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X.Org Server 1.15 Brings DRI3, Lacks XWayland Support

Posted by timothy on from the not-belated-for-eastern-orthodox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A belated holiday gift for Linux users is the X.Org Server 1.15 'Egg Nog' release. X.Org Server 1.15 presents new features including DRI3 — a big update to their rendering model — a rewrite of the GLX windowing system code, support for Mesa Mega Drivers, and many bug fixes plus polishing. The release, though, goes without any mainline support for XWayland to ease the adoption of the Wayland Display Server while maintaining legacy X11 application support."

1 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Daniel Stone core X.o dev on what's wrong with X by caseih · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe he's still part of X.org anyway, but he's working exclusively on Wayland.

    For everyone that disparages Wayland without really understanding anything about Wayland, which seems to be most everyone, I highly recommend listening to this talk by a core X.org developer:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44

    TL;DR points:
    - X11 is no longer "network transparent" and hasn't been so in a long time, due to reliance on DRI, Xrender, Xvideo, etc.
    - X11 is already used in a manner that is similar to Wayland but with a very poor inter-process communication layer and synchronization issues, with most of X11's core bypassed (server-side fonts, drawing APIs, etc).
    - X11 when used remotely is already like VNC, but very poor at it. Lots of round-trips, etc, all to show bitmaps.

    In the end, there are a few things I need from Wayland, and I think they will be there in the end:
    - app-based network transparency, not just remote desktop
    - middle click paste. Maybe done with a virtual frame buffer and rdp to ship the final rendering across the wire.
    - customizable focus policy (focus follows mouse, click to raise)
    - user replaceable window/composite managers

    I suspect we'll lose a few features that very few people use such as using a remote window manager to manage windows on a local server. For example, running Xming on Windows, and then running metacity or even twm on my remote linux machine. A full remote desktop would probably be the way to go here with wayland. And faster.