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XWayland Aiming For Glamor Support, Merge Next X.Org Release
An anonymous reader writes that XWayland is nearly ready to be merged into the main X.org tree "X.Org Server 1.16 this summer should support XWayland, the means of allowing X11 applications to run atop Wayland-based compositors without the need for any application/game changes. With the revised design, XWayland has generic 2D acceleration over OpenGL and a cleaner design compared to earlier revisions. With GNOME 3.12 having better Wayland support and Plasma Next around the corner, it looks like 2014 could be the year of Wayland's take-off!"
The patch series emails have more details. The big news here is that XWayland is ditching its old DDX model for one based on Glamor. eliminating the need for any X.org drivers to be written to support X11 on Wayland: "Finally, the last patch adds the Xwayland DDX. Initially Xwayland was an
Xorg module that exposed an API for Xorg video drivers to hook into
so that we could reuse the native 2D acceleration. Now that glamor is
credible and still improving, a much better approach is to make Xwayland
its own DDX and use glamor for acceleration. A lot of the code in the Xorg
approach was busy preventing Xorg being Xorg, eg, preventing VT access,
preventing input driver loading, preventing drivers doing modesetting.
The new DDX in contrast is straight-forward, clean code, only 2500 lines of
code and neatly self-contained." It does not yet have direct rendering or any acceleration, but those patches should come soon.
The Year of the Linux Desktop is upon us!
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
"It does not yet have direct rendering or any acceleration, but those patches should come soon."
How many projects are in the same state?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
I'll keep using my working computer.
nt
It does not yet have direct rendering or any acceleration, but those patches should come soon.
The patch series emails have more details. The big news here is that XWayland is ditching its old DDX model for one based on Glamor. eliminating the need for any X.org drivers to be written to support X11 on Wayland:
Glamor provides 2d acceleration using openGL.
The post seems to presuppose that Plasma Next will support Wayland. I doubt that: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/
OK, so I need to buy a clue here... does this move the ball forward with respect to being able to run an X-Windows client application on one node, and set the display back to a Wayland-based display server running on another node elsewhere on the network?
The actual article where he says Plasma Next will not (at least initially) support Wayland is: http://blog.martin-graesslin.c...
I'm still waiting for an announcement that any OS works besides Linux. They want this to win, they need it to run on UNIX & BSD.
... a part of X11 or a part of Wayland? Where exactly does it fit?
Is it just me, or is the Linux graphical stack insanely complex? Every time I read about it, they've introduced three new acronyms.
I think (from the vary articles you like) it's quite clear it WILL support it.
It will not support it on the first release. They may be overly-optimistic, but with the change of QT done, hopefully they can focus their efforts to finishing what needs done for wayland support. In addition, because of the diversity of supported platforms, hopefully it won't be as much work as it sounds like.
Really, who gives a flying f*
Anything without acceleration is an experiment. It doesn't matter how many lines of code you've written, or how efficient it seems. 100% of the required functionality is acceleration.
Acceleration is why X is being replaced by Wayland. 2D X11 requires a separate driver for every different type of hardware. 3D X11, from what I read by the Wayland people themselves, has three different APIs. For a long time, the only drivers with good 3D acceleration were proprietary drivers from AMD and nVidia.
I want Wayland to succeed, but I feel that it's still a long way off. The devil is in the acceleration. Think about the time spent by XFree86 developers over the decades writing acceleration code versus everything else, and that's the part we're missing right now. I'm not very clear on just where the acceleration is missing, but it sounds like it's missing in a foundational piece.
With Wayland/Mir people should consider pushing X totally on user space, like Xming,VcXsrv,XDarwin (and XPhoton R.I.P.) with an SDL fallback.
Acceleration is why X is being replaced by Wayland. 2D X11 requires a separate driver for every different type of hardware. 3D X11, from what I read by the Wayland people themselves, has three different APIs. For a long time, the only drivers with good 3D acceleration were proprietary drivers from AMD and nVidia.
So, what you're saying here is that somehow magically the Wayland people have access to some special fairy dust which allows them to write their drivers for the disparate video hardware we've got on the market without vendor support or blobs?
Maybe I'm being dumb here, but at some point in the process even Wayland has to talk to the hardware..so, does this mean we're in for proprietary vendor blobs for it as well in future to get full performance?
Think about the time spent by XFree86 developers over the decades writing acceleration code versus everything else, and that's the part we're missing right now.
The Wayland developers are, for the most part, the X developers, so they not only have access to all that existing X driver code that took so long to write, they're the folks who best understand that code, and know how to adapt it to a new environment. They're standing on the shoulders of giants (and in some cases, are the giants).
The biggest changes we should expect to see are in the API. Under the hood, I expect to see a whole lot of code that's identical to the current Xserver, or nearly so. As I understand it, the biggest issue right now is making sure that Wayland has the security X always lacked. Security, rather than hardware details, is probably the biggest obstacle to getting the acceleration in.
Where can I get WaylandX? This would be much more useful.
A desktop computer is a computer that hooks up to a TV and is controlled with a mouse instead of touch. It lets you do two things that most tablet computers can't do. One is split the screen so that you can have two or more things showing at once, so that the calculator app doesn't need to cover everything else up. The other is let you make apps. You know all these apps you run on your tablet? Someone made them on a desktop computer. There are also laptops, which look like a tablet with a keyboard but run the same apps as a desktop computer.
(Pedants: Yes, AIDE exists, and Samsung multiwindow mode exists, and Windows RT has Snap, but they're outliers. Let me know when XCode runs on iPad or Visual Studio runs on Surface RT or other Android device manufacturers adopt Samsung's multiwindow extensions.)
Until your working computer no longer works because A. its hardware fails, or B. operating system and web browser makers no longer issue security updates compatible with your computer.
Wayland is supposed to reduce code complexity.
Is XWayland, running on top of Wayland actually less complex than X on its own?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's not quite as bad as it sounds, the actual hardware drivers are still accelerated and exposed as OpenGL, it's just that XWayland doesn't make use of it. If you look at this diagram it's the line between the X-server and libDRM that's broken when you use XWayland instead because Wayland can't talk directly down to that level. XWayland needs to be rewritten to accelerate graphics using OpenGL instead, then it'll hook into the green box above libDRM and all will be well. Luckily for the Wayland project so does the X-server want to as well, "Glamor" that they talk about is essentially 2D X11 over OpenGL.
Old:
X-client --> X-server --> libDRM --> hardware
Old using Wayland:
X-client --> XWayland --> (broken, software fallback) --> hardware
New in X-server:
X-client --> X-server (Glamor) --> OpenGL --> libDRM --> hardware
New using Wayland
X-client --> XWayland (Glamor) --> OpenGL --> libDRM --> hardware
Long term it looks like the plan is to expose everything via OpenGL/OpenGL ES for rendering and EGL for the windowing system so the direct link between X11 and libDRM would go away. That is still a few years off though.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This again? Two guys that worked on bits of Xorg are not collectively "the X developers". There are plenty of others out there working on stuff other than a nice tear free framebuffer for a phone. There are plenty of others that don't laugh at "running that app from 1996", who don't laugh at shaped windows, who don't bite the hand that is actually adding some wayland support and who have something better than a half finished presentation with no screenshots to show off their work.
Oh so I suppose you will only support a project if the entire team is ex X11 coders?
Honestly I've seen your posts on this subject over and over again and they are starting to wreak of X11 shill, or at least someone with some massive anti-wayland agenda.
People bitch and moan about the whole "Those who don't understand ____ are doomed to reinvent it poorly". Then people point out they actually have understanding and you come out of the woodworks and say it's not enough?
Seriously the fact that you rarely get an insightful moderation should be a clue. Take your uninformed anti-wayland rants elsewhere.
Not letting it slide when some fanboy that's never run Wayland but likes the idea says "X sux because of some lie I made up" is not an anti-wayland agenda.
Yup. Beat around the bush. Yadda Yadda about compatibility layer upon compatibility layer to keep features before acceleration. Just start anew & solid and the rest will follow.
Two guys that worked on bits of Xorg are not collectively "the X developers".
Not just two guys, but most of the team, and not just bits of X, but much of its design and current core code for the past 20 years, including nearly every driver for X.
And where did I say anything like "X sux..."? I said Wayland is going to have the benefit of the work that was done on X to create drivers, and the benefit of people on its team who generally understand those drivers. And you attacked like some sort of rabid mongoose.
I like X. I use its remote features regularly. And I'm quite satisfied with its performance. I'm going to be reluctant to switch to Wayland until it supports (directly or through XWayland) all the features I need. Nevertheless, I think I'm probably going to end up running Wayland/XWayland in the not-too-distant future. It's already installed on my system, since most of its libraries were dragged in by some package dependencies I haven't bothered to track down. And I like variety and options, so I'll probably start playing with it soon. I have tried the sample terminal client, and that seems to be working just fine.