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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!
Again?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
XWayland is the X server for Wayland, so that you can run traditional X applications on Wayland (as opposed to Qt etc. applications, which will talk directly to Wayland). http://wayland.freedesktop.org...
Yes, XWayland can be compared to an X Server running on Windows or over OS X, it translates X to the native display, in this case Wayland
Client X11 apps speak the X11 protocol to XWayland, XWayland speaks the Wayland protocol to Wayland so it's basically a big compatility shim. From Wayland's side it's just another client and if you use an X11 server you don't need it, it's not really part of either. Maybe the closest analogy is WINE, if you use Windows or run native Linux applications you don't need it. But if you want to run Windows applications on Linux you need WINE, likewise if you want to run X11 applications on Wayland you need XWayland. Basically you take an X11 server, stop it from talking to actual hardware and makes it draw to a Wayland window instead.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
X has always been in userspace.
Neither VNC or RDP require that the server have any local video capabilities. It is quite possible to run a Windows server headless.
RDP can remote single applications and has been able to for years. No full desktop required.
No one WANTS VNC. The very idea of POLLING for changes is pretty much the worst approach to a remote display that you can come up with.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
X has always been in userspace.
That's a serious overstatement.
X.org runs as root and directly maps parts of the PCI address space into its address space. It has the same amount of raw metal access as the kernel; it's a kernel which runs on top of another kernel.