The State Of The Wayland Display Server

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The State Of The Wayland Display Server

Last year the Wayland Display Server project was started by Kristian Hogsberg, a Red Hat developer and a name known well within the X.Org community for his work on AIGLX, Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2, and various other projects. We were first to talk about the Wayland Display Server in detail, which aims to provide a mini display server that is designed around the latest X/kernel technologies like the Graphics Execution Manager and kernel mode-setting. Wayland also integrates its own compositing manager and is designed to produce a perfect frame (a.k.a. no tearing) each and every time. There has not been much to report on this project recently, but we now have a status update courtesy of Kristian.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13857

[smitty3268]

as far as i know firefox uses cairo (cairo is being ported to wayland), GTK (there is also a Clutter Backend for firefox and clutter is being ported to wayland)

woudnt all this mean that firefox will be usable once GTK stuff is ready

also appart from the server/client network thing what functionality of X is still necesary for a desktop??

I'm pretty sure Firefox is peeking directly at events in X rather than using the higher level libraries for some of it's event handling code. It wouldn't surprise me if there of other X-isms as well, that would need to be ported or removed.

[nanonyme]

Desktop environments/window managers should also have a stable API too

<troll>You mean like in Windows. </troll>

[some-guy]

Firefox doesn't use GTK, it uses xul and fakes the gtk widgets

[89c51]

What does GTK vs Qt have to do with Wayland? Oh, right. Nothing.

I look forward to seeing Wayland backends for both toolkits, not to mention Firefox and OOo and Cairo. I look forward to seeing if Wayland is actually usable as the actual desktop display server and not just as an X multiplexer, or to see if X just gets those same features and obviates Wayland. For all the complaints against X, it has kept up just fine so far, especially since the X.org rejuvenation. Time will tell, I suppose.

a question (that hopefully will drive the discussion away from the fuckin GTK vs QT thing)

as far as i know firefox uses cairo (cairo is being ported to wayland), GTK (there is also a Clutter Backend for firefox and clutter is being ported to wayland)

woudnt all this mean that firefox will be usable once GTK stuff is ready

also appart from the server/client network thing what functionality of X is still necesary for a desktop??

[susikala]

I would use same name, because it's already well known and both are made by same people. Another reason is to not confusing users. I'm not sure if they differ in such level I mentioned before. I was just guessing why KDE devs chose to rewrite every application.

Actually, in using the same name the KDE developers have shot themselves in the leg. If you have a history of releasing stably and then you 'release' something buggy and not on feature par with your previous releases, then such trust abuse will be met with cold shoulders.

If they named it something else, people like myself would be willing to consider KDE more seriously. Take a look at XFCE for a much better managed (and thus much applauded) release.

[spykes]

If there will be only one toolkit Wayland dev/devs will have less work to do The same about graphic cards drivers developers.

You can extend this to the whole OS... Openess and diversity is what open-source is all about, we should not complain about it.

[DeepDayze]

In an ideal world there'd be a stable API that all driver writers (both opensource and proprietary) can write to to ensure their drivers will perform. Sadly that is not the case now...API keeps changing and causing all kinds of headaches for graphics driver writers...

Desktop environments/window managers should also have a stable API too

[kraftman]

Sorry I'm pressing here, but why would you use the same name for two versions of a product that have (according to you) as little to do with each other as one of them compared to a wholly different undertaking? Isn't that more like forking, or creating a whole new project? Then it should also be advertised as such ("KDE done right") and not be called "KDE x".

I would use same name, because it's already well known and both are made by same people. Another reason is to not confusing users. I'm not sure if they differ in such level I mentioned before. I was just guessing why KDE devs chose to rewrite every application.

@Elanthis

What does GTK vs Qt have to do with Wayland? Oh, right. Nothing.

If there will be only one toolkit Wayland dev/devs will have less work to do The same about graphic cards drivers developers.

[susikala]

Moving from QT3 to QT4 is like moving from Gtk* to QT4 (ok, maybe in some, but probably in big part), so in my opinion Gnomes way is not the best in this case.

Sorry I'm pressing here, but why would you use the same name for two versions of a product that have (according to you) as little to do with each other as one of them compared to a wholly different undertaking? Isn't that more like forking, or creating a whole new project? Then it should also be advertised as such ("KDE done right") and not be called "KDE x".