XWayland 24.1 RC Released With Explicit Sync, Improved Rootful & GLAMOR Optimizations

[phoronix]

Phoronix: XWayland 24.1 RC Released With Explicit Sync, Improved Rootful & GLAMOR Optimizations

As expected, the first release candidate of the forthcoming XWayland 24.1 is now available ahead of its planned stable debut in May...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/XWayland-24.1-RC

[slagiewka]

I'm waiting for the day when XWayland releases will actually be boring.

[emblemparade]

To all those who complain about X11 being abandoned, this is yet more proof that it is not. Everybody realizes that X11 apps are here to stay for a very long time and that we need to provide users with the best experience when running them in modern Wayland compositors.

There's just no investment in X11 servers anymore, such as the X.Org server.

[andrei_me]

To all those who complain about X11 being abandoned, this is yet more proof that it is not.

isn't XWayland a subset of X11, with the parts that makes sense today and are needed to be able to run X11 apps in wayland? 🤔

[emblemparade]

isn't XWayland a subset of X11, with the parts that makes sense today and are needed to be able to run X11 apps in wayland? 🤔

X11 is a protocol, similar to how Wayland is a protocol (though they have very different design principles). They are not pieces of software.

X.Org is an X11 server that is in common use in a lot of free desktop operating systems. (It's actually not the only X11 server out there; there are a few others with much more limited use cases.) I think XWayland started by borrowing a lot of code from X.Org, mainly to handle the enormous amount of higher-level APIs and weird cruft that has accumulated over the years, stuff that practically nobody programs with anymore but still needs to be there for some antique (but still important!) applications. The bottom line is that XWayland supports (or should support) as much as the X11 protocol as X.Org does, so applications should run. Back to your question: XWayland is not a subset of X11, it's truly all of X11. What's still evolving is how well applications run on it compared to X.Org. That is what today's Phoronix story is about.

Wayland doesn't define an exact equivalent of an X11 "server". Instead, that responsibility overlaps more or less (mostly less) with something called a "compositor" or "display server". Popular compositors are Mutter (made for and used primarily by GNOME), KWin (made for and used primarily by KDE), and Sway. You can consider all of them to be replacements for X.Org. There's also Weston, a compositor developed by the Wayland community itself as a way to test that everything works. It's has very limited features, so it's not so useful for running a desktop but it can be fine for things like Point-of-Sale kiosks.

[MrCooper]

To all those who complain about X11 being abandoned, this is yet more proof that it is not. Everybody realizes that X11 apps are here to stay for a very long time and that we need to provide users with the best experience when running them in modern Wayland compositors.

You're arguing with a strawman.

Nobody (with a clue) is saying that X the protocol is being abandoned. It was always clear that good support for X clients is critical for Wayland's success. That's what Xwayland is for.

What we are saying is that development of Xorg specifically is dead, and that remaining development in the xserver project is mostly for Xwayland. The Git shortlog in the Xwayland 24.1.0 rc1 announcement e-mail is proof of that.

There's just no investment in X11 servers anymore, such as the X.Org server.

Not accurate either.

Xwayland is a proper X server (which happens to also be a Wayland client), just like Xorg.

I think XWayland started by borrowing a lot of code from X.Org,

There's no borrowing. The majority of code in the xserver tree is simply shared between all X server binaries.

[emblemparade]

You're arguing with a strawman.

Nobody (with a clue) is saying that X the protocol is being abandoned.

I'm sure you know that there is a large amount of people without a clue, "even" here on Phoronix. Strawmen (and trolls) abound. I'm not trying to argue with them, just hoping to balance that with more knowledge.

One of the biggest news story arches on Phoronix for years has been that more and more applications, frameworks, and libraries are adding native support for Wayland while major desktop operating systems are making Wayland the default. It doesn't take deep analysis to realize that this can only be a temporary situation and that the trend is towards deprecating X11.

The "strawman" sentiment about this is anxiety and anger: "You're shoving Wayland down our throats! X11 works great for me on my personal laptop, Wayland doesn't, so obviously this step back is happening because of 1) greedy business interests, or 2) lazy/dumb devs who want to play with new things instead of dutifully maintaining the software that works great for me on my personal laptop, or 3) collusion of both." I think the ongoing improvements to XWayland are, at least, proof that there is an investment in preservation and a good transition experience. Of course, the "strawmen" could interpret this a way to placate the slumbering masses while the evil strategy comes to fruition! (replace-all wayland to systemd for some fun)

Xwayland is a proper X server (which happens to also be a Wayland client), just like Xorg.

Thanks, yes, my first comment was misleading. I hope my second comment explained it better. To make the difference crystal clear, X.Org is a "full" X11 server that is integrated into a complete graphics stack (at several levels), while XWayland is a much "reduced" X11 server that relies on a Wayland compositor. Thus the quality of the experience in using XWayland depends both on the quality of the compositor and the quality of communication between them (the Wayland protocol). Both aspects are still a work in progress towards full feature and quality parity with X.Org. (To be fair, XWayland can also do some things better than X.Org already.)

[mdedetrich]

How long does it take for an RC to make it to release for XWayland?