Ubuntu Is Switching to Wayland (omgubuntu.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ubuntu is to ship Wayland in place of X.Org Server by default. Mir, Canonical's home-spun alternative to Wayland, had been billed as the future of Ubuntu's convergence play. But both Unity 8 the convergence dream was recently put out to pasture, meaning this decision was widely expected. It's highly likely that the traditional X.Org Server will, as on Fedora, be included on the disc and accessible from whichever login screen Ubuntu devs opt to use in ubuntu 17.10 onwards. This session will be useful for users whose system experience issues running on Wayland, or who need features and driver support that is only present in the legacy X.Org server session.

Comments

So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Ubuntu's switching to PulseAudio, to systemd, to GNOME 3, and now to Wayland, what is it that makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

The only difference I can think of is where an installation ISO would be downloaded from, and typing "apt-get" instead of "dnf" to install packages.

Those are really minor differences.

So what's the point of using Ubuntu if it uses the same kernel, the same init system, the same windowing system, the same desktop environment, the same sound system, and pretty much all of the same userland software that Fedora does?

At least things like Unity and Mir made Ubuntu somewhat unique. But now Ubuntu has basically become Fedora with just a different name. Why would anyone even bother using Ubuntu now?

Re:So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Eravnrekaree]

First of all, most distros have always had the same window system, X Windows. The reason for this is that since all applications and window managers which are GUI, have to talk to the WIndow System, its important to have standardization around the same API. Otherwise you end up with a MESS of an app that works on one distro not being able to run on another distro or having to run 10 different windowing systems, because each application ends up being tied down to one or the other. You also have to have video hardware drivers and those have to plugin to the window system as well. If we are going to change the core window system, all of the distros had better agree to it or else we will end up with a fractured ecosystem like above. Now, because of X's design of leaving look and feel to the Window Manager, you can completely change the look of the user interface by changing the window manager, which does not affect applications. This is why you can use the same apps regardless of what WM you use. Wayland should and will continue this philosophy.

All of what I said also applies to the sound server, as well, so it was important to standardize around pulseaudio if we are going to have a sound server, which is a good idea. The alternative to a sound server would be to incorporate that kind of functionality into the kernel, its better to have it in a user process rather than to add further complicated code to the kernel, as with X.

As for systemd, rather than to rehash all that here: please read this: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. Basically, systemd is a big improvement over what we had before and the criticisms are mostly myths.

Re: So what makes Ubuntu different from Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu LTS releases include five years of support over Fedora's 14 months. And Ubuntu has about three times more open source packages in the default repositories.

Re:X also has stuff!

[serviscope_minor]

Not to mention window managers. One thing we'll sadly lose is the richness of the X window manager ecosystem. That's not a techincal argument against Wayland.

Re:But is Wayland better?

[Rob Y.]

Well, okay. But it sounds like you could figure out how to do the same thing via a remote desktop session. So it boils down to whether Wayland improves things enough for the millions of everyday users to make it worth making users like you figure out another way to do that thing you occasionally do. I don't know enough about Wayland to know that it really will improve things - though I've read reports that it makes the desktop 'feel' smoother. If it makes it easier to get drivers for the latest video cards with fewer bugs, though, I'm all for it.

X remoting was always a good-sounding idea that was implemented in a way that made it not much more efficient in practice than VNC-type remoting. I use remote desktop on my Linux box at home when I need to access my office Windows system from home. I run local stuff on one virtual desktop and RDP on another. The RDP desktop is pretty awful - but useable enough, I guess (since I use it). It'd be better if 'grab all keys' actually grabbed all the keys. But somehow I don't think remoting via X Windows would be any less awful...

Re:But is Wayland better?

[OrangeTide]

X11's network transparency is not terribly useful. It doesn't allow detach/reattach of sessions, so you're forced to exit every program and start them back up again at the new location. While this was very memory efficient back in the 1980's, it's not a very good user experience when dealing with unreliable wireless networks.
And if you've used GTK2 and other widget libraries in the last 10 years, you'll notice their network performance is pretty terrible. Network transparency is kind of useless if none of the software is designed around it. There are too many round-trip messages going on these days to deal with the broken parts of X protocol and in giving fancy user interaction.

VNC is slow, but it's what most people use because it works in a way that is convenient. NoMachine/NX/FreeNX is a technically better alternative, although it's not very popular. (being proprietary doesn't help)

Re:X11 SUCKS

[Billly Gates]

Quotes from the Unix Haters Handbook here.

Let's desconstruct here your arguments X11 myths:

Myth: X Demonstrates the Power of Client/Server Computing

Fact: "The database client/server model (the server machine stores all the data, and the clients beseech it for data) makes sense. The computation client/server model (where the server is a very expensive or experimental supercomputer, and the client is a desktop workstation or portable computer) makes sense. But a graphical client/server model that slies the interface down some arbitrary middle is like Solomon following through with his child-sharing strategy. The legs, heart, and left eye end up on the server, the arms and lungs go to the client, the head is left rolling around on the floor, and blood spurts everywhere.

The fundamental problem with X's notion of client/server is that the proper division of labor between the client and the server can only be decided on an application-by-application basis. Some applications (like a flight simulator) require that all mouse movement be sent to the application. Others need only mouse clicks. Still others need a sophisticated combination of the two, depending on the program's state or the region of the screen where the mouse happens to be. Some programs need to update meters or widgets on the screen every second. Other programs just want to display clocks; the server could just as well do the updating, provided that there was some way to tell it to do so.

The right graphical client/server model is to have an extensible server. Application programs on remote machines can download their own special extension on demand and share libraries in the server. Downloaded code can draw windows, track input eents, provide fast interactive feedback, and minimize network traffic by communicating with the application using a dynamic, high-level protocol.

As an example, imagine a CAD application built on top of such an extensible server. The application could download a program to draw an IC and associate it with a name. From then on, the client could draw the IC anywhere on the screen simply by sending the name and a pair of coordinates. Better yet, the client an download programs and data structures to draw the whole schematic, which are called automatically to refresh and scroll the window, without bothering the client. The user can drag an IC around smoothly, without any network traffic or context switching, and the server sends a single message to the client when the interaction is complete. This makes it possible to run interactive clients over low-speed (that is, slow-bandwidth) communication lines."

Other fun tidbits that made me chuckle

" How to make a 50-MIPS Workstation Run Like a 4.77MHz IBM PC

If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.
- Marus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation

X-Windows is the Iran-Contra of graphical user interfaces: a tragedy of political compromises, entangled alliances, marketing hype, and just plain greed. X-Windows is to memory as Ronald Reagan was to money. Years of "Voodoo Ergonomics" have resulted in an unprecedented memory deficit of gargantuan proportions. Divisive dependencies, distributed deadlocks, and partisan protocols have tightened gridlocks, aggravated race conditions, and promulgated double standards.

X has had its share of $5,000 toilet seats -- like Sun's Open Look clock tool, which gobbles up 1.4 megabytes of real memory! If you sacrificed all the RAM from 22 Commodore 64s to clock tool, it still wouldn't have enough to tell you the time. Even the vanilla X11R4 "xclock" utility consumed 656K to run. And X's memory usage is increasing."

Dude if there ever was a case f