XWayland "Rootfull" Changes Merged For Running A Complete Desktop Environment

[phoronix]

Phoronix: XWayland "Rootfull" Changes Merged For Running A Complete Desktop Environment

While XWayland is normally used just for running root-less single applications like games within an otherwise native Wayland desktop, new patches from Red Hat that have been merged into the X.Org Server enhance XWayland's existing "root-full" mode of operation for allowing entire desktop environments and window managers to nicely function within the context of XWayland...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XWayland-Rootfull-Desktop

[dragon321]

I wonder what is the point of running Xwayland "root-full" with whole desktop environment. Isn't that just running X.Org Server but with extra step?

[Hibbelharry]

Before the flamewar starts:

I guess the idea is to be able to remove that bitrot parts of x.org dealing with hardware, lowering maintenance burden. I also guess doing so should have a positive impact on security.

And now: let the fun begin.

[X_m7]

I wonder what is the point of running Xwayland "root-full" with whole desktop environment. Isn't that just running X.Org Server but with extra step?

One possible reason is mentioned in the article itself, being able to fully support X11 on Wayland means that on the hardware level only Wayland support is needed to get both, so there wouldn't be any need to maintain hardware support/drivers/etc for both X11 and Wayland. It's the same logic as the idea of dropping native OpenGL drivers and using Zink on top of Vulkan drivers instead.

[Sethox]

I wonder what is the point of running Xwayland "root-full" with whole desktop environment. Isn't that just running X.Org Server but with extra step?

So basically you put a desktop environment within a desktop environment like a virtual environment. Which I guess could be beneficial to "legacy" applications (legacy desktop environments) to not lose the old with a more secured environment.
For regular users, this is stupid (too few use cases), but for legacy users it could be better if only with security in mind (not running X.org at all, just XWayland).

I don't know, for better or worse it's cool to add this in, it will fizzle out if it's not used or supported that well anyways.

[sinepgib]

So basically you put a desktop environment within a desktop environment like a virtual environment. Which I guess could be beneficial to "legacy" applications (legacy desktop environments) to not lose the old with a more secured environment.
For regular users, this is stupid (too few use cases), but for legacy users it could be better if only with security in mind (not running X.org at all, just XWayland).

I don't know, for better or worse it's cool to add this in, it will fizzle out if it's not used or supported that well anyways.

I fail to see the security improvement. If (most of) your whole desktop is running XWayland then by definition it runs on X (XWayland is just a normal X server stripped of a few things that become irrelevant that acts as a Wayland client), and now it's rootfull it should have most of the security misdesigns of X, namely any application being able to spy on every other application, etc. I'm very much on board with Wayland (for the general case anyway), but I don't really see the point here. It may make testing cheaper, but even in terms of code it shouldn't make that much of a difference vs just dropping the specialized drivers and using VESA and libinput.

[birdie]

Let's have a couple of pages of comments with: "Waylands works [only] for me [read: my narrow use case], why is XWayland even needed?!"

[clouddrop]

Mixed with a couple of pages of "Wayland does not work [only] for me [read: my narrow use case], why is it needed?!"

[ehansin]

Not sure if this is on mark at all, but I thought it was pretty cool in a pure Wayland where I could be running Sway (light Wayland compositor) and then launch Hikari (another light Wayland compositor) with in it.

Wondering in what is being talk about here, could I be running Sway and then launch say i3, or DWM, or whatever X11 DM within that Sway session? Not that I would want to, but this is what the article made me think about.

[CochainComplex]

followed by pages full of: ....based on [the niche case] issues deducing "Thats why Wayland is not ready yet" and any working examples are considered as not legit.