No KMS? No Mesa? Run Wayland Off A Linux Framebuffer!

[phoronix]

Phoronix: No KMS? No Mesa? Run Wayland Off A Linux Framebuffer!

Besides needing to get the various tool-kits and other libraries ported to run atop the Wayland Display Server, another requirement limiting the adoption of this X11 Server alternative so far has been the specialized graphics requirements. From the beginning, Wayland was designed for GPU drivers that support kernel mode-setting (KMS), Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) buffers, and OpenGL ES, among some other smaller requirements. Originally only the Intel Linux driver would work, but since then the various branches needed to support Wayland have been merged to their mainline code-bases and it's possible to run Wayland with the open-source ATI Radeon and Nouveau drivers too. But those using the proprietary ATI or NVIDIA drivers have not been able to run Wayland nor those people utilizing the VESA driver or any of the other obscure graphics drivers that lack any of the needed GPU driver capabilities. This though has now changed as it's been proved possible that Wayland in fact can run off a Linux frame-buffer...

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

[BlackStar]

If this is going to make it easier for developers develop for it, then this is good news. Speaking of things to make development easier, one thing that I've been wondering is that if OpenGL support (as opposed to OpenGL ES) is added to Wayland and Wayland eventually fully replaces X (I realize this may take many years), then would it be easier for developers to develop open source graphics drivers because it would be for Wayland, instead of X?

No, the hard parts in driver development have nothing to do with X. Programming a GPU is hard, period.

[Prescience500]

If this is going to make it easier for developers develop for it, then this is good news. Speaking of things to make development easier, one thing that I've been wondering is that if OpenGL support (as opposed to OpenGL ES) is added to Wayland and Wayland eventually fully replaces X (I realize this may take many years), then would it be easier for developers to develop open source graphics drivers because it would be for Wayland, instead of X?

[smitty3268]

I paid for my Nvidia card to use its full feature set now, not in a few years.

Then why are you even worried about Wayland? It's not going to be used by anyone who doesn't specifically install it themselves for at least that long.

[brent]

I can imagine this being nice as a fallback that always works. Just like the VESA Xorg driver now.

[thefirstm]

I paid for my Nvidia card to use its full feature set now, not in a few years.

[Ranguvar]

Let's see... X with hardware accelerated everything, or Wayland with my expensive NVIDIA GPU acting like a dumb framebuffer. Which will I pick......

It couldn't be more obvious that this is simply to make Wayland more accessible for hacking by developers.

A very good thing, only if you like slow 2D, slow/incomplete 3D, no/incomplete video acceleration, and high power usage.

Because Wayland becoming the default system to use and Nouveau then the default driver to use with it would slow/halt progress on all those issues, instead of boosting them dramatically.
Oh wait...

[BlackStar]

Fail troll is fail.

[thefirstm]

Excellent. Hopoefully, nvidia will consider this "supported" and not make any further updates to their driver to handle it directly. This would boost the migration away from the nasty blobs, which is a VERY good thing.

A very good thing, only if you like slow 2D, slow/incomplete 3D, no/incomplete video acceleration, and high power usage.

[droidhacker]

Excellent. Hopoefully, nvidia will consider this "supported" and not make any further updates to their driver to handle it directly. This would boost the migration away from the nasty blobs, which is a VERY good thing.