GNOME 3.10 Is Now Properly Supported On Wayland

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GNOME 3.10 Is Now Properly Supported On Wayland

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @04:55AM from the not-just-a-lawn-ornament dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One week ahead of the GNOME 3.10 release, all of the basic Wayland support for GNOME has been merged. With today's GNOME Shell 3.9.92 release the Wayland branch was merged and there was also an updated Mutter Wayland release, besides earlier GNOME 3.9.x packages fostering the Wayland support. Fedora 20 is expected to ship with GNOME on Wayland as a technology preview. Additional details about the current GNOME Wayland support are available from the GNOME Wiki."

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For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:01 · Score: 5, Informative

(and didn't want to google it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29
http://wayland.freedesktop.org/

Wayland
Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain.
1. Re:For those who didn't know... by Steve+Max · 2013-09-17 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  A first post by an AC that's actually useful. That's a FIRST.
2. Re:For those who didn't know... by h4rr4r · 2013-09-17 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't know what Wayland is odds are you don't care about this article.
3. Re:For those who didn't know... by MickyTheIdiot · 2013-09-17 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  I care about this article as long as xorg.conf goes away sometimes soon.
4. Re:For those who didn't know... by Aguazul2 · 2013-09-17 05:21 · Score: 2
  
  If you don't know what Wayland is odds are you don't care about this article.
  He must be posting for those people who reckon a thing isn't worth investigating until they've heard a hundred mentions to it. Wayland is just now entering these people's consciousness.
5. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:21 · Score: 0
  
  You're probably right. Still, it'd be nice to get enough information to know whether you care for an article or not straight from the summary, and having something on Wayland makes it clear why non-Linux people should care (if Gnome went Wayland-only, it would become Linux-only at least for now).
  Besides, a couple of links related to the subject is way better than something to the likes of FR0$T P!S$.
6. Re:For those who didn't know... by h4rr4r · 2013-09-17 05:24 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Why?
  At least it lets you pick any random modes, try dealing with windows and a monitor that does not support EDID.
7. Re:For those who didn't know... by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-09-17 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  I care about this article as long as xorg.conf goes away sometimes soon.
  Mandatory xorg.conf went away a few years ago. You can still tweak parameters with one if you want to. Are you suggesting removing the ability to tweak it?
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
8. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:30 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  What about it? You can define and set custom modes in the absense of EDID. It's trivially easy especially using Catalyst, NVIDIA Control Panel or Intel's drivers.
9. Re:For those who didn't know... by h4rr4r · 2013-09-17 05:44 · Score: 0
  
  Actually the old catalyst drivers did not support it. All you could have were standard resolutions it felt like providing.
10. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  Great. How is that at all relevant to anything current?
11. Re:For those who didn't know... by 0123456 · 2013-09-17 05:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Mandatory xorg.conf went away a few years ago. You can still tweak parameters with one if you want to. Are you suggesting removing the ability to tweak it?
  Must be a Gnome developer. Configurability confuses users, so we make make them write 'extensions' in Javascript instead, etc.
12. Re:For those who didn't know... by wonkey_monkey · 2013-09-17 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  You may be happy with the exact amount of knowledge you've managed to acquire thus far, but some people actually like finding out about new things. It's why we have "news."
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
13. Re:For those who didn't know... by nonicknameavailable · 2013-09-17 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Wayland wont be supported by Intel, Nvidia, AMD so you are out of luck with the older monitors
  
  --
  Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
14. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 07:20 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  But... but... his 1980s vintage monitor and 1200/75 baud modem will mean that Wayland is useless for him.
  How very DARE you.
15. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 07:50 · Score: 0
  
  This concept of "configuwability" confuses and angers us!
16. Re:For those who didn't know... by goruka · 2013-09-17 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  Why are you stating the obvious? Everyone knows that Wayland is a promising new technology that will revolutionize desktop graphics on Linux.
  On the other hand.. I forgot what Gnome is, have a link url for that?
17. Re:For those who didn't know... by hairyfeet · 2013-09-17 09:36 · Score: 2
  
  Uhhhh...you make your own INF for the monitor with something like Powerstrip and be done with it? My KVM switch doesn't support EDID, it took less than 10 minutes to whip off an INF with the correct resolution and push it to my systems, easy peasy and has worked perfectly ever since.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
18. Re:For those who didn't know... by Barsteward · 2013-09-17 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  i thought it was ubuntus' Mir that won't be supported by Intel.
  
  --
  "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
19. Re:For those who didn't know... by smash · 2013-09-17 14:07 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah because I have a heap of screens I still use from 1994.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
20. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 19:28 · Score: 0
  
  Wayland wont be supported by Intel, Nvidia, AMD so you are out of luck with the older monitors
  Since Intel is actually employing half the people working on Wayland, I hope you brought enough crack to share with everyone.
  nVidia and AMD are more of a toss-up. AMD is heavily on the open source bandwagon so that really just leaves nVidia who will probably be as slow as always and will only bother once penetration exceeds 50%.
21. Re: For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-18 23:47 · Score: 0
  
  XMir, not Mir.
22. Re:For those who didn't know... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-18 23:50 · Score: 0
  
  XMir, not Mir. Intel is right in not supporting the former because it's only a transition to the latter.
Yes! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:20 · Score: 5, Funny

Now I can complain about the user interface on a whole new display technology!
What GTK3 novelties? by Blaskowicz · 2013-09-17 05:20 · Score: 1

I wonder if there are new features removed from GTK3, or forced on users, or if GTK3 themes break again. This affects non Gnome 3 users sometimes (e.g. File/Open puts you into "Recently Used", wasting a bit of your time and clicks, in a app that uses GTK3.)
1. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-09-17 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  This affects non Gnome 3 users sometimes (e.g. File/Open puts you into "Recently Used", wasting a bit of your time and clicks, in a app that uses GTK3.)
  Ooohh, is that what it is. Is there a workaround?
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
2. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by king+neckbeard · 2013-09-17 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  Have they fixed the lack of options for decent previews? Selecting a picture or video by a 20px preview just doesn't cut it anymore.
  
  --
  This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
3. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:33 · Score: 0
  
  (e.g. File/Open puts you into "Recently Used", wasting a bit of your time and clicks, in a app that uses GTK3.)
  Even worse, then you Save, you end up in Recently Used.
  Try it with, for example, GIMP. Then GIMP tells you: "Please select a folder below"
4. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by AliasMarlowe · 2013-09-17 06:00 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  This affects non Gnome 3 users sometimes (e.g. File/Open puts you into "Recently Used", wasting a bit of your time and clicks, in a app that uses GTK3.)
  Ooohh, is that what it is. Is there a workaround?
  Here's one that keeps the "Recently Used" category empty. Unfortunately, it does not prevent GTK3 applications from defaulting to that absurd category in a File/Open operation. As a logged-in user, run:
  
  rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel mkdir -p ~/.config/gtk-3.0 echo -e "[Settings]\ngtk-recent-files-max-age=0\ngtk-recent-files-limit=0" > ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
  
  The second rm will probably cause an error message, unless some application is busily updating the "Recently Used" category while you run these commands.
  
  --
  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
5. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by AliasMarlowe · 2013-09-17 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  (e.g. File/Open puts you into "Recently Used", wasting a bit of your time and clicks, in a app that uses GTK3.)
  Even worse, then you Save, you end up in Recently Used. Try it with, for example, GIMP. Then GIMP tells you: "Please select a folder below"
  It's even worse, if you're tweaking a web site. The absurd "Recently Used" category is just full of files named index.html, and they're a bunch of different files in different directories (but Gnome conceals the directories or other context, of course). It's one of the reasons I disabled that category on our PCs.
  
  --
  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
6. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:09 · Score: 0
  
  Got a little sand in your vagina again?
7. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by MrEricSir · 2013-09-17 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  There's a bunch of really basic deprecations, including GtkStock (every app will now have to have its own translations of "Cancel" and "OK" for some reason) and GtkActionGroup.
  Lots of new code will have to be written to port apps to Gtk 3.10, which makes one wonder if it's worth the upgrade. Normally I update my toolkits because I want new features, not new obligations.
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
8. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by bmo · 2013-09-17 07:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Have they fixed the lack of options for decent previews? Selecting a picture or video by a 20px preview just doesn't cut it anymore.
  Yes, it's called using KDE.
  --
  BMO
9. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-09-17 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you. It's the defaulting that's the real pain for me; I guess if I cannot fix that it's better to have a chance of the item being in there than not.
  I don't know who Gnome thinks they're helping - it's a pain for me and royally confusing for my wife, who is a basic computer user.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
10. Re:What GTK3 novelties? by hobarrera · 2013-09-17 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  The "Recently Used" items has always been empty since I first saw it, everywhere. What I'd like to know is how to make it go away forever!
Is Wayland there yet? by unixisc · 2013-09-17 05:21 · Score: 1

GNOME 3 is now at 3.10? Who'd have thunk it?
But how ready is Wayland itself for mainstream release? I know they've gotten as far as version 1, but are any of the distros - Fedora, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, et al - near having Wayland ready so that one can install something like GNOME or KDE w/o installing X11, but installing Wayland?
1. Re:Is Wayland there yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  It's the third sentence in the summary: "Fedora 20 is expected to ship with GNOME on Wayland as a technology preview".
2. Re:Is Wayland there yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:52 · Score: 0
  
  Slackware
  Slackware will migrate to it when Xorg dies and/or 2 years after everybody else migrated.
3. Re:Is Wayland there yet? by smash · 2013-09-17 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  ...except for Debian Stable, which will migrate 5 years after that.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Now for proprietary drivers to get on-board! by Kernel+Corndog · 2013-09-17 05:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

No doubt, I am cheering the open source drivers to continue their great progress but I can't understand why Nvidia and AMD don't enable EGL extensions on their desktop drivers (especially AMD since I'm a shareholder because they started supporting open source). With Mir and Wayland needing the extensions, Gabe Newell saying Linux is the future of gaming, and the future of Linux windowing being Mir or Wayland, I'm not going to get super excited until one of the Big Two GPU vendors start supporting it.
And I'm hoping it's you, AMD, that will be the first to claim that crown on Linux. Please let it be in the forthcoming hardware Newell mentioned.
Should have been Gnome 3.11 for Workgroups.. by DarkOx · 2013-09-17 05:26 · Score: 3, Funny

Really disappointing choice of version numbers.

--
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1. Re:Should have been Gnome 3.11 for Workgroups.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:52 · Score: 0
  
  Are you implying the OP stole this joke?
2. Re:Should have been Gnome 3.11 for Workgroups.. by unixisc · 2013-09-17 07:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  GNOME 3.11 would be the next dev version. But imagine - GNOME 3.11 running on Linux 3.11 - it would be GNOME/Linux for Workgroups 3.11
3. Re:Should have been Gnome 3.11 for Workgroups.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 13:08 · Score: 0
  
  This joke is getting old and tired. Please stop. It's not funny anymore.
Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by sinij · 2013-09-17 05:26 · Score: 1

Can someone explain this with a car analogy?
1. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:33 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  X11 is like a VW Bug, it's simple to those who understand it but if you're not a mechanic it's just a bunch of greasy parts. Wayland is like a new Smart Car, it's intended to be simpler even but built on new technology and the inner workings are all hidden from the average user. GNOME is the driver and it's been comfortable with its Bug for a long time but is now getting in to the Smart Car but doesn't know how to effectively drive it yet because it has a different transmission. How's that?
2. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by king+neckbeard · 2013-09-17 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  You can now install an electric engine in a Honda Civic.
  
  --
  This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
3. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by ssam · 2013-09-17 05:40 · Score: 2
  
  When Xcar was made everyone lived in a forest. The Xcar need to have its own built in machete to get anywhere, plus a built in oil well and refinery to make fuel and 14 different types of wheels. Now we all live in high-rise apartments, so we put the widgets the boot (er, thats 'trunk' for americans) and cram the car with all its blades, drills and distillation towers into the lift (elevator) to get to the display.
  Wayland car is roller-skates and a shoulder bag, just enough to skate down the hall to the lift.
  The GNOME widgets now fit neatly into the shoulder bag. before you had to have a fake boot (xwayland) that strapped to your back.
4. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by amiga3D · 2013-09-17 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  Electric Motor! Not engine.
5. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:45 · Score: 0
  
  X is a highly modified Yugo. Yeah it kinda works but it's a pain to maintain because only a handful of people understand the construction.
  Wayland is a Model S.
6. Re: Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:48 · Score: 0
  
  Electric -engine-. While I acknowledge the term is technically incorrect, it both gets the point across and serves to irritate people like you.
  Which makes it a sure winner in my book.
7. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:54 · Score: 1
  
  Imagine the community has been driving a good old Volkswagen van from the 70's, is reliable but a little quirky and is starting to show its age. Many people don't see a good reason to replace it, it has been doing what is supposed to do, rarely fails and everybody uses it in a way or another. Some other people don't like all the things that are redundant (for example there is a dashboard hidden behind more modern plywood dashboards), some recent its step learning curve compared to more modern cars (its a stick), and some other just want a new flashy car.
  So two teams rushed ion a solution of their own to replace something isn't quite broken yet with two things are not entirely done yet.
8. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  No X11 is a useful tool for getting things done. Kinda of a car with a big trunk and comfortable seats that anyone can operate. On the other hand Wayland is a collection of incompatible after market parts clearly not designed to work together forced in the car by a wannabe mechanic who claims to know more than the car designer and car owners.
9. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  You got it a little backwards. Xcar has a large trunk and comfortable seats, nothing spectacular but dependable. Xcar has lots of mechanics who know how to fix Xcar and Xcar comes with book that describes how to fix the Xcar and what tools you need to fix it. Wayland is an uncomfortable undependable Fisher-Price toy car that cann't be repaired without shipping the entire thing back to the factory at 10x what a new one would cost.
10. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 07:28 · Score: 0
  
  If you actually knew what you're talking about you'd know it's rather the other way around.. X11 being a massive patchwork of kludges is mostly the reason work started on Wayland in the first place.
11. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 12:31 · Score: 0
  
  No I have compiled X11 from source starting with X11R3 on my Sun 3/60 and know what inside X11. I also tried hard to get Wayland to compile, unfortunately the source from the git repository had a huge number of compile-time errors. Looking at the code it appears to have been written by l33t speakers.
12. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 13:14 · Score: 0
  
  X11 had better compile, because if there were errors know one would know how to fix them!
13. Re:Can someone explain this with a car analogy? by smash · 2013-09-17 14:13 · Score: 1
  
  Actually X11 is more like a Westfield kit car. It comes in pieces and you are expected to assemble it yourself. No two builds are exactly the same and the result depends heavily on the end user. Whilst performance is decent there is no warranty and there's always the chance that a problem with some minor thing you thought was inconsequential will cause it to burn to the ground.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:34 · Score: 0

... how about getting GNOME functional again ? All this eyecandy fuzz simply pisses me off. Whenever I move my mouse to the hotcorners (because I want to do some other stuff like selecting entries in a menu) the entire window zoomes into expose. Kind of really annoying.
1. Re:Now make GNOME work by Arker · 2013-09-17 05:41 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Yeah, dont hold your breath on that. They are pretty much committed to the line that their interface is great, it's you users that suck, and need to be shipped off for re-education if you dont like it.
  In reality it's a trainwreck that epitomises what you can get out of a large group of 'designers' who dont have any real work to do.
  The larger question I have, and asked many times before without getting any sort of satisfying answer is - what does Wayland provide that X cannot? X is mostly well tested very mature tech and it seems to work fine, and provide MORE not less capability than Wayland.
  NIH syndrome?
  
  --
  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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2. Re:Now make GNOME work by Microlith · 2013-09-17 06:07 · Score: 2
  
  what does Wayland provide that X cannot?
  X is mostly well tested very mature tech and it seems to work fine, and provide MORE not less capability than Wayland.
  X11/Xorg is very well tested but largely misses the point on current platforms, if it's not outright causing problems and forcing workarounds.
3. Re:Now make GNOME work by Dimwit · 2013-09-17 06:10 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's not that Wayland does a whole bunch that X doesn't, it's that X has a lot more hoops to jump through to keep going. Wayland just presents what amounts of a framebuffer and a simple protocol to let the compositor and clients communicate about size changes, movement, available displays, etc.
  All of the modern graphical environments and applications are using the COMPOSITE extension to X, which adds an extra step to a lot of graphical operations. Plus, to be "X", you have to support things like the old X line-drawing primitives, fonts in the server, and other things that simply aren't used anymore. Important things like changing the screen resolution are kept in protocol extensions that you have to check for before using. Large amounts of code and protocol are dedicated to working with screens of vastly different capabilities - everything from monochrome monitors to "true color" displays. Nobody has a fixed-sized monochrome X terminal anymore, but the code has to account for it still.
  Plus X stores a ton of things in the server, making it big, slow, and a source of potential security/information disclosure issues. Wayland stores less and does less.
  In other words, developers are hamstrung having to maintain and work around lots and lots of very old code that will never, ever be used by a new application, ever, but has to be there, even though it slows things down, takes up space, and makes things more complicated.
  Personally, I would've liked to have seen something more like "make COMPOSITE a part of the core X protocol and deprecate lots of things" and see X slowly evolve into a more "modern" system, but that's just me.
  As for GNOME - I realize that GNOME 3 is different from GNOME 2, but I'm at least happy that for once the Open Source community *tried something different* instead of just aping Windows or Mac OS X (though GNOME 3 is obviously inspired by the latter). Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but at least we can claim to attempt to lead, instead of just blindly following.
  
  --
  ...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
4. Re:Now make GNOME work by Arker · 2013-09-17 06:45 · Score: 1
  
  This is interesting, you see, I have heard this before. There's a lot of handwaving about having to support old programs that YOU dont use anymore (which you equate to NO ONE uses anymore, incorrectly, but I digress) but you dont give me a single concrete example where this has actually caused any sort of problem. I dont hack the xorg code to say myself but I have heard people that should know telling me that while there is a ton of legacy code the maintainers have to check occasionally, it's not a big deal for them, and it doesnt affect anyone else. The only bit in here that I know to be true is that it increases disk requirements but then again it seems to me like if disk space came up in the context of a discussion about using a WM vs a DE, you would be one of the ones calling me an idiot for caring about disk space in this day and age.
  In my experience the only thing that makes X slow is unsupported hardware. Which is understandable. On systems where the necessary support is implemented it tends to run faster than Windows/Mac/Slowaris or whatever else the computer can run. I havent seen any convincing evidence that the performance hit from backward compatibility or from the extra abstraction layer (which permits remote X among other things) is very significant at all. And it's not like this is really stuff no one uses. Thinking that is just myopic.
  
  --
  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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5. Re:Now make GNOME work by raxx7 · 2013-09-17 06:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Check this presentation by Daniel Stone (one of the X.org developers) on the problems with X.~
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
6. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-17 06:58 · Score: 2
  
  X is mostly well tested very mature tech and it seems to work fine,
  [citation needed] ....unless you want to concede that Windows 8 "seems to work fine" too.
7. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-17 07:03 · Score: 1
  
  The larger question I have, and asked many times before without getting any sort of satisfying answer is - what does Wayland provide that X cannot? X is mostly well tested very mature tech and it seems to work fine, and provide MORE not less capability than Wayland.
  Anybody who has looked in the innards of X knows its a pig. No secret there. It's only Unix fanbois that cannot fathom that some parts of Unix were not properly designed from inception.
  Most of those have been patched over the years (e.g. security which initially was non-existent, internationalization, which still lags Windows/Mac but is closing in). X is one of the few remaining *big* mistakes in Unix. It was designed with the wrong philosophy and overtaken by actual usage. Wayland is an effort to clean up and refactor the code.
8. Re:Now make GNOME work by fbobraga · 2013-09-17 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  None of that works: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/422/no-corners/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/118/no-topleft-hot-corner/
9. Re:Now make GNOME work by Kjella · 2013-09-17 08:10 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Anybody who has looked in the innards of X knows its a pig. No secret there. It's only Unix fanbois that cannot fathom that some parts of Unix were not properly designed from inception.
  At 15:19, David Stone has a nice slide that says:
  xserver 1.0.2: 879,403 lines of code
  xserver (now): 562,678 lines of code
  That's 300,000+ lines of cruft they wiped out without breaking the X protocol. Wayland is currently about 20,000 lines of code, that's about 3.5% the size. Even if that doubles they're still getting rid of 90%+ of the old code, that's huge.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
10. Re:Now make GNOME work by rahvin112 · 2013-09-17 08:50 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  They couldn't fix X. The developers behind wayland looked at what it would take to do the same thing they are doing but do it with updates to the X code. They saw a process that would take 20 years rather than 5.
  X has 20+ years of legacy code, on a modern X install you are using at best 5% of the code. When you've reached a point where 95% of the code and application isn't even being used it's time to start over rather than work to upgrade what you have. You would spend so much time troubleshooting old code that you could literally rewrite the entire thing 4 times before you finish.
  Wayland is designed like a modern interface that is used on almost every other OS. It's designed to be as simple as possible while being extensible. It isn't trying to be anything but a channel for programs to talk to graphics hardware. X was everything and the kitchensink as you said everything from drawing lines on vector displays to keyboard and mouse. X was a monster that's time to deprecate and replace.
11. Re:Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 09:04 · Score: 0
  
  I used up my mod points already tonight, (and hence AC) but that was one of the best explanations of why we need !X for the future, whether that be Wayland Mir od whatever. Thank you!
12. Re:Now make GNOME work by markjhood2003 · 2013-09-17 09:37 · Score: 0
  
  X is one of the few remaining *big* mistakes in Unix. It was designed with the wrong philosophy and overtaken by actual usage. Wayland is an effort to clean up and refactor the code.
  X was ahead of its time and nothing ever caught up to it. It was designed around the idea that all the resources of the network should be seamlessly accessible from a single user's desktop, and embodied the old Internet ideal of ubiquitous peer-to-peer connectivity (still perfectly reasonable and incredibly useful on a secure LAN). Wayland is an effort to make it easier to develop eye-candy user interfaces for consumers and throw out any functionality that gets in the way of that goal. It's totally appropriate for mobile but unnecessary and counter-productive for the desktop.
  If you want to talk about really big mistakes in Unix, and computing in general, take a look at the modern web browser and the development environment that it requires. Doing anything interesting on the web requires an unholy mix of technologies and infrastructure like JavaScript, PHP, HTML, XML, CSS, cookies, DOM, BOM and all the interfaces between them. What we really need is a Wayland for the Web, not a Wayland that destroys much of what is stable and functional in Unix.
13. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-17 09:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  X was so "ahead of its time" that its entire architecture was dumped in version 10 to give way to X11, and then it remained so far ahead of its time that to this day NextOS, MacOS, Android and Windows have yet to adopt a single thing from it, contrary to the rest of Unix most of which has made its way into those operating systems.
  And no, it was not designed to access resources from the desktop. It was mainly designed so that you could use a dumb terminal to access your server. When it became clear that was pie on the sky, instead of redesigning the turd, they just added layer upon layer of cruft, so you ended up with a dumb as doornails protocol running on a heavy weight, expensive "dumb" terminal.
  Wayland is an effort to remove those layers of cruft that nobody uses (Xtoolkit?)
  Lastly the web browser has nothing to do with Unix. It is platform independent. The fact that you think the web==unix shows how little you know about deep OS architecture.
14. Re:Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 10:05 · Score: 0
  
  I realize that GNOME 3 is different from GNOME 2, but I'm at least happy that for once the Open Source community *tried something different* instead of just aping Windows or Mac OS X (though GNOME 3 is obviously inspired by the latter). Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but at least we can claim to attempt to lead, instead of just blindly following.
  There are two problems with this. The first is that, as you point out, GNOME 3 isn't really trying something new and different: it's following the same path tabletwards as OS X. The second is that new and different doesn't necessarily mean better: the huge backlash against GNOME 3 is a strong indication that, in this case, it's worse. In fact, I think this is a great indication of the strength of open source: if Microsoft introduces a new interface in Windows 8, you've got no choice, but with open source there'll always be someone to fork the project and give you your preferred option, if enough people agree with you.
  If you want a better example of open source doing something new and different, that's both an improvement on the old system and unprecedented by commercial software (and, in fact, now imitated by them), the biggest and most obvious one is package management (yum, apt, etc.). "App markets" are very much a monetarised derivative of these.
15. Re:Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 11:04 · Score: 0
  
  what does Wayland provide that X cannot?
  the real story behind Wayland and X
  from: http://people.freedesktop.org/~daniels/lca2013-wayland-x11.pdf
  "Programming X is like reading one of those french philoshophers where afterwards you start wondering whether you really know anything for sure [Thomas Thurman]"
  "sidenote: three people on this earth understand X input; really wish I wasn't one of them"
16. Re:Now make GNOME work by sharklasers · 2013-09-17 12:46 · Score: 1
  
  but I'm at least happy that for once the Open Source community *tried something different* instead of just aping Windows or Mac OS X (though GNOME 3 is obviously inspired by the latter). Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but at least we can claim to attempt to lead, instead of just blindly following.
  At this stage of my life I can honestly say I don't care about attempts at being different, just for the sake of being different. Execution is far more important. I'd rather a copycat of Windows/OS X which had more features and was overall better and more versatile (GNOME 2), than something which was completely new and hard to establish a comfortable workflow with (GNOME 3 - well, Gnome Shell specifically).
  Being different is not a virtue if the outcome is rubbish.
17. Re:Now make GNOME work by markjhood2003 · 2013-09-17 13:25 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  X was so "ahead of its time" that its entire architecture was dumped in version 10 to give way to X11, and then it remained so far ahead of its time that to this day NextOS, MacOS, Android and Windows have yet to adopt a single thing from it, contrary to the rest of Unix most of which has made its way into those operating systems.
  Mac OS X, Android and Windows are consumer operating systems, for which eye-candy UIs are considered more important than network transparency. Their remote connectivity needs are limited to accessing corporate Web, cloud, and IT services, not other peers on the network.
  NeXT was a great OS that used Display Postscript as the rendering engine, but it was also wrapped in a networked desktop environment, NextStep, and used with X11 and NeWS as well (Sun's Network Extensible Window System). I did find NextStep and NeWS superior to X11 and it's a damn shame they didn't succeed (although NextStep evolved into OS X, and Applie did include a rootless X11 implementation with it until Mountain Lion).
  As for other companies, there were entire industry consortiums dedicated to expanding X and Unix, such as X/Open and the Open Software Foundation: these included companies like AT&T, DEC, Unisys, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, Prime, and Apollo.
  
  And no, it was not designed to access resources from the desktop. It was mainly designed so that you could use a dumb terminal to access your server. When it became clear that was pie on the sky, instead of redesigning the turd, they just added layer upon layer of cruft, so you ended up with a dumb as doornails protocol running on a heavy weight, expensive "dumb" terminal.
  The dumb terminal at that time was a VT100. X was designed to run on bitmapped displays. Although there were such bitmapped terminals available at the time, X mostly ran on engineering workstations. You didn't usually use it access a server (although you could); rather, other networked peers used it to display a UI on your local X display. I'm not sure why you think that is "pie in the sky" since it worked and continues to work rather well. Part of the reason for that was because the protocol was rich enough to transmit graphics primitives at a higher level than a bitmap. Nothing dumb about it.
  
  Lastly the web browser has nothing to do with Unix. It is platform independent. The fact that you think the web==unix shows how little you know about deep OS architecture.
  Don't be silly, I'm not conflating the Web with Unix. Sure, web browsers are supported by most computing platforms. But the web browser's roots in Unix go way back to NextStep and the beginnings of the Internet, at that time mostly Unix-based, and the web browser remains a central and crucial component of desktop Linux. My main point was that cleaning up web browser architecture would be vastly more useful and relevant than replacing a stable and functional part of Linux with something that is less useful, but prettier.
18. Re:Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 13:45 · Score: 0
  
  "All of the modern graphical environments and applications are using the COMPOSITE extension to X, which adds an extra step to a lot of graphical operations. "
  Yes because "designers" don't have to contribute except creating more "themes" and creating effects for switching windows. Compiz is example of what happens when "designers" are let loose. Completely worthless and a burden on the system regardless of how the windowing is done, but boy does it do eyecandy!
  "Nobody has a fixed-sized monochrome X terminal anymore, but the code has to account for it still"
  Unless you have a large fixed-sized monochrome monitor for looking a X-ray films. By the way there were very very very few X terminals. The term you are looking for is monitor or lcd panel
19. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-17 13:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The dumb terminal at that time was a VT100.
  By dumb terminal I mean a thin client, something that didn't happen.
  
  X mostly ran on engineering workstations.
  
  Not by design dude. It was meant to run on thin clients but it ended up being such a pig that you needed a workstation to run it. At the time a "thin" X-client was more expensive that a PC.
  
  I'm not sure why you think that is "pie in the sky" since it worked and continues to work rather well.
  
  So a protocol designed to run on a cheap thin client ends up needing a powerful workstation to run and you call it "working rather well"? With those definitions it's no wonder you consider X a success.
  
  Part of the reason for that was because the protocol was rich enough to transmit graphics primitives at a higher level than a bitmap. Nothing dumb about it.
  No one uses such primitives because they are incredibly sucky. Hence VNC and such.
  
  I did find NextStep and NeWS superior to X11 and it's a damn shame they didn't succeed
  Of course, anything was better than X11. Steve Jobs famously declared "X11 is brain dead".
20. Re:Now make GNOME work by oursland · 2013-09-17 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  Thin clients did happen, but they didn't catch on. In fact, one of the main Xorg developers, Keith Packard, worked on some in the 80s. Sun Microsystems created the SunRay product line that provided a thin client environment to their SunOS/Solaris and Linux platforms, although the protocol was proprietary and not X, likely due to the same reasons Wayland was created. On a side note, Keith's presentations on why X sucks are some of the best and worth viewing to understand why Wayland is so important.
  
  When I was using a thin client, it was a great experience when you used a very simple environment and no animation, such as an XTerm in TWM. The experience quickly deteriorated when you tried to do many on screen changes and lots of interactivity, which is common for people simply surfing the web on most pages such as facebook. This was compounded when you had some 16 clients on a single host server.
21. Re:Now make GNOME work by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 18:45 · Score: 0
  
  I was happily running X in 1996 in 8 MB or so and it was working perfectly fine. The slow and bloated stuff is just a lot of bullshit. I also used X over the network a lot and can work great, although modern applications are not optimized for this.
  The only thing with respect to graphics which really improved in my life is that configuration is of X was a pain. After that was fixed Linux GUI developers just caused me pain by breaking my desktop over and over, removing features, introducing new bugs, ... Wayland will again remove features, break backwards compatiblity etc... I think Wayland's main motivation is this "let's make mobile GUIs for idiots and shove it into the desktop" mentality.
  Seriously, I can't see his technological superiority over X. Every display system which does not support network transparency in 2013 is just a joke IMHO. All those fanboys repeating the same myhts about the brokeness, bloat of X over and over again, without ever giving a good technical argument or hard numbers should all just shut up please. And those guys breaking my desktop over and over again could just go away..
  BTW: Can somebody recommend a good linux distribution which stays with unix principles and takes backwards compatibility seriously? Or is time to switch to BSD and leave Linux to the idiots.
22. Re:Now make GNOME work by mcgrew · 2013-09-17 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  Mac OS X, Android and Windows are consumer operating systems, for which eye-candy UIs are considered more important than network transparency.
  Windows was for the office from the get-go, and I think you'll find fewer and fewer PCs in homes now that there are tablets. It suffers from the fact that it was originally written as a standalone OS and not designed for networks. OSX was completely rewritten using the BSD kernel, which was Unix-based. Unix was originally written to be networked. People screamed bloody murder when they made the change, but it was necessary.
  Eye Candy has nothing to do with network transparency. There's so much eye candy in all the non-server OSes because they can -- PCs are thousands of times faster than when Macs and Windows first came out. Networks are a hell of a lot faster, too.
  I saw your comment while metamoderating, whoever modded you "troll" got marked down. They should have left it at the default (at worst overrated maybe) but no way is it a troll. Moderators, please read the slashdot FAQ!
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
23. Re:Now make GNOME work by MareLooke · 2013-09-18 04:20 · Score: 1
  
  As for GNOME - I realize that GNOME 3 is different from GNOME 2, but I'm at least happy that for once the Open Source community *tried something different* instead of just aping Windows or Mac OS X (though GNOME 3 is obviously inspired by the latter).
  The two billion different window managers out there supporting every imaginable workflow would like to have a word with you. Yes, they're still out there, despite all the efforts of the "userfriendliness" crowd to break them.
  
  Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but at least we can claim to attempt to lead, instead of just blindly following.
  The problem with GNOME isn't whether it sucks (I haven't really used GNOME since the crap that was 2.0, so I have no opinion on how good or bad it is), it's that they have decided that their way is the only way and have taken over independent projects (like GTK, the "G" really doesn't stand for GNOME and it is definitely not only used by GNOME applications) and are forcing their views on those as well.
  The FLOSS community used to be about cooperation and choice, but lately it seems to be more about which corporations can hire the most developers to force their vision onto the projects they support without any regard to the rest of the ecosystem.
24. Re:Now make GNOME work by unixisc · 2013-09-18 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  At that time, were there really any DEs? I thought that the only thing X was used for was running multiple consoles on a single giant screen
25. Re:Now make GNOME work by squiggleslash · 2013-09-19 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  X was so "ahead of its time" that its entire architecture was dumped in version 10 to give way to X11
  
  That's... a bizarre statement and completely meaningless. In fact, it's intellectually dishonest.
  The X11 was developed purely because X10 wasn't generic enough in its hardware requirements. That was it.
  But even you could legitimately describe that as dumping the entire architecture (which, I think, we can legitimately call an outright lie), that would still have nothing to do with whether the X Window System is ahead of its time. X11 and its predecessors feature a network transparency system that were uncommon at the time of X11's development.
  
  and then it remained so far ahead of its time that to this day NextOS, MacOS, Android and Windows have yet to adopt a single thing from it, contrary to the rest of Unix most of which has made its way into those operating
  
  This is exceedingly dubious. A "single thing"? Really? In fact, pretty early on Windows started to adopt various incompatible network display protocols to counter the fact it didn't have native network transparency. Did it do it exactly the same way as X? Of course not, architecturally X11 was completely incompatible. But it did make the effort. Did Android? No, Android post-dates X11/Unix by decades, and is intentionally stripped down. Android also doesn't require network transparency in a fucking phone screen. "NextOS"? NextStep used Display Postscript early on, one of whose advertised features was... yes, it's a shame Apple dumped the technology in favor of something inspired by PDF, but the world changes.
  AmigaOS was also ahead of its time. You could legitimately argue that operating systems since bear no resemblance to AmigaOS, whose shared-memory space message-passing multitasking environment had its flaws as well as its advantages. But to argue that AmigaOS can't be described as ahead of its time when it was doing in the 1980s what many operating systems are still doing poorly today would get you laughed at.
  But X11, unlike AmigaOS, never went away. And so we're familiar with its flaws, and we focus on its flaws and not its strengths. And its strengths are, absolutely, huge.
  Wayland is a tragedy. It should not exist as a project. It's taking the jewel from Unix's crown and throwing it away in favor of a candy wrapper because the jewel has gotten a lot of gunk on it over the years and nobody's thought to just polish it.
  
  Wayland is an effort to remove those layers of cruft that nobody uses (Xtoolkit?)
  
  No, it's not. Wayland is an effort to replace X11. It will end up, after a few years of people hacking around its flaws, with just as much cruft as X11, but unlike X11, it'll never have the promise. It'll never be able to do in 25 years from now what X11 can do today.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
26. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-19 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  Let me sum it up:
  1) the people who know X best, say it sucks.
  2) I've programmed on it from its very early days (Xlib, Xtoolkit, Motif, all the way to the present) and it sucks.
  3) The people who developed graphic subsystems thereafter (NeXTSTEP, MacOS, Android, Windows) avoided it because it sucks.
  4) The developers of Linux are dumping it because it sucks.
  5) You defend X by talking about "network transparency" (the mating call of the X11 noob). "Network transparency" is a rarely used X11 feature which is fully supported in Wayland as an extension. So the rare few people who need it will have access to it.
  So, pardon me, but I'll stand by my statement: X11 sucks.
  p.s. "The X11 was developed purely because X10 wasn't generic enough in its hardware requirements. That was it." Around here that is considered an architectural flaw, as it couldn't be fixed by a simple extension of the protocol.
27. Re:Now make GNOME work by jelabarre · 2013-09-28 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  The larger question I have, and asked many times before without getting any sort of satisfying answer is - what does Wayland provide that X cannot?
  Wayland provides severe broken-ness and an inability to work on remote systems. It's designed to bring all the uselessness of MSWindows to the Unix world.
28. Re:Now make GNOME work by jelabarre · 2013-09-28 14:31 · Score: 1
  
  You defend X by talking about "network transparency" (the mating call of the X11 noob). "Network transparency" is a rarely used X11 feature which is fully supported in Wayland as an extension. So the rare few people who need it will have access to it.
  and YOUR feeble excuse that network transparency may or (more likely) may not be available as an extension does NOT help if it is not always available BY DEFAULT on any system you may need to remotely connect to. If Wayland becomes widely implemented they way *you* want to see it done, it's highly likely the overwhelming majority of systems will be forever isolated and unreachable. For all that will give us, you might as well be using the Point-and-Drool MSWindows interface you seem so hot and horny to emulate. It certainly would make my job significantly more difficult.
29. Re:Now make GNOME work by Alomex · 2013-09-28 15:06 · Score: 1
  
  Make up your mind. Either it is useful in which near every one will apt-get the extension, or it isn't in which case it won't be installed.
  Your reality in which is useful yet people don't install it is absurd.
Was this supposed to be good news ? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 05:35 · Score: 0

Gnome3 - Just another reason to not want to try wayland.
How about GTK+3 for Win32? by Nimey · 2013-09-17 05:37 · Score: 1

Still no stable binary release of GTK+3 for Win32. Any word on when that's happening?

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
1. Re:How about GTK+3 for Win32? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:19 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  http://www.tarnyko.net/dl/
  I use this to develop GTK+3 applications with MinGW. Everything works fine.
Okay, that's half-way there. by Minwee · 2013-09-17 05:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

More importantly, when will we see GNOME 2 support?
1. Re:Okay, that's half-way there. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Probably never, unless you add it.
  Personally I'll just use gnome-classic.
2. Re:Okay, that's half-way there. by Derek+Pomery · 2013-09-17 07:21 · Score: 2
  
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQzMTU "GNOME 2 Fork MATE Desktop Aims For Wayland"
  
  --
  -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
3. Re:Okay, that's half-way there. by unixisc · 2013-09-18 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  Better question would be - would MATE bother to support it? B'cos that's where it's headed. Since Cinnamon uses GTK3+, they probably would, but about MATE, it's still an open question. I'd suspect they may not, since it would involve having to add Wayland support to GTK and make Muffin Wayland compliant as well
4. Re:Okay, that's half-way there. by unixisc · 2013-09-18 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  Oh!
But in fact it's NOT properly supported. by tlambert · 2013-09-17 05:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

But in fact it's NOT properly supported.
If you read the wiki that the article poster linked to, there are all sorts of caveats and missing functionality. "Properly Supported" means functional parity, and from where it sits right now, there is not functional parity.
1. Re:But in fact it's NOT properly supported. by Desler · 2013-09-17 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  "Properly Supported" means functional parity
  New to Gnome development, eh?
2. Re:But in fact it's NOT properly supported. by ElusiveJoe · 2013-09-17 19:37 · Score: 1
  
  there are all sorts of caveats and missing functionality
  Technically, it is the next version of Gnome.
Wary of tabletication by tuppe666 · 2013-09-17 06:02 · Score: 2

Don't care about Wayland. I gave Intel my money, and in return they have 30 Developers, that have given me an astonishing return on my hardware. Hell they can still use X as far as I'm concerned.
I do care about the Gnome Shell and how to kill it with fire...I currently use Cinnamon, but do not want to continue to patch my Desktop , and I do care if Gnome is going to (continue) to cripple my Desktop experience. these two articles http://worldofgnome.org/gnome-upcoming-features/ http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/08/gnome-core-app-project-make-me-excited-for-desktop-linux show off the new core applications Maps, Music, Photos, Software & Calendar...ans they look great, only it looks like oversized icons/Buttons; "not over-burdened with features"; "built around the premise of ‘finding and reminding’ you of your files". Yeah I am nervous too.
How about they expand on evince(a fantastic program on any platform) by giving it epub compatibility. Rhythmbox has just been updated codename "I Eat Tapes" http://worldofgnome.org/rhythmbox-3-0-is-eating-the-tapes/ which is looking great after being much neglected for Banshee(Which was great) in the Mono push to satisfy some self serving... anyway great; modern looking; desktop app, not even mentioned. Hopefully I can finally get rid of the awesome Tomboy notes with Notes(Bijiben) ready so I can ditch Mono altogether (Cue that self serving prick to spout crap to retain reverence soon).
The bottom line is I don't want my Desktop experience Tabletified. There is a great hybrid touch/keyboard+mouse interface in here somewhere, and some great ideas, but my main computer is not about find...its about organising files not search; Sensible user of a 24" screen and accurate pointing devices (and I include pen too); Feature rich presented sensibly with good defaults...only removing unnecessary "options". There is something great here, but Gnome is taking too long at fitting the pieces together.
1. Re:Wary of tabletication by sayfawa · 2013-09-17 10:30 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with everything you say except the part where you have to care what Gnome is doing. XFCE has helped me not care about Gnome for about 3 years now. It's not as feature rich or polished as the last versions of Gnome 2, but it's getting there.
  
  --
  Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Ut oh.... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 06:14 · Score: 0

serviscope_minor is going to be really pissed now. Expect major trolling from him in 3...2...1...
You clearly are confused by tuppe666 · 2013-09-17 06:26 · Score: 2

Why do Linux desktop/window manager developers want to emulate Microsoft windows? If you want to steal things try and steal from someone like Apple, please.
There is no Linux windows manager that follows a tile/wiget/wall paradigm. Apple OSX is basically the old desktop paradigm which is the same as Gnome+Cinnamon; XFCE; KDE etc etc although is starting to go iOS round the edges.
1. Re:You clearly are confused by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 09:31 · Score: 0
  
  But gnome is following the "there is no way to start an application from the desktop" paradigm of windows 8.
  But to be honest at least Windows 8 didn't do the "You can't even select a window from some sort of task bar" paradigm of gnome 3.
Thank you Ubuntu! by Drunkulus · 2013-09-17 06:36 · Score: 3, Informative

This is a great leap forward for desktop Linux and we must remember the open source luminaries that have made this advance possible, starting with Mr. Mark Shuttleworth. Mark committed to making significant contributions to Wayland back in 2010, and generously offered to support KDE and Gnome in the transition. Wait, what? They never contributed a single line of code? They were secretly working on another project and are now in a pissing match with Intel??
1. Re:Thank you Ubuntu! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 16:14 · Score: 0
  
  Hur hur hur
  Mir actually did us a favor by lighting a much needed fire under the lazy butts of those idiot Wayland devs, and everyone knows it.
"Bloated, fragmented and space consuming" by mutube · 2013-09-17 07:05 · Score: 1

My favourite bit of the linked article...

The upper right area of Gnome Shellâ(TM)s top panel contained four separate items with their corresponding menus used for configuring sound, internet connections, power and user settings. This was bloated, fragmented and space consuming especially in the case of using extensions that need space on the right.
A new status menu that unifies all the above individual settings in one was imperative and we got it on 3.10!
...directly above a screenshot showing the top panel in question - which is 80% empty space.
Seems you can justify anything in UI design if you include the magic words "bloated, fragmented and space consuming" in your rationale.

--
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
1. Re:"Bloated, fragmented and space consuming" by goose-incarnated · 2013-09-17 21:37 · Score: 1
  
  My favourite bit of the linked article...
  
  The upper right area of Gnome Shellâ(TM)s top panel contained four separate items with their corresponding menus used for configuring sound, internet connections, power and user settings. This was bloated, fragmented and space consuming especially in the case of using extensions that need space on the right.
  A new status menu that unifies all the above individual settings in one was imperative and we got it on 3.10!
  ...directly above a screenshot showing the top panel in question - which is 80% empty space.
  Seems you can justify anything in UI design if you include the magic words "bloated, fragmented and space consuming" in your rationale.
  I can't find any of that in any of the linked articles
  
  --
  I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Yes, X12 might have been better by amaurea · 2013-09-17 08:03 · Score: 1

I agree. The Wayland developers have convincingly argued that X11 is a broken heap of cruft, and non-backwards compatible changes seem to be needed to fix that. But as you say, that could be done by updating the protocol itself. Judging from the X version number, that has happened many times in the past, but somehow we've gotten stuck at version 11 for a long while now. Make X13 or X14 the redesigned version with all the cruft removed, and use the versions between there as a deprecation buffer.
1. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 09:13 · Score: 1
  
  That is possible, however it adds a burden of additional development and maintenance. Also X is an ugly, partly outdated and complex API that nobody uses directly, not to mention that some of the forgotten API's might have vulnerabilities (there are Xorg exploits found from time to time). Wayland will run the accompanying X server as unprivileged process, on demand. Eventually most apps will move away from it to Wayland (the only reason not to is maybe to run on both Ubuntu's Mir and Wayland but apps can be ported to both). I expect that it will not take long to switch most of the common OSS apps, and many already support Wayland protocol automatically through toolkits. Remaining can keep running on XWayland (like some old binary apps, games).
  The whole Linux graphics stack has been rearchitected in recent years and the next obvious step was to replace X with something better.
2. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by raxx7 · 2013-09-17 12:02 · Score: 2
  
  X11 was introduced in 1986 and was not backwards compatible with X10.
  So, it has happened in the (very distant) past, but not as you may think it did.
  It's not possible to achieve what Wayland strives to achieve and keep X any more than Wayland does, unless you're satisfied with simply calling the Wayland protocol "X12" and be done with it.
  There are two main problems.
  First, there are problems in the X11 server/client protocol that can only be fixed by creating a new major extension, where a client connects and says "I'm a X12 client and I swear I won't ever speak X11 to you", and the X12 protocol would look awfully like Wayland.
  Second, there are problems with the X11 model of display server (X.org), window manager/compositor (Mutter (GnomeShell), Compiz (Unity), Kwin, Enlightenment etc, etc ) and clients.
  Wayland fixes those problems by merging the role of the display server and of the compositor are merged into the same piece of software, the Wayland compositor.
  That has a number of advantages (better performance, the compositor has full control over the input the clients get) but it's only feasible because, due to the simplicity of the Wayland protocol, writing a Wayland compositor can be not much harder than writing a X compositor.
  This is not feasible if we were to try and write compositors which also act as an X11 server, due to the sheer size and complexity imposed by the X11 protocol (core + modern extensions).
  The Wayland architecture is much cleaner and much more feasible.
  We'll have several Wayland compositors (Mutter, KWin, Enlightenment, etc), which are only burdened with speaking the Wayland protocol to Wayland clients.
  And a modified X.org rootless X server (Xwayland), which is also a Wayland client, will support X11 applications (as good or better than before).
3. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by renoX · 2013-09-18 01:19 · Score: 1
  
  > unless you're satisfied with simply calling the Wayland protocol "X12" and be done with it.
  You cannot call Wayland X12: X is a drawing protocol, Wayland isn't: it only provides buffers.
  And I disagree that an X12 protocol 'woud look awfully like Wayland':
  -with X you know where your pixels are going on the screen, with Wayland you don't!
  -with X (XRender), to draw text efficiently you can have a glyph cache managed by the X server, with Wayland you cannot have this.
4. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by raxx7 · 2013-09-18 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  Arguing about what features a display server protocol has or not to be worthy of being called X12 is a useless discussion to begin with.
  Much more so when you consider how X1 to X10 looked.
  - Even on X11, the client does not know where the pixels are going in the screen. In the end, the compositor does what it wants.
  - XRender allows you to do a lot of things "efficiently" but we can do them more efficiently with direct or client side rendering and just push a shared memory buffer to the server. Even on X11. Qt5 will not use XRender.
5. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by renoX · 2013-09-18 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  > - XRender allows you to do a lot of things "efficiently" but we can do them more efficiently with direct or client side rendering and just push a shared memory buffer to the server.
  More efficiently? Only locally, remotely it depends on a lot of things (bandwith, latency).
  > Qt5 will not use XRender.
  I'm not so sure: this webpage list XRender http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtdoc/requirements-x11.html
6. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by raxx7 · 2013-09-18 11:43 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that modern application/toolkits need to send stuff to the server that it no longer works that well over the network.
  In fact, they often need to send so much Xrender commands that modern application/toolkit developers just give up on trying to make efficient use of Xrender and just start dumping pixmaps to the Xserver, with a minimum use of Xrender to stitch them together.
  http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2008/10/22/so-long-and-thanks-for-the-blit/
  Even by Qt4.5, they found out that their pure software backend (Raster) was fast than the XRender one (Native).
  Whatever the cause, more and more ssh -X only works well over high bandwidth, low latency and beyond that we need to use middlemen like VNC, RDP or NX.
  Regarding Qt5, I guess the still need to call some XRender function actually draw the pixmap or some other hidden dependency.
  But I can only find references to two backends on Qt5: Raster and GL.
7. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by renoX · 2013-09-18 19:27 · Score: 1
  
  >[cut] with a minimum use of Xrender to stitch them together.
  Which is a very good way to use XRender: use the glyph cache in the server for efficient text rendering, for the background render locally and push the pixmap (which could be easily compressed in case of WAN access) to the server and stich everything together.
  And you can't do this with Wayland (no drawing API..).
  >Even by Qt4.5, they found out that their pure software backend (Raster) was fast than the XRender one (Native).
  The benchmark you've linked is a local benchmark, irrelevant for network rendering.
8. Re:Yes, X12 might have been better by raxx7 · 2013-09-19 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  No, you need to make a distinction between using XRender and actually making efficient, network friently, use of XRender.
  If you care about rendering across the network, the good/efficient way to use XRender, it to send many (typically small) pixmaps to the server, which can actually be reused (and cached) and then send XRender commands to draw your application, reusing those pixmaps.
  Ie, you send a pixmap for an "a" in a given size and font and then you can reuse the pixmap to draw every A of that size and font in your application.
  The problem is that increasingly, toolkit/application don't use XRender in this way.
  Even if they do still use XRender to stitch the pixmaps together, the pixmaps they're sending are, increasingly, large non-reusable pixmaps.
  Which means there's little, if any, bandwidth improvement.
  The advantages of having server side rendering, like X does, are increasingly going unused by actual applications.
I DON'T LIKE CHANGE! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 08:42 · Score: 0

You heard it.
You're welcome! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-17 09:06 · Score: 0

It wouldn't have been possible to pull off Wayland if not for the throngs of dedicated Wayland-devs working their butts off 24/7 for 5 years to realize their vision. Wait, what? They were sitting on their asses holding their dicks until the looming threat of a bruised ego compelled them to actually get any work done? Well waddayuknow...
Credit where credit is due dipshit. If not for Canonical you could've been waiting for another 5 years to see any progress. I may not agree on the clandestine nature of their reveal, but the ensuing hatred was blown out of proportion.
1. Re:You're welcome! by Drunkulus · 2013-09-17 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks to Mr. Coward, I have seen the light. It is clear to me now that Canonical is essentially an open source Machiavelli, manipulating other players such as Redhat and Intel with ease. The Wayland devs, shamed into action, are now producing the next generation display server which Canonical will then use instead of their Trojan Horse display server.
Wait, Evince can't even read EPUB? by Phil+Urich · 2013-09-17 11:07 · Score: 1

Not to be the KDE fanboy here, but Okular has been able to do that since . . . I dunno, whenever many years ago I first tried clicking on an EPUB.

At this point it almost seems like classic GNOME fans might be better off using KDE and themeing/fiddling with it to make it look and behave how they want. And KDE doesn't even make you write Javascript extentions to do any of that, it's all in the actual UI to customize it . . .

--
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
1. Re:Wait, Evince can't even read EPUB? by Windwraith · 2013-09-17 14:41 · Score: 1
  
  ...fun, I've been using Okular for pdfs for years now, but I didn't know it could do epub as well...shame on me!
  I agree though.
And to speak of Tabletification . . . by Phil+Urich · 2013-09-17 11:18 · Score: 1

I really do think the KDE devs are going about it the right way, leveraging the Model-View paradigm to make it so most of the code can remain the same but the UI/UX can be changed for different circumstances. So if you do install on a tablet, you can have a full-screen launcher and nice finger-friendly icons and such, running what are underneath completely compatible programs. But if you run a desktop, you have the full and unfiltered desktop experience. You don't really have to sacrifice one for the other (well, the tablet side is taking a bit to entirely come together, but that's mostly hardware support, and if we're going to sacrifice either I'm sure we're all fine with our Android tablets or whatnot in the meantime, no need to muck up the desktop).
I'm typing this from a KDE install right now, loving Lancelot Launcher and Yakuake, and pitying my Windows-using colleagues when they don't have tabs, split-views or SFTP support in their file managers (and chuckling a bit about their Windows 8 angst). There were some scary and awkward times in the beginning of the KDE4 transition, but these days KDE is back to be stable and solid, and whatever layout and behaviour you want you can pretty much do it (the mere thought of which must drive the GNOME devs into panic attacks).

--
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!