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LibreOffice Ported To Run On Wayland

Posted by timothy on from the onwards-and-up-words dept.

An anonymous reader writes: LibreOffice has lost its X11 dependency on Linux and can now run smoothly under Wayland. LibreOffice has been ported to Wayland by adding GTK3 tool-kit support to the office suite over the past few months. LibreOffice on Wayland is now in good enough shape that the tracker bug has been closed and it should work as well as X11 except for a few remaining bugs. LibreOffice 5.0 will be released next month with this support and other changes outlined by the 5.0 release notes.

31 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by amalcolm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What does Wayland solve for me, a standard Ubuntu user? What I have wordks ok, why does it need to change?

    --
    Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
    1. Re:What's the point? by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Downsides: 1. you lose remote access (save for second-class stuff like VNC), 2. you need to port most software or use X emulation. Upsides: ... [crickets] ...

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:What's the point? by kenaaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This statement is fundamentally crap. Every day I run multiple kde 4 applications on multiple systems back to a single desktop with ssh. The applications are not degraded and I don't have to disable any X11 features to do it. Occasionally I even use OpenGL applications remotely and they perform just fine.

    3. Re:What's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      But something is better than nothing. Currently wayland is only offering the latter.

      Your comment is two years out of date, Wayland has offered remote protocol since 2013 in the main branch, further its expected to be better supported than X11 (ie perfect alpha blending on shading at 60fps over a network link) all while using less resources than X11 and without degrading features.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    4. Re:What's the point? by firewrought · · Score: 2

      Downsides: 1. you lose remote access (save for second-class stuff like VNC), 2. you need to port most software or use X emulation. Upsides: ... [crickets] ...

      Performance, battery life, innovation.

      (And if you haven't noticed, X remote access is already second-class to thinks like RDP and SPICE.)

      --
      -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
    5. Re:What's the point? by muep · · Score: 3, Informative

      Most Wayland-compatible applications would likely not render things by directly communicating with the Wayland protocol. Instead, they will likely use a higher-level UI toolkit. Toolkits like GTK+ and Qt are able to switch between Wayland and X11 based on which server they detect to be available. If you need to run a Wayland-compatible application from a server to which you are logged in via ssh, you would likely be able to do so as long as X11 compatibility is retained. As long as there is no convenient way to use Wayland over network, it might well make sense to keep using X11 in that role even if otherwise the default in some distros ended up being Wayland.

      On the downside, the user might encounter some uncommon bugs due to using a non-default backed. But in my experience, the situation already is that there are bugs that mostly exist in cases where X11 is used over network. Differences in performance and feature availability between X11 over network and local X11 server is quite large, so already continued availability of remotely usable GUI applications depends on people testing for and fixing issues that are specific to the over-network use case.

    6. Re:What's the point? by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Informative

      In fact, not wanting to give up on "proper hardware acceleration" is the number one reason I despise Wayland.

      Lies, lies, lies, yeah:

      https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=mtgxmde

    7. Re:What's the point? by prefec2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Beside your tone, you also missed the point. X11 is a graphical terminal technology where an application sends UI draw information to a server which renders it into graphic memory which is finally displayed on a screen. All input is collected and transmitted to the application. The server understands a simple protocol based on graphical primitives including fonts. In later years the font feature got extended, but the principle was not violated by that extension. The problem started when people wanted to use 3D and watch videos. Also audio was outside of the scope of X11 and of course printing. The addition of video required direct hardware access to be fast enough (especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s). Therefore, stuff like DRI where realized, which broke with the X11 principle that an application sends drawing information to the server which then does all the graphic stuff.

      I hope that clears things up.

    8. Re:What's the point? by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      HELL, while you idiots were sleeping the entire rest of the world (minus Apple) warmed up to the idea of remote desktop technology. If you are bound and determined to gut that, then you are giving Linux a competitive disadvantage and setting it back 20 years.

      Sure, remote desktop rocks. But they also are superior to X. For example, if your network connection burps, you don't lose your f'in work. Because the app runs locally and is displayed remotely and is completely independent on the network.

      Sure remote X is great, I use it all the time. But I'm also aware that if I start a long-running process, I need to use screen to keep it alive, because now I'm depending on three things - the Linux machine hosting the app, the network, and my desktop PC showing me the app. That's a recipe for fragility in the whole thing.

      Perhaps you don't use remote X for things that take hours to run, or don't mind losing all your work because you forgot to save and now the network connection reset. That's fine and great. But some people do, and really, X is pretty deficient compared to the rest of the remote desktop protocols out there. Even VNC.

      Remote X is great, but it's time to modernize it and put features that every other remote desktop system has.

    9. Re:What's the point? by Endymion · · Score: 2

      You are aware that X has an extension system, right? Or are you just leaving that part out in an attempt to pretend that the backwards compatible development style of X for some reason requires that no new features have been added? Also, your nonsense about ancient versions of X providing features similar to the limitations of ancient hardware have nothing whatsoever to do with the basic principles of the X Window System.

      Supporting new features does not require removing old features - they are simply moved into "extensions". In no way does this limit the performance of those features. The idea that we need to remove the older non-extended protocol to support newer features is not only wrong, it's terrible engineering.

      So which are you - a n00b that needs to learn how X (and good engineering practices) actually works? Maybe you're just a sociopathic troll? Or is this profit based and you're trying to push someone's agenda? (perhaps RedHat?)

      --
      Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
    10. Re:What's the point? by Endymion · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Did you miss the GTK+ 3.0 drama?

      The GNOME idiots have been making it a point to break compatibility and remove "old" (aka "working", "currently used") features. You are delusional if you think they will continue supporting X once they declare the Wayland version to be "standard".

      Of course, they'll probably use their typical victim-blaming approach where claim that keeping the old version around is "too much work" that should be done by someone else.

      --
      Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
    11. Re:What's the point? by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We didn't spend the last 20 years building LINUX for your kind. Kindly fuck off and buy a Micro$haft "xbox" if you want to "game".

      Linus Torvalds:

      "I love the Steam announcements – I think that's an opportunity to really help the desktop," he said, speaking at LinuxCon in Edinburgh.

    12. Re:What's the point? by morgauxo · · Score: 4, Informative

      As an actual user, not just a developer talking about protocols try actually setting that up and using it. Supposedly that code is in the main branch but there is ZERO documentation about how to make it work. From what I have heard one of the developers wrote it in order to try to shut up all the people who were rightly complaining that a major feature from X was being taken away. Once he had a single demo it then went by the wayside. Does that code even work any more? Who knows, how would one even find out?

      As far as I can tell remote Wayland was developed only far enough to be a publicity stunt and doesn't really exist in a usable state.

    13. Re:What's the point? by Endymion · · Score: 2

      I'm even fine with changes that break existing software if it is required to fix a security issue. Unfortunately, we have people confusing design with implementation, and even more that follow the Not Invented Here principle. Anybody in that camp may want to read "Things You Should Never Do" by Joel Spolsky.

      When programmers see an old, messy project they tend to want to rewrite it. They see that mess and believe they know how it could "obviously" be simplified. Usually, this is incorrect, as the simplified abstraction they are picturing doesn't actually implement the same feature. That "mess" was actually the accumulation of important details that were learned over time: subtle details that were not covered by the original design, evolving requirements, and expensive bug fixes. The "rewrite" has none of that, and those details will eventually be added back, eventually making the rewrite just as messy as the original version at the cost of many man-years of effort. Throwing out the "mess" is throwing out a project's most valuable asset: real-world experience.

      --
      Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
    14. Re:What's the point? by markdavis · · Score: 2

      >This statement is fundamentally crap. Every day I run multiple kde 4 applications on multiple systems back to a single desktop with ssh. The applications are not degraded and I don't have to disable any X11 features to do it.

      If I had mod points, I would mod you up AND the parent of your reply down.

      We use remote X even when it is not remote- thin clients. X11 works great both locally and remotely. I do wish that there was an X12 effort rather than the attempt to throw X completely away... which I am quite certain this is where it is headed with Wayland. And I absolutely know this is going to be a nightmare for me when projects stop supporting X11 for reasons that most people are not expecting or covering.

    15. Re:What's the point? by markdavis · · Score: 2

      >"The GNOME idiots have been making it a point to break compatibility and remove "old" (aka "working", "currently used") features. You are delusional if you think they will continue supporting X once they declare the Wayland version to be "standard"."

      BINGO!!!! +1000

      And then other projects will marginalize their X ports too, perhaps LibreOffice, perhaps Firefox, who knows. But at some point there will be no way to continue to really run a full-blown X11 workstation, and that *SUCKS*. Because rest assured, there are some severe issues and limitations with Wayland. Of course they are going to dismiss those as "old stuff nobody cares about anymore". Or point to some unstable demo code that nobody cares about. Or some ridiculously complex work-around that is flaky at best.

      I am certainly not opposed to Wayland in CONCEPT. The problem is that it won't be adding something new we can choose, it will be something that destroys X11 and negates any possibility of improving X to something like X12.

    16. Re:What's the point? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Lots of blocking calls

      Like what? the X protocol and the low level binding xcb are fully asynchronus.

      poor synchronization (tearing)

      I've heard the claim that Wayland will magically solve tearing. I only seem to get tearing when running two monitors (I've not seen single monitor tearing in years). Those two monitors are running at different frame rates, marginally. Your're either going to get tearing or awful juddering.

      support for multiple monitors and input devices with hotplugging

      Works fine for me...? I can even have different keymaps on different keyboards.

      global hotkeys/media keys, conflicts like modal window and screensaver both wanting to be on top and so on.

      Now this is one of the most diesngenuous claims. Traditional X11 has had three processes, in this regard, the application process in question, then WM and the screensaver. The wayland solution is to make the compositor and screensaver one process. You can already make the wm/compositor/screensaver one process if you like on X. Sure no one seems to be doing it but there's no inherent barrier. Likewise on Wayland there's nothing stopping you doing it the bad, old X11 way.

      As for global hotkeys: I thought a passive grab on the key does that. Or if you're a compositing WM, you already get all keys anyway, so problem solved.

      And though it's not directly part of the protocol, you're likely to see a revisit of client vs server-side decorations since Weston - the reference implementation - only support CSD.

      Now that just makes me sad. It comes from the same schoo of thought as the chuckleheads who removed the "kill grab" feature. Apparently the claim was that you don't need it because it only happens when there's a bug in an application. Well shit, I write applications. Sometimes they have bugs. That, and for the same reason CSD, I feel is a deeply user-hostile feature and actively enforces the user-is-not-a-developer mindset.

      Likewise, for debugging, I sometimes pop up a window and draw shit. I don't process events, because why bother? It's for debugging. Nonetheless, having no working window decorations (like move!) is going to be a right barrel of laughs.

      And then there's the likes of ratpoison etc. If CSD take off, that basically wipes out a whole class of window managers.

      The thing is, X11 is flawed, deeply so in many many ways. However, like so many pioneering systems it still has some brilliant features of which only poor shadows exist on other systems. It seems like people with first Windows envy and then Mac envy are determined to discard everything Linux did right in a quest to be more "friendly" to a class of user who as far as I know doesn't actually exist.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    17. Re:What's the point? by SEE · · Score: 2

      Have you ever been annoyed by users of *nix systems that are less popular than Linux? Then have no fear; Wayland is an effort to kill off those platforms.

      You see, first you reduce X on Linux to the sort of second-class status that it has on OS X. So then people switch their development for Linux to Wayland. So then they stop maintaining an X version of their app (even if the toolkit they're using supports both X and Wayland), since it costs them resources for such a tiny fragment of people. Then, since nobody's developing for X, the toolkits themselves drop support for X. And then all those people using *BSD or Solaris are up shit creek without a paddle. And then the makers of Linux server distros, who are the ones who have to compete with *BSD and Solaris profit.

      Oh, sure, they can't come out and say openly that the purpose of Wayland is to destroy the competition. So they'll talk about all sorts of technical advantages. But then ask yourself, if the goal was simply to create a modernized/simplified/higher-performance/whatever GUI system, why deliberately choose to make it dependent on the Linux kernel, instead of developing such a system for all *nix systems?

    18. Re:What's the point? by morgauxo · · Score: 2

      Keep in mind this is pretty low level stuff. We aren't talking about coding yet another mp3 player (which is just a frontend for lame). We are talking about hardware drivers, video backend stuff, network protocols... I am a 'developer' myself but I would have absolutely no idea where to even begin working on something like this. Just listening to the Wayland developers talk about the internals of X vs Wayland and why Wayland is better gets me lost after a paragraph or two at most.

      The population out there that is capable of working on a problem like this is probably much smaller than the population that might contribute to other aspects of open source software. Of those few that are qualified apparently none use this feature even though many of the rest of us depend on it.

    19. Re:What's the point? by jbolden · · Score: 2

      A respectful comment from the anti-Wayland side! Well done.

      Anyway the reality is that Wayland guys wanted to get a prototype working to make sure there weren't any problems with remote... i.e. in theory a remote system could meet Wayland's "every frame is perfect". They don't actually care if in reality the frames are even visible for end users right now. That is the need it to work as essentially a unit test they don't need it to work right now for end user.

      They do agree remote usage is an important feature and it is something they intend to add. Remember that applications, especially those that are often used remotely, are likely to be somewhat delayed in how long before they switch to Wayland only versions. Also VNC works much better with Wayland. So in their mind they have years to fix the remote problem. They do agree it is something on their todo list.

  2. Main links hijacked by ads by innerpeace · · Score: 2

    The post links twice to an offsite article that is hijacked by an overlay ad from which there is no escape, making the article unreadable. There is a hidden x on the ad overlay which only shows by scrolling, but clicking it only makes the x vanish, not the flash ad overlay. Reloading the article only reloads the problem. I'm running Pale Moon, a lightweight Firefox derivitive, on Linux.

    1. Re:Main links hijacked by ads by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      Are you joking? Modern web is extremely clunky to use if you browse it with scripts turned off by default.

  3. Re:Wrong Person by FranTaylor · · Score: 2

    Only the X developers should be whining about the burdens of coding X.

    Says someone who has clearly never written an application for X Windows.

  4. Re:OpenSSL by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How did all that legacy code work for OpenSSL?

    OpenSSL's problems had nothing to do with 'legacy code.' If legacy code were a problem, then OpenBSD would be in trouble, because there's plenty of really old code in there. OpenSSL had problems because they wrote shitty code.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. Re:When the fuck will I be able to use Wayland? by Martin+Blank · · Score: 2

    I can't speak for Debian, but Fedora has it available at least for Gnome in F21 and F22, and they're trying to make it the default under F23. You could create a live-boot USB drive to test it out on your hardware.

    --
    You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  6. Re:When the fuck will I be able to use Wayland? by FranTaylor · · Score: 2, Funny

    When the fuck will Wayland be usable on my system?

    when you find someone competent to install it for you

  7. Re:When the fuck will I be able to use Wayland? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thanks, Fran. You've just made the entire open source community look like a bunch of useless assholes once again. Here we have a user asking a legitimate question, and instead of just answering the question you treat that user like dirt. And people wonder why The Year of Linux on the Desktop is always "next year". Normal people don't like being treated like crap, regardless of whether it's because the open source software they're being subjected to is broken, or whether it's because they're being treated terribly by open source advocates. Linux will never be anything but a niche OS, and by extension Wayland too will remain a niche product, all thanks to people like you and the way you show so much disrespect to everyday users.

  8. Re:That is not an answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it is not dependent on systemd. You've posted this same comment before whenever Wayland comes up.

    Grow the fuck up.

  9. Re:When the fuck will I be able to use Wayland? by jedidiah · · Score: 2

    The Wayland fanboys are certainly in full force today upvoting any mindless worship and downvoting anyone with a contrary opinion.

    BTW, a contrary opinion is not trolling.

    That's something else you know if you're an "old neckbeard".

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  10. Re:X is not going away by morgauxo · · Score: 2

    Sure you can run X apps on Wayland.. For now...

    Then distros will suddenly standardize on Wayland. Soon after X versions of applications will not be available. Then.. bye bye remote display. Were you still using that? If so then you are just a neck beard who is afraid of change and was holding up progress so that some poor kid's video game ran a couple of FPS slower. Your features don't matter but the gamer's needs do matter. I guess that makes sense seeing that video games are the only life many of those sorry slobs will ever experience anyway...

  11. Re:When the fuck will I be able to use Wayland? by kthreadd · · Score: 2

    Actually, Fedora 22 (current stable release) already runs the gdm login screen under Wayland.