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GNOME Aiming For Full Wayland Support by Spring 2014
An anonymous reader writes "Canonical's plan to develop the Mir Display Server for Ubuntu rather than going with their original plans to adopt Wayland has been met with criticism from KDE (and other) developers... The GNOME response to Ubuntu's Mir is that they will now be rushing support for the GNOME desktop on Wayland. Over the next two release cycles they plan to iron out the Wayland support for the GNOME Shell, the GTK+ toolkit, and all GNOME packages so that by this time next year you can be running GNOME entirely on Wayland while still having X11 fall-back support."
So, you want X11 then? *sigh*
Because if you have network transparency in the display system then all your applications get network transparency for free. They just talk to the display system like they always do and the display system throws them up anywhere you're connected to, as you like.
It's not a niche feature. Just because you don't need it, it doesn't mean that millions of others don't.
Even on my home network I use X11 between machines every single day. It's the simplest solution to an awful lot of problems when you're using more than one machine and it generally works much better for interactive use than remote desktop or VNC on a local network.
No. X11 is a bottle neck. It thinks in 2D, it's full of redundant baggage which nobody uses and all those processes introduce latency. Even X11 developers recognize that it's an impediment in a modern desktop which is why some prominent ones have endorsed work on Wayland.
Can't speak for the GP, but in my case, yes.
Yes, by all means spam me now with all the arguments that claim that X11 is terrible because it's imperfect. I'm well aware it's imperfect.
But the fact is it's not imperfect enough to warrant throwing it out and replacing it with something that lacks the more awesome things X11 does. Yes, I know the counter argument here too: "Nobody uses/needs/wants the awesome things!" says Baby Bathwater. But look at what you're proposing: a tiny, inconsequential, performance improvement and possibly cleaner API, in exchange for guaranteed incompatabilities and the removal of functionality.
So, pretty please, knock it off with the Wayland/Mir shit, at least until you achieve feature parity.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Because if you have network transparency in the display system then all your applications get network transparency for free. They just talk to the display system like they always do and the display system throws them up anywhere you're connected to, as you like.
Except if you have very little bandwidth it is absolutely horrible and you'd do far better with a web interface and if you have lots of bandwidth you can use VNC. The pipe between your CPU/RAM and GPU is one of the fattest pipes in a computer able to push many GB/s and when you replace that with tin cans and a string you need to do something, it's like arguing that if I replace your graphics card so the game renders at 1 FPS that it's now supported for free. I'd never, ever design a system that'd depend on X11 for remote access, would you?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've used both X forwarding over SSH and RemoteDesktop to an XRDP server to work remotely, quite often. I've found the differences interesting. . . In general, the RemoteDesktop connection is faster. Significantly. To the point that I use it routinely now that it's available to me. But I've noticed that when it comes to doing something like simple text scrolling, it's actually slower than the X fowarding I did prior (in an xterm or equivalent), probably because it's thinking of the window as an image instead of simply being able to send the text update. It's annoying when trying to scroll through huge text log files, so for me, X wins there. . .
RDP, VNC, and Teamviewer all present whole desktops. This is infuriating. I want the application windows to be seamlessly navigable among my local applications.
That's not to say X is perfect either. X is highly latency sensitive, particularly for things like Java GUI applications. If network flakes out, the X client dies rather than 'detaching' for someone to later reconnect. X has no concept of audio streams.
I don't necessarily want X, but I want something that recognizes the core value of application level remote display (including things like the NETWM stuff to let 'tray' icons live in the right place.) and enhance it through better audio integration, detachable operation, and better network usage (e.g. Xlib primitives are rarely used anymore, having primitives more relevant to modern usage like RDP has would be a large improvement)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The RDP "whole desktop" is entirely an artificial limitation. It actually works great on the application level, after you've shell out the bucks. So, yes, it is infuriating that MS crippled their own product.
It looks to me that Wayland developers only have one desktop at home and were Windows users that want gaming on their linux box.
- What about asynchronous rendering? fast text scrolling in a windows like "find /" or "make -j32" thru a modem connection works in X11, I'd be surprised to see the same on Wayland.
- What about single GUI App running remotely: ssh to a cluster with no network card and need to start paraview or gnuplot? Should I run a full desktop with useless fancy gadgets just to see a gnuplot window?
- What about client application that freeze: Can't move the window because the decoration is done by the client?
- Wy can't I move parent windows when a modal window is open like a file selection dialog box. How do I move the parent app to see my shell window behind. Should I do the same as in windows: close the file selection dialog box move the windows and reopen the file selection dialog box?
- What about lost event because the client is buzy? I click on the button, but the event is lost because the client is buzy.....
Wayland is just a LOL in professional environment.
Thanksfully, I'm running KDE...The original desktop that Gnome tries to imitate since it's creation...I'm curious how it's manage the Wayland migration....
So: Please tell us what "awesome" things X11 does which cannot be done with Wayland or go fuck yourself.
Open a remote editor on a machine the other side of the world? Have it integrated with my wm?
Copy and paste between windows on different machines without the app having to provide the copy/paste functionality?
Being able to set my preferences once, and not having to reconfigure 40 different desktops to my liking?
Get the correct DPI and fonts for the display I'm on, not the one of the remote machine?
Being able to run VMs that look and function the same as when run natively?
For everyone bitching about Wayland vs X11 and network transparency, you need to watch this talk by Kristian Høgsberg. Keith and the rest of the devs have always said that remoting would eventually come down the pipeline.
And for everyone else talking about efficiency of sending pixmaps via the network, you should learn how your current stack actually works. It will be much better with Wayland.
I've used X11 since 1995, I'm very fond of it. But I also realize it needs to go...
Yes, There are fundamental differences. RDP simply works with input events and draw regions. The draw regions use pretty much any compression routines under the sun and supports the windowed regions, so moving windows around inside the container is basically free network IO, whereas VNC requires redraws over all delta regions. I'm not sure if Window border rendering is client side of not, but obviously the inner contents need to be redrawn with graphics sent back.
The real killer against X over networks is in latency, since most of X is performed with operations instead of rasters. Instead of sending possibly hundreds of commands, RDP can send a single raster to represent the same thing. The possible overhead in sending / acking / processing the operations quite often causes a large amount of time. This isn't helped by the fact that traditionally X developers didn't spend much time optimizing network performance, so you'll see a large number of libraries / apps that perform highly serial operations maximizing operation processing latency (since it needs a full round trip just to continue to the next instruction).
On a side note, there's the NX protocol which is a much more highly optimized remoteing solution for X derived services, but its proprietary, so it makes it unlikely for use in wide adoption. NX works quite closely to that of RDP/Citrix so that's why performance should be comparable.
Bye!