Wayland: A New X Server For Linux

[PGHammer]

Why It's Taken compiz so long

I also do not think this will take as long as it has taken the XServer to evolve to its present form for Wayland to either evolve to the same degree of complexity/features/support. However realistically speaking, I don't see Wayland taking over the XServer in less than 5 years time-frame, could take even longer. However, recent tilts into the development of FLOSS software has been blazing fast. Take Compiz for instance, it has taken distros to enable it by default (Ubuntu 8.10 and others) over two years, and its been under development for at least four years (that I know of, anyway), so from inception to deployment of this rather "useless" piece of desktop bling it has been about 4-5 years. I see a similar path for Wayland. It could be faster due to the interest and momentum generated by these other projects.

One thing that has sucked the air *out* of compiz (as a project) is that desktop environments (especially KDE, but equally true of GNOME, let alone the lighter desktop environments) are including their own compositing managers which are doing their darndest to obviate (either partially or completely) compiz. (Look *just* at KWin's rather lengthy, and getting lengthier, list of natively-supported desktop effects as long as you have OpenGL/XRender/DRI support - how many of these are duplicates of those normally brought to the table by compiz?) Desktop environments (whether heavy or lightweight) are becoming more and more monolithic - in fact, they are becoming a lot like - dare I even say it - *Windows*.

[PGHammer]

Think About Why It Takes So Long

ditto, Hell it takes a long time for FOSS friendly wifi chipsets to get proper support (ie ralink) which is far more complex then a BT client but doesn't come close to the complexity of a X server.

The very reason it takes so long for FOSS-friendly hardware to be supported properly is because FOSS is still not as large a priority as even OS X, let alone Windows - and that is entirely due to marketshare and (perceived) complexity of FOSS on the desktop. (Yes; I did say "perceived complexity" - not all FOSS distributions are difficult to install compared to OS X or Windows; in fact, some are actually *easier* to install than even Windows or OS X.)

I *have* a Ralink-based USB stick, which is directly supported by every OS I've thrown at it - not exactly typical.

[bridgman]

And Wayland just became the default X server in the latest Ubuntu on top of Unity.

My understanding was that Mark Shuttleworth blogged about possibly using Wayland under Unity a year from now... I don't believe it is the default "anything" today.

BTW I think this has been mentioned before, but Wayland is not an X server in any respect... it is a smaller, simpler *display* server which can occupy a similar spot in the graphics stack as long as your applications or toolkits can run over Wayland.

If you want X functionality (eg network extensible display protocols) and support for X applications the idea is that you would run X *over* Wayland.

[SarahKH]

And Wayland just became the default X server in the latest Ubuntu on top of Unity.

[yoshi314]

I see a similar path for Wayland. It could be faster due to the interest and momentum generated by these other projects.

the interest from small, embedded distros might do the trick. it's quite a big market, after all (although not everybody on that market needs X).

take damn small linux, for instance. they use Xvesa right now. (i don't know about slitaz, perhaps they use the same thing). distributions targeted for old hardware (e.g. deli linux) are more likely to use kdrive, Xvesa and similar smaller servers instead of full xorg.

if there would be a better X server with similar disk/memory footprint some of those distributions would definitely take it for a spin.

[Thetargos]

I also do not think this will take as long as it has taken the XServer to evolve to its present form for Wayland to either evolve to the same degree of complexity/features/support. However realistically speaking, I don't see Wayland taking over the XServer in less than 5 years time-frame, could take even longer. However, recent tilts into the development of FLOSS software has been blazing fast. Take Compiz for instance, it has taken distros to enable it by default (Ubuntu 8.10 and others) over two years, and its been under development for at least four years (that I know of, anyway), so from inception to deployment of this rather "useless" piece of desktop bling it has been about 4-5 years. I see a similar path for Wayland. It could be faster due to the interest and momentum generated by these other projects.

[deanjo]

That's not really comparable in terms of complexity...

ditto, Hell it takes a long time for FOSS friendly wifi chipsets to get proper support (ie ralink) which is far more complex then a BT client but doesn't come close to the complexity of a X server.

[TechMage89]

That's not really comparable in terms of complexity...

[XVampireX]

By the way for those who think this development will take a long time, I think you're wrong. Don't forget that a lot of people who try to get a rewrite of software they do it from binary only releases... Now Xorg is actually an open and documented system so it's going to take much less time than what you think. Take an example of Nvidia/Nouveau vs Bittorrent clients (At what rate they are developed).

[TechMage89]

Looks like little more than a toy at present, but the idea is certainly a good one. I'm not sure about doing all rendering client-side, but that probably works well for some applications. I watch with interest.