu

[Skapare]

They should call it by another name. I'll see if I can think up one.

Re:Waybuntu

[Lord Maud'Dib]

Or maybe Wayland Ubuntani?

Re:Waybuntu

[rrohbeck]

As long as there's Kubuntu and Xubuntu they can do whatever the hell they like. I haven't touched standard Ubuntu since Lucid.

It wouldn't surprise me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't surprise me if the tool that is behind the abortion known as systemctl is also a part of this monstrosity.

It's sad to see Linux distros going this "me too" route of solutions in search of a problem. If this POS picks up momentum, makes it into Fedora (like systemctl), then filters down to RedHat, it's off to BSD-land... (Thank FSM for BSD)

Re:It wouldn't surprise me...

[Noughmad]

The tool behing systemctl is called systemd and noticeably speeds up the boot process. It is not by any means related to Wayland, or Unity, or PulseAudio.

The systemctl interface itself is not the most intuitive (no config file to edit, having to type kdm.service instead of just kdm), but systemd is an improvement, not an abortion.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the comments, it appears most have no idea what Wayland actually is and the rest just use this to bash Ubuntu.

I would like to just say this - it doesn't make you cool to be the only kid on the block using Linux. So go suck a dick, because every single comment you leave points to some minor quirks or just states your personal preference (hey, I hate working with rpms but I don't go around saying how everyone should just use Debian or Arch - it's possible to not do that!).

Slashdot shit eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Slashdot, where nerds eat their own shit and then piss on their moms face. This post brought to you by reddit and 9gag.

Ubuntu sucking metrosexual cocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take Windows 8, set it to shit brown, install Firefox and Libreoffice and you have Ubuntu. Ubuntu is for hipsters too hipster for macs and therefore need to have their penises cut in half.

Re:Ubuntu sucking metrosexual cocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

but their dicks are already so small......

Wayland

[philofaqs]

So something no-one wants, universally reviled, will never see production, pure vaporware. Sorry I must have missed the news that Canonical had been bought by Microsoft.

Professional

[Anonymous Coward]

DualShine.com Professional China jewelry wholesaler, super low prices

wholesale fashion jewelry and costume jewelry for women and girls, Largest

selection of cheap jewelry, handmade jewelry, jewelry supplies, jewelry findings

& accessories, jewelry making supplies, apparel accessories, hair accessories

and other Fashion Accessories (Asian Fashion, Chinese Fashion, Indian

Fashion, Korean Fashion, Japanese Fashion), $100 minimum order and

welcome bulk wholesale, big discount, shop now.
www.dualshine.com

Not any more

[quixote9]

Ubuntu helped me completely switch over to linux back in 2004-2005. But once they changed to Unity, I moved to Linux Mint Debian and haven't looked back.

Sad, really. Their forums were one of the best things about them. As I learned tips and tricks, it became sort of a hobby to visit the forums and try to answer questions for even bigger noobs than me. Not much I can do there now. And the Debian boards are more of a listen and learn place for me. I miss the community, but the OS has made itself unusable. Wayland sounds like a way of piling that mistake higher and deeper.

Re:Not any more

[Anonymous Coward]

But once they changed to Unity, I moved to Linux Mint Debian and haven't looked back.

Why completely change distro? Just install XFCE on Ubuntu and away you go.

Their forums were one of the best things about them.

And you could still be using them if you hadn't gone and changed distro for no reason.

Re:Not any more

[icebraining]

Well, if you switch do Debian proper (they don't support derivatives), try the IRC channels. They have hundreds of people always on, and a few of them are real Debian gurus ready to help.

Re:Not any more

[quixote9]

Since I-don't-remember-when (Hardy Heron?), I was spending more and more time recustomizing stuff after every upgrade. They kept pushing gwibber and telepathy and f-spot or shotwell or whatever-the-hell back on. I had a small hard drive and a slow connection and didn't want programs I never used taking up space and bandwidth during updates.

With Unity and its "you VILL haff ze launchbar on ze left and like it" attitude, it looked to me like the whole philosophy was headed straight down the porcelain fixture. That's why I changed distro. Sure, I could install xfce or kde (which is what I did, I'm kind of a sucker for eye candy), but as I say, I got increasingly fed up with having to fix things I hadn't broken and being told, in effect, to get used to it.

Re:Not any more

[quixote9]

Debian has excellent help. I'm just saying most people know way too much for me to be of any use to them. I tried straight Debian and stumbled on stupid stuff like figuring out how to set permissions for my sftp backups and stuff. Debian can handle networks of any complexity, so for a household user, their permissions are set up more strictly than what I was familiar with and I ran out of time on the learning curve. You know how it is. I keep playing with it though because I like their attitude. One of these days I'll have learned enough to switch.

Re:Not any more

[unixisc]

Wayland sounds like a way of piling that mistake higher and deeper.

But Wayland is where all the major DEs are interested in going - KDE (KWin), GNOME 3 (Mutter) and Unity (Compiz). Granted, one could use the other Window Managers unless and until the point that they too decide to go Wayland. I'm not sure whether Muffin - the Cinnamon derivative of Mutter - will go Wayland as well, but that's for the Mint team to decide.

Re:Not any more

[unixisc]

I think the GP was suggesting installing a different WM, such as Gnome 2 or MATE and using that, thereby continuing to use Ubuntu. Incidentally, did/do Ubuntu forums cover issues w/ Xubuntu or Lubuntu (or Kubuntu - this last is a special case since Canonical no longer handles it)

You said it (now, eat your words troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not natively on Windows, you have to install third party software to make 3D work on Windows." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, @11:05PM (#40941525) QUOTED DIRECTLY FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3033483&cid=40941525

1.) OpenGL32.DLL will do 3d BY ITSELF exposing the OpenGL 1.1. standards' functionality (which vidcard OEM's driversets & libs enhance to higher OpenGL std. levels, which NVidia on Windows support as does ATI, probably others too)

See pertinent proof excerpt here:

---

How Does It Work On Windows? All Windows versions support OpenGL. The Microsoft Windows DLL opengl32.dll only directly exposes OpenGL 1.1 functions. The important thing to know is that opengl32.dll belongs to Microsoft.

FROM -> http://www.opengl.org/wiki/FAQ#How_Does_It_Work_On_Windows.3F

---

2.) OpenGL32.dll's also a native Microsoft dynamic link library too, not a foreign non-OEM file, & yes, it does 3d display, unlike what you said above.

---

3.) OpenGL32.dll's not an emulator that produces OS environs "heavy weight" either (As Linux's WINE must do reproducing Windows itself in emulation, in essence on Linux to do an imperfect less than current Direct X - OpenGL32.DLL's NOT emulating Operating Systems!)

---

* THUS, once more? Well... you know:

You have to EAT YOUR WORDS!

(You know, they're yours & NOW? Spiced with the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat" & of course, lol, "flavored" with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH too, lmao!)

You're quoted in black & white above in grave technical errors as usual troll!

Just as I said how/when/where/who/what/when/why since OpenGL32.DLL does have 3d functionality by itself, & yes, OpenGL functionality driven too to many builds 1.1 - current 4.x iirc!

APK

P.S.=> By the way - "ENJOY YOUR LUNCH" (breakfast, & dinner too, because you'll be eating your words for a while now I think...)

After all: LMAO, see YOUR QUOTE ABOVE as proof of your colossal blunder - & my data disproving it entirely!

THIS? Well, lol, you KNOW I've just GOTTA say it "as-is-per-my-own-inimitable style"... This was JUST "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" & it always is, because your ac trolling makes it so (how many times have I dusted you in tech debates that you have decided to troll me by ac posts for MONTHS now, only to fail each time as you have here?)...

... apk

Re:You said it (now, eat your words troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

alexander peter kowalski
903 east division st.
syracuse, ny 13208

dob: 01/31/1965

mother:
jan kowalski
dob: 12/03/1933

Replacement for X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I can do "ffmpeg -waylandgrab ..." I don't want it.

Coward APK shames his family

[Anonymous Coward]

Disproof of all apk's statements: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040729&cid=40949719
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040697&cid=40949343
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040597&cid=40948659
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3037687&cid=40947927
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040425&cid=40946755
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038791&cid=40942439
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3024445&cid=40942207
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038597&cid=40942031
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038601&cid=40942085
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040803&cid=40950045
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040867&cid=40950563
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040921&cid=40950839
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041035&cid=40951899
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041081&cid=40952169
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041091&cid=40952383
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041123&cid=40952991
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041313&cid=40954201
AND MANY MORE

$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exi

Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

From the top:

"Not natively on Windows, you have to install third party software to make 3D work on Windows." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, @11:05PM (#40941525) QUOTED DIRECTLY FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3033483&cid=40941525

1.) OpenGL32.DLL will do 3d BY ITSELF exposing the OpenGL 1.1. standards' functionality (which vidcard OEM's driversets & libs enhance to higher OpenGL std. levels, which NVidia on Windows support as does ATI, probably others too)

See pertinent proof excerpt here:

---

How Does It Work On Windows? All Windows versions support OpenGL. The Microsoft Windows DLL opengl32.dll only directly exposes OpenGL 1.1 functions. The important thing to know is that opengl32.dll belongs to Microsoft.

FROM -> http://www.opengl.org/wiki/FAQ#How_Does_It_Work_On_Windows.3F

---

2.) OpenGL32.dll's also a native Microsoft dynamic link library too, not a foreign non-OEM file, & yes, it does 3d display, unlike what you said above.

---

3.) OpenGL32.dll's not an emulator that produces OS environs "heavy weight" either (As Linux's WINE must do reproducing Windows itself in emulation, in essence on Linux to do an imperfect less than current Direct X - OpenGL32.DLL's NOT emulating Operating Systems!)

---

* THUS, once more? Well... you know:

You have to EAT YOUR WORDS!

(You know, they're yours & NOW? Spiced with the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat" & of course, lol, "flavored" with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH too, lmao!)

You're quoted in black & white above in grave technical errors as usual troll!

Just as I said how/when/where/who/what/when/why since OpenGL32.DLL does have 3d functionality by itself, & yes, OpenGL functionality driven too to many builds 1.1 - current 4.x iirc!

APK

P.S.=> By the way - "ENJOY YOUR LUNCH" (breakfast, & dinner too, because you'll be eating your words for a while now I think...)

After all: LMAO, see YOUR QUOTE ABOVE as proof of your colossal blunder - & my data disproving it entirely!

THIS? Well, lol, you KNOW I've just GOTTA say it "as-is-per-my-own-inimitable style"... This was JUST "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" & it always is, because your ac trolling makes it so (how many times have I dusted you in tech debates that you have decided to troll me by ac posts for MONTHS now, only to fail each time as you have here?)...

... apk on Windows, Well... you know:

You have to

Re:Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

this obnoxious fucknuts has been trolling the internet and spamming his shit delphi sub-fart app utilities for 15 years.

alexander peter kowalski
903 east division st.
syracuse, ny 13208

dob: 01/31/1965

mother:
jan kowalski
dob: 12/03/1933

Re:Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, apk, who the fuck did you piss off this time? Hahahahaahahahahahahaahaha. Pass the popcorn as the troll apk gets pwned relentlessly.

Coward APK shames his family

[Anonymous Coward]

Disproof of all apk's statements: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040729&cid=40949719
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040697&cid=40949343
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040597&cid=40948659
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3037687&cid=40947927
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040425&cid=40946755
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040317&cid=40946043
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038791&cid=40942439
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3024445&cid=40942207
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038597&cid=40942031
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3038601&cid=40942085
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040803&cid=40950045
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040867&cid=40950563
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3040921&cid=40950839
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041035&cid=40951899
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041081&cid=40952169
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041091&cid=40952383
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041123&cid=40952991
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3041313&cid=40954201
AND MANY MORE

$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exi

you FaIxl It!

[Anonymous Coward]

and reports 4nd

Still needs networkability

[LaughingRadish]

As far as I'm concerned, Wayland is a non-starter as long as it continues to be ambiguous about whether or not it will support network transparency. I really don't want there to be a situation where someone writes a graphical server control application that needs to run on the server but won't display on some other computer. With X11 this is effortless. With Wayland, it's a mushy wishwash of "no, it's not supported, you don't need it, so shut up" mixed with "maybe it'll support it, but that's not our focus".

Re:Still needs networkability

[badkarmadayaccount]

The are quite specific, actually - that's not our job, link in a RDP/ICA/NX server library in the compositor, and shut up. They want to strip down the graphical subsystem to graphics only, remoting belongs somewhere else, even if that means a companion library upstreamed from another maintainer. And X11 protocol sucks in comparison with modern remoting protocols, even RDP, if a new enough version.

Why not replace X11 with... nothing?

[JDG1980]

No doubt this is a stupid question (I'm not really that familiar with the technical details of the Linux graphics stack), but why is middleware like X11 or Wayland needed at all? Why can't the desktop/window manager talk directly to OpenGL, which in turn talks to the graphics hardware via a driver? Intuitively, it would seem like this would give better performance and fewer places for bugs to crop up. Why do there have to be 20 different layers in the rendering stack? Is this just abstraction for abstraction's sake or is there actually a good reason?

Re:Why not replace X11 with... nothing?

[agrif]

This is almost exactly what Wayland is doing. Wayland is a communication protocol between compositors and the things they composite: usually, between window managers and applications. This means that the window manager is responsible for communicating with applications, and for pushing video data on to the screen (via OpenGL + Kernel Mode Setting). So instead of launching X, then launching a window manager on top of that, you just launch the window manager.

This is the primary advantage of Wayland: it's simple. Really really simple. It's basically just OpenGL and a protocol for delegating render surfaces to other applications (to render on to using OpenGL). By comparison, an X server needs font rendering, shape rendering, and a ton of other things that aren't used today anyway because everyone uses freetype and cairo and such. Wayland leaves those out and expects you to get that from other places (like, say, freetype and cairo).

(Wayland is also the name of a C library implementing the Wayland protocol. The Wayland project also produces the Weston compositor, as a reference implementation of a simple "window manager".)

Re:Why not replace X11 with... nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is almost exactly what Wayland is doing. Wayland is a communication protocol between compositors and the things they composite: usually, between window managers and applications. This means that the window manager is responsible for communicating with applications, and for pushing video data on to the screen (via OpenGL + Kernel Mode Setting). So instead of launching X, then launching a window manager on top of that, you just launch the window manager.

This is the primary advantage of Wayland: it's simple. Really really simple. It's basically just OpenGL and a protocol for delegating render surfaces to other applications (to render on to using OpenGL). By comparison, an X server needs font rendering, shape rendering, and a ton of other things that aren't used today anyway because everyone uses freetype and cairo and such. Wayland leaves those out and expects you to get that from other places (like, say, freetype and cairo).

(Wayland is also the name of a C library implementing the Wayland protocol. The Wayland project also produces the Weston compositor, as a reference implementation of a simple "window manager".)

www.ibrahimabi.com bu site baka site bu site site deil hayatn ta kendisi

Re:Why not replace X11 with... nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunate naming. It's taken 12 years living in the Western suburbs of Boston for me to get Wayland, Weston, Wellesley and Waltham straight.
Now the rest of the world can enjoy driving around in circles too.

Re:Why not replace X11 with... nothing?

[mikael]

X11 started off as a way of unifying all the different windows systems of all the different UNIX workstation vendors (Digital, DEC, Sun, SGI, HP). At the time it was developed it was considered a triumph of engineering because you could have an application running on one workstation, and have everything else drawn on a different screen on another workstation in another part of the campus. All communication was done using TCP/IP and other network stacks.

Which was great when all your software was doing the rendering. Then they start bringing in hardware acceleration starting with pixel-blitting and hardware mouse cursors. Going up and down through the network stack just to read a block of pixels was just too much, so they had to implement direct graphics screen formats which bypassed the network stack. Next thing was people was far fancier widgets than plain bitmapped text on flat square widgets as X-windows just managed the basic bounding box of every widget, window and screen, along with bitmapped text fonts and mouse icons, read input from input devices like mice and keyboards, and a software drawing callback system to refresh items which were erased when windows are moved around.

Then users wanted rounded corners on windows, shadow, transparency and effects, and accurate fonts. So they brought in X-windows/Motif, TrueType Fonts (FreeType). Then 3D acceleration came along, this was more of a bolt-on to X-windows. You created special GL widgets which allowed you to send down graphics commands. Then they wanted 3D effects on the window system itself. That meant bypassing the X-windows 2D render path to do pixblitting, and just render everything as texture-mapped triangles and point clouds using OpenGL. So the window manager itself becomes an OpenGL application. 2D drawing is just done over OpenGL functionality.

With current graphics hardware, it's easier just to have each window as an OpenGL renderbuffer and just texture draw all of them to the framebuffer.

ubuntu shortcomings

[Anonymous Coward]

It's becoming more and more obvious that Shuttleworth and his crew couldn't organise sex in a brothel. I'm so glad I ditched them and returned to Debian.

Re:ubuntu shortcomings

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian organizes Sex? And why do you demand, your distributor needs to organize sex?

But what does it give us?

[dbIII]

What does Wayland propose to give us that isn't already available with a stack like E17 (with Evas alone doing a lot of what the entire benefit of Wayland is supposed to be) on top of X11?
I've looked at their list of features. Is there something else that provides some advantage that hasn't been listed? I just cannot see any advantage other than "let's have our own X, but without the hookers and blackjack".

Re:But what does it give us?

[agrif]

Everything that Wayland does is possible under X, it just might be hard to write the X code to do it.

The biggest point to Wayland is that it is extremely simple (compared to X... X is huge), and it's capable of doing 95% of what people use X for. The other 5% is network transparency, a feature I hold dearly but one that I acknowledge not many people care about.

So what's so great about simple? For one, it's easier to maintain. It's also easier to write clients for, since it's almost entirely OpenGL (the Wayland part is small). The X library is a horrible horrible thing, and I would die happy if I never have to use it again.

Re:But what does it give us?

[jon3k]

a feature I hold dearly but one that I acknowledge not many people care about.

And I can appreciate that, but keep in mind, anyone can write a compositor with network transparency support or you can use VNC or any other technology to access applications remotely. Or of course, just run X on top of Wayland to support your old apps for now. So it's not like we don't have options. And I can't blame the guys for optimizing for the 95% and leaving the 5% of us to figure out, from several different options, the best way to handle our environment.

Re:But what does it give us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the constant shitstorm about network transparency and the lack of it in wayland and the useage patterns by the typical linux user who usually is far more sophisticated than the average windows or osx user, I'd say your "95% doesn't use it" is both disingenuous and far off.

You don't happen to be a gnome-de-developer? They also seem fond of pulling huge numbers out of their asses to "prove" how many users who "do not use" feature "X".

Re:But what does it give us?

[jbolden]

Performance that would be impossible under X11. Especially as we are moving towards 10 megapixel worth of screens with 4 bytes of color information i.e. 40 megapixel the speed at which you can move information from one part of ram to another is starting to introduce latency. Reducing the number of buffering / copying instructions will have a huge impact on latency. The latency reductions are impossible under X11.

Re:But what does it give us?

[dbIII]

Fair enough. How's it going with that performance improvement? Any results yet?

Re:But what does it give us?

[jbolden]

This is the system that Windows (GDI and now Metro) and OSX (Aqua) both use. Everyone knows it works.

Anyway 2 main performance improvements have been noted:

1) The one with buffering above.
2) Because the code for Wayland is smaller more of it fits in the processor or motherboard cache at any given time. Processor no-ops are noticeably declining with the GUI.

(2) was sort of an unexpected benefit of less code. No one thought Wayland would be small enough to get this benefit, after all it isn't written in assembly where you typically aim for this. It might not last very long as it will fall off exponentially as Wayland's code base gets bigger. But so far, yes they are getting it.

Re:But what does it give us?

[dbIII]

This is the system that Windows (GDI and now Metro) and OSX (Aqua) both use. Everyone knows it works.

I was expecting a bit more detail than "lies to children" :( We're grown ups and can see the differences so a bit more detail world be nice, such as x% faster in some sort of image test or something.

Re:But what does it give us?

[jbolden]

I don't know of anyone who has tested in isolation under real conditions. Wayland isn't finished, and apps aren't ported to Wayland. Anything done today would be a simulation and if you are going to simulate well you take things that take hundreds of a second on X11 and replace them with things that take billionths of a second on Wayland. Well yeah that's faster.

But there are more complete example. X11 using quartz-wm (i.e. essentially X11 on Wayland) vs. X11 as root windows (what X11 on Linux is like now) vs. Aqua (i.e. Wayland native). We do have apps that have been ported on which we can do measurements. The differences are profound and immediately noticeable. But more importantly remember even here what's an apple's to apple's comparison (excusing the pun). Wayland makes it easier to have all sorts of speed enhancing figures.

  When the switch happens the differences won't be subtle, if they are Wayland failed.
 

VNC

[flyingfsck]

I guess that the same people who don't want networking in X are the same people who uses VNC on Linux because they don't know better...

"aliens"

[Anonymous Coward]

its a droid

That doesn't fill me with confidence

[dbIII]

Yes, but my question was "what does it give us".
If it's a simple monolithic thing does that lock it down or are there plans to make it extensible in the future like X is? Does it all have to go into memory at once or only just the bits you use, like the X extensions, Evas etc do now (without having to muck around directly with the X libraries anyway)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see it as a cathedral vs bazaar thing where it's hard to add more to the monolithic thing but easy to add a bit more to the modular thing. If X was monolithic to the level of the window manager we'd all be stuck on mwm or similar instead of the many side projects that made it as useful as it is today.

Anyway, I'd say go for it on it's own merits but it looks a bit early to be talking about a full X replacement unless it brings something else in that can't be done with X.

Re:That doesn't fill me with confidence

[jon3k]

Just the opposite, the point of Wayland is to do LESS.

Start here: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_8

Re:That doesn't fill me with confidence

[Hatta]

I wish they'd do nothing at all. Between losing network transparency, client side (inevitably inconsistent) window decorations, and compile time window manager selection, this is going to be a fucking disaster.

Re:That doesn't fill me with confidence

[dbIII]

That makes a lot more sense now, but apart from the odd example of multiple X sessions as faces on an animated cube instead of VT switching I can't see much there that Evas or a similar canvas layer can't do, but I'm probably missing something.
At least that's a far more intelligent response than the "X is slow because it assumes a network" that newbies keep throwing up.
We had that "X sux let's go around it" thing back when this site was new and the results ended up in qt, gtk, E17 and a few other places that mean people don't have to touch the nasty bits of X anymore.

This is a good and necessary step

[zenyu]

For Weyland to work applications will need to support it and nVidia & AMD will need to support it. It needs to be available via a fairly simple install before I'll try to port my applications to it. I'm hoping the Weyland developers are actually talking to nVidia and AMD and Cannonical doesn't release this until they have at least beta drivers.

I'm not too worried about the network transparency even though I use it everyday. Most of the applications I use remotely are things like emacs that are a bit slower when sending images rather than text to be rendered but don't really need the performance X11 can give you with remote applications. Remote OpenGL is nice and I remember being annoyed when only SGI supported it, but no one explicitly writes to that because it has never been universally supported.

I'm not totally up on how Weyland will work but as I understand it the main push is to provide a simpler API that gets rid of stuff like having the X server render your fonts. Instead your application will do that using a toolkit like Qt and hand the image over to the Weyland server. I don't care if indexed color or binary bitmap support goes away, but if RGB/RGBA is the only bitmap supported that would be a problem. How things will things like XVideo and VDPAU will work? We can do YUV->RGB conversion in the application but it means pushing a lot more data across the bus and generally you don't even want video composited. Anyway being able to run Weyland easily will let me know what is already there and what I will need to convince the Weyland developers to add before it goes mainstream.

What is Wayland?

[dgharmon]

"Wayland is a new protocol that enables 3D compositors to be used as primary display servers, instead of running the 3D compositor as an extension under the (2D) X.org display server." link

We don't really need better performance than X

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few days ago there was an article on here about how Valve was able to get higher frame rates using Linux with X than they could get with Windows. This suggests to me that X is working just fine. Maybe it's bigger than it needs to be, but it's also performing better than local-only solutions. It seems to me that Valve's tests shoot a bit of a hole in the argument for Wayland.

Not that I'm opposed to Wayland itself. Maybe it will bring something new/better to the table. I just don't see a need for it when X is performing so well.

Driver Support

[chadruva]

I don't really see much of a case of throwing the house out just to get "butter smooth" GUI, as far as I can tell linux GUIs has been good enough since quite some time, I have yet to see tearing or any graphical problems with firefox like in the "old" days even with many tabs open. While its nice to optimize the stack we loose a few things, first we distance linux yet again from all other Unix-like systems (BSD, like with ALSA vs OSS), then there is driver support, as far as I can see there is no planned support for Wayland from Nvidia or AMD on their proprietary drivers, we are back to square one, with an "exotic" architecture with no full support for modern graphics hardware (OSS vs Proprietary aside), way to go.

As a coder and enthusiast Wayland sounds fantastic, but the reality is that wayland has long long way to go, I personally don't see the need for it.

Re:Driver Support

[unixisc]

I see no reason why the likes of BSD and other Unixes can't make use of Wayland as well.

Re:Driver Support

[chadruva]

Wayland requires a few things that are Linux specific, for example, Kernel Mode Setting (which there seems to be some effort to port it to FreeBSD), Direct Rendering Manager drivers and supporting components (which Intel drivers are ported but others are not), and udev, as far as I can see in the FreeBSD forums there isn't much urgency to get in the Wayland wagon, Xorg will be around for quite a long time.

Baloney

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running an X App that does any significant amount of OpenGL/DirectRendering. Try running it remotely. Not.

Network display vs. Network sound

[Compaqt]

Although some of the benefits seem compelling, I just have to ask:

How is it that in the case of display, we're supposed to drink the Mark Shuttleworth Koolaid that network display is bad.

But in the case of sound, we're told that network sound is good. Need I remind anyone of the pain associated with PulseAudio?

We were told it was for our own benefit, because, hey, you can pipe sound across the network! So suck it up.

But, now, network is bad.

It seems the only constant is: What ever Mark says is the tablets from Mt. Sinai.