Ubuntu 13.04 Will Enable Wayland Support In GTK+

[newwen]

GTK+3 Wayland backend is as of today enabled in Ubuntu

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+3.0/+bug/954352

[Darxus]

so you need to "switch" to wayland to have a advantage from it... you cant just bypass a few of the gtk-apps to wayland... but if you then run weston or maybe a portet wayland-gnome ontop of wayland you can use X for some older applications that dont know about wayland... so its basicly a real switch you have to do... to have advantage more than testing?

Yes. The plan was for desktop environments like KDE, Gnome Shell, Compiz, etc., to add wayland protocol support. So you could just switch from using X to using Wayland without any change in your user interface. But there doesn't seem to be much going on for that.

[blackiwid]

I would say that the point of wayland is that X is so crufty that it's miserable to maintain or develop. So wayland is a fresh start that's less miserable for the developers (same people working on X). I think this is the best explanation of the problem with X: http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2010/...the-X-protocol



GTK can output directly to Wayland / Weston, with no X involved. It provides a simple path for applications to switch from X to Wayland, because they can stick with existing widget libraries.

The X server stuff is just there for backward compatibility. So you can easily run applications that have not yet been ported to run natively via the wayland protocol.

Also, you can run weston as an X client, for more convenient testing / development. (You can also run weston as a weston client.)

so you need to "switch" to wayland to have a advantage from it... you cant just bypass a few of the gtk-apps to wayland... but if you then run weston or maybe a portet wayland-gnome ontop of wayland you can use X for some older applications that dont know about wayland... so its basicly a real switch you have to do... to have advantage more than testing?

[Darxus]

I dont really understand what is the point of this? I thought that wayland is an alternative to X11... so to be smaller and faster...

I would say that the point of wayland is that X is so crufty that it's miserable to maintain or develop. So wayland is a fresh start that's less miserable for the developers (same people working on X). I think this is the best explanation of the problem with X: http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2010/...the-X-protocol

so whats again the point or the way in using wayland between X and gtk? or is it a kind of shortcut for gtk... so X server is there does some input device handling or something? and then gtk displays directly through wayland on the kernel drivers?

GTK can output directly to Wayland / Weston, with no X involved. It provides a simple path for applications to switch from X to Wayland, because they can stick with existing widget libraries.

The X server stuff is just there for backward compatibility. So you can easily run applications that have not yet been ported to run natively via the wayland protocol.

Also, you can run weston as an X client, for more convenient testing / development. (You can also run weston as a weston client.)

[blackiwid]

I dont really understand what is the point of this? I thought that wayland is an alternative to X11... so to be smaller and faster... so whats again the point or the way in using wayland between X and gtk? or is it a kind of shortcut for gtk... so X server is there does some input device handling or something? and then gtk displays directly through wayland on the kernel drivers?

Or is wayland a kind of shortcut for programms that are developed to use it? So will there be some apps that use it be faster at scrolling or some stuff... moving around or whatever... when they use wayland? and will then all X apps run through wayland and after that they get forwarded to x when they are not compatible? I mean if you dont use weston...

So do I think here right... you just install wayland... maybe set in a file a option like use-wayland= yes so that gtk knows it... and then you dont have to start anything else but some apps gets faster?

or maybe not faster but less resource-eating?

[Delgarde]

Then GTK should get some restructuring.
Seriously backends not optionally choosable? That's one of the most basic things you need in a toolkit like GTK to be adaptable to it's platform.

It's choosable at build time - e.g for building the libraries to run on Windows, MacOS, Unix/X, etc. And it's choosable at runtime which backend is used, if multiple backend exist (e.g Wayland and X).

The catch is that while backends are chosen dynamically, they're not (yet) loaded that way. Thus, the gtk libraries will be linked to both X and Wayland libraries, and both sets of libraries will be dragged into memory when the process is loaded.

Basically, it's a transitional problem. Until Wayland, there was never a need for supporting multiple backends at runtime, so the support for doing so is a work in progress. (EDIT: though as the bug someone linked to indicates, fixing GTK to dynamically load the backend would be a major effort. Don't expect it to happen soon)

[uid313]

Why do I feel the need to take a 2-yr break from Linux once the Wayland transition really gets going?

Not all Linux distributions will suddenly all jump at Wayland.
So if the distribution you use decide to switch to Wayland, well then you can configure it to use X.org, or you can switch to a distribution that doesn't use Wayland.

[pingufunkybeat]

Why do I feel the need to take a 2-yr break from Linux once the Wayland transition really gets going?

You don't. X will still be there, working just as well

[johnc]

Why do I feel the need to take a 2-yr break from Linux once the Wayland transition really gets going?

[Darxus]

Does the latest version of weston support multiple monitors? I heard that it would handle multiple monitors in a different way than Xorg

Yes, by default you get a desktop on the multiple connected monitors.