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Fedora 25 To Run Wayland By Default Instead Of X.Org Server (phoronix.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the finally-happening dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Fedora 25 will finally be the first release for this Linux distribution -- and the first tier-one desktop Linux OS at large -- that is going ahead and using Wayland by default. Wayland has been talked about for years as a replacement to the xorg-server and finally with the upcoming Fedora 25 release this is expected to become a reality. The X.Org Server will still be present on Fedora systems for those running into driver problems or other common issues.
Fedora's steering committee agreed to the change provided the release notes "are clear about how to switch back to X11 if needed." In addition, according to the Fedora Project's wiki, "The code will automatically fall back to Xorg in cases where Wayland is unavailable (like NVIDIA)."

21 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. "common issues" should not be the default by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If there are "common issues", it shouldn't be a default, no matter what it is.

    This literally damages the reputation of FOSS as a whole - recklessly making "common issues" more common.

  2. Wayland bashing by packrat0x · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Cue negative Wayland comments by those who have not read, or do not understand the X.org code. Who do we hope will maintain the codebase? There's what, four men still alive, who can do the job?

    --
    227-3517
    1. Re:Wayland bashing by isj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've read the x.org codebase. Mostly to discover the grey areas in the protocol when I was working on a X/Window server running on ms-windows. The x.org code is not pretty but that is mostly due to being an old code base.

      The X protocol has its problems and quirks too, particularly when dealing with long latency between server and client. It was designed when using high-level primitives (eg "draw line to (x,y) in color Z") made sense. When client just use such primitives the speed is impressive. But some 10 years ago clients started doing client rendering and just sending bitmaps to the display server. Mostly that meant higher bandwidth and fewer round-trips. Whether that is good or bad depends on the clients and the environment.

      I have followed the progress of wayland a bit, and I have actually seen some of the presentations. It seems to me that wayland initially was infested by the type of developers that think that all they need is direct access to video memory, and for remote applications all you need is VNC-style full-desktop remote. Of course people who use remote X think that that is a myopic and arrogant view. It seems that wayland has gained some developers in the past few years who have more common sense and one of the new goals is to support remote X clients in a root-less fashion. When they have implemented that and also made sure that both clipboard and X-selection work then I'll give wayland a shot.

    2. Re:Wayland bashing by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nobody's enthusiastic about X. We're not not happy about a replacement that lacks the features of X that we loved and in many cases relied upon.

      And no, I don't want to hear that only "1% of users use the XSERVER variable" or that the underlying implementation wasn't very good.

      Hardly anyone uses GNU/Linux, but we'd never accept that as an argument for abolishing the operating system and requiring Windows.

      As for the latter - it doesn't matter if it's not perfect, it works damn it. I can manage a remote instance of LibreOffice as an app integrated on my desktop. I do this.

      We'll be happy with Wayland when it's as good as, or better than, X11. Not when the underlying code is temporarily easier to understand (you think it'll stay that way?), but when its feature complete, by our standards, not by the developers.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:Wayland bashing by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Informative

      My understanding of why X needs to go away is that it comes down to security. The xdg-app/flatpak story is completely useless if you can have perfect isolation except for the graphics stack. X makes it trivial for one application to grab the graphical content of another process, but you can't securely implement a screen lock.

      This is all out of date.

      Firstly, programs can only grab each other's windows if you give them permissions to. X has security mechanisms to prevent it if you wish to prevent such things. The easiest way is to do X over SSH, and disable trusted X11 forwarding. All that does is use XAuth to mark the client as untrusted, and you can do that without using ssh.

      The breaking out of sandboxes article a while back by Matthew Garrett only worked because in Ubuntu's implementation it treated the sandboxed programs as trusted. That's Ubuntu's fault not X, and in fact running his test program as untrusted demonstrated the X security mechanisms work just fine.

      The screen locker one is both overblown and wrong. It's true that if something else has a full grab then the screen locker can't supersede it. In that case, you can't start the locker and it;s usually incredibly obvious. If the screen locker succeeds, it is secure and you can't break out of it.

      But now it's also simply wrong. If you run a compositor, that intercepts ALL input events even with grabs because it has to be able to map them to the correct coordinates. If your screen locker is part of the compositor, then it is completely secure. I believe that's in fact exactly the same mechanism that's idiomatic in Wayland.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Wayland bashing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      1. Saying "the new thing is good because the old one is still available as fallback" is not a compliment to the new thing.

      2. x.org was a fork of XFree86, an implementation of the X protocol. Wayland is a new, less capable architecture.

      3. You seem quite angry. Are you on the Wayland development team?

    5. Re:Wayland bashing by Uecker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The code base of X is OK. Yes, I have read the code of many different open-source projects (and some close-source). But the real problem is not the code at all, I don't mind if somebody decides it needs to reimplement the X server for some reason. The real problem with Wayland is breaking backwards and forwards compatibility with a universally supported protocol instead of carefully revising it in a backwards compatible way (which would easily be possible with extensions). This is just insanely stupid.

    6. Re:Wayland bashing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People are starting to push back against the like of dnf being a replacement for yum,
      but does a very poor job of providing real compatibility with yum - silently doing something
      _different_ with the same command arguments.

      Same w/Wayward. The important features are *now* being pasted on top of the source
      topology, not an integral part of its design, as they should have been.

      What people rail against is the removal of choice by these "software authors." They're not
      clever enough to have their new stuff run side-by-side with the established stuff, for
      whatever reason, it's perceived as arrogance.

      Then there's the clown(s) out there who says "hey - you don't like it, get the sources and make it
      yourself" and has only gotten as far as writing a "hello, world!" program in their "engineering" career.

      CAP === 'unwind'

    7. Re:Wayland bashing by silanea · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Bandwidth does not matter nowadays [...]

      Bandwidth does matter, and in some ways more than ever, for two reasons:

      1. By now we have highly portable devices with enough computational capacity to do out in the field what would only two decades ago have required a few shelves full of Crays – but in the same time we have managed to unlearn how to efficiently use bandwidth. Many applications of computing or telecommunications still work in environments where bandwidth is a scarce resource. Not every service goes through fibre or LTE.
      2. We have so many devices out there that every modest reduction in bandwidth use per device runs up to a sizable gain.
      --
      Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
  3. As long as... by Kludge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm fine with Wayland...
    As long as it still runs all my wonderful diverse choices of Unix desktop environments.

  4. Eye Candy v Functionality by BoxRec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use the desktop for work, since April 2011 Linux desktops have promoted Eye Candy above Functionality. I am not just moaning about Fedora here, these are generalized complaints. Will I be able to switch instantly between windows/desktops ? probably not, there will be some lag due to the necessities of Eye Candy. Will I have a visual indicator of which documents I have open, nope, I will have to rely on subtle clues hidden at the edge of the monitor to hunt for them. Will I be able to quickly and easily navigate/tab down to some little used graphics program, nope I will to use a graphic menu clicking all over the place and making sense of the whole screen or even worse have to google for the name and type it in.

    1. Re:Eye Candy v Functionality by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 2

      I use the desktop for work, since April 2011 Linux desktops have promoted Eye Candy above Functionality.

      Welcome to Linux in the desktop. This is what many in the Linux community are pushing in an effort to beat Microsoft in the desktop. No wonder they are mostly spinning their wheels. Fortunately, we (still) have alternatives in the Linux world.

    2. Re: Eye Candy v Functionality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I use the desktop to leverage my synergies and align scalable innovation with our global branding strategy.

    3. Re:Eye Candy v Functionality by John+Allsup · · Score: 3, Insightful

      These are nothing to do with Wayland, but upon what you build upon it. Wayland provides a protocol for local programs to render to client buffers and efficiently pass these to the compositor, and to pass event information back to the application, and essentially little else. All additional functionality is a matter of how you design your compositor (of which Weston is just a sample implementation), and your compositor does not _only_ have to talk Wayland. It is important to understand the software engineering concept of coupling, namely what happens when the design of one component mandates behaviour and design of another component. Minimising this maximises flexibility, but perhaps gives you less 'for free'. An extremely lightweight compositor designed for getting work done is not out of the question, and most likely there will be a proliferation of compositor designs as there was for window manager designs in the earlier days of Linux.

      --
      John_Chalisque
  5. Honest Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does Wayland, at this stage, provide the same level of functionality that Xorg does? Does everything just work or do all the applications need to be re-achitected to work properly. If I can't ssh -X me@remote WhateverFuckingApp& then I am not even remotely interested in hearing about Wayland, let alone trying it.

    After 17 years of daily use, the Linux desktop has come way too for for me to tolerate a major step back or reduction on feature set with the mere promise of improvement in coming months(years), again. KDE4, Gnome3, and Unity were the absolute-last-straws for that scenario.

    From now on, new stuff has to be a major improvement in quality, features, functionality, without sacrifice for me to tolerate the interruption in my workflow and the relearning, for the n-teenth time, of basic desktop operation. If the application or feature doesn't make me say; 'Oh wow, I really want that!', then it can FOAD

    The days of change for the sake of change, or change for the sake of a programmer's fantasy of technical superiority are over. I expect the Linux desktop to work and to get out of my way so that I can work or play.

    1. Re:Honest Question by MrKaos · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the most important usability features X11 has over Windows and mac is the suberbly powerful cut paste and remote display paradigm. If I can use those X features in Wayland I'll be happy, otherwise, I think you have a point Mr AC.

      I switched from Windows to linux because I was sick of that shit, change for change sake. I want change for the sake of a usability improvment in a computing interface that I am compelled to use because it makes me more efficient at using a computer. I am an advanced user and I want an advanced interface. For me that is an ambidextrous mousing paradigm, remote windows, more advanced cut and paste, multiple desktops.

      Frankly, UI configurability in linux has gone backwards since it got more popular, workspaces interfaces have *less* functionality than it did in 2008 when I could drag windows between workspaces and you could configure just about every aspect of gnome to customize your linux desktop experience. I didn't want a Mac or Windows UI and since their UI's adopted workspaces the functionality in linux seems to be dumbed down and advanced linux GUI features being domesticated.

      Wayland looks like it is answering the need for backwards X11 compatibility with Weston so it remains to be seen if it will take the powerful features of X11 and leave some of the atropied aspects behind.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    2. Re:Honest Question by armanox · · Score: 2, Informative

      Another one - is there a fully compatible equivalent to X -query $hostname? I should have the option to connect to servers on my network however I need/choose to. I have users that use ssh to do remote X over a VPN to Solaris boxes, etc; and these all need to not break. And it's important to keep the heat on Fedora because what ends up in Fedora will be in RHEL 8.

      Personally, I think I'm going to end up with a lot of unhappy users, or end up with Solaris workstations being deployed with the direction Linux is headed these days (oh hell, maybe I'll be able to get work to pay to revive my SGI O2 and use that as a daily workstation. It's perfect for everything but web browsing - I've got the full Adobe suite (Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop) on there too, and I can use Word Perfect for documents. My Octane would be a bit heavy to transport to work, though it's a lot more powerful then the O2...)

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    3. Re: Honest Question by buchner.johannes · · Score: 3, Informative

      Eh? You can do this in GNOME3. Just press super and drag between desktops. Or do Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down to switch virtual desktops and bring the window with you.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
  6. Re: Desktop environments have to implement support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Meanwhile, everything just works on my Windows 10 desktop.

    even all the things microsoft added that you don't want to work, right?

  7. OK so now I've read about it and ... by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wayland is attractive to its developers because it explicitly implements a much reduced feature set compared to X11. Quite a few of the X11 features are historic and not of interest to very many modern users, but then again there are some features that are useful and Wayland doesn't offer a replacement for them.

    X11 includes a rendering API for 2d graphics, and through extensions, for a variety of compositing and other more "modern" operations. Wayland provides no rendering API at all. Wayland is just a graphics compositing server with input support. It's a small fraction of what X is. It gives you a buffer to write your pixels into and you have to bring a rendering implementation to the party yourself.

    This means that applications have even less coherency than they had with X11; X programs have a fundamental set of behaviors that are all the same due to using a single rendering framework. The degree to which this will matter in practice, given how poorly X programs adhere to any kind of common UI paradigm anyway, remains to be seen.

    Apparently there's this thing called Mir that Ubuntu is developing that is a competitor to Wayland for the X replacement (where neither is actually a replacement, offering significantly less functionality in both cases). I guess that Ubuntu rejected Wayland and decided to roll their own. I would bet a fair sum that Fedora is pushing Wayland in this way to try to prevent Ubuntu from gathering its own momentum with Mir. I doubt they're pushing it for any reason that benefits end users. It's purely political as a means to prevent a competitor's favored X replacement from gaining support.

    I have been an X user for about 26 years now and I have zero problems with it and would rather not see a replacement take over, especially one that is likely to be a step sideways/backwards from an end user perspective ala systemd. But given that Wayland by itself is not nearly as useful as X by itself, I expect that operating systems will use Wayland, at least for a while, as a layer underneath the X server. X will remain, it will just allow Wayland to own its frame buffer instead of owning it itself. And in the end, the functionality I require from X will remain because the X server will remain.

  8. Re:Jesus, what's with all this Wayland bashing? by Lisandro · · Score: 2

    So, the question seems to come down to whether Wayland can do remote apps as effectively as X can, either by itself or by way of some kind of extension. I've read the entire thread so far, and no answer, not even a theoretical one.

    The thing is, X cannot even do remote effectively anymore - at least not with modern DEs/WMs. We're way past the days of rendering with geometrical primitives.