Wayland Back-End For GTK+ Pushed Forward

[elanthis]

Wayland requires apps to use OpenGL ES because there's no actual way to create an OpenGL context on Wayland right now. Normally, to create an OpenGL context, you need to use some windowing-system-specific API, such as GLX (X11), WGL (Windows), or AGL (Mac). Wayland doesn't implement any of these for obvious reasons, instead preferring that applications use EGL.

EGL supports OpenGL, but if I understand correctly it's only really implemented for OpenGL ES and OpenVG in Mesa right now.

This is entirely a short term and fixable problem, not a huge show stopper of any sort.

[89c51]

It won't. It uses existing mode-setting drivers, existing mesa, and so on.

i remember there were some discussions about speed but noone as i can remember gave a proper answer on if it will make a difference

the ease and simplicity in development will come from the smaller codebase as far as i understand it

[srg_13]

Hi, can anyone explain if and how Wayland will speed|ease|simplifiy development of Linux Graphics Drivers Stack?

It won't. It uses existing mode-setting drivers, existing mesa, and so on.

[89c51]

even if this can be considered a milestone there are still stuff in the TODO list that afaik noone is working on

[MaestroMaus]

Hi, can anyone explain if and how Wayland will speed|ease|simplifiy development of Linux Graphics Drivers Stack?

Hi, please use the "search" option at the top of the page. It's been explained a lot of times already.

[smitty3268]

Wouldn't OpenGL in addition to OpenGL ES allow for greater performance in things like high graphics gaming and what not?

Applications don't care what support Wayland has, that's why you can still use 3D apps on a strictly 2D desktop. So you'll be able to use OpenGL 4 in games no matter what Wayland is doing.

The only things it really affects are Compiz and Kwin (and other compositors). These will need to be rewritten to work on OpenGL ES, which is basically the same as OpenGL 3 minus all the fixed-function backwards compatibility. It might be missing a few of the newer OpenGL features, but I suspect those will be included as extensions if they aren't already. I think it's good to only guarantee the base ES2.0 functionality anyway, so that the code can also run on mobile devices that only support that much.

[przemoli]

Hi, can anyone explain if and how Wayland will speed|ease|simplifiy development of Linux Graphics Drivers Stack?

[srg_13]

Wouldn't OpenGL in addition to OpenGL ES allow for greater performance in things like high graphics gaming and what not?

I think ES 2.0 is just the minimum requirement for the compositor (so it's able to run on mobile devices). Since it's just a subset of OpenGL, it's the same performance, just less features.

But applications can use any OpenGL version that their graphics driver supports.

[cl333r]

Wouldn't OpenGL in addition to OpenGL ES allow for greater performance in things like high graphics gaming and what not?

Afaik when you use OpenGL in your app you don't need Wayland's blessing since OpenGL draws directly to the screen. At most Wayland could tell your app _where_ to draw, but Wayland itself doesn't participate in the drawing process of the apps which use OpenGL for (their own 2D/3D) rendering stuff.

Wayland as in "display manager" as opposed to "new standard" does use "OpenGL ES" instead of "OpenGL" to render stuff but that is simply because it wants to run on mobile devices with as little changes as possible and unless you mean OpenGL 4.x there's virtually no big performance difference between OpenGL 1x-3x and OpenGL ES 2.0.

[Prescience500]

Wouldn't OpenGL in addition to OpenGL ES allow for greater performance in things like high graphics gaming and what not?